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Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive AI

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Permanent Link button should be more prominent.

University lecturers (like mine) do not like people citing wikipedia as a reference for numerous reasons. Admittedly for some topics the fact it's publicly editable could pose problems with differences of opinion, or a page showing a one view as being 'publicly accepted' when really it's a load of bull. But for Chemistry topics there's not often a difference of opinion. Either boranes contain boron or they don't, it's as simple as that.

This means for a lot of subjects are immune to a lot of the arguments against our beloved wikipedia. But one remains, the fact that someone could vandalise a page to put in innacurate information(Which does happen, some of my friends vandalised Lead Nitrate before I reverted it...). Also the page you use isn't neccesarily the one the lecturer looks at to check, so you get marked down for being misinterpreting the infotmation even though the page you took your information from was wrong.

One beautiful way to solve this is the Permanant Link button. The trouble is.... it's not a very visable button. Maybe it should be more prominent? It'd deal with several complaints against wikipedia. Maybe at the top? Maybe just for registered users? Maybe next to My Watchlist or something?Simondrake 23:35, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Andy Mabbett 09:52, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
The "Cite this article" link is right below that, and very convenient as well. There aren't that many links in the navigational menu so I do not support bolding or moving it to where it doesn't fit. –Pomte 00:57, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Bot policy rewrite

Please see Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard#Bot policy rewrite for a discussion about whether the bot policy is working or failing at the moment, and possibly in need of a complete rewrite. —METS501 (talk) 23:16, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

'Charm School' Needs A Disambiguation

Currently, a search of 'charm school' takes you only to a rock band called 'Charm School'. I suggest a disambiguation so an additional link can be added, offering a link to 'finishing school'. I have never posted here before so please let me know if I am posting improperly. Thank you. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.39.160.117 (talk) 10:54, 23 April 2007 (UTC).

It's an okay suggestion, and you're welcome to suggest it here. I don't endorse it because the article on "finishing school" doesn't say that it's also called a charm school. If you can bring a source for this usage, then a disambiguation link would be the right way to proceed. YechielMan 17:54, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Mass deletion of obsolete lists

We have hundreds of lists on x-related topics, most of them created before the category systems were implemented. With categories, those lists are obsolete: they offer no serious advantage over categories, are always less comprehensive, can be a time sink for new editors who don't realize categories are used for that, are either gigantic, split into pointless subarticles with the same problem or incomplete compared to categories... in essence, they are a relic of the past that should either be deleted or archived in some wikiproject space as a part of wikipedia history. The consensus at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lists of topics by country and region was while those lists are indeed obsolete, a wider community consensus should be ensured before such a mass deletion / move. In the past, such consensus was reached - to my knowledge - at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Brazil-related topics, Portal_talk:Poland/Poland-related_Wikipedia_notice_board/Archive_8#Wikipedia:List_of_Poland-related_topics. I have now prodded few dozens of articles in those categories to see if anybody is maintaining them, and I would also like to initiate the community discussion on whether we want those articles deleted, moved somewhere or left alone. Please note that while I have so far target only lists of topics by country and region, there are many, many other lists from other fields that share the same problems. I am not saying that all lists are bad; shorter ones that can be made comprehensive (like tv show episode lists) are good - but the long ones, relics of pre-category mentality, should go...-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  19:57, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Well "mass deletions of" anything is a red flag to me. I'd say that Piotrus may have a point but please proceed cautiously. In other words, if this idea is implemented it should be done slowly, with great care that all items on a list are in the corresponding category and that the category and list actually do correspond. I would not want to see wholesale deletion of lists just because some people don't like lists - and I don't think Piotrus is proposing that - but in the past editors have taken ideas similar to this about things other than lists as a mandate for doing just that. With careful, case-by-case review, with extended time given for the meticulous work required to do this right, and with great care that no information is lost, I could see the value in this proposal. Tvoz |talk 20:10, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Some lists actually contain a little more information than a category could (see List of people from Michigan for an example I've referred to multiple times but could be considered obsolete to Category:People from Michigan) and should be kept. I would also suggest (although this is typically not done) that we redirect the lists to the category that they are redundant to. Many readers and new editors are not familiar with the category system and there are so many categories it can be hard to find what one is looking for. For example, if we delete List of Spain-related topics, redirect it to Category:Spain. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 21:23, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
There remain good reasons for lists, and WP:LISTS,section 1 is still a good summary. A long list may in many circumstances be more helpful than a short list--in particular, it offers the opportunities for useful organization, by topic, by period, that are often difficult to organize by categories. I seriously do not think there is consensus that the existing lists are unimportant, and I think it would be much more sensible to continue the process of looking at the apparently useless ones individually, and making sure there is in fact consensus from the people working on the topics concerned. DGG 00:13, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
The matter of lists versus categories is discussed in the guideline Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:54, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Important update: User:Mathbot can be used to generate lists of articles on a given page which are not in a given category. See usage at list of szlachta. The only problem is that adding all the subcategories to search is somewhat tiresome, I asked Oleg if the script can be updated with a switch to search through them automatically.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  16:16, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Make vandals accountable in the real world

People that vandalise Wikipedia habitually or use automated vandalbots to do the same, continue to erode at the hard work of thousands, creating further work for hundreds more. Some people in the public eye and therefore with widespread influence have (allegedly) actively encouraged such vandalism and contributed to the problem in a way that most users are unable.

The Computer Misuse Act 1990 of the UK states that a person is guilty of an offence if he does any act which causes an unauthorised modification of the contents of any computer with intent to prevent or hinder access to any data held in any computer or to impair the reliability of any such data in the knowledge that any modification he intends to cause is unauthorised. The Cybercrime Act 2001 of the Commonwealth of Australia states that a person is guilty of an offence if the person cause any unauthorised modification of data held in a computer. Naturally, both of these laws cover the incitement of commiting and such act.

The keyword is 'unauthorised'. The missing link between a vandal's actions and their accountability in real life is that of authorisation; if you check out |Jimbo's statement of principles, he already states that the community needs protection against real vandals. My proposal thus comprises that Jimbo's wishes are ratified and that the phrase "Vandalism of Wikipedia is forbidden" or words to that effect are added alongside the current warnings: Content that violates any copyright will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable. You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL.

If this can be done, then after an initial warning of offenders (remember, I'm still talking about operators of vandal bots and certain television presenters) to satisfy the requirement for knowledge that the modification is unauthorised, the offender must cease and desist or will be reported to the appropriate authorities.

According to my understanding, this strategy could not be applied to edits coming from within the Unite States. I am unaware of the content of analagous laws of any other countries.

Please help develop this proposal by suggesting flaws, improvements, countries in which the law is compatible with the UK and AU laws and countries in which it is not. --Seans Potato Business 03:56, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Fighting legal battles requires (a lot of) money, which the foundation doesn't have. Plus a high-profile case against a television personality would almost certainly damage Wikipedia's reputation. Vandalism is a nuisance, but I think the Wikipedia:Revert, block, ignore option is preferable to threats of legal action that we wouldn't be able to fufill. LukeSurl 13:45, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
    • I'm not sure if the Computer Misuse Act would apply to wikis, since they are designed to be freely editable, unlike proprietary software which the act was probably intended to cover. As LukeSurl mentioned, the Wikimedia Foundation has a problem: Money No Enough. Given that we have a policy against legal threats, this policy seems quite hypocritical. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 13:57, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Section seven subsection five of the CMA 1990 defines "unauthorised access", and requires that (for our purposes) "he does not have consent to [editing access] to [the database] from [the Foundation]" - but we freely consent that "anyone may edit", that anyone has editing access.
Subsection eight states that an unauthorised modification of data requires that "the person whose act causes it is not himself entitled to determine whether the modification should be made [and] he does not have consent to the modification from any person who is so entitled." We do not, and have never, asserted editorial control or the requirement for "approval" of edits - it would be hard to assert that vandals (and only vandals) are not entitled to determine whether they can edit, without also asserting that all other users are equally incapable of such determination.
Fundamentally, the Act is not designed to apply to publicly open wikis, and it would be a complete farce to try and apply either the principles or the letter of the Act to such a system. Shimgray | talk | 14:36, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
And even if the act did apply, we have better things to spend our money on that getting some vandal in trouble, it is far cheaper to block, revert, ignore. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 14:40, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
I believe that something similar to this is what got User:Zoe so much flak that she left Wikipedia. Corvus cornix 20:29, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

What would happen to the person who posted incorectly without knowing, Would that count as vandilism or not. Kinglou135 21:48, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Linking to other Wikis guideline

Recently there has been a large number of specialised Wikis springing up covering everything from Battlestar Galactica[1] to Nine Inch Nails[2]. Some of these Wikis are small, dare I say it, failed, projects (with minimal articles). However, others are impressive, covering their subject in more detail than Wikipedia ever could or would even want to do.

Rationale

Given that a reader of a Wikipedia article is happy to read a wiki about the subject, it stands to reason that if they wanted more detail they may be happy with further wiki-based content. Furthermore from an editing point of view some articles can clog up with arguably trivial information which would be best moved to a specialised wiki.

