Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive AB

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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals).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

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Radical Linking Proposal, making wiki more efficient

Im not sure if it is possible but it would be nice if all words that have an article or page would automatically be links to those pages, but appearing like normal words unless you have the cursor upon them (or click them). So the Articles would appear as today but all archived words would be "hidden" links. This would maybe take more bandwidth but it would surely make the pedia more effective and integrated. /Minoya 08:53, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

too many links would mean a big trawl. imagine reading an article, you'de never finish it out of curosity of what every word means. at the moment you can link anything to anything, once. An interesting idea. FrummerThanThou 09:25, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• Mouse-over is normally done with Java Script. That would be a developer issue, but I'm rather unenthusiastic about the idea. First, the manual of style (WP:MOS) already discourages overlinking. Second, new readers may get lost in the link maze, but learning when to click and when to click later is part of the experience of Wikipedia. Anyway, I certainly understand the principle, and it's one reason the Manual of Style changed to discourage "overlinking." Geogre 11:19, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
• And I'm not even mentioning the problems words with more than one meaning would cause... - Mgm|^(talk) 13:50, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
• WEll well, eventually it will happen, and when every word, every syllable is completely mapped and understood, we will move on, to new frontiers and new levels of understanding. /Minoya 14:51, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• If you want to know what it would feel like to implement this (scary), see uncyclopedia:Page Full Of Links. Otherwise, it's almost OK. :) Nihiltres 03:45, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Cool, thats the way i like it! Just, I'd like one color for all text, hyperlinked or not. /Minoya 23:44, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

• As you can imagine, this does not really help the legibility of the page. (Radiant) 13:47, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
• Why? Because the text turns blue? I think its a great idea /Minoya 22:53, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Is it possible to leave things looking the way they are, but have right clicks bring up the option of finding links to Wikitionary and other projects? -- Samuel Wantman 10:05, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

• I personally oppose the idea as well. Too many links is overkill, only those terms that actually relate to the topic at hand should be linked. All people and places mentioned should probably be linked to as well, but not everything. Also, how would you deal with phrases that have articles but also where each word of that phrase has a separate articles? --The Way 22:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose, already doable: Individual users can accomplish this by using Javascript to make individual words "clickable". Some sites in fact provide this option; clicked words open up a dictionary definition of the relevant word. Also, there is the problem of "composite links" just mentioned by User:The Way. dr.ef.tymac 19:52, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment This has been proposed and rejected very early on in the project. WP:BTW covers this, and WP:CONTEXT and WP:MOS-L give good arguments why you shouldn't. Linking individual words will also undermine the making of more appropriate multiword links, like "war crimes of the Wehrmacht" instead of "War crimes of the Wehrmacht". The first is really useless, but the second is a much more efficient link to relevant knowledge. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:02, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Layered Pages

ELApro: Might an option be made available for a user to create/access a scaled down, elementary lay version of an article that is highly technical? This would eliminate the jargon and other technicalities that may be present in the parent article.

You mean like the Simple English Wikipedia attempts to do? --tjstrf talk 11:13, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I would like to see a Non-technical summary info box included near the top of each article. Ideally it could be turned off in My Preferences. This would help me understand what the article was talking about and give me some mental framework to hang the rest of the article on. The Simple English Wikipedia does not have many articles on technical or complex subjects, which is where this is most needed. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 15:20, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

co-incidentally, i was just on my way here to suggest something similar.

basically, theres a problem with our target audience, i.e., given that our target audience is 'everyone', it's hard to get the depth and wordage of an article right, so that it's not too complicated for those who aren't allready knowledgable in the area, but still useful to those who are. eg, if i look up an article on genetics, then i dont want it too simple -- i want some complicated meat and bones, rather than an article that just puts simply what i allready know. on the other hands, i want articles that discuss maths to treat me like the mathematical retard that i am, and lay it out simple.

obviously, catering for me would piss other people off :-D. not catering for me pisses me, and similar people, off. so, you see the problem?

why not, at least for sci/tech articles, for decent articles (B-list or above, say), fork the article into simple, normal, advanced, and expert versions? example definitions could be:

simple presumes no background knowledge. aims to get the basic concept across, tho not neccesarily any details on how/why the concept is/works/etc

normal presumes basic/no background knowledge. aims to get the basic concept across, with some understanding of how/why the thing is/works/etc

advanced presumes some background knowledge. aims to get the concept fully accross, along with more detailed how and why

expert presumes deep background knowledge, and a reader that wants to fully and deeply comprehend the subject, and who is willing to wade through a complicated article to do so.

examples for, say, a tRNA article:

simple: understandable without any background knowledge: for those who are simply interested in knowing what tRNA is and what it does, not neccesarily understanding exactly how it works nor wading through complicated bio-molecular/genetic jibberish

normal understandable by someone without any above-basic background knowledge in biology/genetics, but possibly a bit confusing (i.e., they could, with effort, understand what tRNA is, and, broadly speaking, how it works, from the article). probably useful to A-level students as a primer, but less useful to BSCs.

advanced let the scientific jibberish fly! useful to people with biological training. with a background in molecular biology, someone could come away from the article understanding what tRNA is and how it works, tho not neccesarily with an exam-passing understanding

expert for people who allready know the subject really well, and who want more esoteric info on tRNA, such as bond-lengths, etc. incomprehensable to normal people, but makes wp useful on the subject of tRNA to people who would have to work with tRNA in a professional setting.

i knocked up an example. note that i did it really quickly, and, as articles, they're shit. they just aim to demonstrait what i'm talking about.

the tRNA article, slightly stripped down, then forked into simple, normal, advanced and expert versions. User:Dak/TRNA (edit the demo articles if you want, i'm not going to mind just because they're on my user space).

what'cher recon? theres some gaps (between, say, advanced and expert, imo), and the system could be extended: maybe article/concise (brief as possible), article/verbiose (long winded, covering every aspect, with the kind of stuff which is usually clipped from articles to keep them of a sane size), article/data (lists of different tRNA molecules, average bond-lengths, links to genetic sequences, melting point, average molecular weights, etc), etc. etc. etc... --Dak 19:01, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

ELApro: I would assume that the old "Keep it simple" adage might apply. If there is a simplified version of the article in the Simplified English Wikipedia then there should be an auto-link function in the software to have the link created. This, by the way, might be similarly applied to WikiQuotes, or whatever other Wiki application exists for an article. Why not have an option to create a simplified lay person's page, if one does not exist and the current single option appears to be too complex for some lay reader. After a lay version is created, a lay version link from a normal Wiki page would be available for anyone considering the current main page too complex, and desiring a simplified introduction. Those satisfied with the original page can leave it as is, and those believing the original page is too complex, will either have an option to view a simplified presentation, or will have an option to create a simplified version. Let the users decide which original pages may or may not be suited to the typical lay person, by copying information from the lay page (if it exists) into the original page, and keeping the lay page simple. If an article is acceptably presented to all viewers, leave it as is. No changes necessary. Otherwise, an alternative option, only one, is available, linked from the original article. Any levels beyond two could be done by extracting information and customizing on one's own home computer, to suit one's individual taste.

Simple English is different; it refers to language.

However, I don't see much point. This all can be done, and is done, using multiple pages and navboxes. After all, diving deep requires more pages anyway. Well, it's just simpler as it is. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 15:17, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

ELApro: After an initial review of the Simple English Wikipedia, I would disagree. It seems to be precisely what was requested. The only thing that remains to be done is to link all existing articles, hopefully in a manner similar to that described above by Jonathan Kovaciny. This could be done either manually or automatically, but hopefully something could be done to ease or simplify the process. Thank you Jonathan for your valuable information and for seconding this proposal!

The current way to link to simple English versions of articles is to put [[simple:Article name]] at the bottom of the article, and the simple English version would be linked in the sidebar on the left with all the other language versions of that article. Tra (Talk) 18:50, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Stop fair use

The end of Fair use has begun: Wikipedia:WikiProject Stop fair use --ROBERTO DAN 17:44, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

It is already up for deletion. PullToOpen^Talk 21:03, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

A logical improvement drive

I was wondering if it was possible to list all the articles sorted by decreasing "what links here" number of links. That way, we'd have a pretty accurate measure of the importance of an article to the whole encyclopedia, both in content and community. We could work to make the most important articles GAs and FAs, without the constant debate about article importance that generally cripples COWs and improvement drives.--SidiLemine 12:33, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

See Special:Mostlinked, and please don't post the same question on multiple village pump pages. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:14, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Actual edit summary inclusion in "edit summary"

At the moment the only way the nature of an edit can be discovered is by clicking the 'diff' link, and using the edit summaries provided by the editors. However edit summaries provided are often of little or no use - anonymous vandalism with no edit summary being one example. What about the possibility of categorizing edits based on their nature, e.g. text removal, text change, text insertion, link insertion... the options could be as complicated or as simple as necessary. Display this information in brief form next to the edit summary, and it could be useful when browsing an article's history, recent changes or a watchlist. Mushin^talk 06:35, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Edit summaries are now automatically supplied in many cases, see Wikipedia:Automatic edit summaries. In addition, Recent changes now includes a count of characters (bytes) added or deleted by each edit. There is an existing software change request to add this count to the watchlist display, please see bugzilla:8331. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:34, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but automatic edit summaries don't (and can't) help in the "normal" cases. A typical abuse of them is editing a section and leaving the section name nicely enclosed in /* */ as summary. A cheat, at best. —Gennaro Prota^•Talk 17:05, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I thought people cheat in games, and we aren't in one. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 17:23, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Not sure whether you got the irony. Did you? —Gennaro Prota^•Talk 03:12, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Wiktionary integration?

Since the wiktionary project has really taken off, how about including a little blurb "wiktionary has a definition of this word" (with a link, of course!) or something like that for wikipedia articles that are also featured in the wiktionary? I'm not sure if this would be best done with a bot walking through the wiktionary and adding tags to wikipedia or if the databases could be synced... Just an idea... 83.255.10.11 23:55, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

You can use the template {{wiktionary}} to do this where {{wiktionary|example}} gives the box shown on the right. Tra (Talk) 00:06, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Interesting that you should say that Wiktionary has 'really taken off'. There was a question recently about whether it was appropriate for Wikipedia to have an article on Wiktionary at all due to a lack of media coverage (see here). --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 17:30, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Not so random Random article / "Fuzzy search"

I think the Random article link is interesting but unwieldly. I think it would be more interesting if the random article link had an option so one could make it a bit less random-- i.e. make it so one can semi-randomly select:

• an article that was created in the last 30 days
• articles in a specific area (i.e. European history, electronics, philosophy, biographies)
• by article length (i.e. so one can look for random stub-like articles... or long unreferenced ones)
• ... so one can select articles with a combination of the above.
• <add a criterion>
• <add a criterion>

The above is related to "fuzzy searching"... by "fuzzy" I mean one that isn't so well defined in the search sense, i.e. inexact matching of search terms. It would be interesting if one could search articles by content, i.e. search articles for specific words (and get a list as output). Sometimes, I find it is not possible to remember the name of the article... but I remember the content. Google seems to be better at finding things then... than the Wikipedia's 'search' function. It would be interesting if Wikipedia had a search function (not unlike Google)... that has the option of generating a ranking of articles instead of taking one to one specific article. Nephron  T|C 23:18, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I've always wanted a feature like this. Sometimes I'm lost for things to do on Wikipedia (too much choice). It would be great if I could get a random article within, eg., Category:Science and fix what needs to be fixed. --Oldak Quill 02:35, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd also like to have similar filters for "some tasks you can do": I sometimes have a look at it but almost never find topics I have enough knowledge about. Support. —Gennaro Prota^•Talk 04:44, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Move and edit

I frequently come across small stub articles at incorrectly-najmed pages and move them to more appropriate titles. Almost inevitably, the pages also need further work such as wikifying, categorising, or re-stubbing. Currently, the "successful move" page reads:

The page oldname (links) has been moved to newname.

Please check whether this move has created any double redirects, and fix them as necessary.

It would be a huuge help if that could be tweaked slightly to become:

The page oldname (links) has been moved to newname (edit).

Please check whether this move has created any double redirects, and fix them as necessary.

Any chance of adding that edit link? Pretty please? Grutness...wha? 23:00, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

To add this link, an admin will need to change MediaWiki:Pagemovedtext to (see in edit form for code):

The page "{{MediaWiki direct link}}" (links) has been moved to "$2" (edit).

Please check whether this move has created any double redirects, and fix them as necessary.

Tra (Talk) 23:35, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Fair use of promotional photographs

Hi all,

There is a vote to allow the fair use of promotional photographs of living people. Some people believe the fair use policy currently disallows fair use of promotional photographs of living people if they occasionally make public appearances, others disagree with this. This proposal would clarify the issue.

Cedars 22:13, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Spam blacklist type of warning feature

Wikipedia already has in place a spam blacklist which prevents page saves when certain URLs are detected on the page. I'd like to propose a similar type of system. It would not be a blanket refusal to save, but rather would pop up a warning (as we used to have with blank edit summaries before the autofill feature came along) when certain words are detected. The editor would still be able to save, but at least he would hav been alerted to this. It would be of great help to newbies especially. Words I'm targeting off the top of my head are things like "recent", "recently", "lately" etc. that should not be in a "permanent" encyclopedia article. I'm sure others could even think of different ways to take this, e.g. identifying certain adjectives as weasel words and peacock terms. Thoughts? Zunaid©^{Please rate me at Editor Review!} 13:17, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

• Hm, interesting. A similar system could be used to block out vandalistic swearwords (except, of course, that we have articles on most of those words). But if it's just a pop-up, don't you think people will just ignore it? If it's not a pop-up but a refusal-to-save, don't you think this may annoy people and they will abandon their edit? >Radiant< 16:17, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
• I question that this would work. What about quotes? There are also some subjects that use swear words encyclopedically like Fuck the Millennium. Also it can be quite discouraging to new users, similar to when your doing a long online registration and constant problems show up about the entered fields like "too short of a password / taken username", the point: its frustrating. - Tutmosis 16:44, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Not a pop-up window exactly...it would just bring up the edit page again like does with blank edit summaries (just in case anyone reading this isn't aware, you can set it in your Preferences/Editing menu to "prompt me on blank edit summary"). The word list should obviously be cautiously applied, I'm thinking more in terms of encyclopedicness (encyclopedicity?) than profanity. Things like "recently" should NEVER be in a good encyclopedia article. For a profanity filter, perhaps an admin-settable flag can enable a whitelist allowing swear words on a per-article basis, without popping up the warning. Zunaid©^{Please rate me at Editor Review!} 07:57, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Again I'm questing if that would work. What if the user is not familiar with our guidelines on Wikipedia:Weasel words and Wikipedia:Words to avoid. If the user is unable to save then I don't think he/she will understand why. Providing an optional (preferences) pop up in my opinion would be the best scenario. Pop up like "You used [word], which is considered unencyclopedic. Continue?". That ofcourse again being optional for registered users. But completely restricting saving of pages based on words is bound to create problems and wiki-break frustrations. - Tutmosis 15:54, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Kind of a related idea: What about doing something like this for users that have been blocked in the last 90 days? Any time a recent vandal tried to add any word in a large list of common vandalism words, they'd have to go through an extra step before being able to save the page. On the "warning page" there would be an admonishment not to revandalize: "Based on keywords in your edit, it appears that you are attempting to vandalize this page. You may still proceed with your changes by clicking the Save Page button below, but be aware that your edit will be speedily reverted if any vandalism is confirmed." Then, a special note would be automatically appended to the edit summary highlighting the edit as possible vandalism. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 15:12, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Rating system/decision system

In some cases, building consensus on Wikipedia does not work very well. It is slow. It often results in a bad answer/solution. It is prone to manipulation. And often, a number of average editors can make life miserable for some real expert in a field like physics or neuroscience, reverting their changes, getting into petty arguments with them, etc. When you read the academic literature about Wikipedia, this is one of the complaints. The library scientists also complain about problems with unqualified people cranking out nonsense in a strident contemptuous fashion and drowning out the more learned and qualified editors on Wikipedia. In interviews, Jimmy Wales often has mentioned the desire to attract more experts to write articles. I am wondering about possibly tilting the playing field a bit in favor of people who have demonstrated some recognized level of expertise in some area.