This proposal aims to give a clear guideline on how Wikipedia editors should relate to other wikis, aiming for a mutually beneficial system.

Proposal - Link to good wikis (see below) in external links where possible.

When an article in a good wiki exists which covers the topic of the article in more detail it should be linked to in the external links section. If we're very confident, a box similar to the ones linking to Wikinews or Wikictionary could be used. This is not restricted to just the immediate topic of the wiki but other subjects within that umbrella as well (i.e. not just Battlestar Galactica but Cylon as well).

Wikis, of course, should not be used as sources, owing to reliability issues as well as copyright ones (the wiki may not share the same licences as Wikipedia). Editors are however encouraged to look at specialist wikis to see what sources they have used.

Definition of a "good wiki"

Some wikis are excellent, others not so, either yet to get of the ground, deviod of active editors, or merely copying or rephrasing Wikipedia for the majority of its content. Therefore, it is best to define what is a "good wiki"

  • The wiki must have a decent number of articles which are above stub length. What consitutes this threshold will depend on the subject matter in hand, but at a crude estimate, 100 articles seems a reasonable minimum.
  • The wiki should be active, particularly if the subject matter is not stable. The wiki should be edited daily by several editors.
  • The articles should not be copies of Wikipedia material, but original creations.

Other ideas

Dialogue

Where a Wikipedia article needs cleanup, expansion or other improvement, wikipedia editors are encouraged to post messages at the wiki which is specific to the topic asking for assistance. The editors of the wiki are likely to be knowledgeable and enthusiastic about their subject and skilled in wikicode.

Creation of a list of good wikis (in the Wikipedia namespace)

This has a dual purpose. One, preventing duplication of work in assessing wikis as above. Two, a quick reference of where to refer editors to if they create content/articles which is too niched for Wikipedia.

So, what do you think?

In the spirit of all wikis, edit mercilessly :) LukeSurl 23:57, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I think it's a very good idea (many Star Trek articles already have external links to Memory Alpha, a dedicated Star Trek wiki), but we'll need to be highly selective and emphasize that those wikis are third-party and not directly affiliated with Wikipedia - for example, I don't think we'd ever want to redirect someone to Uncyclopedia, or have anyone think that a wiki with POV and nonsense like Uncyclopedia was part of Wikipedia. Nihiltres(t.c.s) 14:20, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia:Linking to other wikis LukeSurl t c 18:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposed guideline: Manual of Style (medicine-related articles)

The editors at WikiProject Medicine (and the numerous related projects such as WikiProject Pharmacology) have been working on a guideline to complement the Manual of Style. The scope is those articles relating to medicine. After nine months of development and discussion, we have produced the Manual of Style (medicine-related articles). Please let us know if you have any opposition to this becoming a guideline. Your comments are welcome on the talk page. Thanks, Colin°Talk 11:18, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Awards

How about this? Every year (or month, possibly), all registered Wikipedians can select from the current year's Featured Articles (articles promoted to FA status in that year) and vote on which one is the best article in all of Wikipedia. It would kind of be like the Academy Awards for Wikipedia. Would anyone support this or even care about this? Diez2 00:56, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Not exactly Academy Awards, but this is a good idea. It can be like the Commons Picture of the Year but Wikipedia Article of the Year. Reywas92Talk 01:43, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Sounds fun.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  05:23, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Or weekly, monthly. Kind of like sports where they pick weekly star and monthly star. But then it's quite obvious that the best monthly article must be one of the 4 best weekly article. OhanaUnited 06:28, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

What about logins?

In order to login to a wikipedia project site, like wikinews, you must have an account for each site.... why not just have one account for all of the wikipedia projects? It seems much more simple. Currently I have nine, yeah thats right NINE accounts just so I can go any wiki project and edit a page. I know what you will say "That isn't to bad." well I made two typos making those accounts, what i mean is instead of Programmer8 I made Porgoammer8 or something. Also to add to the problem I have to login so many times that my fingers will fall off. Please could some admin/director fix this, it is very annoying. -programmer8 on wikinews -- on wikipedia -- On wikiqoute -- on wikimedia commons -- on wikimedia -- on wikispecies -- on wikibooks -- on wiktionary -- on wikiversity
P.S. those are all of my NINE accounts ---13:30, 24 April 2007 (UTC).

This is a much-requested proposal, tracked at bugzilla:57. The developers are working on it, and have been for some time, but it's turning out to be somewhat difficult to fix. --ais523 13:56, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
How about other languages' wiki? Maybe the default could be only the version that you register with, but you can apply to use the same one on another language's wiki if it's not currently in use. OhanaUnited 06:27, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Reducing "unintentional vandalism"

Quite often I see edits where nonsense has been inserted into an article, but where users seem to be experimenting rather than deliberately intending to vandalise the page. I get the impression that quite a few people new to Wikipedia click "Edit this page", then hit the keyboard at random, and then click Save, just to see what happens. I was wondering if there was any way to cut down on this, and to alert these non-malicious users to the fact they should just preview the page. One possibility would be an alert on the edit page. There is already a note saying "For testing, please use the sandbox instead", but it's in a place where no-one would ever see it. Maybe that could be promoted. OTOH, as we know, no-one ever reads instructions or notes, no matter how big and red they are, so another possibility would be to pop up an additional "do you really want to save this" prompt on the very first save during a session (provided a "session" can be identified somehow). Good idea? Bad idea? Matt 23:58, 23 April 2007 (UTC).

  • It's not a bad idea, but there's no practical way to identify a user's first edit, and I'd hate to make all anons be subject to an annoying popup window every time they click edit. Not to mention, a lot of people disable popups in their browsers, so they might not see it at all. But I'd defiantly support adding a nice big red box at the top of the edit window to that effect--VectorPotentialTalk 00:02, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Perhaps, when anonymous users (who are not blocked) click "edit this page", instead of being presented with an edit box, they should be presented with a "Please read this before editing" box. Only after reading and clicking OK will they be presented with an edit box. The "Please read this before editing" box could tell them about the sandbox, provide them with useful links for newcomers and warn them about common mistakes, such as creating vanity articles, copyright infringement, and failing to cite their sources. However, it should be concise, to prevent instruction creep. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:10, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

WikiTimeline

Think I've got a great idea -- Starting a history timeline (similar in concept to the book Timetables of History [see http://www.amazon.com/Timetables-History-Horizontal-Linkage-People/dp/067174271X]) as a adjunct to Wikipedia. Perhaps the first screen would be a simplified (major events only) timeline (scroll right for more recent years, left for earlier) with the capability to drill down 4 or 5 layers showing more detail in a narrower time frame.

Finally at any stage, names, events, etc. could be directly linked to wiki pages.

What do you think?

Pete Walker

Peterrwalker 05:22, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Is this a suggestion for an entirely new wiki (like Wikiversity, Wiktionary, etc.) or a new type of page like a "Timeline" namespace? Something with pages like Timeline:1947 politics Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 20:03, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
There are already pages that collect historical events - see, for example, May 2006. It could be interesting to mark the importance (1 to 5?) and use a bot to build some pages where the user can show fewer events (e.g., only "level 1" events for all of 2006, level 1 and 2 events for May 2006, level 1-3 events for the first week in May 2006), but let's not collect (manually) the same facts and wikilinks in two different places, yes? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:08, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Timeline.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  05:28, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Date formats in cite templates

Moved from Template talk: cite web

Changes were recently made to various citation templates to force a single date style for the accessdate. If users want to force a certain style, they can change it in their prefs. I don't think forcing a single style within these templates is helpful. In fact, it makes many of our better articles look very sloppy, especially when time has been taken to make dates consistent within one particular article. --- RockMFR 00:59, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

The poor, logged-out billions can't, and they just get the dirty numerical string to fathom out. (I never understood why that was the 'preferred' way.) I was very pleased to see that this would no longer be the case. If people, in our better articles, have opted for ISO numeric dates, then do the changes not simply become a uniform textual description? Or do I misunderstand something? Splash - tk 01:19, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
The problem is that the dates in many of the featured articles are now inconsistent. Featured articles I have worked on usually use the YYYY-MM-DD format, but now the dates are completely mixed up. Everything is YYYY-MM-DD except for the accessdates of the refs using the cite web/news/book templates. --- RockMFR 15:03, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Ok, I see what you mean. Some dates are not in ISO numeric form, and so the logged-out billions just get them as they come, meaning they now could be different to the chosen format (imo the correct choice if a choice is to be made) for the numeric dates. A minor difference given enough time, I suspect. Surely someone has a bot they're just dying to keep busy, and the doods who write those regexps for breakfast will have enormous fun. Given your better understanding of this than me, maybe you could drop WP:BOTREQ a line? Splash - tk 19:15, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
A bot request to "correct" dates to a format that is not agreed upon? I really think you are missing the point here. --- RockMFR 19:55, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Let's agree on a format. I propose the ISO numerical format rendered in the same order as in the numbers, with a 4 digit year, fully spelt month name and 2 digit day number. Thus: [[2007]] [[April 11]], which will render beautifully for me with my British tastes and you, with I presume(?), your tasteless American tastes :P , but which will avoid the rather desperately sad situation of presenting the logged-out billions with a date format that several billion of them will be unfamiliar with and have to actually find some way to work out which way to read 2007-04-11. Splash - tk 22:59, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm not understanding this argument regarding featured articles keeping to one date format. The example he gave me earlier was Wii, but the inconsistency in dates has nothing to do with this change. The problem is that there are many dates that are not linked resulting in dates such as 2007-01-15 and November 13, 2006 showing up for everyone. For logged-in users, my edits do not make a difference as individual users can set date preferences. For anonymous users, they don't have to look at the unnatural date format along the lines of 2007-04-12.
Please provide another example of a featured article with this issue; I am so far not seeing the problem. -- tariqabjotu 14:20, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
GameFAQs. I've made sure to make sure every date in the refs is of the same format (YYYY-MM-DD, the format I prefer for refs). Now it's a mix, as you can obviously see. But I don't think it's my duty to provide examples... how have the changes been beneficial? Is there any evidence that anons are so stupid that they do not understand the numerical form of months? --- RockMFR 14:37, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
It's not an issue of anyone being "so stupid that they do not understand the numerical form of months" but that the different order in which months and days are typically placed in different parts of the world make that a non-trivial task.
Personally, I don't really care what format we impose on anonymous users as long as it's consistent and changeable via user preferences. --ElKevbo 14:48, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, there is not consensus for the recent change. Was it proposed anywhere before it was made? I am going to revert it until it is clear that there is consensus in favor. CMummert · talk 01:57, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

One person disagrees. How is that not a consensus? Things are not usually proposed before a good edit is made, they are discussed afterwards as they are being here. There being only one person with any kind of dissent, I think your reversion is misplaced. Splash - tk 14:49, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
Several people have dissented - see my talk page and the talk page of {{cite news}}. For templates that affect a large number of pages, it is standard practice to propose changes first and only make them if there is clear consensus in favor. The splitting of discussion over multiple talk pages is one of the reasons that these things are supposed to be put on the village pump. CMummert · talk 15:22, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
I dissent as well. YYYY-MM-DD is intuitive, unambiguous, and avoids favouring either British or American convention. Considering how crammed references get down there, shorter numbers are a lot easier to discern than more words of differing lengths. –Pomte 15:33, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
See below; it reads very confusing to Commonwealth readers for day numbers less than 13. Splash - tk 15:35, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm also dissenting. The date changes to the cite templates need to be all or nothing; right now it just looks plain sloppy. It was raised as an issue during at least one FAC. — RJH (talk) 20:30, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

OK, so just to summarise:

The point of the change is so that logged-out readers do not get a numeric date to decipher, for which they have 'preferences' to set..

Remember that, whilst a good number of editors will be logged in, almost all readers will be logged out, and not even have an account. This means they have no user preferences to set, and they get the literal 2007-01-02 date. Which is ambiguous to a person ignorant of the ISO standard, which nearly everyone is. In the US, it's easier as the date would be that way around, but elsewhere, it more naturally says 2007, 1 February. By forcing one, string version of the date to appear, at least the words are given and there is no ugliness and no ambiguity. Splash - tk 15:36, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I feel like the correct solution is to unformat the "Retrieved on" date. Forcing a date format is to force a POV. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 15:53, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
POV has less than nothing to do with it. Unformatting completely is pointless, as then noone would be able to get anything other than the plain text of numbers, preferences or no. Splash - tk 16:00, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

To be honest, I can't see from the perspective of the side advocating the status quo. How is 2007 April 14 advocating some point-of-view any more than 2007-04-14? How is this disrupting some sort of "consistency" throughout featured articles and why is that such a big deal? And if consistency is really the problem, can't all the dates simply be changed (although, again, I'm not sure why this is such a big issue)? I also don't agree that YYYY-MM-DD is "unambiguous". As Splash has said, the date change is for clarity and aesthetics. The status quo appears to be for... consistency in a few articles? -- tariqabjotu 22:12, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Agree that forcing most readers to parse "2007-02-01" is awful, but I disagree that "2007, 1 February" is natural at all; it's nearly as confusing as the numbers version, since no one actually speaks or writes that way (except maybe military types, who are plenty used to "meals, ready to eat"). Is there anything somehow wrong with [[1 February]] [[2007]]? It's parseable by the unloggedin masses, and will format for us accountholders as per our date prefs. PS: I'm an American and the day-first order doesn't bother me. It's not the most common format over here in Yankeeland, but we all recognize it and understand it just fine. Let's not be silly about "No! Down with British imperialism!", please.  :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:36, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Clarification: the date format would show as 2007 February 1. -- tariqabjotu 07:03, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Please look at the Notes section of Barack Obama for an example of where one feature article displays {{accessdate}} in raw ISO format to economize on space for the retrieval date. The publish date is spelled out and wikilinked to be reformatted according to user preferences. This approach is held consistently throughout the article and follows the model produced when using this helpful tool http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/makeref.php Raw ISO accessdate format is most useful for articles like this one with many notes, where spelled out accessdates clutter the notes section and add unnecessarily to page length. To my view, nothing is broken here, so there is nothing to be fixed. Please restore the earlier consensus version that permits raw ISO accessdates to be displayed in the "Retrieved on" notation of the template:cite web. --HailFire 11:21, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

This can be easily fixed with a bot. The raw ISO dates are completely unformatted to almost all of the article's readers, who are not logged in. They're for whom this thing is being written. Splash - tk 14:43, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
Why not just add a bug to give anons default date preferences? Especially if IP ranges were correlated with location and standard format differentiated correspondingly, people would tend to see date formats they liked. Nihiltres 15:01, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

There is quite a bit of disagreement regarding this change at Template talk:Cite news. There is no consensus for this change. --- RockMFR 01:32, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Please don't exaggerate. -- tariqabjotu 07:03, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
The documentation for these templates even recommends using the ISO 8601 format. --- RockMFR 01:34, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
    • In the RW I have struggled teaching college students bibliographic formats most of my career. What makes it difficult is that every single subject field as a different convention--and some have multiple discordant ones. Every journal and index in the world does it differently. This is one of the reasons for the success of programs such as Endnote. which can programmatically convert the standard formats. But what I do teach people is to always record it exactly as the source.
Most highly referenced WP articles have multiple styles used because of the different places people get the references from.The one thing I almost never see in biology is ISO 8601. DGG 08:24, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • We could of course change the formatting in millions of articles, the easier solution is to give anons standard preferences. - Mgm|(talk) 10:27, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
I've filed a BugZilla bug request to request what I suggested. - Mgm|(talk) 10:43, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Is there any evidence that the YYYY Month Day format is actually easier for readers to parse? Is there any evidence that anons are frequently reading accessdates in references? I really don't see any benefit to this at all. The reasons to force the formatting of a single style are completely hypothetical, while there are numerous real reasons to not format the date:

  • Users cannot change the formatting of dates in references without changing dates everywhere (if they want the ISO 8601 format in refs, that doesn't necessarily mean they want it in the prose too).
  • A frequent complaint at FAC is making sure accessdates and other reference stuff is formatted consistently across an individual article.
  • There have been multiple ArbCom decisions regarding the formatting of dates to a "preferred style" (Sortan and Jguk, two that I was able to find). --- RockMFR 15:02, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Propose interim reversion to previous status quo until this discussion reaches consensus

I propose an immediate revert to the previous date-format status quo until this discussion reaches consensus on date-format changes. Can we reach consensus on this interim proposal? I vote yes. -- Boracay Bill 23:42, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Strong support for immediate revert to earlier consensus version of "Retrieved on {{accessdate}}" displaying date in raw ISO format. For editors who have taken the effort to harmonize note style within articles using template:cite news and template:cite web, the current inconsistency is unfair. --HailFire 01:25, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes, obviously. --- RockMFR 17:53, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Support. I'm holding my tongue fingers on the formatting debate because I've grown tired of rehashing it again and again, but I like this idea while it works itself out. RossPatterson 02:49, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

4 in favor, 0 against immediate revert to previous consensus version. Adding {{editprotected}} to template:cite web with request for revert to "Retrieved on {{accessdate}}" displaying date in raw ISO format. --HailFire 20:14, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement of the proposal seeking supporting consensus

My understanding of the proposal seeking supporting consensus is:

Citation templates supporting the accessdate parameter currently implement that parameter something like the following example from Template:Cite_web:
{{#if: {{{accessdate|}}} | Retrieved on [[{{{accessdate}}}]]{{#if: {{{accessyear|}}} | , [[{{{accessyear}}}]] }}. }}
and the proposal seeks to change this implementation to something like:
{{#if: {{{accessdate|}}} | Retrieved on {{#time:[[Y]] [[F j]]|{{{accessdate}}}{{#if: {{{accessyear|}}} | , {{{accessyear}}}}}}}.