I propose that a system somewhat like that used by Yahoo! Answers be used. In Yahoo! Answers, a person can put a question forward and get quite a few answers to that question in a short period. They can either choose one of these as the "best", or put it up to a vote to the community which will then choose a "best" answer. The community can then vote after the fact in agreement that the best choice has been made, or can vote in disagreement. Points are accumulated along the way that then identify fairly rapidly those with recognized qualifications and reliability in a given field. Many times I wish I could have a question that arises on Wikipedia put to a vote. On a talk page, this rarely works. Some people have jury rigged votes on special pages, and that can work sometimes. If points were accumulated in a yahoo! answers fashion, and people could find a list of things to vote on easily, then the community could be surveyed easily on many issues that become sources of contention. This could even be used for noncontent-related dispute resolution. For example, I have had editors claiming to me that having citations was unencyclopedic. Of course, I could have tried to organize some sort of RfC or something to address this, but it is too cumbersome. If I could quickly put the matter to a vote, and get 35 votes to 2 to show he is wrong, and build up points in the meantime, then slowly people who are knowledgable and reasonable fonts of knowledge in certain areas will be identified, and people who are less reliable and less knowledgable will become known as well. This would also be an incentive to people to improve, to get a better score. Better scores need not come with extra priveleges; prestige is enough to drive people on Yahoo! Answers. I recently had a situation where an editor claimed he had taken the wording for his contribution (which was very lacking in several aspects) directly from the work of a famous person in the field (but did not attribute the writing to the famous person). I then expressed incredulity at this claim, given that the contribution was of such doubtful quality. I pointed out that this editor appeared to be:

1. admitting to plagiarism
2. appealing to the presumed authority of this famous person to justify what they had written

I was met with a storm of indignation and accusations and attacks. The current dispute resolution system is too cumbersome to deal with this sort of thing. Therefore, there is lots of bullying instead. However, if something easy was available, the problem probably would have been resolved quickly without even resorting to dispute resolution, because even the existence of a way to easily publicly shame someone would encourage them to stay in line. Points might be accrued in different areas to produce a multidimensional score. Anyway, it is at least something to consider.--Filll 07:29, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Voting is not how Wikipedia works nor should it be. Democratic voting is not a good way to decide these sort of issues. What makes you think that votes would not be rigged? Wikis are run by consensus. If you post something and it remains, that means that everyone who reads it has in a sense "voted" to let it remain or abstained. So everything at wikipedia has unanimous approval. When people disagree, they have to discuss. If they can't discuss they can try mediation. If they can't mediate then there is arbitration. Discussions take time, and people who are not suited to collaborative efforts do not stay very long or eventually end up blocked. A million and a half pages have been created this way.

There is no excuse for plagarism, and you should remove anything that is found to be plagarism. If someone claims information to be from an authority, they should cite them. If they do not, remove it for being uncited material. If you get reverted, ask for other editors to join you in reverting uncited material and plagarism. -- Samuel Wantman 09:54, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I understand what you are saying. However, I am reluctant to get into a pitched battle with someone who has been here more than 4 years. They clearly know all the rules and all the tricks for circumventing the rules. They obviously have a wide range of alliances and friends they can draw on. And it is true that 1.5 million pages in English have been created that way, and many more pages have been created in other languages. However, there are problems in a system where everyone is the some weight. Sometimes the herd instinct is wrong. And some lousy pages result. In fact, I have seen my share of examples of bad design, and clumsy wording, and meaningless phrases. And editors who are prepared to defend these to the death, using sockpuppets and friends. Unless someone is prepared to go to a lot of trouble, you cannot dislodge them and the text they are defending. I am not the only one who has noted this. Wikipedia has some very strong points, but it has weaknesses as well. I suppose a rating system could be "gamed" and end up favoring some group that wanted to cheat.--Filll 12:41, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I hope you don't have your heart set on changing Wikipedia in as fundamentatl a manner as you propose, because it isn't going to happen. With 1.5 million articles out there, surely all the articles you might want to edit can't already be defended by editors with sockpuppets (violation of rules) and friends ready to defend them? Perhaps you could look at Wikipedia:Maintenance or Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce if you're not sure where such undefended articles might be found. John Broughton | Talk 17:40, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

No of course not. I just thought I would make the suggestion. I do not claim this is the solution the problems of Wikipedia. When one is brainstorming, one just throws ideas out for comment. Most of them are nonsense, but they might stimulate other ideas and who knows, sometimes something good comes out of it. I also suspect there are many "orphaned" articles out there. --Filll 21:51, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Could be - there's a project to look at such articles just starting up: Wikipedia:WikiProject Abandoned Articles, and a special page (Special:ancientpages) to display the 1000 articles with the least recent edits. John Broughton | Talk 02:45, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

If I understood your proposal correctly, it aims to give expert views more weight in discussions/votes, and to introduce a simpler method of determining consensus. I remember Larry Sanger, and others, criticising Wikipedia for being anti-elitist, and this proposal would help address such criticism, and make it harder for trolls to game the system. A hypothetical situation where this would be useful would be a discussion where a troll tries to get a common misconception reported as a fact in the article, and an expert tries to stop him. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 05:56, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Object This makes absolutely no sense at all. How can you know for sure that that person is an expert on the subject? Say an example: a neurologist decides to become a Wikiholic, and start posting stuff on Neuroscience. There is no way to confirm. Besides new editors i.e. in this case the neurologist, don't have friends in Wikipedia. Therefore their votes will be lower. And then they may leave.--Foundby 10:56, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Whilst I'd agree that the current, consensus based, (effectively weighted democratic) system in Wikipedia is fundamentally flawed, I'm not convinced that this approach to dealing with that is adequate. You're essentially advocating a beauty contest based on a meta level rather than as it is now, on the content level. Until Wikipedia has some form of demonstrating expertise and utilising that in the validation of article content, we'll never get away from the rigging or pimping of votes whether on article page or in WP space. Notwithstanding that the tyrrany of ill-informed democracy does need dealing with.ALR 20:54, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree, this is a major problem. Most adult people with a degree have good professional knowledge in some field. I'm quite thick-skinned and used to debating on forums and so on, but a person not used to Internet can dislike this. And it's much more frustrating to defend what you really know about, and what is the common knowledge for anyone who ever had interest in the field.

However, the way to deal with it, in my opinion, is changing attitude. Really, if an expert decides to help the site by adding some good information or fixing mistakes, he doesn't expect the ingratitutious attitude typical here. WP is becoming somewhat of thing in itself, people judged by number of edits, and anyone with few edits considered a newbie, at best met with condescending attitude.

We just need to change the attitude, as professional knowledge is essential to filter information, and can't be replaced by trusted newspapers. By changing the attitude I do mean some measures, not just "we should". However, I'm not sure which measures. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 14:29, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Require anonymous users to confirm edits

Here is an idea for reducing vandalism: Require anonymous users to provide a valid e-mail address, which will be used to verify that the anon is serious about the edit and to permit identification of vandals. Here is the process:

• Anon does an edit.
• Once they hit "save page", they get a screen asking them to provide a valid e-mail address to which a confirmation message will be sent. It is noted that they will have only 30 minutes to respond (which I assume is more than enough time in most cases to reveive the e-mail and respond).
• If an e-mail address is provided, a confirmation e-mail is sent out, with instructions to either reply to it or click on a coded, confirming URL link to confirm the edit.
  • If no e-mail is provided, the edit is discarded.
• If there is an edit conflict after the confirmation is done, another e-emil will be sent out with a link to a conflict resolution screen. If this link is used, the final edit will be saved as it is associated with an existing confirmation.

Note that at the end of this process we will have a valid e-mail for the user, and some hope of identification if the edit is vandalism. I strongly doubt that any vandal will be eager to type in "me@myschool.edu", but if they do so and it is vandalism we can then contact "myschool" and advise them of the issue. We can also block e-mail addresses that are for vandals in that case.

Note that I am not calling for e-mail addresses to be placed in the edit history or in any place which is generally accessible. The e-mail addresses should be in a seperate place acessible only to sysops if not a much more restricted set of users. However, it should be a part of our policy that Wikipedia can use that information at its discression to track down and/or contact vandals, and that should be noted on the e-mail address query screen and in the confirmation e-mail itself. --EMS | Talk 17:55, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

The whole point of a wiki is that it's quick and easy. Doesn't this proposal take away from that? ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}

All this does is serve to annoy the anons. It won't stop the vandals since they obviously either a)have too much time on their hands and can spare the 30 seconds to confirm their email, and/or b)have an agenda to push and won't mind the inconvenience. Legit users who don't want to join wikipedia but are just trying to be helpful once are less likely to make the effort. And no, it won't inspire people to create accounts. You can't annoy someone into joining - most would choose to simply not bother. Koweja 19:41, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

As I see it, someone doing a quick and legit edit will have little issue with doing the confirmation. Type in your e-mail (which many current browsers will auto-complete for you), and after the e-mail arrives hit the Reply and Send buttons on your e-mail tool, and the edit is in. I don't see that as a huge bother. This will only get annoying once you start making mutliple edits a day, and if you are committed to doing regular editing here, then you should have an account (and most likely will get one).

The goal is to set up a "low bar" to anonymous edits, but one that will stop casual vandals cold. I admit that it won't stop POV pushing and won't stop vandal accounts or other people who care to be creative about hiding their identity. However, a school kid blanking a page as a joke will be looking at creating a trail that potentially can be followed. That is the target here. --EMS | Talk 18:10, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Right, so it won't do much to solve the problems, but cause an inconvenience for many potential members. Thanks to the massive number of people who watch recent changes, have pages on their watchlists, and the AntiVandalBot, page blankings and other drive-by idiocy generally gets reverted in seconds. Your proposal runs counter to established policies of assume good faith and don't bite the newbies. Not to mention the core principle of being an open encyclopedia. You have to realize that even though a lot of vandals are anonymous editors, the vast majority of anonymous edits are helpful. Fact of the matter is that "casual vandals" are the least of our problems. Koweja 18:25, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Not true. In my experience the vast majority of anonymous edits, particularly when done without an edit summary, are deliberate vandalism. Moreover, it does not get reverted in seconds; it can remain for hours, days or even weeks. I used to care, but I'm beginning not to. After all: if Jimmy Wales doesn't care that Wikipedia has become an idiot's playground, why should I? Personally I don't think anonymous editing should be allowed at all, so anything that causes it to be inconvenient sounds good to me. --Stephen Burnett 19:08, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

A lot of energy goes onto doing these reverts that could be devoted to improving the encyclopedia. In fact, I am one editor who has limited time and who has found the vandal reverts make it hard to track what is really going on it the page. Items that could be of interest often get buried by a vandalism-and-revert. Also, as one comes to be watching a larger number of articles, more and more of them are found to have an edit summary of "rvv" or "rv to prev ver ...". So this noise in the watchlists interferes with the ability to track real issues regard that portion of the encyclopedia that you have chosen to contribute to.

I honestly think that Wikipedia has shown that while wikis can be effective tools for creating a community-wide compendium of information, they also can be too wide open and free wheeling. The issue now is to figure out how to achieve the right balance of openness and restraint. Mine is just one suggestion of improvig that balance. --EMS | Talk 04:00, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think editing by non-registered users should be allowed at all - the negatives far outweigh the positives. So giving anon IPs a hoop to jump through should be the least requirement. CyberAnth 04:18, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Let me also add that while people watching at recent changes do a great and thankless job it's not true that vandalism gets simply "canceled" by reverts: the damage on the edit history is permanent and something we shouldn't underestimate. We already have an overwhelming number of Historia se repetit edits just because there's no good way to document rationales for previous choices; and way too many editors who don't use edit summaries. I don't think we should add reverts to that. (Personally, I'm one who thinks Wikipedia should switch to an SCM system, or it will never be able to get a release out, for instance. But that's perhaps a broader topic.) —Gennaro Prota^•Talk 21:21, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

• This should probably be on WP:PEREN. (Radiant) 13:49, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

This sort of raising the barrier to entry to weed out the malicious generally backfires. I wish I could find the article, but there was a study done showing that, after the Boy Scouts of America started requiring that all volunteers submit to criminal background checks, the rate of molestation went up: potential child molesters were more willing to go to the effort of becoming volunteers than ordinary people were. --Carnildo 22:53, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Object Seriously if you want to stop anon-vandals, give them the template welcome anon-vandal. Very good template if you ask me. It was marked for deletion, but I think the decision was to keep the template.--Foundby 10:47, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Ha ha ha! Oh wait... you were serious? Lets face it, if anonymous people have to go through this huge waste of time perhaps to only correct a spelling mistake, why edit wikipedia at all? Even if there is completely wrong information, most anonymous users dont want to spend their precious Sunday afternoon going through that process. And I honestly dont think this will stop vandals at all because those people that vandalize in the first place have way too uch time o their hands. -Charlie34

Really, this won't help against vandals. Only against people who have noticed "Wow! Edit button!" and decided to test it, but they aren't a problem. About the side effect, on many sites I often had a useful comment in mind, but didn't make it because of all the confirmation stuff. Not only it can backfire with spam, I just don't want to confirm all of that, after all, it's the site, not me, who needs it. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 15:28, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Topical ArbCom?

I just read the interesting essay by User:DV8 2XL, who left the project in August 2006.
Given that we seem to have a lot of eager ArbCom candidates, certainly more than the ones needed for the main ArbCom, and many with stellar records (none perfect but no human is), would it make sense to have lower level 'topical ArbComs' as User:DV8 2XL suggests?
Imagine having, say, 6 such topical ArbComs, one for each of the current topics in WP:Refdesk. They would focus on main article space disputes, and on cases where behavior is mostly civil (or maybe we could add a dedicated WP:CIVIL topical ArbCom) and the issues are more related to the core WP content policies, such as WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:NOT, WP:N, etc. They would have the same power to decide on remedies as the main ArbCom. All their decisions would be appealable to the main ArbCom, who would be able to summarily dismiss the appeal (hopefully in most cases) or accept it.
Of course each topical ArbCom would also be able to select its cases, suggesting continued efforts in other mediation venues where applicable.
The motivation is to clear backlog and deal with disputes much earlier than we do today, per User:DV8 2XL's suggestions. Any thoughts? Has this been suggested/rejected before? Crum375 13:05, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

In other words, a group of subsidiary courts? Well, that does sound like the next logical step in expanding the dispute resolution process. We may not actually be large enough to require them quite yet, though.

Would these subsidiary courts be permitted to desysop? I'm assuming any such decision would probably be appealed, but making it explicitly allowed/forbidden from the start would be helpful. --tjstrf talk 19:29, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I suggest the topical ArbCom should be able to issue admin remedies (including desysopping), but desysopping would always require approval by the top ArbCom. I would propose that for such approvals a quick process would be instituted, similar to today's 'case closing' vote. If the lower ArbCom recommendation is voted down, then it will enter a discussion phase by the top ArbCom, followed by a possibly modified remedy. Crum375 01:10, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Can't say I've given it much thought but I like the idea. We could have slightly smaller ArbCom committees which would probably also make them more efficient. Crum375 is right: a lot of very competent, respected election candidates will fail because there are so few spots on the ArbCom. Also, this could mean a somewhat smaller workload for individual ArbCom members, making it more likely that god candidates will apply. Pascal.Tesson 02:04, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure this would work well. It is one thing to say that with an expanded ArbCom (see comments on Jimbo's page and on the ArbCom voting talk page), not all cases need to be heard by the full committee; de facto, that's the practice now. But the community has been extremely hesitant about giving the Arbitration Committee, or any small number of users, authority over content issues. Newyorkbrad 02:15, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I fully agree that content issues in general should be settled by consensus, and failing that with the help of voluntary non-binding dispute resolution mechanisms before reaching binding arbitration. The problem that User:DV8 2XL alludes to (as I understand it) is that very often issues spend too much time in various non-binding mediation processes and by the time they escalate to ArbCom, way too much time and energy have been spent, with a lot of acrimony and frustration along the way, leading to loss of productivity and burnout. The concept here is to introduce binding resolutions at a lower level, while still encouraging the non-binding methods, in the hope of achieving better efficiency and reducing debilitating prolonged conflicts. The issue really is: assuming that as we grow we'll have more need for arbitrators, do we want a single tier or a dual tier arbitration system? Intuitively the dual tier sounds like it could do a better job, assuming the division of labor rules between the tiers are properly defined. Crum375 02:42, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Can anyone here suggest a way to get more input on this from the community? Crum375 02:08, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I think a single pool that draws random panels for individual disputes would make the most sense for dealing with the growth of Wikipedia, plus some procedure to allow escalation to an en banc decision for close or contentious issues. Since ArbComm doesn't rule on content, I don't think topical specialization would be that productive. TheronJ 14:20, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I can see some scalability problems with the single tier ArbCom, in the long run:

1. It will be harder to keep track of situations with repeat offenders, as 'memory' will be diluted as we grow and spread out the load laterally
2. Some cases are simple and some are hard (hard typically involve admin-level conflicts and wheel-wars). The single tier will need to deal with all problems randomly, whereas the dual tier can automatically escalate the hard problems to the top tier while easily dealing with the simpler ones at the lower tier
3. Although content dispute per se should not be 'arbitrated', many conflicts arise in relation to content. Having the more specialized lower tier ArbCom would improve understanding of the underlying content issues and make the resolution quicker and more efficient
4. Having the dual tiers will allow a more natural division of labor, as opposed to near-random case selection by a large ArbCom pool

Crum375 14:32, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

As long as the role of ArbCom is primarily related to user conduct rather than managing the content of the encyclopedia, a topical breakdown doesn't seem very natural. Christopher Parham (talk) 03:37, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Maybe so, but ArbCom does need to expand to handle a bigger caseload, and a dual tier structure makes sense, as opposed to random subgroups in a single flat structure. Using generic topics as in the RefDesk as a dividing scheme for the lower tier would be an easy and natural division, and would allow the lower tier group quicker understanding of content related issues, hence more efficient handling. Crum375 00:26, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

The one concern I have with topical arbcom divisions would be that it increases the likelihood that an arbitrator might have a conflict of interest (either through editing the pages in question or personal viewpoint). Also that certain subcoms (philosophy, religion, politics, and BLP) would get much higher numbers of cases than others. However, I can't think of a better division system. Perhaps if arbitrators were shifted between branches in rotation? --tjstrf talk 00:33, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I tend to agree with your point about WP:COI, in principle. I can see requiring topical ArbCom candidates to disclose any special affiliation related to the topic. Your idea about rotation is good, except we would lose the advantage of greater efficiency due to topic specialization. Maybe some combination is needed? Maybe shorter term limits? (with possible resumption of role on a given topical ArbCom after say 1 yr hiatus.) Crum375 01:15, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I think that topical ArbComs are a very good idea, especially if they are staffed with people who are experienced in the area. I see WP:COI as being something of a red herring here. We don't want to exclude scientists from the science ArbCom for instance. I see conflicts as being such things as ruling in a conflict where the arbitrator has already taken sides. I can't speak for other areas, but science is one where the subject matter is fractured as-is. We could easily do committees for physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Even there, there are subdisciplines where if one may have a conflict in one area, they would be available for others. It also will be very helpful to have recused arbitrators involved in cases on an advisory basis.

I see this as a way of giving the interested editors more say in dealing with conflicts and perhaps easier access to arrbitration when needed. As-is, the current arbitration process is so complex and involved that I for one perfer to avoid it. --EMS | Talk 17:52, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

This would be very different from what ArbCom is now. It specifically doesn't deal with content issues, and specifically excludes them even if the conflict started about content.

I find just "lower arbcom" (whatever named) more fitting the purpose. As ArbCom can work on several cases with different members, so can the lower tier. It's true that people often bring petty disagreements to ArbCom, and that should be avoided. However, that could encourage escalation instead of mediation. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 15:01, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Expire (delete) unread articles

[Note: This was initially but imporperly placed in (perrenial proposals)] --EMS | Talk 21:26, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I suggest that articles which go unread for an extended period of time be automatically removed. After all, the goal of an encyclopedia is to transmit knowledge. So an article which is not being read is not a useful part of an encyclopedia.

It seems to me that the first thing to do is to obtain statistics on how often articles are being read, and get some idea of what consititutes an unread (or rarely read) atricle. Even without that, I would suggest the following standard for removing articles:

• An article which goes unread or unedited for 90 days should be automatically removed.
• Accesses by bots and the "random article" function should not be considered reads for the purpose of this standard.
• A user which selects pages at a rate of more than 100 reads per hours for 10 accesses or more should not have their accesses for that period counted as reads. The same should also apply to edits. (This is suggested as a way to thwart editors who would access pages to "refresh" their expiration timers.)
• A page which is deleted under this standard should
  • be replaced by a template stating when and why the deletion occurred,
  • have its article and discussion histories removed to prevent a trivial revival of the article, and
  • be protected against being restarted for at least 90 days.
• Secondary issues:
  • When the random article function is used, should the use of a link in the article cause it to be considered read?
  • The editing of a article accessed through the random article function probably should reset the expiration timer.

I suspect that this may result in the removal of a substantial number of articles, but if no one comes to Wikipedia looking for information on a given topic, is it at all fair to consider that subject notable? --EMS | Talk 05:57, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Here's a few questions: is the usage rate for all articles generally constant or are some articles read on a cyclical basis? Are articles related to Arbor Day and Halloween accessed more frequently as these dates approach? Could there also be articles related to these two topics, which are perhaps of a minor or marginal nature, and which might see no use at all except during some segment of the calendar year? A great many U.S. colleges and universities are operating on a reduced schedule during June, July, and August, and might not the fact that a majority of their students are away on vacation affect the usage of Wiki articles?

Just generally I'm uneasy with the idea of deleting information (because the minute I trash something I'll have need of it) and I think this proposal has the potential to strike at the core of what Wikipedia is, or is not. If the Wiki is to set a standard as a knowledgebase I would think that completeness must be part of the perception, if not the reality, of what the Wiki is. And if the Wiki is not perceived as complete, in some sense, then I suspect it becomes less likely to be used as the first source referred to when a person first 'looks up' a particular subject. I also wonder just who the Wikipedia is intended to serve. Is it to be a useful reference for everyone, no matter how arcane or obscure ones interest may be, or is this to be an encyclopedia for the casual masses, who, for example, are intrigued by The DaVinci Codes and turn to the web just to read a little more and see what's out there?

In other words, do we entertain the hope that Wikipedia might be perceived as a standard tool for serious research of some kind, at some point, if not now, or are we content for Wikipedia to serve as a kind of enormous fan infobase for devotees of a great diversity of topics? Both forms of Wiki would serve a valuable purpose, but they are not the same animal.

Also, I feel it should be pointed out that anyone who wrote an article, only to find it deleted ninety-one days later, might well become disenchanted with Wikipedia, and thus disinclined to ever write to another article, or another, or another, because the fruits of their labor did not, in effect, sell to the reading public (or their search engines). You might also discourage other people from ever writing anything, out of the concern that their efforts would not be sufficiently popular to generate sustained interest, as the seasons turn. Cryptonymius 17:29, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

With regards to cyclical reading: I find it hard to believe that Halloween would go completely unread for the rest of the year. The goal is to have a bar low enough so that an article that is of any legitimate interest will easily stay in Wikipedia. Perhaps the time on this should be 1 year instead of 90 days. (I actually suspect that much of Wikipedia is accessed daily, but a reasonably long expiration time is needed to protect marginal articles against the effects of randomness. For example, and article that gets accessed twice a week on average could easily have a month where it it not accessed at all. Hence the 90-day period.)

The concerns about Wikipedia as an enormous infobase and the concern over editors being disenchanted in their work vanishes are related. Once again I ask of what use an article is if it is never accessed or if anyone other than the creator cares that it is there. Such articles contribute to the article count, but do not contribute to the mission of the encyclopedia. It seems me that if an editor is not producing usable content that their becoming disenchanted is not a bad thing. In fact, we are constantly deleting undesirable/non-notable content. IMO, this is a wonderful test for non-notability.

As for "completeness": "Wikipedia is not an indiscrimiate collector of information". It is not intended to be "complete". This leads to another consideration: If an article is not being accessed, it is not being checked for accuracy either. Remember the incident of that fake biography which created such a scandal within Wikipedia a year or so ago. That article went unnoticed for months. Under this scheme, it would have vanished of its own accord in a reasonable period of time.

Finally, do note that I have called for there to be a usage study first, so that the viability of this proposal can be determined. The "random article" function currently returns mostly stubs on parks and people that provide little usable information. It would be nice to see that buttom return more in the way of solid content more of the time. --EMS | Talk 19:39, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

This just increases systemic bias against important but less popular subjects. The Superman article would never be deleted by this, but articles about certain species or chemical compounds might. I just think this is a terrible idea.--Chris Griswold (☎☓) 21:30, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Why in God's good name would you expect Superman to be deleted under this proposal? It is an actively edited article and a regular target of vandals! Look at it's edit history! This article would need to have the Earth demolished by a kyptonite meteorite to go unread for any significant period of time. --EMS | Talk 21:36, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

He said it WOULDN'T be deleted. Read his comment again. --tjstrf talk 22:18, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Please no. The fact that no one on an electronic encyclopedia reads something for x period of time means very little. There's no cost to keeping it, and a detriment to someoen who eventually wants to use it. Trollderella 21:39, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

If it's not being read, it's not being edited. If it's not being edited, the content is not being validated and/or improved. First versions on this medium are generally lousy, but if several editors are involved an article will improve quite fast. Also, given the current popularity of Wikipedia I would think that any useful article is highly unlikely to go unread for any significant period of time. --EMS | Talk 21:45, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

This proposal violates my general principle that bots must never be given more power than humans. The community would never allow such a blind massacre on AfD. An admin who repeatedly deleted articles without even glancing at their titles, content, histories, talk pages, logs, or linked pages would be reverted and desysopped. No amount of usage studies will change that.

The software could help us out by generating lists of unread articles, which thoughtful humans would comb through in search of non-notability and vandalism. But the software cannot take any action that we wouldn't. Melchoir 22:08, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

If an article is completely unread for an extended period of time, on what grounds would you consider it to be notable? --EMS | Talk 22:22, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Any of them. The existence of multiple, nontrivial, published reviews is a standard measure; there are others. Note that notability pertains to an article's subject, not the article itself. An article's readership can suffer from factors that have nothing to do with its subject, such as a poorly chosen title, insufficient incoming links, or improper categorization.

Moreover, notability is a criterion for deletion only because it tends to single out topics which are impossible to cover encyclopedically: they are so little-known that we cannot meet our content policies of verification and neutrality for an article. Your proposed process cannot identify these non-notable articles; it doesn't even care when the content standards have already been met! Melchoir 01:51, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

This idea is patently absurd. There are many notable encyclopedic subjects which people only rarely would need to know about or research. For example, who's going to look up minor Senators of Alabama from the 30's? However, that is no excuse to go about deleting them when the information they contain is useful and necessary to our encyclopedic nature. Encyclopedias, in case you haven't heard, are supposed to be all-encompassing. Why should we delete pages simply because they are not of popular interest? This would additionally give us an even stronger bias towards the temporal and current vs. the timeless and historical. Rejected. --tjstrf talk 22:18, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Is this for real? This proposal is so absurd that it costs me a major effort to believe it was done in good faith. -- Ekjon Lok 22:23, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Hum. "I suggest that [books] which go unread for an extended period of time be automatically [burned]. After all, the goal of [a library] is to transmit knowledge. So [a book] which is not being read is not a useful part of [a library]." We were reshelving a bay at work today; I'm fairly sure some of those books hadn't been touched in four, five years. But they're still useful books, in potentia, they just need their reader to come along. I think the analogy is illuminating... Shimgray | talk | 22:26, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Perfect parallel. I remember checking out a copy of Kidnapped from my library which hadn't been read since 1954. --tjstrf talk 22:29, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I hope you tore it up, it was clearly not-notable. Trollderella 22:32, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

This is a phenomenally terrible idea. -- BrianSmithson 01:32, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

The proposer of the topic should consider WELL ESTABLISHED policies: 1) wikipedia is not paper. There is no compelling reason to remove a well-referenced article merely to "make space". Wikipedia has infinite space. There are reasons for deleting articles, but simply to remove them because they aren't being used is silly. Consider the average University Library. They have millions of volumes, and only a few thousand are ever on loan. Some LARGE majority of the books in a University Library may go YEARS between check-outs. Yet, the university maintains space for them, not for the fact that they HAVE been used, but that they MIGHT be used. Past performance is never an indication of future performance. 2) Notability is established OUTSIDE of wikipedia, and is NEVER revoked. Once external, independant, third-party sources exist to verify notability, THEY NEVER STOP EXISTING. Thus, once notable, always notable. The fact that an article goes unread doesn't eliminate the existance of the sources used to write the article. Thus, there is no compelling reason to delete merely for lack of utility. 3) Wikipedia is a place to collect knowledge. To delete VERIFIABLE knowledge for any reason runs counter to Wikipedia's purpose. I would agree that this MAY be one of the worst proposals I have seen here. What purpose would it serve to delete a verifable and notable article? --Jayron32 02:47, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Saying an article hasnt been edited/read for 90 days (excluding bots) so lets delete, I wonder how many FA would fall into that category. Even ignoring that Wikipedia is as much about the collection of knowledge as anything else, while we may write an article on something today because nobody reads or edits that page for 90 days doesnt invalidate the information. There enough stub, poorly formed or unsourced articles that survive AfD, how could it be contemplated to let a bot just delete an FA/GA because nobody as has read or edited it for 90 days. Gnangarra 03:15, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

What I am seeing are a lot of knee-jerk reactions, as if articles should be here because they are here. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collector of information. I really think that this is an idea that needs to be researched. How often are articles accessed? Are there articles which go largely unread? If so, what kind of content do those articles typically have? From there other questions will follow: Are these relatively unaccessed articles worth keeping? What do these articles say about the Wikipedia notability standads? Noone seems to have an answer to those questions. The concern about FA articles is valid, but I strongly doubt that topics which noone cares about become FA's. At the least Wikipedia should come to know how it is being used.

(BTW - I agree that blindly implementing this suggestion is a truly bad idea. You just plain don't do something like this unless you have a very good idea of what it is going to do.) --EMS | Talk 03:25, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Any article can become an FA provided someone put the effort into researching and writing. then you proposal should be to find out how and what is being accessed, without the suggestion of deleting stuff. Gnangarra 03:30, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

The two kind of go hand-in-hand. I am making a certain assumption that unviewed material is almost certainly non-FA material. That assumption needs to be validated. It could be that stubs can be removed on this basis, but more fleshed out articles are better manually reviewed if not just plain kept. --EMS | Talk 05:47, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Good idea, wrong implementation. Instead of deleting them, have a Special:Unviewed page (or probably some better name) that would allow these articles to be identified. Then it gives people one more avenue to find articles that need to be reviewed. But certainly no automatic deletion. —Doug Bell ^talk 04:42, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

That is an intriguing idea, and others have suggested above that a manual process would be more desirable. I can be flexible with this, as my concern is to remove the "clutter" from Wikipedia. Yet in the end I want something to come out of this that is a benefit to Wikipedia. I get a sense that there are a number of articles present that could be deleted but just are not worth the bother to find and flag. A system of this type may be able to cull things more efficiently. --EMS | Talk 05:47, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

• Doug - we have Special:Ancientpages. (Radiant) 09:18, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

The problem is here is that 'clutter' is a thinly veiled term for 'things I'm not interested in'. Why would you think that unread articles are 'clutter' that need to be removed? They are gems waiting to be discovered! Trollderella 17:21, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

"Ancientpages" is not at all the same thing. I spot checked them and saw a collection of disambiguation pages and a few short (but well done) articles on small towns. I suspect that most (if not all) of these are accessed regularly.

I accept the insinuation about the meaning of "cluter". However, the issue is one of identifying what noone is interested in as opposed to what I am not interested in. 99% of this encyclopedia I will never use. At the same time, the relativity pages (which I edit) will never be read by 99% of the users of Wikipedia. I realize that this proves nothing.

Can anyone answer this question: I there are tracking a article usage currently? IMO, it would be interesting to track the last 10 non-bot/random reads to each article (by when and not who), as well as to maintain counters for the current and previous of each of day, week, month, year. (I don't know how much tracking data can be efficiently attached to an article. I am certain that doing so will make the database bigger, and that could be an issue. Perhaps a tracking database is what is needed.) --EMS | Talk 17:54, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is mirrored all over the place. This means it is impossible to know whether an article has been read or not; you can only find out if it has been read on a particular service (eg Wikimedia). A statistical survey might yeild interesting information (it would be especially interesting to know how well the read frequency correlates with the edit frequency), but I don't think editorial decisions like this should be made on such a crude basis. Chris Thornett 19:24, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

At least I am getting support for studying the usage patterns. I would not let the existance of mirrors bother you. The first question is how the mirrors are refreshed: If they only go to Wikipedia for content when it is requested (for example a mirror may seek the current article if it has been more than a day since it last retrieved it), then for the less-used articles the statistics will remain accurate and valuable. Even if mirror-related effects are not visible, Google tensd to send searchers straight to Wikipedia, so once again Wikipedia statistics should be usable and indicative of generally unread articles. As for whether this means is "crude": Until it has been studies, noone can say for sure how good or bad it is. We really should have the data instead of each of us "shooting fromt he hip". --EMS | Talk 20:39, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

a) Almost all mirrors are running from static dumps of varying age; very few are directly spidering Wikipedia or regularly updating. We have little to no knowledge of most of them, much less ability to get data.

b) We just don't have article-read statistics. We can't generate them, not with the setup as is. Logging pageviews, the fundamental requirement for good statistics, has been estimated at about 7 terabytes of storage space per month across Wikimedia sites - your ninety days threshold would mean having to store and regularly study 20TB of logs. Even stripping that down to nothing more than a timestamp and a page-visited note would still be unwieldily large. The best we can do is very very limited sampling, hopelessly muddied by caching and proxies and so on, looking at about one pageview in a thousand - and whilst that is decent for letting us know what the most useful pages are, it's hopeless for anything in the long tail, the articles that a proposal like this is interested in.