As I understand it, the effect of this change would be that if an editor (1) used a citation template affected by this change and (2) supplied the accessdate parameter but (3) did not supply any accessdate data, then a user viewing this article whould see an access date with a value of the current viewing date, formatted in YYYY FullMonthName DD format. Reformatting of displayed accessdates according to date preferences set by logged-in users would be disabled by this change.

If I have mis-stated this proposal, would someone please correct my mis-statement? -- Boracay Bill 01:52, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

No, that's not correct. If no accessdate parameter is provided, no access date would be displaying in the citation. If an accessdate parameter is provided, the date will show up in the format set in a logged-in user's date preferences. For anonymous users, it would show up in YYYY FullMonthName DD format. Registered users would not even be able to notice a difference on articles. -- tariqabjotu 12:13, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Machine readability

I've been adding machine-readable metadata tags to citation templates, and it would be best for those if the dates were in bare YYYY-MM-DD format without any brackets or anything. The brackets would then be added in the visual display part of the template, to be displayed as per the user's date preferences.

Not-logged-in users should see a default format based on their geographic location.  ;-)

Of course the visual side of things is much more important, but this is how I would like it to work.

Also see Bugzilla: 4582: Use date format preference on unlinked dates, which proposes a <date> tag (which I think is completely backwards; all plain text dates should be parsed and modified to user preferences by default, and <nowiki> tags should be used to escape this behavior, just like any other automatic formatting). But whatever. — Omegatron 04:06, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

full/semi, maybe something new

After reading various user, talk, pump etc... discussions and giving the issue of FA articles and protection some thought, I have come up with an idea. Perhaps once an Article has reached the FA status and has survived its day on the main page maybe permanent less-than-semi-protected-but-more-just-on-editor's-and-user's-watchlist status should be enacted. In other words perhaps various "keys" should be given to the central contributers to that article and in order to edit said article an anonymous IP would have to go to one of those users pages and obtain that "key" in order to edit the page. The use of the "key" would notify the user whose "key" was used and all others with "keys" to that article. With this key system enacted, I believe that the quality of FAs might be stabilized and thereby make Wikipedia a better and more stable encyclopedia. I guess you could think of it as a sort of "active watching" or local adminship of an article. Also these keyholders might have the ability to lock an article lock an article for a period of time if they feel it necessary. I propose this because I believe that Semi is too strong and simply watchlisting to be too passive and prone to slower reverts of vandalism. Let me know if I am way off base or not with this idea.

Continually questing to make Wikipedia better Cronholm144 09:52, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Don't forget that in addition to being passive, Watchlists only feature the most recent change to an article. So if someone performs vandalism and then another user edits without noticing the vandalism, it's possible for the incident to go unnoticed. Cheers, Lankybugger ○ Yell ○ 15:41, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I would also like to know if this is a proposal worthy idea, and I would love as much input as possible Cronholm144 20:35, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

There are a number of problems with this proposal. The most fundamental, probably, is that it calls for very granular permissions (for each FA, specified users would have unique access to the article). That's completely contrary to the fundamental design of MediaWiki software, where access to an article is by class of user (e.g., for semi-protected articles, all IP users cannot edit). I don't think the developers would be at all interested in this, particularly given that there are less than 2000 FAs out of 1.7 million or so articles.
In any case, this is the wrong place to discuss such a proposal; this is the talk page for discussing protecting Main Page articles, not FAs. If you really want widespread feedback on this, you should take it to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:14, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Note: I have moved this from the discussion page about FA article's protection status. Cronholm144 04:05, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
I've been asked to elaborate on my "there are a number of problems with this proposal". In addition to the programming issue, there is the problem of who determines who the "central contributors" are; exactly how a "key" is to be requested; exactly how a key is to be handed over to another user for (temporary, I assume) use; what happens when keyholders disagree about locking an article; and probably more if I thought about this further. We simply don't have enough featured articles to justify the time and effort involved in creating such a different process, let alone the programming that would be needed. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:44, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

While I sympathize with the ideas behind this proposal, I'd tend to agree it would probably be a lot of work for not too much benefit. I don't worry too much about FA's anyway (especially the main page FA), vandalism's not hard to revert, especially with the latest crop of vandalfighting tools. If anything, I'd worry more about the mass of articles that only a couple people may have ever edited. If those people leave or lose interest, chances are no one's watching it, and if RC patrol doesn't catch vandalism to it, it could stay there for quite some time. Regardless, though, if something is getting vandalized a ton, I think (semi)protection is enough to deal with it. I also think we need a lot less idea of article ownership, and I'd be very hesitant to anything that gives a very nasty but very persistent idea more weight-the idea that "major contributors" to articles somehow get more weight in deciding what edits are acceptable. Seraphimblade Talk to me 23:54, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Although vandalism is obviously a major nuisance, in my view one of the key strengths of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit (almost) any article with minimum fuss. Anything that obstructs that ability, and makes Wikipedia appear like the closed province of a "privileged few", is IMO a bad idea unless absolutely essential in cases where vandalism makes the existing system totally unworkable. Matt 01:26, 26 April 2007 (UTC).

Thanks so much for your comments. You have given me a different perspective on this issue and hopefully I can think up something better next time. I think it is safe to assume that this idea in its current form is dead. Cronholm144 05:35, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Splitting out tables into their own namespace

A long time ago, I proposed that tables be moved out of articles and into their own Table: namespace. They would then be included in articles through a syntax similar to image syntax: 

The '''world population''' is the total number of [[human being]]s alive on the planet [[Earth]] at a given time.

[[Image:World population.png|thumb|Map of countries by population]]

Below is a table of historical population figures shown in thousands.

[[Table:Estimated world population at various dates|left]]

In 2000, the [[United Nations]] estimated that the world's population

Large tables require very messy markup, and are quite intimidating for non-technical types to edit or work around. (Imagine that you're editing a wiki for the first time and aren't good with computers, and then compare the above example with the real thing, which uses inline table markup.)

I also hoped that making tables self-contained would eventually allow magic functionality for the Table: namespace, similar to the Image: or Category: namespaces, to allow for table editing that isn't based on editing wikicode directly, so users don't need to learn pipe syntax to contribute. Maybe external editors with export as .csv or .ods files? Maybe a built-in Java(Script) editor?

This was proposed, notably, before the introduction of templates, which addressed some of the same problems, but I still think it would be a valuable addition, due to the other benefits it would provide. (Even those of us who know pipe syntax would still prefer to edit tables in spreadsheet software.)

In 2005, I asked if this was a good idea, and got almost unanimous support. The developers want to know if it still has general support.

  • I strongly support this, as this is a prerequisite for implementing a clientside (JavaScript) table editor --Dustball 23:49, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Do you still think this would be a beneficial feature? How, specifically, should we implement it? — Omegatron 23:28, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I would definitley support this. As it stands, tables tend to look really cluttery (in the wikitext) when they are in the center of the article. This would make creating, adding, and positioning tables much easier. This would also make it easier to put a table in multiple articles. If tables have their own pages, an edit made to the table would be applied to all pages that have the table. If this leads to an easy table editor, even better.
As for implementation, I would say create the table space first, editor later. If it gets to the point where we are definitely going to do this, I would suggest making lists of articles with tables to be moved into the new space. We would also probably need a new guideline, something that explains when to make a table page, when to do a template, when to do a list, and when to make a table on the article itself (if ever). Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 23:57, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
I support this idea. Tables are kind of a nuisance at the moment, and this would really help. Pyrospirit Shiny! 04:27, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Support. On that note, during Wikimania 2006 there were also discussions for a reference namespace (as references, especially with cite templates, are also quite messy, and having a reference in separate page would allow to easily link it to many articles and check usage). Perhaps we can deal with both issues, as they are somewhat similar?-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  04:33, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Strong support. There's nothing like table syntax to turn off a would be editor from ever clicking the edit tab again. People can digest a few quote marks and brackets. Table syntax is necessarily but unfortunately complex; this proposal should be implemented for this reason alone. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 04:42, 21 April 2007 (UTC)