In short, the impracticality of collecting the data makes any proposal based on interpreting that data a non-starter. Shimgray | talk | 20:57, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

This does not impress me in the least. The issue is how to get it done, not why it cannot be done. Logging all pageviews for 90 days worth is indeed a non-starter, but that is not how you would do the needed tracking! This kind of study relies on aggregate startistics. Suggestion: Create a daily tracking table/database. During the day, each read results in the invokation of a read against the tracking table entry for that article. If the entry exists, then increment it's counter. If it does not exist, then create it with a value of 1. At the end of the day do a file rename to switch the tracking to a new, empty database. The previous day's table is then saved under a name which includes the date. Batch processes can now be used to create aggregate tables for weeks, months, etc. Given a million articles and names which average 25 characters long, the result is a database which is 30-50 Mb big. Ninety days worth is then < 5 Gb worth. That isn't small but it fits easily on most modern hard drives and is far from the 20 Tb that you claim is needed each month. So a properly designed process is very much within the realm of technical feasability. --EMS | Talk 21:17, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikimedia simply does not have the resources to do a database write at a rate that is anywhere near 1 per read request. It takes a large number of caches and database mirrors just to keep up with the read requests. In addition, many of the dedicated caches are intentionally very dumb, and would not be able to update a read counter without a major architechural change. I am afraid any kind of tracking that needs to respond to every read request is a technical non-starter. (FYI, the read rate for Wikipedia is in the ballpark of 5000 pages per second distributed across >200 servers.) Dragons flight 21:50, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I beg to differ. Let's first take the external mirrors off of the table, so that only direct request to Wikipedia iteself are considered (which is still a real boatload). It seems to me that you identify boxes that can handle this task, and those that handle reads. Any box that can do both maintains a local read counter along the lines noted. Otherwise, the requests get passed onto a box that can handle the counting task. Note that each box does its own counting in this case to spread the load around. At the end of the day, they all send their data to another box which collects and combines the individual databases from the various boxes to obtain the statistical "dailies" for Wikipedia. I believe that this will introduce a minor (not necessarily trivial) load on the system. It will also need some thoughtful design and implementation to create. So the issues are ones of whether Wikipedia is interested in putting enough of its volunteer resources together to prototype this, and if it does so what level of system impact would be acceptable if this is to go into production.

I strongly suspect that you all will learn a lot of interesting things about Wikipedia if this is implemented. Whether my initial suggestion will be implemented because of it is problematical though. --EMS | Talk 04:55, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

We should also remember that we are not just writing for the current crop of readers - we are writing about verifiable material for generations to come. We have litterally no idea what they will be interested in, just as past historians did not anticipate what we would be interested in. That is why verifiability, not whether it is interesting to current readers, must be the gold standard. Trollderella 23:40, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I just love the note at the top that says this was temporarily placed at perennial proposals. I'm a deletionist at heart but this is just a very very bad idea. And I won't even mention the useless technical complications that implementing this would entail. Quality articles are quality articles, regardless of whether or not they're read often. We already have plenty of resources allowing us to identify useless content: orphaned articles, linkless articles, short pages, neglected articles etc. Any attempt to make the deletion process automatic will undoubtedly lead to loss of valuable content. I have a hard time believeing this is a good faith proposal. Pascal.Tesson 06:03, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I was shown the random article function by my daughter (it's on the left hand side of the screen in the skin I'm using), and she was joking about the kinds of articles that it shows. Try it. It is mostly stubs on trivial places and people. If find it hard to believe that most of that stuff is viewed at all regularly. Often it does little more that documents the existance of the topic. You worry about losing "valuable content", but how is content valuable if it is never used!? I think the silliness of that knee-jerk reaction to this proposal is shown in people worrying that Halloween and Superman could vanish because of it. Most (if not all) of the articles removed under this proposal will be on topics that you cannot name!

Once again, I call for article usage to be studied and unread articles to be identified in order to determine if this idea or some variation on the theme can work. Noone can name for me an unread, quality article because noone knows what articles are unread! Special:ancientpages shows the oldest (longest since last edited) articles, but most of those have good reason for being stable, and most likely are regularly read.

It is silly that I keep hearing the theme of "this will remove valuable content". Once again: Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collector of information. I for one find it hard to believe that unaccessed articles will be found to be valuable. Remember the incident on the fake biography accusing someone of being involved in the John F. Kennedy assassination! That article went unnoticed for months! Why? Becuase noone read it, except accidentally! Unaccessed articles are not being checked for accuracy, nor do they have content being added to them as additional people with additional knowledge become involved with them. Those that may be worth keeping will be on highly esoteric subjects, and even then there may be an issue of whether they should be in this wiki!

At the least, it would be nice if the data was gathered so that I could be shown that this is a silly proposal, or alternatively that I could show you that it (or a manual version of it) will work a lot better than you may think. --EMS | Talk 15:49, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I do hope you are joking. Trollderella 21:07, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

It's not a joke. Even if the idea is bad, I believe that the suggestion itself is good because of the questions it raises. After all, if there are unread articles, then why should that be the case? Are these quality articles that will reward the very occasional reader who should be looking for them? Or are they hidden pieces of BS that are waiting to "bite" an unwary user of the "random article" function? It seems to me that it would be very interesting to find out what is unread and determine why that is, and I do suspect that a lot of those articles would end up being removed upon further consideration. --EMS | Talk 22:45, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

For the second time, no one said Superman would be deleted. The person who commented about the Superman article was saying that Superman wouldn't be deleted but that far more scientifically valuable articles like those on elemental isotopes or rare species might be. --tjstrf talk 23:46, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

While I agree that the idea of deleting (manually or automatically) long-unread articles is absurd, being able to view a list of pages that have not been viewed in a long time would be very useful, as User:Doug_Bell suggested. Special:ancientpages orders pages based on creation date, so Special:unviewedpages (wantonpages?) would sort them based on their last access date. This tool could be used to make sure esoteric pages are of acceptable quality. It would also be a way of finding hidden gems! -Kslays 21:33, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for being open-minded about the possibilities here. --EMS | Talk 22:45, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if anyone already wrote it, but - if some page is listed in proposed Unviewedpages list and I someone will have to solve the quality of the page, he will have to visit the page - and if he does it, the page is immediatelly visited and removed from the list... So if the editor thinks for whatever reason it is a valueable page (or if the reader does not think about any reason, just browsing the Wikipedia not caring about editting or removing unread articles), it is safe for years again. So be careful about the list. Okino 23:36, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

The Long Tail is relevant to this discussion (I see that Shimgray mentioned this concept above). I oppose deleting unread articles in the same way I oppose burning dusty books (as was mentioned earlier). The statistics gleaned from the analysis would be interesting and valuable - they would help to focusing certain clean-up efforts and in surveillance for certain types of vandalism. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:02, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Dear God, the deletionists are at it again! No, this is an appalling proposal. Just because information is obscure and rarely accessed does not make it useless. I was the first person to check a 1940s book out of the university library where I work. Does that make it useless? No, of course it doesn't. For a start, I was interested enough in it to take it out! Let's just bin this proposal now and move on. -- Necrothesp 17:48, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

• My initial reaction is to be against this proposal, it just seems negligent. The only way I could see it working is if 1) The no-read deadline is extended to 6 months, if not a whole year. and 2) If the pages weren't actually deleted, but instead, archived somewhere with the possibility of recreation. -- Chabuk ^{[ T • C ]} 18:43, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree, bin the proposal of anything relating to deletion of old articles. Very bad idea for all the reasons listed above and it merits no further discussion. However, we should thank EMS for the entirely distinct discussion about having a way to see a list of articles that nobody has looked at in a long time that grew out of this failed proposal. As Ceyockey says, it would be a way of finding vandalism, encouraging clean-up, and additionally we could find useful neglected content that should be better linked and integrated into frequently viewed articles to make it more accessible. Who can create Special:unviewedpages? -Kslays 16:42, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

• You might find this helpful. Ninety^wazup? 20:56, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Its not always apparent to people but have you ever considered that an unread article maybe simply undiscovered instead of ignored, Its like that time when Atari made an illegal tetris cartridge for Nintendo's NES system, and most of the cartridges were kept in a warehouse. At that time you could see adds offering $300 for one cartridge! They simply didnt know it was there and therefore did not pay the warehouse any attention. Its basically like that, if you dont know it is there you wont visit, you could probably shave off a good amount of content from wikipedia, simply because people dont know its there! I personally think that there shouldnt be a deletion of unread content. -Charlie34

As far as I know, Wikipedia isn't a free web hosting. The purpose of WP is very different, and so I don't see how low access rate alone justifies deletion of content. Remember, HDD space cost is negligible compared to the work of creating content. Should libraries burn books not requested for a year? If not, why should we?

Actually, deleting users who haven't edited for 90 days would make as much sense.

However, I have always supported the idea of at least rough monitoring of usage, at least to precision of how many digits the number would have. This would help on AfD and before AfD to separate subjects with no interest and not worth salvaging from ones which are worth rewriting. Really help, there've been a lot of cases when an article on a seemingly obscure "crufty" subject was rewritten and turned into a good one, clearly proving notability of the subject. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 14:54, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Dead-Link Cleanup Day

Is it possible to set aside a day or week where members of the community go through every article and check for deador spam links? A comment could be posted on the talk page after each page is done. Something has to be done to deal with all these dead links and i was wondering if anyone else thinks this is a good idea. The Placebo Effect 13:30, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

It might be possible to set up a permenant WikiProject to work on this, similar to WikiProject Spam. Koweja 14:02, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Stalin Birthday

It is mentioned under your research that he was born on December 18th when all other research states he was born December 21st. What is the correct dob? yiannimelas(at)gmail(dot)com thanks, yianni

Stalin — Date of Birth: 21 December 1879. According to http://encyclopedia.worldvillage.com/s/b/Stalin Adaptron 10:36, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I believe Stalin#_note-0 explains it all. His official documents in the Imperial Russia were on 18 December 1878 but he himself installed 21 December 1879 as the official date. The reasons why he did it are unclear: desire to have a 50-year old celebration as a national holiday, questions of paternity, who knows? Alex Bakharev 10:51, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Allowing edit summaries on "rollbacks"

The rollback button is great to undo bad edits, but it can piss off people having their work undone without an explanation. Rollback should only be used on obvious vandals that deserve no explanation, of course, but sometimes convenience trumps caution. - DavidWBrooks 21:50, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

What I do is I install popups and set popupRevertSummaryPrompt=true; so it prompts me for an edit summary every time I do a revert, and I have a choice of either entering an edit summary or leaving the default summary for vandalism reverts. Tra (Talk) 22:10, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

For several weeks, I've been thinking up a similar proposal.

Under my proposal, there will be a small text box next to the rollback button. The rollbacking admin may enter a code into the text box (entering a code is optional). Based on the code entered, an appropriate edit summary will be generated, and an appropriate warning issued to the offender.

For example, when rollbacking spam, if an admin enters "spam2" as a code, the edit summary will indicate that they are rollbacking spam, and a {{spam2}} warning would be issued to the spammer.

I discussed my proposal with Brion VIBBER, a developer, on IRC, and he suggested that a user script would be more appropriate for this purpose.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 02:51, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Hide/Show box for footnotes

Might a box be made as to make the footnotes on a page less, well obnoxious if there are many. I have seen boxes where there is a link in the top right corner where it says "show" while the box is closed and "hide" while the box is open. This could be done in much the same way the table of contents are done. Now I don't know how to do it, so I bring it here. (Note: This idea was originally derrived by myself at Talk:RuneScape, having nearly 50 citations. However, I have seen a page with 137 citations, and this would make any and all Wikipedia pages look far more pleasing to the non-editing reader.) How plausible, if plausible at all, is this plan, and does anyone know how to make such a box in a non-intrusive way? Other Feedback? Thanks in advance, → p00rleno (lvl 78) ←ROCKS^C_RS 01:36, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Read with Firefox, and use {{reflist|2}} or {{reflist|colwidth=40em}} or something like that in the article. (for instance, cell nucleus's references are pretty big (both in quantity and column width), but on wider displays, it'll automatically display two columns side-by-side) --Interiot 02:53, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Since I use Opera, am I left out in the cold? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 05:11, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

The purpose of footnotes is not just for the editor. If we consider how information is presented to the reader then we have various levels of granularity. In principle the opening summary contains the whole story and may be adequate for some readers, although we must accept that most summary intros in Wikipedia do not achieve this objective. The next level of granularity is the article itself, and the next again is the footnotes. A further level of granularity is going to the references themselves to establish what they say. I appreciate that a lot of Wikipedia articles leave a lot to be desired in this structural format, by using clumsy formations to attribute references and sources in text as well as footnoting, but that doesn't mean that the footnotes and references are only aimed at editors.

The challenge is to get well written articles, appreciating that some will require extensive referencing to demonstrate adequate coverage.

ALR 20:49, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

But still, a box which could be hidden would make it look nicer, all I wanted to know is if anyone can make such a template. → p00rleno (lvl 78) ←ROCKS^C_RS 21:58, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion: New Yearbook about PC and Video Games

Hi,

I tried to find a place to submit this, but ended up here. It's about a new post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation/2006-10-21#the_Book_of_Games_Volume_1_.28The_Ultimate_Guide_to_PC_.26_Video_Games.29

How long does it take before a new article is verified? I am the publisher of the book, and would like to contribute if I could. Is it possible to get in contact with someone that will work on the article? We could send a press copy of the book to the person.

-Bendik Stang

• Adding arbitrary time stamp to facilitate archiving. User:Steve block 09:31, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Spoilers on http://www.wikicities.com/wiki/c:Lost

I went to http://www.wikicities.com/wiki/c:Lost , thinking it was some sort of new wikipedia-related technological thing. It turned to be a page about the television show "Lost". That wasn't my only discovery. I also discovered something about the show that I would have preferred to have seen on the show itself. In short, the page lacks any warning of spoilers. I propose to make a page created solely to alert people of possible spoilers before actually veiwing the page http://www.wikicities.com/wiki/c:Lost . Thank You —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jack Rabitt (talk • contribs).

Hello there. Unfortunately, that Wiki is not part of Wikipedia itself (as far as I know), thus we can't "force" them to add spoiler warnings. If you clicked an external link from a Wikipedia article that took you there, and if you really consider this step necessary, leave a message in the talk page of the article from where you clicked the link, and explain why you think a spoiler warning should be added. Wikipedia is not censored, and that apparently includes spoilers. -- ReyBrujo 03:59, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikicities is a service of Wikia, a for-profit company founded by Jimbo Wales, who also founded (or co-founded, depending on whom you listen to) Wikipedia. There is no formal association between the two entities other than sharing a founder and using the same (free, open-source) software. *Dan T.* 04:07, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Toolbar

Hi, Beyond any doubt wikipedia is a lovely thing to have in our cyber world. I am a big fan of her. Though I dont have a very specific area of experties where i can be helpful to your project but i do have one suggestion. Like some other services like google, answers, yahoo and msn etc. I would suggest that wikipedia may like to launch a comprehensive and free toolbar for desktop use. I hope i may not have disappointed you with my suggestion. Thanx —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ccuuppiidd (talk • contribs).

See Wikipedia:Tools/Browser tools :) —Quiddity 20:09, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

search bar change

Hi I'd like to request a change on the placement of the search bar. I often forget where it is because of the awkward and almost unnoticible location. I think that if you moved the bar to a more visible area on the page, it would induce more browsing on the site. Thank you, and I think Wikipedia is awesome. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 76.171.242.137 (talk) 09:50, 20 December 2006 (UTC).

Where would a better place be? Tra (Talk) 15:50, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Maybe the top of the sidebar, under the Wikipedia logo? Or maybe up where the Foundation fundraiser thingie is?~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)} 16:04, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

You could switch skins: Cologne Blue has the search box below the logo and Classic has it at the top of the page. Tra (Talk) 16:30, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

The anon can't switch skins. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)} 16:54, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Yup, customization is mentioned as a benefit of registering, at Wikipedia:Why create an account?. John Broughton | Talk 17:31, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm guesing that our friend at IP 76.171.242.137 is a reader of Wikipedia; not so much an editor. Perhaps only a casual reader. Their contribution here is the only contribution from that IP address. Perhaps someday they will see that one typo they can't resist and fix it and become hooked; but for now they really aren't interested in editing and probably see no reason to register. Moreover, people are always talking about deleting unused accounts; it's somewhat of a perennial proposal. If 76.171.242.137 did register an account for the purpose of customizing his/her reading experience it would be yet another unused account for people to pick on and complain about. Moreover, 76.171.242.137 has a valid point. If 76.171.242.137 has trouble finding the search bar, then I guarantee that there are 10 other readers of Wikipedia; people who have wandered in here from a Google search or a link on some other webpage who perhaps have no idea what Wikipedia is who can't find the search bar. Paper encyclopedias are easy to find things in; everything is in alphabetical order, period. Wikipedia is one heck of a lot harder, especially if it's your first encounter with it and you don't see the search bar, don't understand that blue words are links, and can't figure out how the categories work. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)} 17:51, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

what you're saying makes sense, and I'm in full agreement that concerns for readers, not editors, should be the top priority. However, the search bar seems like it's in an obvious posisition, and I'm not sure where to relocate it. i kan reed 19:16, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

A more obvious place would be in the upper left corner, above the globe. I realize that the more graphically inclined may strongly object to that, but if the goal is to make the reader experience as trouble-free as possible, the page shouldn't be treated as an art project. John Broughton | Talk 02:41, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Object I am used to it, and so will you.--Foundby 10:58, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Have you noticed that when you type in wikipedia.org, there is a seachbrowser just underneath the logo? You have to try to miss that -Charlie34

Some ideas for the good articles shown in other languages

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Good articles/Archive 8#Some ideas for the good articles shown in other languages

I've just created a template Template:Link GA, it's works similar as the Template:Link FA. However it needs the MediaWiki:Monobook.css and MediaWiki:Common.js to be updated to reflect this change. Is that a good idea to introduce this template? --Shinjiman ⇔ ♨ 05:58, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

There's seems not much feedback about this proposal, so I copied to here also. --Shinjiman ⇔ ♨ 16:18, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm curious. What do these two templates do? What are they for? Maybe they need some words inside <noinclude> tags, as the Template:Babel has, to explain what they are and when to use them. --Coppertwig 04:14, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I think they're to add a little plus icon to one of the "in other languages" links if the corresponding other-language article is marked as good. NeonMerlin 05:35, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

yup, that's what this template would do. (See also zh-yue:iPod, this template would add a plus icon at a inter-language link that its status is good.) --Shinjiman ⇔ ♨ 17:02, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Logo Variations

I would like to propose for Wikipedia to use logo variations created by members of the community to mark national and international awareness days, Remembrance Days, notable anniversaries, and observance days. Besides for the featured article, it is important to commemorate special days to show Wikipedia's support for bringing out more awareness of these issues and events. The logos would be chosen from contestants in a consensus of graphic artist users on a project page of its own. This project would be similar to google's [[[1]|sketch contest]]. I would like us perhaps to be ready for our first wikilogo by Hanuka, Christmas and Eid ul-Adha! FrummerThanThou 05:43, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• comment the Wikipedia logo is copyrighted so you would probably have to get permission from the foundation to do this. savidan^{(talk) (e@)} 06:44, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
• Question What would be the criteria for dates to be recognized in this way? -- Visviva 06:50, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

This is an issue that needs to be discussed, I think each religion's two or three main holiday's should be considered as well as important awareness days such as world cancer day, world aids day, breast cancer day and any others that we come to a consensus on. FrummerThanThou 07:01, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• I think a better idea would be to make it possible to change the logo via some CSS code, so people could install it in their own monobook.css/js file if they want it. I've tried it before, but unfortunately the URL for the logo is stored in the <a> linking to the main page, rather than monobook.css itself, which means it would require some tricky JS to make it work. |This would allow users to have their own criteria for dates. --172.205.196.44 (Michael Billington logged out) 06:55, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
  • That seems like an excellent idea, if it can be made to work... can it? -- Visviva 07:05, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

  #p-logo a { background-image: url(http://mylogo.com/logo.png) !important; } GeorgeMoney (talk) 07:07, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

  Exactly, I agree with 172.205.196.44 - for that matter, my .js has actually disabled showing the wikilogo, so I wouldn't see it anyways. But, not being selfish, I like the idea :) Daniel.Bryant ^{[&nbsp;T · C ]} 07:27, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• I am for the idea in principle (I am envisaging something like the google logo changes). However, I would not want to see anything national-specific (especially US-specific) or politically-motivated, religiously-motivated etc. What I would not want to see is for example a "4th of july" logo or a "jesus crusified today" logo, these are politically- and religiously- charged. Perhaps "Figure X born today" or "Chemical Y discovered today" etc. I think if we do this it should be a variation that represents the kind of things wikipedia does and stands for, rather than a slavish mimicry of eg the google logo. Cheers - PocklingtonDan 10:33, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Some great points from a great user. I think there can be "some" politicly and religiously charged versions though, like Christmas. FrummerThanThou 10:48, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment: To keep our headings clear, it's probably good if we switch to numbers from asterisk indents. Geogre 10:57, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

1. Comment: That Google does it is kind of the "Diddy did it" thing: more or less irrelevant. I'm in favor of the proposal, although there would need to be a few clear understandings. The globe of letters is the copyright, just as the lettering of "Google" is, and so the graphic alterations would need to be backgrounds, colors, and things around the logo. Also, please make it two words, "Wiki logo," rather than one, as one sounds like "Wiki Λογος." As for the substance and the problems, please forgive the extra indents:

   The project would be properly located at Commons, not .en. This would make the variations available to all projects, so that the .se pedia can put up a 4th of July logo, if they wish.

   National holidays (ones where all government offices close) are non-controversial, but seccession day, failed rebellions, etc. can get tense. Nationally recognized religious holidays (Christmas, Easter, Good Friday), and especially those that are core, would be non-controversial, but regionally or sectarian or denominational ones would be tough.

   If there were to be an include/exclude argument, the best one would be, "Is this nationally recognized in an Anglophone nation for .en, a Francophone nation for .fr, etc." A non-English speaker going to .en may be interested in the funny customs of the Anglophone world, just as native English speakers tend to be interested in the "strange" holidays celebrated by the Swedes, for example. The dominant nature of English shouldn't enter into it, really.

   The proposal carries with it a rather non-wiki element, in that it requires an approval community. The best suggestion I could offer would be that this be done via a Project. There should be a Holiday Logo Project, and it should need to vote and gain consensus on these acceptable variations (and it should be plural).

   Picking which, if any, to actually put on the main page requires a top level admin who enjoys wide, wide trust. The only candidate I can think of right now would be Raul, who is already the FA director, but I'm not sure he'd want to do it.

   Anyway, that's what occurs to me. I really hope it helps. Geogre 10:57, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• I love logos ^^, BUT! First off; what kind of awareness days? And some Rememberance days might be offencive to others, off the top of my head say the Armenian holocaust, the Turks deny it happened and refuse to adit comitting it, but I betcya the Armenians have a day to REMEMBER it. Also, some people don't like The dream factory (to get this joke click the wiki link fore Rememberance days you wrote on me talk page =P). Note: I am very buisy these days for the next two months I've got covers, collections, some more covers magazine and newspaper comics blah blah blah... so I probably won't do it, but here is some advice if it helps. In my opinion, why not, as not a lot of wikiusers go to the front page and read it all if there's an awareness thing on it, but I don't think we should go too much in to it, maybe just slap a small awareness ribbon on the logo and make a more noticible article on the front, or maybe even send an automated awareness message to ALL USERS. The wikilogos are very estetic so we must be carefull in editing them if we are permitted tom we don't want them to loock cheep now do we ^_^? I'd keep it modest. Also problems: Some awareness symbols, ribbons, or collors may stand for more things, so the observer may not get it. And: What if it gets out of hand? Before you know it we'll be having a santa cap on the logos hah. In conclusion: Only if these days are important and regard everyone, not just say Christians or something. Like AIDS day, Memorial day, Give out free candy day, Global warming awareness day, ect. Exactly how, I do not know but don't make it too flashy or just too much. If you're gonna go for it, think simple and clever, it always works ;) --Mudel 11:19, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

1. I support this proposal. It is a qay to remind us "Never Again" Booksworm Talk to me! 14:56, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• It sounds like a fun idea on the surface, but doesn't really gain Wikipedia anything other than administrative trouble. It might have some value if, like the cartoonish altered Google logo, it brought people to the front page to see what cute logo-mod Wikipedians had come up with for the day, or if Wikipedia had an unfriendly image problem that desperately needed to be rectified. (And "image problem" brings up other difficult issues regarding tone and style of any illustration, btw.)
  

I absolutely do not support a religious logo-mod of any sort, and that most definitely includes Christmas ornaments, Channukkah dreidels, Valentine's hearts, Easter eggs, etc. ad nauseum.

I agree with PocklingtonDan that only "a variation that represents the kind of things Wikipedia does and stands for" might be more reasonable than religious or political commemorative days. However, I think the "On this day..." section does that and more.

Perhaps, alternatively, we could choose one event from "On this day..." to call out with a stand-alone logoish graphic (i.e., not a Wikipedia logo-mod). This logo-like graphic might be used something like a dot-whack, and might be valuable for calling attention to the "On this day..." section, as well as adding some graphic variability to the front page... but I'm not sure it's really a problem in search of a solution.

Renice 17:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Don't like the idea. With Google, they can detect what country you are in and provide you with an appropriate version of Google [2], where they can do cute and culturally appropriate things with the logo. I don't ever see there being a "U.S." version of Wikipedia, a British version, Canadian version, etc... There are very few holidays that are not specific to religions or certain countries. --Aude (talk) 17:42, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment whilst it is true that that Sweden's Christmas is snowier then Britain's, certain observance days are the same. Obviously D day is no good since some German's wont like it, but that desicion would be reached in the consensus. What are you saying? frummer 03:09, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Strong Oppose - Wikipedia has a strict NPOV policy. Local holidays and events would not be global. As such, we can't do something like this. I understand that this is a bland, boring decision, but Wikipedia's ideals shouldn't be violated for periodic variations of the logo. Nihiltres 19:35, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Support - This sounds like a great idea. :) ViperBite 20:22, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Strong Oppose - I agree with Nihiltres, the whole idea violates NPOV policy. It's important to note that someone's holiday celebration is also a reminder to someone else's failure in history. Or recognizing someone religious event offends those opposed to that faith. It's sad to say this, and I wish any holiday could be recognized and respected but Wikipedia needs to keep the whole "political correct" neutrality. Cyberia23 22:06, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Strong Support- It could just be on internationally accepted holidays, i.e. Christmas, maybe Rememberance Day. Sooner or later you're going to upset someone about something - its absurd to not do something because someone somewhere may be offended by it. RHB 23:12, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment - two things:

1. Christmas and Rememberance day are both biased. Christmas is Christian, and Rememberance Day favors the victors of the World Wars. The article on Rememberance Day reflects that.
2. It is absurd, on Wikipedia, to do anything that may offend someone in a political, religious, or social way, even if Wikipedia is not censored, because of the necessity for a neutral point of view. See Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Bias.

I don't mean any offense whatsoever, but what you've said doesn't seem to hold up. Nihiltres 03:25, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I apprecaite you don't mean any offense, but where do you get it that people will be "offended" if some laurels where to apear on the logo for christmas and link to the article. Finding out about each other's religion's cultures and values would be a great thing for many of us, instead of being "offended" so badly? Please read the thread, I dont beleive for a minute you've read anything above. The focal points have been discussed, except for this "offended" thingmajig. frummer 03:50, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I've read the thread, and the main topic of discussion is whether such a project is feasible. On the "cool variation" level, I strongly support this idea. As with Google, it would attract some people to see the latest Wikipedia "doodle". On the other hand, I find holidays to be inherently POV, and on that level such a project is entirely unacceptable. Users can have user scripts to change the image for themselves, but the main page and layout need their blandness and NPOV - NPOV is one of the five pillars! Nihiltres 04:23, 15 December 2006 (UTC) (signed after, oops)

can these problems be fixed technicly, an option to turn it off/show the normal logo?  ⇒ bsnowball  18:39, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Support- Even if it does include something only celebrated by only one religion, ethnic group, etc., that shouldn't matter so long as we include the "equivalent" (if possible) holiday for any other religions, ethnic groups, etc. As well, if someone feels that their religion, ethnic group, etc. does not have a holiday recognized that they think should be, they can always suggest it. Ninety^wazup? 23:52, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
• oppose Religion#Demographics list 21for balance, if we consider three Christian dates of Christmas, Easter, Good Friday that means that 63 religious day logo's. Then we add these UN listed special days(note some are weeks) from here http://www.un.org/events/observances.htm , theres another 60, thats 1 in 3 days. Then what happens when day A and day B occurs on the same day how would it be decided which would get the recognition. I think we leave day recognitions to the "On this Day" section that way every event gets equal and fair recognition. Gnangarra 06:32, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

• It's a good idea but there could be the problems with copyright and determining which events pass the notability test. We don't want to be following Google day for day though, though I do like the Google sketches. :) Wikiwoohoo 22:33, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose:Per Gnangarra, Nihiltres, and Cyberia23. Evan^{(Salad dressing is the milk of the infidel!)} 11:39, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. Incidentally, to Geogre's comment that National holidays (ones where all government offices close) are non-controversial I'd counter that I can immediately think of one populous, economically powerful nation with a national holiday to celebrate the birthday of somebody who arguably should have been tried as a war criminal (see Dower, Embracing Defeat, passim). In principle I am vaguely interested in non-national, non-religious UN days; but really, there are so many of these, their names are so prolix, and some are so optimistic/silly/insulting -- "International Day for the Eradication of Poverty" (my emphasis), pfffft, somebody please alert me when the day becomes a decade -- that I lose interest fast. -- Hoary 12:24, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose - violates NPOV. JoeSmack ^Talk 16:58, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose This very obviously violates our NPOV policy and would end up being a never-ending headache for those who implemented it. We couldn't do any religious holidays because it would be a way of endorsing that religion, and trying to rectify this by doing it for holidays of all religions wouldn't work; there are hundreds of religions with hundreds of holidays and we couldn't possibly deal with all and would therefore have to pick and choose, which would mean accepting some POVs and rejecting others. The same problem would emerge in dealing with commemoration dates and the like, certainly those that are national rather than international would have to be excluded. Also, this seems to me to be, in my own opinion, a rather silly diversion from actually, you know... writing an encyclopedia. --The Way 22:19, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

• Leave that to Uncyc - even neutrality aside, we need a more serious attitude. Considering neutrality, it's horrible, as even Christmas isn't a holiday to everyone; and outside the West the world is so full of conflicts that most national holidays will be found hostile by some people. Let's list them all on the main page as we do already, but leave the logo serious. For coming to see what's new today, again, we've got the daily renewed main page which is way more interesting than on most if not all other websites. People coming to WP to see something new will be - and are - more attracted by the actual page, pictures and content, rather than jokes with the logo. Really, it won't add anything to WP. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 15:46, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

WP:ADOPT

I cannot see this proposal anywhere; if I have missed it, please don't shout at me.

It seems quite clear to me that many serious new editors, who really want to help our project, do not come across the adopt-a-user setup, nor are they directed to it. I have adopted two users and, since doing so, I have been approached by three newbies with questions which, happily, I could answer. But they were unaware that they could have asked to be adopted. They had all received a {{welcome}} template. I propose that the welcome templates be enlarged to include a link to WP:ADOPT. They then have the option of going there or not, but they will at least know about it.--Anthony.bradbury 19:39, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

It sounds like a good suggestion, and I would eventually support it, but WP:ADOPT is very new. It might be best to allow for a breaking-in-period for the program before linking to it from welcome templates. Doc Tropics 19:45, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Not sure about the breaking-in-period. Do we really need it? —Gennaro Prota^•Talk 19:56, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Without naming names, some other well-intentioned programs have later encountered difficulties and met with a certain amount of criticism. I do think that a longer period for community evaluation and response to WP:ADOPT would be in order before creating an "offical" link. In part because the link would strongly imply an official endorsement, in part because it just seems prudent to make sure the program works the way it was intended. Doc Tropics 20:49, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Are you talking about Wiki-Bortion? I thought it started out well at first, but then things started to get complicated. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 16:08, 7 December 2006 (UTC) —the preceding comment is a joke.

In support of Anthony.bradbury I would like the Adopt-a-user program to be linked from {{welcome}}, but I do understand the concerns of Doc Tropics. I would like to ask what sort of time period / number we talking about, and where could we get such community evaluation done?