Comment People use template namespace for this sort of thing already, but single-use templates are frowned upon for the exact same reason you'd prefer to use them -- they hide the markeup and make it more indirect to edit. A separate table namespace could be an option though. Just use current template transclusion and have a different sort of rules for what can be included, and always make sure there's an extremely convenient link to edit it. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 07:40, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Strong support, as long as there is a prominent "edit this table" (or similarly worded) link with the table. Ultimately an optional WYSIWYG table editor would be a real benefit to the inclusivity of editing. Thryduulf 12:06, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Oppose/Alternative — I find it quite annoying when I start editing a page that is heavy with non-apparent transclusions and have to search for the entry that I want to edit. Adding tables to the category of things that will take more searching will only complicate the process, and create many, as Night Gyr noted, single-use templates. I suggest that, instead, tables be made to register as subsections of an article - that way users not wishing to see the template syntax don't need to. I also don't see why we need to have a table namespace for users to have a WYSIWYG table editor, which I would definitely support, remembering when I learnt table syntax in HTML (although the Wiki syntax is much' easier to use.) Nihiltres(t.c.s) 13:26, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
There would be an edit link next to each table, just like there is next to each heading, and maybe a link going to the "table description" page, like clicking on an image.
And wiki table syntax is only easier to use because it's a shortcut for html syntax. You still need to learn HTML syntax first in order to understand what it means. There were other proposals for more intuitive syntax when tables were first introduced, but they didn't make it. — Omegatron 15:32, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Support, this will take some load off the Template namespace and allow further development of WYSIWYG-editors. Could it also be made possible to upload csv and xls files into this namespace, or is that too complicated? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Hymyly (talk • contribs) 16:27, 21 April 2007 (UTC).
  • Support. Willing to let developers decide whether to create namespace after something new is implemented for it. (SEWilco 00:47, 22 April 2007 (UTC))
  • Strong support. I've edited tables a number of times, and having their own namespace where they would (I definitely hope) have their own, special markup/syntax (user-friendly) would be a huge improvement. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:03, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Query -I see that this idea has wide support, so my personal distaste for unnecessary transclusion is outweighed by the community. I must ask, however: what will happen to existing tables? There are thousands of tables across Wikipedia, all of which would have to be changed to fit this proposal. Nihiltres(t.c.s) 02:18, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
    I suggested that we create a guideline before implementation that would detail when to make a table page, when to do a template, when to do a list, and when to make a table on the article itself (if ever). As for existing tables, perhaps a temporary project to identify them and/or a bot to move them. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 02:24, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
    I support this idea, but I'm guessing the bot would look for things such as "{{", "|}", "|-"?. Also, I don't think this would be a temp project as there are probably about 100,000 tables that would need to be moved. And how would the bot find a page with a table? --TeckWiz is now R ParlateContribs@(Lets go Yankees!) 02:28, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
    I really have no idea how such a bot might work, if it even could (I have virtually no programming experience). Though if it could be made to identify something beginning with {| and ending with |} it might work. The only problem then would be what to name the table if it creates the tablespace page for it. It probably couldn't be done without an accompanying project to populate a category. It would be a temporary project in the sense that once all the tables are moved, a table moving project would serve no purpose; it would possibly take several years though. That's the problem with establishing something major like this now. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 02:40, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
    Present tables will continue to work. Conversion is not required in order for articles to continue to function. If someone wants to do conversion with a bot then how to make it work is their problem. (SEWilco 04:09, 23 April 2007 (UTC))
  • It's been said that "There would be an edit link next to each table, just like there is next to each heading", but how would this work when a table is preceded and followed by plain text all within the same heading section? If you wanted to edit the whole section (clicked on the link next to the heading) then would you see the [[Table:...]] syntax embedded in the text, but just not be able to edit the table at the same time (without opening a new window and navigating to the table name)? That sounds like a real pain. Matt 00:50, 24 April 2007 (UTC).
    • There would be an "edit" link for the section and a separate "edit link" for the table. If you click on the edit link for the section, then no, you'd not be able to edit the table; it's not clear why this would be a real pain. Many editors who wanted to edit the plain text would want to leave the table as is; many editors who wanted to edit the table would want to leave the text as is. Those who wanted to edit both could edit one, save it, and then edit the other. In particular, if table editing were significantly different than text editing (certainly the case now), it would be best to keep the two separate, so that beginners wouldn't see both when editing plain text in a section that happened to have a table. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:53, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
      • Where the table is a big structurally separate chunk, then I agree with you. I was thinking of the cases where tables are used just to format what is essentially part of the main text. I added one just the other day at ISO 4217#Without currency code (the little list of non-ISO codes), and it was in my mind when I wrote the above. If to do this I'd had to think up a name for the table, essentially create a new article just for the table, go in and edit that, come back out, edit it the main text and fix up the link to the table then I don't think I would have bothered. And if you're not registered then would you even be able to create the table "article" at all? OTOH, as I've just realised, if the existing syntax continues to be available for these circumstances, and splitting them out is optional, then my objection disappears I guess. Matt 00:59, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I think there are lots of simple tables where it just doesn't make sense to transclude it via the table namespace from another page. This will be particularly problematic for templates. Should the template include its own transclusion to the table? How do we pass arguments back and forth. How would you code infoboxes? Also, did I miss something, or where is the markup actually simplified? It seems like the mess is just being moved from one place to another. --Selket Talk 23:00, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

It seems like the mess is just being moved from one place to another.

Exactly.  :-) This makes both the table and the article easier to edit by hand, and could also enable treating the table like a self-contained page or independent file, so it could be manipulated by more advanced tools without even having to look at the code. — Omegatron 00:34, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
"I think there are lots of simple tables where it just doesn't make sense to transclude it via the table namespace from another page." I totally agree, as per my contribution above. I think that if implemented this splitting out of tables should be optional, with common sense to be applied. Matt 01:09, 26 April 2007 (UTC).

A category for pages which have templates which should be substituted

I think that every template which should be substituted should have the following line in the wikicode:

{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>empty template|[[Category:Pages which transclude templates which should be substituted]]}}

This way, any page which has a substituted template with that, the {{Empty template}} will prevent the category from showing up; but if it's transcluded, then the category will show up - so such pages will be in Category:Pages which transclude templates which should be substituted. Od Mishehu 07:57, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Aren't bots and big bold red text taking care of this? –Pomte 04:18, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Bots don't seem do deal with all of them (a few times I've found pages which had a {{prod}} tag on them, not subst-ed, for over an hour), and having the big red text won't allow users to find such pages, onl;y to identify them once they look at them. Od Mishehu 07:34, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Dynamic functions

Re. previous comment posted on Technical board, 17th April

I'm looking to make a template that will display a custom page when sent data - specifically to illustrate the position of a certain time in the geological time scale. I've written a template which will perform as I wish, and whilst I can include the template in a page, I hoped to be able to link a date using Template:Ma so that clicking on the year would take the user directly to a timeline with the specified year marked. I've spoken to a couple of experienced editors who are unaware of a solution to this problem. Is there any way I can carry this out? (I hope I've explained what I want clearly enough...)

Many thanks, Verisimilus 21:12, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

That does not seem possible. We would need m:DynamicFunctions##arg: - instead of including a page for given parameter values, this allows linking to a page for given parameter values.--Patrick 00:42, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


I'm not sure whether this is the best place to post this.
What are the arguments against getting m:DynamicFunctions##arg?

I'd quite like to campaign to have it installed, since I feel it could add useful content to Wikipedia.

Verisimilus T 18:51, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that would be useful.--Patrick 13:45, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't know whether this is the reason it's not enabled or not, but it seems to me that any page using any of these functions (except perhaps #skin) could not be cached in the front end Squid caches which serve roughly 3/4 of the site's traffic (see m:Wikimedia servers). This would not be an issue unless a significant number of pages (by access count, not by raw number) started using these functions. If you want to pursue this, I'd suggest posting a query to the wikitech-l mailing list. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:17, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't foresee this being a huge contributor to traffic, so I've posted a request on the list. Thanks for your pointers! Verisimilus T 13:41, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Brazil Collaboration

Wikipedia:Brazil Collaboration was created!!! JoãoFelipe   ( Let's talk! ) 21:58, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

  The current Brazil Collaboration is .
Every month a different Brazil-related topic, stub or non-existent article is picked.
Please read the nomination text and improve the article any way you can.

undo

I think the "undo" command should make clear that simply clicking it does NOT undo an edit in the sense that many editors think it might. That is, it should be made clear that after clicking it, one still has to scroll all the way down to "save page" and click that, too. Kdammers 02:05, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Good idea. It should be a fairly simple matter to change the code, but I don't know how. YechielMan 05:07, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Support making the interface easier to use for newcomers. You may wish to cross-post to the technical pump. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 08:42, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
I think it is clear. After clicking (undo), you get at the top of the screen either
The edit could not be undone due to conflicting intermediate edits.
or
The edit can be undone. Please check the comparison below to verify that this is what you want to do, and then save the changes below to finish undoing the edit.
If you want to change the (undo) link on the diff page, how would you reword it? (attempt undo)? –Pomte 23:50, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion for a Specified Random Search

I am a frequent and fond visitor of the Wikipedia platform. As I have already skimmed though all the featured articles I have the following suggestion:

Would it be possible to implement a specified random article search? For example;


- Most frequently viewed articles

- Articles with at least 20 lines of text (no stubs)

- Articles from certain categories only

- Excluding certain categories (no counties, cities or high schools)

Hope the input helps to create an even better Wikipedia.


A Swiss Wiki-Fan —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.0.102.200 (talk) 08:59, 25 April 2007 (UTC).