On the other hand the project has been running for a few months now - and we have currently over 65 adoptees - and so far (as far as I am aware) no complaints. Even if it was added to the welcome template, we could always removed it very quickly if there were problems encountered. Beyond a certain point I suppose it is an old circular argument - if we don't have any "official" support we can't advertise the service properly to increase our numbers, but we need to increase numbers before we are allowed "official" support. "Official" support is particularly important for this project because it would help us attract the newest of users (who are otherwise hard to reach).

On a similar and maybe less controversial note, it would be great if we could have a link inserted under Where to ask Questions at Help:Contents - please see Help talk:Contents to discuss. Thanks Lethaniol 15:00, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

For the sake of clarification, I strongly support the program myself and I'd like to get involved; it seems a very worthwhile project. My only concern was about moving too quickly in adding it to the "welcome mat". I would support the link being added once we are sure that the program works as intended, and so far, it seems to. Doc Tropics 15:24, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I like this as well. For now, let's try to spread this by text-of-mouth.--Chris Griswold (☎☓) 16:10, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

As I mention elsewhere, I do not think that this program is so useful (while the idea is cute). The best way for a user to get involved would be contribute to articles, and the interaction which follows from there. Joining a wikiproject is also a good idea.

Besides, I believe that the {{welcome}} template already has a bit too many links. If this project is found really useful, I'd suggest replacing one of the existing links than adding to it. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:09, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Could people also comment on maybe adding it to the Help:Contents as well/instead please - many thanks Lethaniol 16:29, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Per this thread Help talk:Contents#WP:Adopt. Comment here or there. --Quiddity 19:21, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Another suggestion: Maybe we could make another template (e.g. {{welcome-a}}) with the welcome message and the link for users who want to link to WP:ADOPT to use until the link gets added to {{welcome}}. That said, I'm in favor of adding it. If any problems come up, it can be removed later. I think this would have been helpful for me when I was new; I, like a lot of people with knowledge in kind of obscure areas, edited quietly and didn't have too many interactions for a long time. delldot | talk 21:18, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I strongly support this addition to the routine welcome template. Requiring a break-in period for the adoption program is superfluous. It is a very simple program and its basic concept has been proven for millennium. -- CyberAnth 08:07, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Until, which will be hopefully soon, Adopt-a-User is added to either or both of Help:Contents of the Welcome template, people that support its insertion can use an alternative template - Template:Adopt-a-User Welcome - which has only a minor modification to include Adopt-a-User. Cheers Lethaniol 19:37, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

• Support this idea. I was unaware of it until I followed your link just now!!! - PocklingtonDan 10:41, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Just so people known, we have increased are number of users involved (combined adoptees and adopters) from 100 to 150 in under 10 days. As the project in continuing to gain support I would like to know at what sort of level of use people think it should get linked from Welcome and Help pages, or whether it should never be? Cheers Lethaniol 12:41, 14 December 2006 (UTC) P.S. I know that numbers are not everything, but they are one of the measures that, I should think, will be needed to be used to assess the programs importance Lethaniol 13:52, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Support per nominator. --Foundby 10:39, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Templates for proposing category splits

Just now I needed to propose the splitting of Category:Life simulation games into Biological simulation games and Social simulation games, and found the required cf* and cf*2 templates didn't exist. I ended up using a modified version of {{cfr}} on WP:CFD and the generic {{split}} (with the rarely-used discuss parameter to point to CSD instead of category talk) on the category page itself. But I bet this isn't the only time a category's been put up for splitting. Shouldn't there be templates to do it with? NeonMerlin 04:58, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism

I'll keep this short since most everything is explained elsewhere. Simply put, sometimes vandals are not fit to be reported to WP:AIV, but there should be a place where they can be kept track of. You may read the problem in detail at Wikipedia talk:Administrator intervention against vandalism#Removal of valid vandals, and I would appreciate any and all feedback on my possible solution, which is still in its early stages of being and is completely open to suggestions and constructive criticism. Dar-Ape 23:54, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

This isn't that hard to do on your own. Watch their talk page; then check their contribs list from time to time. If they vandalise repeatedly within a few days, warn them each time with the progressive warning tags, then report them to AIV. If they become good editors, or disappear for ever, leave them alone. I don't see where we need more than that. --Jayron32 04:26, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Jayron32, by identifying chronic anonymous vandals, Dar-Ape's propose list aims to have many users doing what you suggested: watching their talk page, checking their contribs, and, if neccesary, warning them and reporting them to AIV. There are many anonymous vandals who stop after receiving a last warning, only to come back the next day (e.g. school IPs). If the IP address is static, they should be handed long blocks (of several months). --J.L.W.S. The Special One 11:45, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. Furthermore, even if IPs have a history of vandalism, they should generally not be listed at WP:AIV if they have only vandalized once within the past few hours, or have not vandalized after their last (which could also be their first) warning. Yet they could be reported on this page. Also, if someone has to sign off, contribs of the vandal he or she is watching can be combed and reverted the next day, but in the mean time, many people may have read the vandalized articles and gotten false or misleading information. This should be preventable, and will be with a "watchlist" like this. Dar-Ape 03:56, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

WikiBar

Apologies if this has already been suggested, but it occurred to me that a Wiki search/toolbar would be really handy for those who reference Wikipedia often. 203.28.13.57 02:13, 19 December 2006 (UTC) Sorry, just discovered it, please disregard/remove the above. 203.28.13.57 02:20, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikidea

What about a Wikidea. It could be like an open source think tank or blog that people could submit their ideas and people could work on them.

Proposals for new projects should be made at m:Proposals for new projects. For your particular proposal, I think there might be a project at Wikia covering this sort of thing. Tra (Talk) 20:51, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

There is Wikiasite:ideas already. Angela. 17:12, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Article length templates

Before I'm overcome with boldness, let's try this here first (ok, I'll be bold with colons). Bottomline: {{long}}, {{Verylong}}, and {{intro length}} should be deleted. Let me explain: these temporary templates are placed in articles that someone believes are overly long and requests that someone (ie. not me) transfers to a sub-article or summarizes the content. The flaw is that this is metadata: a comment and request (directed at editors who are familiar with the subject) concerning the structure of the article. This metadata belongs on the talk page: their raison d'être. Theoretically (as some templates say and most people ignore) the template-slapper should also leave an explanation on the talk page. Templates in the article should be addressed to the readers (ie. warnings of NPOV, unverified, current event, etc.). So this clever observation that the article is long should go on the talk page: not somewhere in the actual article. On the talk page the templates would be redundant with a section explaining how it is too verbose: so delete the templates. Right? :maclean 05:34, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Sort of :-) The sad thing is… many editors don't look at the talk page. I think we would need a software feature along the lines of: "don't even think of hitting the edit button and I'll show a gigantic warning in front of you" :-) OK, you got the idea. There are many other types of "annotations", BTW, which we would be able to use in that case. —Gennaro Prota^•Talk 09:07, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. The templates are important, as some articles are ridiculously long and can easily be broken into separate articles. However, as mentioned, they do belong on the talk page since they are a notice for editors, not readers. Perhaps someone running a bot or using some other kind of script can move them over. A notice should also be added to the template pages with instructions to add only to the talk page as many other templates already have. Koweja 13:50, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Agree that this is talk page material, not article. Rmhermen 18:05, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Me, I'd send the templates to hell without apology, as I do not want anyone templating "long." If an article is too long, then go to the talk page and argue the position. Templates are far too slap-and-run for my taste, and I don't want anyone telling me that a full article on The Cantos is "too long" because it gets to X kb or Y kb. If they pass TfD, then they're talk page matters and absolutely positively under no circumstances for the article page itself. Geogre 22:01, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

• Sounds reasonable; I think you should drop the templates on WP:TFD and/or get a WP:BOT to move them to the talk page. (Radiant) 13:44, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Ok, I stuck my neck out at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 December 19. ·maclean 04:24, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Limiting the number of edits for new users

Is there a way to limit the number of user edit by implemeting an edit quota, this would for example limit the usefulness of sockpuppets and revert/edit wars that go on. The edit limits can be placed on let's say:

• new users by limiting the number of edits they can perform overall - after the users have been around for some time, this edit quota can be lifted for example this is lifted after let's say a week or a month
• special edit limits on selected articles where edit/revert wars are constant

Regards,

Vodomar 20:30, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Rejected, goes contrary to the purpose of encouraging new users to edit. We aren't GameFAQs where they arbitrarily define privilege levels. There is no purpose to doing this, and would serve only to discourage new editors from being active. Socks are cheap and easily creatable, so they wouldn't be stopped by this at all. Just make another 3 or 4 or 10 or 50 if you hit your revert limit. If a specific page requires it, we have semi-protection. --tjstrf talk 20:37, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I can tell you right now that it is not going to happen. This site will not treat all new users and/or anons as potential vandals and sockpuppets just because a small percentage are. See WP:AGF for more. If a revert war is going on you can have it semi-protected, but this is not the way to do it. Koweja 20:40, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Plus, those users who do commit wrongs can be blocked. Ninety^wazup? 23:43, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Of course we have problem new users, but we have problem old users, too (no, not administrators). New users who insert massive numbers of links, who write in their company everywhere, and then do the scribbling stuff are problems, but they're not a new problem, and the scope of the problem isn't growing faster than our vandal hunting tools, so there is no need to curtail our general philosophy. For every two vandals and spammers affected by this, a legitimate and good contributor, and the bad guys will simply use two accounts to accomplish the edits they're now doing with one, so the effect will be strictly to increase suspicion and unfriendliness to good users. Geogre 02:20, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your replies ! Vodomar 12:32, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Automatically identify edits by new posters

In WP:AfD discussions, new accounts are frequently flagged as possible Single Purpose Account by a human editor, possibly a biased one.

A much fairer approach is to automatically flag all edits by "new" accounts with a link to a "Please be nice to our new Wikipedian" page. This page would have links to the don't-bite-the-newbie page as well as to the SPA page.

As a straw-man figure for "new" I would suggest any account with less than 30 days OR an older account with less than 20 edits is "new." Yes, I know it's not trivial to count the total # of edits, perhaps that can be done in the next software or database revision. Dfpc 04:23, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

It's easy enough to get a count of how many edits someone has made. Just go to http://en.wikipedia/wiki/Special:Contributions/User:username. I fail to see whats wrong with what happens now. It isn't insignificant if a user's only contributions have been to the XfD. All the note says is that they haven't made a lot of contributions. It doesn't insult them or accuse them of being a sockpuppet/SPA Koweja 04:32, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

• Indeed. A statement of fact is not an insult. If a new user comes to an AFD and someone says, "this is the user's 10th edit" then that's not an insult. People may think it an irrelevant remark, but it's usually not that either. (Radiant) 13:42, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Fair use rationale guideline proposal

I would like to propose Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline as a guideline to detail the necessary components of a fair use rationale. At present, it's kindof a moving target. Some pages have a detailed, bulleted rationale, while others have a one sentence "this picture identifies the subject". Patroling Category:All images with no fair use rationale, I've seen image pages that explicitly have something of a rationale that have been nominated for a speedy. So I would like for us to formalize what is required. I have also created Template:Fair use rationale that I am proposing we use as a template to assist users in creating an acceptable rationale. Please see Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline and the associated talk page to give your thoughts and ideas. BigDT 22:40, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I would find a page like that very useful. Currently, I often find myself jumping between Wikipedia:Fair use and Help:Image page to try to find the details explaining how to do a rationale. Tra (Talk) 22:50, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Link to top of page

As was brought up a bit earlier at "Slidey Uppey Downey Idea" what about having a 'Top' link at the bottom of every page that links back to an anchor at the top. May not be useful for some small pages but for some long articles could benefit. It could go just above the "This page was last modified ..." text or even in the sidebar. Chris_huh^talk 12:22, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

• Press the "home" key on your keyboard :) seriously though, feature requests should be made to the developers, at WP:BUG. (Radiant) 13:43, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Cell / Mobile phone Project Gutenberg ebooks links

The last 12 months I have been working on project www.mobilebooks.org to have Project Gutenberg ebooks available on cheap cell / mobile phones. And that is not using WAP where the big fat telephone operators make big money to download. These ebooks are in java and work on most java enabled phones. Users can download them straight for the website without needing to pay big bucks for WAP. All this is of course for free, users can download the 5000+ ebooks for FREE.

Now the big question!!! I want to invest time to put the proper links so wiki users can download the cell phone ebooks straight from Wiki.

What do you guys say????

Thanks John Mizzi

Sounds like an excellent idea. Good on you. Durova^Charge! 22:40, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

John and I have been discussing this via email. He is talking about adding thousands of links to his website (which has Google Ads) to articles. I have suggested that he follow WP:EL and add the link to the article talk page to avoid a conflict of interest. He has already been blocked once under the belief he was spamming and I think that is likely to happen again if he restarts in the same manner. Sarah Ewart 05:24, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

There are an ever increasing number of fact books at Wikibooks, a Wikipedia sister-project, if you are interested in this aspect Wikibooks staff lounge is the contact point. Robinhw 10:24, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

In Wikibooks I could not see any ebooks. What I am proposing is for wiki users once in an author's page or books they can click on the link from wiki, hook their cheap cell/mobile phone to the PC and download the ebook to the phone so they can read it in the bus, plane or at night in pitch black darkness so their partner can sleep. A typical example will be Charles Dickens Cell/Mobile Phone e-books or to the ebook itself Oliver Twist - Cell/Mobile Phone Version. The objective of this project was to brink ebooks to the masses not just the elite with expensive PDAs. Cannot get simpler than that? John Mizzi 10:35, 17 December 2006 (GMT+1)

I agree with Sarah that, with the prominent Google ads and apparent conflict of interest, linking to the service from even a few articles would be seen as spam. Thousands boggles the mind. I could see one link, from the external links section of Project Gutenberg, but thousands of links, even on article talk pages, would be too much of a slippery slope for my liking. I can just see thwarted spammers adding their links to the talk pages, and pointing to this as a precedent. SWAdair 08:39, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Downloadable Wiki Word Processor

ELApro: Could a download link or site for just the Wiki word processor be made available. This is for the purpose of working off-line on say, adding a new article or new section. This would guarantee that offline formatting would conform to Wiki formatting. I have also had problems at times with losing information during long edits. I have been copying my text, as a backup, to Microsoft Notepad, but it sometimes adds such things as double spacing and loses certain characters.

See Help:External editors — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 15:22, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

ELApro: The links on the Help:External editors page to Template:Phh:External editors & MediaWiki 1.5 are dead. Thanks again Jonathan.

Announcements about Wikibooks

Is it possible to make major announcements about Wikibooks on the main Wikipedia page? Robinhw 11:24, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

What about one of your nice boxes with:

Wikibooks! From books for university such as Special Relativity to books for infants such as Big Cats Wikibooks has a book for everyone.

Robinhw 12:32, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't have a problem with major announcements for sister projects since it isn't really advertising. You're example, however, is just an ad for Wikibooks. What kind of announcements did you have in mind? Koweja 13:51, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Initially an advert but later on announcements of completed books. Wikibooks is at the stage that Wikipedia achieved about 3 years ago, it ranks about 3000th on the internet (Alexa rank) and is just about to take off. It now has some good content and an exponential growth phase may be just round the corner. I was hoping for a bit of a push from Wikipedia. Robinhw 16:17, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Announcing completed books seems like a pretty good idea. However, do Wikibooks have to go through a review process before they are declared completed, similar to how wikipedia articles are review before being declared a featured article? See WP:FAC for what I mean. Koweja 16:36, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Now that the project has quite a number of completed books I would expect a scheme of this type to occur. Until now most of the effort has been devoted to actually getting some books completed. My guess is that Wikibooks will go through the same development cycle as Wikipedia but over a period of 3-5 times as long because books are time consuming. This is why some publicity to draw in Wikipedia contributors would be useful. Robinhw 10:32, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikiproject Talk-templates Proposal

Almost every Wikiproject has their own template to post in article talk pages. While this does allow users to find other articles in their favorite topics, some articles have several Wikiproject affiliations making some article talk pages very long and hard to convert to the new small template format. My plan is to create a template that can list all of the Wikiprojects an article is involved with, allow users to edit the Wikiprojects it lists, and display ratings and importance classes. Since I have almost no knowledge of template coding, I will need major help. I originally wanted to use the wikitable format using three columns: Wikiproject Name, Rating, and Importance:

Wikiproject		Rating		Importance
Albums		A		Significant
China		B		Core
Microsoft Windows		A		Core

...but that would mean restructuring the small template setup. I have concluded that I will probably need to use the messagebox format. How should I do this? Any thoughts? Improvements? Know anyone who would be interested in this project? Again, here's my to-do list again:

• Create a multiple Wikiproject template
• Give the Wikiproject name, rating, and improtance
• Allow for the small template configuration
• Any other ideas...

Thanks. -Blackjack48 04:31, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

This is a good idea. It would certainly cut down on talk page header clutter. To do this, we will or would need two things: a list of all article-talk-header-inserting WikiProjects, and a format for listing the WikiProjects. I like your mockup, but I think an icon for each, not to mention the usual rating colors, would be a good idea. Nihiltres 04:59, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I would support the new format for project tags and history tags (good article, former good article, etc.) However, important notices such as reminders about signing comments, that the article might containt trolling, etc. should remain as wide bars on top. We also have {{skiptotoctalk}} which can help aliviate the problem. Koweja 14:09, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

This has been discussed to death (in many different places); there are a number of problems with a unified template:

• Different project have somewhat different rating systems. The template would need to code each project's options separately (with the whole mess of categories).
• The template would be used on nearly 400,000 pages; editing it (which would need to be done fairly regularly) would be a not-insignificant technical concern. (Not to mention that any careless change would suddenly break every project's assessments.)
• Most importantly, project banners typically contain a variety of options other than article assessment; even if the assessments all used a common template, the banners would still need to be present for all their other features to work.

I'm of the opinion that, given the new small-format layout available, talk page clutter is basically a non-issue. It's quite trivial to enable the small format on any banners that lack it; certainly easier than trying to work with a template common to every WikiProject. Kirill Lokshin 17:20, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Branching support

Hi all. I would like to revive the old feature request for Wikipedia:Branching support. What do you all think of the idea? Cheers, --unforgettableid | how's my driving? 00:46, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Why do we need a formalized system for creating POV forks? Don't we want to avoid those as much as possible? --tjstrf talk 02:23, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Merging fair use templates

Anyone interested in fair use templates should probably see the proposed merge at Template_talk:Game-cover#Merge. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)} 19:40, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

IPA Quickhelp templates

I have an idea for making IPA symbols more comprehensible, using tooltips. I have made a template {{Ʒ}} that contains [[ʒ as in beige=beɪʒ|ʒ]], and then a redirect at [[ʒ as in beige=beɪʒ]] to the appropriate phonetic page. (Here it is without nowiki: ʒ, and here's a link to edit the template page: {{Ʒ}}. The discussion of this concept is here: template talk:Ʒ. Without popups, this works wonderfully: someone who doesn't know IPA sees blue text, moves their mouse over the link, then sees the quickie pronunciation help in the tooltip, and if they want to know more, they click and get the appropriate article. The dev version of popups has now been fixed to work with this, but the production version of popups still is not compatible. Again, please do NOT comment here, instead comment at template talk:Ʒ. If and when this starts to get a clearer consensus on whether and how to move forward, I'll be posting this at (policy) and (technical). --Homunq 16:20, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Automatic proposal and suggestion of words

I wish to propose Automatic proposal and suggestion of words. That is when you search for say Etymology but misspell it(perhaps you write Etimology), a proposal is made of one or several similar words that actually exists and also a suggestion at the bottom asking if the user wants to start a new article under the searched name. As it is now, you have to go to google to find out, because google often gives you good suggestions. /Minoya 05:34, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Agree. I looked into Google's API and unfortuantly suggest is not available. An open source spell checked could be used in an extension. -Ravedave ^{(help name my baby)} 05:23, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• The subject is already covered. We attempt to create "common misspelling" redirects. If you misspell a word and you believe that the misspelling is common, then, when you get the option to "Create this article," do so. In the new article, do the following: #REDIRECT [[properpagename]], where "properpagename" is the name of where the article really is. In your edit summary, put "spelling redirect." Many spelling redirects exist, but be thoughtful about this, as well as bold, and think about whether your misspelling is common or just a one time only goof. If it's the former, go ahead and make a redirect. Geogre 11:31, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the enlightenment. Now, why not #REDIRECT the one time only goofs too, as a user id rather have an article pop up than nothing at all. Better to be abundant. /Minoya 13:47, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• Better to be concise, of course. Although we're not dying for server space now the way we once were, it's still good to conserve storage space however and whenever we can. The common saying is "redirects are cheap," but also "they're not free." Google uses a parser to try to figure out what word you could have meant. Since they already do it, we don't need to ("search using Google"); instead, we should cover the most used, most common mistakes. You can create a redirect for the one-time misspelling, and it may or may not get deleted. I doubt anyone will threaten or throttle you for doing it, and there are certainly easily misspelled terms we need redirects for still. Geogre 13:53, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, thanks, I can say no more.

Remember to use the often-forgotten template {{template:r from misspelling}} on your misspelled redirect. –Outriggr § 04:11, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Long edit summaries

Ok. I realize that edit summaries are supposed to be just that, a summary of the changes you made. I realise that some editors get really annoyed by long edit summaries. I realise that long edit summaries make it harder to peruse the article's history. I know people think long edit summaries clutter up watchlists. I understand the importance of brevity in edit summaries. I know that if it's too long and detailed to fit in the summary box, it's probably best to take it to the talk page anyhow.

However, detailed edit summaries are useful, especially when a page or change is likely to be contentious. Sometimes, if there is a long discussion on the talk page about a change and I go ahead and make it, I feel the need to expound in great detail in my edit summary just in case someone hasn't been following the talk page discussion, or to avoid bringing material to the talk page that would distract from an ongoing discussion. People often ask me to proofread things they've written, and in those instances I feel the need to go into detail about every little spelling or punctuation fix, no matter how minor.

Most of the time if I run out of space in the edit summary window it's only by 2-10 characters. Sometimes I can trim it down or abreviate words, but when I abreviate I worry that people don't know what "ptl rv, dab, link & mv cntnt" means, so I try to avoid abbreviations if possible.

I did a test in the sandbox, and it seems to me that the edit summary allows you 190 characters or so (I may have miscounted). Therefore I would like to propose an increase to 200 characters. It's a nice, even number that's easy to remember. It's only 10 characters more then the current limit and shouldn't clutter up histories and watchlists too bad, but yet will eliminate (for me at least) most instances where I'm trying to trim my edit summary to the point where it is illegible, but have good reasons for not taking it to the talk page.

I'm sure that this is something that should be taken to the developers, but it's also something that needs community consensus. Hence I'm proposing it here rather than bugzilla (not to mention I have no idea how bugzilla works, only that anything involving changes to the software should be proposed there). What do others think of a 10 character increase in the maximum length of edit summaries? ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)} 15:21, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. 190 or however many characters seems like a lot, and in many cases it is more than enough. However, if you are putting links into the summary, all of the link target counts towards that limit, though it isn't seen on the edit summary. Why not bump it up to 255 characters or so? Koweja 16:12, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I originally thought 300, given that if you are only editing a section the software automatically includes the section header and counts it toward your character limit. But then I thought people'd object too much to 300 rambling characters. But considering the limit for sig characters is 250, shouldn't edit summaries be at least that long? ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)} 16:27, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

From the HTML source of the edit page of this section:

<input tabindex='2' type='text' value="/* Long edit summaries */ "
 name='wpSummary' id='wpSummary' maxlength='200' size='60' />

..the limit's 200 at the moment. --ais523 14:53, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Then how about 250? ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)} 16:20, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Branch

I, LightbringerX, herby decree that a new branch of Wikipedia is adue. A Lyric pool in the form of other Wikimedia productions should be considered. I'm thinking 'Wikilyric' sounds pretty good.

Shouldn't you also be thinking 'Wikiblatantcopyrightviolation'? Pascal.Tesson 07:15, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Wow this comes up a lot. Most copyrighted lyrics are forbidden by law to be distributed except by their owners, despite their wide dissemination by other sides. Wikisource is a good location for non-copyrighted lyrics. Deco 09:59, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Exactly: what's more the licensing for the lyrics has to be expressly public domain or GFDL. It cannot be "used by permission" or "everybody knows them." Now, if people want to write lyrics of their own, there is a WikiCities creative portal, I believe. Geogre 15:41, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

"in the news section"

how come the content of the "in the news section" is always the same articles ... ?, Thanks, Rod Brown159.251.88.50 16:23, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

• It's not. It updates at a pretty slow rate, but it does change.But for that to happen, someone needs to update the relevant article and suggest a news item and an administrator must agree to put it up. - Mgm|^(talk) 13:35, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
  • The speed that it changes depends on the speed at which articles get updated. Some times an article can stay up there for three or four days, sometimes it is gone in 24 hours. Also try clearing your browser's cache to make sure it is getting the newest version of the page (most likely you hold the control key and press F5). Koweja 04:18, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

All articles go to semi-protect mode when WP:WDEFCON reaches two?

I don't know if this is feasible, but it might help editors on Vandal Patrol if all articles could temporarily be automatically semi-protected when the WP:WDEFCON reaches two. It would take an admin to invoke that level. This could help cut down on anonymous IPs attacking articles and enabling the VP to catch with article reversals if need be. Ronbo76 01:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Withdrawn. It looks like WP:SNOW. Ronbo76 05:04, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

No, just no. WikiDefcon is an unofficial number set by people who see vandalfighting as a pseudomilitary operation. The last thing we need is giving a person who assumes bad faith and thinks all IPs are vandals the power to block them from editing at will. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 02:35, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Oppose: I'm concerned that this would just give the vandals a target to aim at and thus lead to more vandalism, rather than less. Newyorkbrad 02:39, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Hey, that would be interesting, like a giant plug of anonymous edits. But that would go against the spirit of Wikipedia. There are enough patrollers and admins around to handle most attacks. -- ReyBrujo 02:42, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) This is possible, but I oppose it definately. It totally takes away the idea of a wiki and is, as Night Gyr said, an unofficial number. It would be totally unfeasible for this to happen whenever we reach "Defcon2". If we somehow reached "Defcon1", a developer would lock the database (something we experienced while I was trying to save the page :)) to try and sort it all out. (as if someone accidentally put something bad in one of the MediaWiki pages, a definite no-no! So, no, I do not agree with it. Cbrown1023 02:46, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm opposed, not all IPs are bad, it's "unwiki", and there are even some IPs who actually revert vandalism. What is Defcon1 anyway? Willy on Wheels just got a 'cratship and started changing everyone's names to "Username ON WHEELS!!!"? --tjstrf talk 02:54, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Vandalbot is real and rises up from the deep like r'lyeh from beneath the sea, its tendrils touching thousands of machines across the internet calling them to "SPAM! SPAM! SPAM WIKIPEDIA WITH DISRUPTION!" and lo, the evil washed across the land. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:02, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

It only feels like that sometimes....... Newyorkbrad 03:04, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Oppose. This is preemptive semi-protection, a violation of policy (and for good reasons). Superm401 - Talk 04:54, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Separate "Fanpedia" for all fancruft

Strangely this is not in the list of perennial proposals, although it seems obvious, and I would guess someone suggested it already. The proposal is to limit articles with many associated specialised articles (of interest to fans only). There would be only one article on The Simpsons, Star Trek, Big Brother (TV series), individual computer games, professional wrestling, and so on. All derived articles, on individual episodes, sequels, characters, tournaments/competitions, scores, league tables, competitors, and so on would be moved to an entirely new project. This is both a policy proposal and a new project proposal, and the policy could only be implemented when such a project starts up.Paul111 12:30, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with it. You don't see it unless you're looking for it. — Omegatron 14:53, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Various fan wikis exist at Wikia and other Wiki hosting services, for example Wookieepedia. Kusma (討論) 14:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia's not paper; we don't need to remove information because it's only of interest to fans. As an (imperfect) analog, imagine getting rid of General relativity because it's only of interest to scientists. That said, various projects do exist generally for fictional universes, and cover the story in more detail (but tend to include less out-of-universe information). Trebor 15:02, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Ever seen Memory Alpha? User:Zoe|(talk) 18:48, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Wookieepedia is exactly what I had in mind, but for all fan-interest-only articles. Even if they are not visible without looking for them, they are still a distortion of content. Look at the new page creations, and you will see how many articles fall into this category. The best analogy is with recipes: policy excludes them all, ending all disputes on notability.Paul111 11:32, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

POV rears its ugly head. You'll be arguing to kingdom come over many of the articles as to whether or not they're fan-related. --Dweller 11:55, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

• Up to a point. I have seen a number of well-written articles which fail core verifiability policy taken to Memory Alpha or Wookiepedia. Guy (Help!) 12:18, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

• I would be all in favor of a guideline asking that when too much unsourced in-universe fancruft, a wikia be created to cope with all the fan protestations during the AFD. Anyone seen the WP:GUNDAM mass deletion dispute recently? It's true we need a solution for these cases.--SidiLemine 13:37, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikilyrics

I think there should be a site created for the sue of submiting lyrics for songs! This woule be a great addition to the Wikipedia creators!

The vast majority of lyrics are copyrighted so the site would either have almost no content or get shut down. A lot of lyrics sites are being shut down or at least being ordered to remove a lot of their lyrics as it is. Koweja 20:45, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Despite that, there are still some in existence. Trebor 20:47, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

There are plenty of sites host copyrighted videos still in existence, but that doesn't mean Youtube should allow people to upload protected works. Koweja 16:00, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

• We also have some on Wikisource. But yes, they tend to be copyvios. The internet is full of copyvios and most of them don't get shut down or anything, but that doesn't mean we should join them; note that we are rather more high-profile than just about anything else on the 'net. >Radiant< 12:00, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist enhancement

I wondered if it would be possible to introduce some whizzy tec that'll make it possible to remove pages from the Watchlist from the main "my watchlist" page, rather than the alpha order full list?

I do RC patrol and consequently my Watchlist rapidly fills, making it more difficult to really watch the pages I want to keep an eye on. I'd find it easier to prune the list using the recency element of "my watchlist" than the alpha list.

Opinions welcomed. --Dweller 10:05, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I use the "unwatch" feature of popups to unwatch pages directly from my watchlist by opening "unwatch" in a new tab. If your watchlist is getting too long, you might also consider typing up a list of pages you really want to watch and check changes to them with Special:Recentchangeslinked. Hope that helps, Kusma (討論) 10:09, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I finally installed popups as a result of your suggestion (something I've been meaning to do for yonks). It does work, but if I'm curmudgeonly about it, it's still quite clumsy, as for each unwatch click, I get taken to a new page telling me I've removed the page from the watchlist, rather than leaving me able to select a bunch of pages simultaneously. I, erm, didn't understand your other suggestion, but it sounds pretty laborious. --Dweller 10:19, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

That's why I open the new unwatch pages in background tabs, where they don't annoy me. For the other thing, see User:Kusma/Contributions and Special:Recentchangeslinked/User:Kusma/Contributions for what I mean. Best, Kusma (討論) 11:57, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist enhancement - "temporary watch" feature?

When warning a vandal, you may wish to temporarily "watch" them for further vandalism. Similarly, after reverting vandalism, you may wish to temporarily "watch" the article for further vandalism. You may also wish to "watch" a request for adminship, or a nomination of an article for deletion (such discussions usually last 7 days). Once it's clear that vandalism has stopped, or the discussion has ended, there's no further need to watch the page, and it simply clutters your watchlist.

How about a "temporary watch" feature, which allows you to watch a page for a specified period of time, after which it is removed from your watchlist? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:11, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I wondered if it would be possible to introduce some whizzy tec that'll make it possible to remove pages from the Watchlist from the main "my watchlist" page

Yep. The one I am using is here, though Quarl had a better version that used AJAX. See User_talk:Ilmari_Karonen#Unwatch_link and Bugzilla:424.

How about a "temporary watch" feature, which allows you to watch a page for a specified period of time, after which it is removed from your watchlist?

I would love this. In the bug report, someone suggested it a little differently:

Perhaps a user could set a "max number of watched items" parameter in his preferences. If he then adds a new watched item that takes him over his limit, the software would drop the oldest watched item from his list.

— Omegatron 14:50, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

You would have to be notified about which link was dropped, and there must be some way of sorting by date and not only alphabetical, otherwise you may lose watch links you don't want to. It would be much better if you could "categorize" your watch items in different categories. -- ReyBrujo 12:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Email notification of new messages

Following from my posting a few months ago about this subject on the perennial proposals board, As it seems there have been no replies I've come to the conclusion that it may not have been quite as perennial as I had thought. The few responses it's received on the other board have been very positive, and it's apparently already available on Wikipedia Commons. I've posted it here and now to see if it might get a wider response...

...I've been wondering about this for a while now - when a user recieves a new message on his/her talk page, they get that lovely and prominent "you have new messages" banner at the top of each page. Sometimes though, users want some down time away from wikipedia - to be honest I'd be suprised if that statement didn't account for the majority of users.