This is a good idea, but there are a number of problems, and some of these ways to search already exist. First, in order to exclude certain categories, and to be able to search in certain categories only you would have to make a general search browse through all the categories on Wikipedia. This would EMMENSELY slow down the search process because there are thousands of different categories here on Wikipedia. As for the no-stub search, you can always look at the size of each article when searching. Any article less than about 1,000 bytes is guarranteed to be a stub. Finally, there is already a way to see the most frequently viewed articles already. I don't exactly know where, but it's out there. Anyway, thanks for your suggestion. Diez2 15:21, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Actually, most stubs are longer than 1000 bytes. The really short articles are redirects on RfD (so they don't count as redirs); most of the others shorter than 1000 are disambiguation pages. --ais523 17:27, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I think what you're getting at is an advanced mode for the search engine with oodles of different checkboxes and fields that could be used to narrow the search, for example:
[x] hide articles tagged stub
[x] hide redirects
[x] hide disambiguation pages
[ ] hide non-Featured articles
[ ] hide non-Good articles
[ ] automatically show a random article from among the results

I'm guessing these features will be added eventually, as developer time and server resources allow. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 20:31, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually, a random search based on something like the list below would be very easy to implement (I've omitted the last item in the list above, since I don't understand it, and I've tweaked the fourth and fifth items for clarity). With this list, checking one or more of the first three boxes simply requires the random article generator to do multiple tries until it meets the given criteria (almost certainly less than five attempts, which for a computer is a matter of a small fraction of a second); checking the fourth or fifth would mean simply using one of two lists, which could be generated once per day, as the base for selecting an article, rather than all articles.


-- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:37, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Having three checkboxes that say "don't select" and two that say "do select" is confusing. Use five positives or five negatives. >Radiant< 09:36, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Not that I expect anything to come of this, but sure, no problem:
[x] don't select any article tagged as a stub
[x] don't select a redirect
[x] don't select a disambiguation page
[ ] don't select anything that isn't a Good article or a Featured article
[ ] don't select anything that isn't a Featured article
-- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:11, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Users online.

I think it would be a good idea to have the number of people online on the front page of wikipedia. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kinglou135 (talk • contribs) 21:44, 23 April 2007 (UTC).

I think that that would take too much developer time and bandwidth to implement - as far as I know, that would involve: developing a feature to tell when users are online, and a magic word to gather the total at any given time, and recaching the Main Page every few seconds as users logged on and off. While it would definitely be a neat feature, I don't think it's worth it. Nihiltres(t.c.s) 21:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

okay thanks anyways Kinglou135 21:56, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Simpler ways to learn -- how to peel an onion.

Many, many people want to learn how to learn things. I'm a psychologist, but it doesn't take a psychologist -- or parent -- to know this is true.

Kind of like getting the Almanac every year -- I don't know where to start to systematically acquire new and important information. So generally the book sits there and is used as questions arise.

There are a huge variety methods of acquiring new information. Such as: go to school until you graduate from high school, as a librarian, watch fun stuff on TV, etc.

Wikipedia has the opportunity of streamlining the process for people, helping them acquire necessary information as easily as possible.

For example, I test youngsters for reading deficits fairly regularly. Perhaps Wikipedia should have methods to remediate reading deficits.

I am interested in new science research. I'd be very interested in what people think of as cutting-edge research in science, health, environment, etc.

You may very well have such a system in place, but until I can access it, the Almanac is largely unread, the onion unpeeled, and the foreign language I want to learn is still unknown to me.

I'd be delighted to discuss this approach.CalebBurns 04:28, 28 April 2007 (UTC)CalebBurns

Yours truly,

Caleb Burns, PhD

[e-mail address removed to prevent spam]

You might want to check out Wikiversity. -- Ned Scott 05:27, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Right. We're facing enough challenges here writing the world's best encyclopedia; no reason why Wikipedia should try to be all things to all people. If Wikiversity isn't what you're looking for, either, then you perhaps you should be proposing a sister project at Meta. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:47, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Have you tried the Simple English language Wikipedia? -- Phoeba WrightOBJECTION! 01:54, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

wikipedia tool bar

why don't wikipedia have a tool bar? like google, yahoo and ask do. i think it would be a nice idea to see what wikipedia says about topics we are searching for. and get its various services one click away on the interface. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.108.99.234 (talk) 14:48, 28 April 2007 (UTC).

I think there is a tool bar: see WP:TOOL and look around there. Nihiltres(t.c.s) 18:32, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Cross-category searching

Sometimes I find that I want to browse all the entries within a certain category, that simultaneously fulfil another category. Is there an existing way to do that, because I certainly knw I would love to use it. If not.... who can I take this idea to? --Mattbray 03:53, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

See :m:User:Duesentrieb/CategoryTree-gadfium 08:52, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Also see Wikipedia:Category intersection and m:Help:DPL. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:06, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

{{user:Wikihermit/meta}}

Tell me what you think. Its based off of this at meta.


{{user:Wikihermit/meta}}

Which produces:

reha This user is a Wikipedia Rehabilist.




Wǐkǐɧérṃǐť(Talk) 01:30, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I think it's better than {{AWWDMBJAWGCAWAIFDSPBATDMTD}}. –Pomte 09:42, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Personal redirects

I have a proposal for "personal redirects." When we type in a page in the search bar, it looks for an article with that exact title. Well, I'm proposing an improvement to the MediaWiki software that adds options (in User Preferences) for personal redirects. For instance, if I type in American Idol into the search bar, it takes me to the American Idol article. Well, what if I was a frequent editor of that article (I'm not, this is hypothetical) and When I typed in American Idol (or even AI) into the search bar, I wanted it to take me to American Idol (season 6). Basically, there would be a table in our preferences that had a column for our preferential search term and another corresponding column for the link we want it to take us to. Something like this:

Search term Article
American Idol American Idol (season 6)
AI American Idol (season 6)
Heroes Heroes (TV series)
Scrubs Scrubs (TV series)

When a search term is entered, it checks this table first and then proceeds as normal if no match is found. This will allow people who want a certain link to go directly to an article as opposed to a different article or disambig page to set Wikipedia to do this for them. Apologies if this has been suggested before. Thoughts?↔NMajdan•talk 17:21, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject User scripts has a solution to this one already; you can create this functionality by copying an appropriately modified version ofUser:AndyZ/monobook.js/personalredirect.js to your monobook.js. --ais523 17:24, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Figures. "Everything that could be invented, has been invented." Thanks for pointing me to that. I still think it would be a good addition to the MediaWiki software.↔NMajdan•talk 17:27, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Or you can see how to set your browser to do this. –Pomte 09:44, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

browse by alphabetic sequence

I like browsing through hard copy encyclopaedias article by article in a sequential fashion. However, wiki does not allow this as a standard feature. Could we consider a 'go to next article' button/arrow and a 'go to previous article' button/arrow; maybe at the top or bottom of every article. Many software stacks have this feature, especially where didactic info is displayed. It would be neat, and also elegant design-wise. Lgh 23:40, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

You can use Special:Allpages though it's not as convenient. –Pomte 23:44, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
You may have your opinion, but I see that serving no encyclopedic value and Allpages is just as good (except for the excess of redirs). Sorry. Reywas92Talk 00:00, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Without getting into value judgments (or commenting thereon), I note that Wikipedia:Quick index is a slightly different presentation of the same way of accessing articles. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:27, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
none of these suggestions is satisfactory. Allpages is inconvenient. My suggestion stands. As for my suggestion being unencyclopaedic - it is precisely encyclopaedic. Note the origin of the word and get back to me. Lgh 23:03, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Links to deleted image go to upload page

When I follow a link to an image that is a redlink, it will take me to the upload file page. It used to lead to the image page where it said that the image did not exist. For example, following File:Karte Fuessen in deutschland.png will go to Special:Upload. This is annoying because, for example, I want to look at its deletion log. To do that, I must copy its name into the search box and find it there. This may also lead to a problem because new users will upload an image, not knowing how it works. We should really go back to a redlinked image goes to its non-existant image page. Although it doesn't exist, I believe that would be better. Thank you, Reywas92Talk 18:41, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

When you click File:Karte Fuessen in deutschland.png, at Special:Upload there is a link at the bottom of the blue box to the deletion log. –Pomte 21:22, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Heh, heh, didn't notice that. I do think that there should be a link to the image page, though. Thanks! Reywas92Talk 19:17, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Deleting own Pages

I think we all agree that if you want to delete your own page, you should be able to do so quickly. However, as the CAT:CSD becomes more and more backlogged, should we be able to have the power to delete these pages ourselves (if the user is the author of the page in question, of course)? You could even extend this idea to cover the user and user talk pages of a user. Please comment on this idea. Diez2 22:57, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Allowing users to delete pages they've created once others have edited them is a bad idea. That would make it far too easy to delete records of conversation that a troll doesn't want people to see. -Amarkov moo! 23:10, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
What about the ability to delete their own user subpages?↔NMajdan•talk 23:19, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
That would just add the step of moving the thing you want deleted into your userspace. Delete an archive, shuffle some others around so there's no incriminating redlink, and it takes a good Wikisleuth to notice that anything happened. -Amarkov moo! 23:37, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Fine. Then let's take the most simple case: someone is the only one who has ever edited a page. Why not allow him/her to delete it? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:42, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Why not tag the page with {{db-author}}? --Iamunknown 04:47, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
I believe that the point that Diez2 was trying to make is that adding a CSD template would lengthen the process of deleting the article. I honestly think that we should continue with the process we have now (using the CSD template). As more admins pop up and people become more aware of the backlog, the size of the backlog should shrink down. For John Broughton's question, I stand by my opinion above as well. I don't think that you will find a case often when only one editor edits a page and wants the page deleted (this is usually the case for user and subpages), in which case it may not help with the backlog. Sr13 (T|C) ER 12:10, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Why tag it with {{db-author}}? That would just increase the backlog. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 06:26, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
The problem with such a deletion possibility is that a bad-faith user can do the following to make it harder to fix his/her vandalism:
  1. Move a page to his/her own namespace.
  2. Delete the redirect created by such a move.
  3. Delete the page, which is now in his/her own namespace.
In this way, the vandal has, basicly, deleted a page from Wikipedia in suich a way that it would be hard to find it.
However, I think that if this ability is limited to pages that weren't moved, and weren't a redirect caused by a move, would fix this problem. Under such limits, I think it's a good idea - it would limit the amount of speedy pages in the backlog, and would give reasonable limits on usage to prevent abuse. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Od Mishehu (talk • contribs) 07:25, 30 April 2007 (UTC).
It would add to the backlog insignificantly. As Kusma said (below) such speedy deletions are trivial and, additionally, can quickly be cleaned out by going to Category:Candidates for speedy deletion by user. The additional step is not a hassle. --Iamunknown 13:01, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Pages that are tagged for speedy deletion by user are easy to decide on for admins and usually get deleted quickly. However, user pages or subpages may be used or referenced elsewhere (say, in a RFC or ArbCom case) and these pages shouldn't be deletable by their author. In any case, user pages are non-urgent deletions; if you think they cause too much of a backlog in C:CSD, create an extra category for them that can be processed slower. Kusma (talk) 12:51, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Please provide evidence of this actually being a problem? Also, feature requests go on WP:BUGzilla, not here. >Radiant< 10:49, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Update on Article of the Week and Article of the Month

Ok, these pages are essentially completed and ready to go, but I do want to hear if more people support this and/or will help out with this. Thank you! Diez2 15:22, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

The community attempted this at Wikipedia:Article of the week, but the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Article of the week was (to say the least) unsupportive. Perhaps it really ought to have been called, Wikipedia:Newly featured article popularity contest or some such! The question was repeatedly raised, "How would this help the encyclopedia?" Personally I thought the answer was obvious: it would encourage editors to read more of each others articles, and gain insight into what makes articles popular with readers! (Sdsds - Talk) 16:15, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

dismiss

The "dismiss" notice at the top of articles should be explained (e.g., with a right-click message). The word is unclear and looks very dangerous. Wik insists on using all sorts of unexplained words (especially neologisms and ambiguous words), to the detriment of its reputation. Kdammers 01:28, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

The word "close" or "hide" is more standard. YechielMan 05:08, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Support making the interface easier to use for newcomers. You may wish to cross-post to the technical pump. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 08:41, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Support. "Hide" is more appropriate and not misleading. –Pomte 23:53, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Strong support - "Hide" is the standard wording in other places; much easier for user to understand. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:34, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I changed it to "hide". John Reaves (talk) 11:48, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Pinpointing The Supporting Statement In A Reference: The Quote Attribute

The current situations is that if you want to use a citation template, you can use the 'quote' attribute, to quote the relevant part of the supporting text. This helps people search and verify the veracity of a source which would otherwise necessitate reading it from the beginning, until the supporting statement was found, assuming it even exists to begin with. The problem arises when the same source is used to support more than one statement in an article. I would like to suggest that the <ref> tag is modified to allow a 'quote' attribute as well as a 'name' attribute, so each time a source is used, a new, relevant quote can be given. Otherwise, people can continue to put sources that they "think probably" support a statement, in a hurried, half-hearted attempt to improve an article (I've seen it done before and had to go through the entire text to discover that it was improperly quoted as a source). Implementing this system would at least allow people to spend less time verifying those citations that make use of the feature. --Seans Potato Business 21:54, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

A problem with your suggestion may be the repetition of citations, depending on whether all the source information appears with each quote. A way to do this currently to put the source information in the references section, then cite that same source using multiple citations in the notes section. The former code will be at the bottom of the page and the latter code will be inside <ref> tags within the content. Inside each <ref> tag will be something like
  1. Smith 2000. “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.”
  2. Smith 2000. “Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.”
Then further below you have the complete source information in a bulleted list:
  • John Smith (2000). "Lipsum". Publisher. Retrieved 2007-04-29.
If people are dropping off links without quotes, they probably don't know about the quote parameter in the citation templates either. I don't think adding this attribute will solve that, because if they are using <ref>, they could always provide a quote within those tags without any help of templates. –Pomte 22:29, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Arabic

I would like to see Wiki available in Arabic with contributions from arabic speakers (writers) in the native arabic language. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 90.38.63.150 (talk • contribs).

Have you checked http://ar.wikipedia.org ? -- ReyBrujo 13:15, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Searched-term Counter

When creating a new Wikipedia page, there should be a way to see how many times the term has been searched for. This would promote the creation of demanded-for pages and help Wikipedia grow in a desirable direction. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Stussy D (talk • contribs).

There is a way to see how many pages link to the target page. It's right under the search box, called "What links here", and it works even if there's no article. It's a great way to see what kind of need there is for an article. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 21:06, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Use of Wlink template

I recently created a new template, {{wlink}}. Normally, links to edit a page or history links have to be formatted as external links. While this template doesn't change that, it simplifies the appearance of the code in the edit window.

A couple differences between this template and normal linking: It only works for action=, section=, and redirect= endings at the moment, but more could easily be added; and spaces in titles are replaced with + signs rather than underscores ( _ ). Also, if there is a second parameter, an extra & symbol will be added to the end of the URL.

For example, a link to edit the fifth section of Bay of Bengal with text of Bengal Bay:

Appearance
In edit window On page
Normal method [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bay_of_Bengal
&action=edit&section=5 Bengal Bay]		 Bengal Bay
With template {{wlink|Bay of Bengal|Bengal Bay|action=edit|section=5}} Bengal Bay

Should we widely use this template for internal links that need to be formatted as external? I'd like to see if there's any problems with using it that I didn't think of. Considering how much simpler and easier it makes linking, I think we should start using it unless someone brings up a major problem that we can't fix. Pyrospirit Shiny! 15:27, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

This seems useful, although its use should not be required. I also propose that <span class='plainlinks'>...</span> be added around the template, since the internal links are only interpreted as external because of the requirement to create them using the external link syntax. Further, it might be useful to make links explicit in their displayed name. Nihiltres(t.c.s) 16:09, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
I wasn't thinking about requiring its use, just letting people know about it for future use. The span class="plainlinks" is a good idea, and I just added it. Thanks for suggesting that. However, I'm not quite sure what you mean by "make the links explicit in their displayed name." Could you clarify please? Pyrospirit Shiny! 19:43, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, adding code so that links to pages are explicit would be, say... "edit section X of page Y". Oh and looking at the code, wouldn't it be useful to include the redirect=no by default (coded) if other actions allow for it? I'm not sure, but wouldn't it not affect other actions? Nihiltres(t.c.s) 23:55, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm still not quite sure what you're talking about or how to do that, but go ahead and edit it yourself. Pyrospirit Shiny! 17:50, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Please use fullurl for another alternative. You may even incorporate this into your template. –Pomte 21:32, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Great idea, I'll do this. Pyrospirit Shiny! 17:20, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Ooo, /me likes. I agree with using fullurl and, also, you should probably wrap {{urlencode:}} around the parameters. --Iamunknown 06:32, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Adding a 'talk' (and possibly 'contribs') link to the default four-tilde signature, including for anons

This came up on WT:SIG (in this section); there seemed to be support for requesting the developers to add a 'talk' link to the default signature, but not many users commented. What do people think about the idea of a 'talk' link by default in users' signatures? --ais523 15:22, 18 April 2007

It's probably useful, but won't change much, and could be annoying for some users. I just changed my signature to what I've thought of having it as for a while, which does add those links, but I liked my simple "Nihiltres" for quite a while. In addition, doesn't it make sense for someone to first see the person's userpage? The addition of those links only reduces the link trail by one, anyway. I stay neutral - this would be useful, but what's the point of doing it? Nihiltres 16:02, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Having talk links by default, or making the default signature link to the talk page instead of the user page, would be great. There is very little reason to look at another user's user page more than once, but a lot of reasons to use a link to their talk page over and over. CMummert 16:14, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
I see no need to clutter the signature with a Talk link. It is trivial to find the proper Talk page for a linked user. (SEWilco 20:10, 18 April 2007 (UTC))
Yes, but lazy people like me just use the default signature which points to their non-existent user page when there is an actual talk page PaddyLeahy 22:17, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I like this idea and have actually been using exactly that within my own signatures for quite awhile now. Of course, it's even handier when anons actually sign... --Thisisbossi 22:45, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