Given the purpose of talk pages (ie, for the community to get in touch with a user), would it not be to the benefit of both the community and the user if (just like almost every forum out there on the web), each registered user had an option in their preferences to recieve a simple email notification of a new message. Just like every forum out there of course, it would only send a notification for the first message, and not send one again until the user has visited the talk page.

Alternatively, A weekly email could be sent out with a summary of new talk page sections from over the last week, which would be perhaps useful in cases where a user is on an extended leave from wiki. I'm sorry if this has been brought up before, but I haven't seen anything about it. Any thoughts?

{{VPP-bug}}: Please see the notice at the top of the page - when a proposal involves a change to the software, go to the bug tracker (which also does feature requests) and file a new bug there. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:16, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I missed that (twice it seems!). One of the reasons I posted about it here though, is that I also wanted to know what the community in general thought about it. Is this OK, or should this be removed? Crimsone 21:23, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I suspect there are a lot of intermittent editors who'd appreciate this feature (though one could question how many of them would actually learn of it). And I suppose that if it were implemented, there might be more demand for other push-type e-mails, such as notification of AfDs of articles where one had recently contributed. So, in general, I (for one) think it's a good idea, and if it didn't take a lot of programming effort, why not? John Broughton | Talk 03:09, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Spam gateway! Spam gateway! Spam gateway! Anon and newly-registered users can post to User_talk: pages. What mechanism will be put in place to prevent spammers from abusing this as a spam relay? Even if this is solely an "opt-in" feature, couldn't this also get legit Wikipedia emails flagged as collateral damage spam? —Dgies^t c 05:11, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

If all it does is say "You got a message, come check it" then you're only going to get one email regardless of how much spam you get, and won't do the spammer any good vs. spamming talk pages now. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 05:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

It would be trivial for a developer to enable this, but it would probably place far too much load on the servers (if this is popular, the number of emails sent might be pretty large); the number of emails being sent from Wikipedia might also lead to it being (incorrectly) detected as a spammer and blocked by email services. --ais523 15:30, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Both Commons and Meta have these notifications

   Dear ReyBrujo,
   
   the Wikimedia Commons page User talk:ReyBrujo has been changed on
   21:47, 14 November 2006 by JeremyA, see
   http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:ReyBrujo for the current
   version.
   
   See
   http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:ReyBrujo&diff=0&oldid=2978670
   for all changes since your last visit.
   
   Editor's summary: Re: Album Covers
   
   Contact the editor:
   mail: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Emailuser/JeremyA
   wiki: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:JeremyA
   
   There will be no other notifications in case of further changes unless
   you visit this page. You could also reset the notification flags for
   all your watched pages on your watchlist.
   
           Your friendly Wikimedia Commons notification system

Personally, I don't like it. -- ReyBrujo 15:40, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I personally can't confirm the calculations, as I don't know the number of changes per day first hand, but in one of the number of bug reports on the issue, a couple of users are saying that the server load is actually far lower than would be at first thought. (here) Crimsone 23:52, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Being notified of changes to articles on your watchlist and changes to your talk page are two different things. The server load would be much smaller if it only notified you of changes to your talk page. I would really like to see this enabled for talk pages only. — Omegatron 15:08, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely. This is what I'm suggesting (and can be easily done). Enabling it for the watchlist would indeed be a silly proposal if only for the rediculous load on the server - for user talk pages it's (apparently) a different story though. I filed a bug report for this precisely (rather than the bug report I posted above which is slightly different, though it was apparently a duplicate) - here Crimsone 15:47, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Printer Friendly Pages

I would like to suggest that, if possible, a "printer-friendly" version of Wikipedia articles be made available. As the web pages are constructed now, it is a very tedious process to copy and paste the rich information that is provided on any given subject.

James Gabe Oklahoma City January 18, 2007 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jamesgabe (talk • contribs) 18:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC).

We already have one. Click on 'printable version' in the toolbox (which is below the search box). --ais523 18:28, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Wiki Google Widgets

Hi, I'm a fan of both Google and Wikipedia and I use the wikipedia widget for my google homepage. Since google homepage doesn't allow to have more then one instance of the same widget, I'd gladly see a new version of the wiki widget allowing to me to have more then one query field for different languages. I use both it.wikipedia and en.wikipedia for different searches and I'd be very happy to have both query fields in the same homepage. Now, there is only the option to select a language. I'd be happy with one "add one more language" option, that allow to me to chose one more language for another query field. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.208.83.231 (talk) 14:35, 18 January 2007 (UTC).

A fantastic feature would be a tool bar that would enable me to highlight an article (not for public display and not for editing purposes) but for display in the articles that I view within my own account when I have logged in.

Then when I am reading about something, I wouldn't feel I have to print the article and then highlight it, but just mouse highlight things. Then it would be great to save this highlighting to show up only in my account.

This suggestion outlines the only drawback to online learning as opposed to paper (and therefore mark-up-able) learning--wikipedia would be a pioneer!

What do you think?

I like the idea, but it would be pretty tricky to do; it would be hard technically to keep the highlighting when the page was edited. --ais523 18:46, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

noinclude pages in the Wikipedia namespace

I have a suggestion: to take all pages in the Wikipedia namespace (policies, essays, guidelines, etc.) and enclose them in the <noinclude> tag. What this will do is prevent transclusion or substitution of pages like WP:MOS, which in nearly no circumstances would require transclusion ({{Wikipedia:Manual of Style}} or substitution ({{subst:Wikipedia:Manual of Style}}) While this need not occur on short essays, or on Wikipedia pages that are meant to behave like templates, it seems good to me, and it will prevent abuse that could cause inconvenience for the page viewer and possibly Wikimedian servers. (Yes, there is WP:PERF for good faith editors, but purposely trying to slow down servers is different.)

Suppose that I write an essay and call it Wikipedia:Drunk driving, and the content is

Don't edit Wikipedia when you're drunk. [...] End of story.

...and suppose that the essay is (somehow) a couple of kilobytes long. There is no reason to transclude or substitute that (just link to it), so make the page content:

<noinclude>Don't edit Wikipedia when you're drunk. [...] End of story.</noinclude>

Or even better,

<noinclude>Don't edit Wikipedia when you're drunk. [...] End of story.</noinclude><includeonly>[[{{subst:NAMESPACE}}:{{subst:PAGENAME}}]]</includeonly>

This seems like a good idea due to recent vandalism to User talk:68.39.174.238, which was met with this course of action, which I suggested to Tuxide on IRC. (The user that did this may need checkuser, but that's my passive opinion.) Doing this for all pages in the Wikipedia namespace (except for, as listed above, pages meant to behave like templates, and maybe short essays) can't hurt; and if it can, please tell me why. Thanks. Gracenotes^T § 04:09, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

P.S. This could be extended to user pages. Several come to mind. 04:09, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
P.P.S. Hm, how about User:Tuxide/Sandbox/Do not subst my user talk page? :p 04:09, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I decided to stuff some WP:BEANS up my nose. check my userpage. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 06:39, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

This won't solve anything. Vandals will just find some way to vandalize wikipedia, including using subst to copy everything over as someone did to my talk page recently. Besides, we don't need to change thousands of pages just because of one instance of vandalism. That would just give the vandal a lot of attention, which we shouldn't be doing. Koweja 13:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

The point of this proposal is to counter server/client thrashing (and impersonation in the case of user pages), not necessarily vandalism. This particular user tried to impersonate me by substing my talk page onto his own, and repeatedly added 1.5 megabytes of text to someone else's talk page by transcluding WP:MOS. This resulted in a talk page that took forever to load/generate. Tuxide 22:55, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

edit: I know there is WP:PERF but the client can also be thrashed as well, as in this case. WP:PERF only addresses possible server concerns and has no regards to the user client. Tuxide 23:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

A radical reworking of AfD

A lot of people complain that AfD is in some way "broken". Others disagree but acknowledge serious flaws. One common problem is bad articles on good subjects; people often !vote "keep and clean up", which often results in the article being kept but not cleaned up. So I have an idea:

• Rename to Articles for discussion (consistent with some other meta discussions)
• Have three outcomes, not two: keep, expedited cleanup, delete
• Articles sent to expedited cleanup are tagged as such and dated, and after say 14 days if not cleaned up can be speedily deleted

I believe this will reduce the chances of crap articles on good subjects being deleted by those whose mission is to improve the quality of the encyclopaedia. And crap articles which are not remedied will be deleted, which is also good for the encyclopaedia. Finally, closing admins will have a middle ground between keep and delete in marginal cases, giving those who advocate keep a deadline to remedy the faults identified by others. Guy (Help!) 12:16, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

That's a good idea. The German Wikipedia has something like that in de:Wikipedia:Qualitätssicherung (Quality assurance). Articles at AfD can be sent to quality assurance if they are bad (too stubby or poorly written) articles on notable subjects, and will only be deleted after that attempt to improve them has failed. I don't know how well that works, though. Kusma (討論) 14:51, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Good idea. I've always argued that "keep and rewrite" should be counted as delete !votes on the grounds that if an article needs a major reworking then it is not useful to keep the crap version hanging around anyway. There are FAR too many articles that survive AfD on this basis. Delete without prejudice to recreation should far and away be the most common closure of these AfD's. Sadly they aren't. Your solution offers a good middle ground. Zunaid©® 14:55, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Not bad, but I would shorten the period to 7 days. Users would have 14 in total since the article is sent to AFD until they can be speedy deleted. Note that some AFDs end with "conditional keep", however nobody ever cares about the "conditional" part, since nobody verifies if the condition is fulfilled. -- ReyBrujo 14:59, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

A possibly very valuable change, but I have three concerns:

• I think the present name, albeit not consistent with other XfDs, should be kept. I'm concerned that AfDs could come pouring in from folks saying "well, it's a dicussion, not a delete, so what's the harm of having this article reviewed". AfDs should really be limited (in my opinion) to articles that someone seriously doubts meet WP:V and WP:NOR criteria, and the name does affect how the process is interpreted.
• Similarly, the instructions need to make perfectly clear that articles that are stubs, need expanding, not major cleanup, etc., are not to be sent to AfD as a way of forcing a quality improvement. Instead, again, only articles with WP:V or WP:NOR qualify for AfDs. (We have way, way, too many stubs to send even a small percentage through AfD.)
• Third, the most serious concern: How much discretion does this proposal shift to admins? I'd bet that under the three-tiered system, only really bad cruft (almost speedy-delete material) would get a "delete" consensus; after all, why not put anything marginal into the QA (middle) tier and see what happens? What will happen at the end of the 14 days is that an admin will say either "Nope, those references aren't good enough" or "Well, I suppose that's okay", without any further input by anyone. Is that what we want?

So maybe (at the risk of instruction creep), if the decision is "expedited cleanup", then the admin decision at the end of 14 days, if someone disagrees, it goes back to AfD, and this time the expedited cleanup option is not available? John Broughton | ♫♫ 15:13, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Two Questions... 1) Is WP:NPOV not a criteria for deletion? and 2) You talk about crap articles on good subjects, what about well written articles on crap subjects? 38.112.47.92 16:38, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Does Coprophilia count? - CHAIRBOY (☎) 16:44, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll tell you why this is a problem - the deletion discussions more often than not revolve around the worth of the article as a subject for inclusion. I can see it now: a poorly written article on an important, but little known, historical event gets tagged for "expidited cleanup." Nothing happens because few editors know enough about said event, article gets deleted. Then, major problems and hand-wringing about the resubmission of said article, the quality of the resubmitted article, and on and on and on. Instruction creep is not an issue here, but the amount of changes that will have to be put in place to deal with the fallout are somewhat staggering to me. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:50, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

One of my pet peeves at AfD are people who vote for "Keep, but clean up" because they think the article's topic sounds "intresting" or "cool", even when the article may be a mess and they know little or nothing about the subject. I wish there was a way to stop this, but I don't think there is.

That said, I don't have a problem with creating a "Keep, but clean up" decision option. I would, however, put the onus on the editors to enforce this and not the admins. If an article is not cleaned up in a reasonable time, it can always be renominated for a 2nd AfD, and the proposer can point to the previous AfD discussion and comment that no "clean up" was done. The admin who is determining the 2nd AfD will then know that "keep and clean" does not seem to be a realistic option and delete.

I would, however, not support the idea of an "expedited" clean up... it may take more than 14 days for an editor (one who honestly wants to clean the article up) to read up on the subject, research citations, etc. We don't want to undercut an honest good faith effort to clean a poor article up just because an arbitrary deadline has passed.

Finally, the idea of "Delete without prejudice" is the flip side of "Keep, but clean up" - ie, an indication that the topic has potential, but the current article itself is so bad that it needs to be deleted. I would favor adding that to the options as well. Blueboar 18:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Is WP:NPOV not a criteria for deletion? No, it's not - see Wikipedia:Guide to deletion.

BDJ has a point - if there are impassioned defenders of an article, the expedited cleanup basically gives them 14 days to put up or shut up. But for other articles, it's unclear whether there would be a "cleanup corps" that would really work articles to prevent them from being deleted at the end of their 14 days, or if it would be a "someone else will take care of that" sort of falling between the cracks. In some sense, AfD now spurs people to fix articles they think are repairable (I've certainly done that myself a couple of times), because that's the best argument they can make to prevent deletion. John Broughton | ♫♫ 18:49, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

What if we trial the idea? It doesn't nessecarily have to seriously affect XfD for the moment. Instead, if it works, it could be an organic process of change. All we would have to do is set up WikiProject Quality Control (ok, I know control may not be the best word, but that's what you get at the end of a factory line where quality of a "product" is checked.) or WikiProject Quality Assurance. I have no doubt that a fair number of people would join such a project, and it's sole aims would be twofold - Admins closing XfD's that have an indication that a cleanup is needed could a link to the article/AfD discussion on an "XfD cleanup list" at his/her discretion, and members of the project could add articles to a seperate "cleanup list" if something was felt to need real attention from the project (or some such. the latter is just an idea). The concentration of course would be on the XfD list.

As I say - it wouldn't need to be fully integrated into the XfD process. In fact, to start with it would be better not being integrated to start with and just having a closing admin doing it on a discretionary basis as part of a trial. It wouldn't need to be every XfD article that would apply - just a few would see if it works well or not to start with...

...Just an idea. Crimsone 18:56, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Whether this is a good idea or not seems to boil down to whether people think we should keep articles we will want in the long run, or delete them until they are of sufficient quality. Provided it passes notability and WP:NOT then we can have an article on it. But should we remove that article until it meets the other content policies, or leave it in a poorly-written state. I would be inclined towards the latter; I don't think deletion should be a reflection on the current state of the article, merely whether one could be written (I'm an eventualist, not an immediatist). Trebor 19:01, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

• The actual problem is that our cleanup processes are terminally backlogged. >Radiant< 09:38, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

• We have a cleanup process? I thought we just tag articles with {{cleanup}} and then forget about them. Kusma (討論) 12:05, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
• Maybe so, but I don't see how deleting the articles will help. I find it more effort to start a new article than work from an existing base, even if the base isn't very good. Similarly, if I'm searching, I prefer to find limited information than no information at all. I feel this would attack the symptom (a large number of poorly-written articles) than the cause (people's tendency to slap clean-up tags on articles rather than actually clean them up). Trebor 16:51, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

• The reality however is that poorly-written articles reflect badly on the 'pedia and tend to stay in that state for a very very long time as Radiant mentions. I am of an exclusionist bent, and classify myself as a "3-monthist" (any and every article should be pulled up to Wikipedia standards within 3 months of creation). Now that I think of it, I'd prefer the three options be keep, delete without prejudice and delete with prejudice. If an article can't even be turned into a useful stub (at the very least!) in the five days it takes AfD to run, then clearly there is no material worth saving for a "keep and clean up". The extra days and extra process are unnecessary. Zunaid©® 14:03, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
• Several good suggestions above. I proposed a while back changing AfD so new entries went to the top (so that they get seen and discussed - last of the day tends to get virtually no discussion). That was thought by some to be a good idea as well. But nothing has yet been done. How do we progress this stuff? Guy (Help!) 08:59, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Be bold? As far as I can see, adding the new suggestions to the top is a no-brainer. Ideally, there'd also be a page that logs the 150-200 additions too, to avoid the cut-off at midnight. But with a large community it seems very hard to get anything done. Trebor 12:43, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea that not only should be applied to keep/cleanup votes but also to the No Consensus. As for the short time period common sense should be applied where an article has been unedited (excluding bots, vandals etc) for the 14+ days then send it back to AfD and then the editors who say Keep and Cleanup should required to make some effort during the AfD, then when closing if nothings happened to the article then these comments should be discounted/ignored. Gnangarra 13:18, 20 January 2007 (UTC)