No need for a contribs link, but the talk page link is a great idea. It'd be easy enough for people to type [[User:Myuserpage|Myuserpage]] and click "raw signature" in their preferences if they don't like it. John Reaves (talk) 11:18, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I like this idea of having both talk and contribs by default. The only reason I started messing around with customizing my sig was to put those links in - the colors and extra links came later. I never would have bothered with colors and extra links if I didn't want the talk and contribs links. With the virulent hatred some people have for customized sigs, maybe adding those links by default would decrease the customized sigs and make everyone happier. ~ ONUnicorn 19:08, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I do not understand the point of a contribs link. Further, my signature by default goes to my talk page. Even further, I use Lupin's popup tools to click on whatever aspect of the user I want to see (including user page, user talk page, user contribs, user space, user block log). I'd prefer not see talk and contribs included by default. All you need is one link. --Iamunknown 19:11, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Here's the point of the talk and contribs links: forget that you are you. You are now some person who is just discovering Wikipedia. You edit an article. Someone leaves {{Welcome}} on your talk page. You want to say hi, thank them for the welcome, and maybe ask some questions. You see their signature and it's the default - goes straight to a userpage. You know there must be a place to leave them a message like they left you, but where? A talk link helps a lot in that situation. As for the contribs link... you are still that same person, but some time has passed and you are more comfortable with Wikipedia but still relatively new. You've not yet needed to see anyone's contributions, know how to read page histories, but didn't realize you could see a contributor's entire history. Have no idea how to find such a page if it does exist. You stumble into some process like RFA or RFC where people are dealing with diffs and evidence. You actually have something to input, but don't know how to look in someone's contribution history for the evidence, so you just make a statement and get jumped on for not presenting evidence. Default sig links to contribs would help a lot in that sort of situation. Why not make Wikipedia easier for newbies and the technologically challenged? ~ ONUnicorn 19:41, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
It still sounds pretty pointless. If I want to look at someone's contributions I go to their user page and click the "User contributions" link. If I'm engaging in discussion that last thing I want is to have to wade through a forest of "talk" and "contributions" links. They're useless and intrusive. One link is all that is needed to identify the user adequately. --Tony Sidaway 19:53, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Ignore All Rules - policy? guideline? meta-policy?

As far as I can determine, WP:IAR was declared a policy on 23 April 2005, about a week after Jimbo made an edit where he stated in the comments that IAR is policy and always has been. Note that he did not change the formatting of WP:IAR on that edit to reflect the statement he made in the edit comments. So about a week later (give or take hours), editors at the time made changes to the body of the article that reflected that assertion.

I have asked around about that mechanism (in general). I've asked on Wikipedia_talk:IAR, and I've asked on User_talk:Jimbo_Wales, about whether what Jimbo says, goes. The edit on 18 April, 2005, when Jimbo made that editing comment, as far as I know is not actually an official declaration. Previous informational boxes on the same project page declared it a guideline, a meta-policy, a policy, a mix of all three, as well as a hoax and an AfD and an MfD.

Given the article's history, the reminders I've had that not all that Jimbo says is official, I suggested going back (in the policy information box) to some of the wording from prior that 18 April 2005 edit, that talked about IAR being part of the official body of policies and guidelines, but that didn't specify a particular role it had to play in that body, instead mentioning three: policy, meta-policy and guideline.

It was suggested I go here and ask, so here I am asking, is WP:IAR really policy? Or is it a guideline?

As a side note: What's its meaning? I'm led to believe by the various folks I've talked with about it that it's not as obvious as it looks, but at the same time, the same folks, or similar folks are saying it is. To me, it is a sort of meta-anti-rule which serves to underline the importance of consensus over process/policy, but I also know that a lot of folks who've been around Wikipedia for a long time take it at face value and use it to justify individual judgment calls in the face of consensus opposition.

Anyhow, a lot of the discussion is still quite available on the main talk page, should you choose to delve.

Thanks in advance for any and all opinions. --MalcolmGin Talk / Conts 01:40, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

It needs to be policy, as it is essential to policy maintenance. At the same time, some people do abuse it. Perhaps there's some way to alter the balance a little to make the latter harder? --Kim Bruning 01:54, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
It occurs to me that the editors who know enough to Ignore All Rules when necessary to keep the encyclopedia running smoothly are probably also sensible enough not to get all twisted up over the template (policy, guideline, or essay) that appears on WP:IAR. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 01:57, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
<grin> That much is true. But it makes things harder for new people to learn, which is also somewhat important. (see intro to: Wikipedia:Follow consensus, not policy). --Kim Bruning 02:06, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd say that the "Ignore all rules" is a good policy, but only taken in the context that what rules exist exist so that there are clear ways to resolve conflicts and standardize form, and that otherwise, users can edit freely. Users sometimes abuse IAR by misinterpeting it as license to do whatever they feel like and break the standards Wikipedia must uphold. Nihiltres(t.c.s) 02:19, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, that's not abuse quite yet. --Kim Bruning 02:21, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
In any case if they do act abusively they can be blocked if it's a serious problem, and dissuaded if it isn't. This is a very useful policy and if a few nitwits think it means they can act the goat then it's also a useful nitwit detector. --Tony Sidaway 02:33, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
(EC) I think the harm of IAR manifests itself in a couple of ways. It first tends to result in people thinking "Well I know I'm right, so I'm going to act out of process." Well, that's fine, except that it's usually not. Even if you really are right, you may cause a tremendous amount of disruption and ill will from people who think they didn't get a "fair shake." If the process runs, and genuinely goes against those people, it still might irritate them, but it won't appear abusive. Secondly, a lot of people interpret it as "do whatever the hell you like." I've seen people break the 3RR and get blocked, only to come back and argue "But I was improving the article, so I'm entitled to ignore that rule!" IAR should be very narrow, and applied only in exceptional cases that the rules don't cover, or in the very unusual case where acting according to normal policy would be undisputedly harmful. But for the most part-if someone wants to argue to keep a crappy, unsalvageable article at AfD, just let the thing run, let everyone but them argue to delete, and delete it. Let them take it to DRV, and see the deletion overwhelmingly endorsed. They probably still won't be happy with the result, but at the very least it will remove any doubt that it really is the result. Seraphimblade Talk to me 02:35, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I agree. We should ban the use of WP:IAR on WP:AFD and WP:DRV. That way people would more quickly clamor for reform on those pages. --Kim Bruning 02:56, 1 May 2007 (UTC) But is my proposal WP:BEANS or WP:POINT or both, and am I violating WP:WOTTA?
In this case, I personally think that the DRV/AFD project pages should be changed to more accurately reflect the truth of the process you described here, Seraphimblade. For instance, DRV asserts it's for reviewing policy/procedure issues but is also a de facto forum for reviewing the actual content of the article itself. But that's a different conversation. --MalcolmGin Talk / Conts 13:22, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
  • (after EC) Well i think it shouldn't be policy, or guideline, or anything like policy. But it is clear that my view does not have consensus on this. When there was an open straw poll on support for IAR, it looked like a majority supported it, but a majority that was rather short, numerically, of what we elsewhere call a clear consensus. If this is policy, it isn't because a clear community consensus ever made it so, as far as I know. Jimbo can make policy by fiat, perhaps he has done so in this case. If this is policy, I would like to know why. Arguments of the form "This is essential to the project" or "Because it is and always has been." don't impress me much. A statement that 'This is policy because Jimbo said so" would do, but one could wish that he was clearer about when he is and when he isn't acting with his "founder's hat" on. Other sorts of reasons would be good, I'll see what is said here. DES (talk) 02:46, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
It is "policy" because it is inherent to the design of a (revision-history backed) wiki. Why this is so might perhaps not quite fit in this margin.
Note that your first encounter with IAR, (and incidentally a prototype bold revert discuss) was when it was used in circumstances where I think most people agree it was appropriate (to counteract some particularly expert trolling, where people were using the actual wikipedia guidelines against us) --Kim Bruning 02:52, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't think much of WP:BRD at levels beyond article content, either. I don't approve of its use on policy pages, for example. I still think that the page deletions on the occasion you refer to were improper, and also that they were counter productive -- they in fact caused the trolling to be more widely known they would otherwise have been the case. i further note that most of the deletions were of edits by established wikipedians, not trolls. As for "inherent to the design of a (revision-history backed) wiki" that is simply incorrect. we could perfectly well have a much stricter view of policy and procedure, without any hint of IAR, and still use a "(revision-history backed) wiki" and still get the benefits of that technology. it is true that such a change would change the community dynamic to some extant. Whether for the better or the worse could be debated -- i think it would be for the better. But it could be done, and indeed most users might well not even notice the difference. So much for "inherent". Something like IAR is common, if not inherent, in relatively small, informal projects, where most people know each other, and personal reputation is a vital factor. Wikipedia in its early days was much closer to this model than it is now, and I suspect that the IAR concept arose largely from this. Note also that one long standing version of IAR qualified it by "in editing articles" if I recall correctly. This was interpreted by many to say that if you dded content but messed up style guidelines, or the like, not to worry, another editor would deal with the matter. if that were all IAR stood for now, it would not be nearly as controversial as it is. I note, for a "foundation policy" IAR is very controversial indeed. Many long-established editors support it passionately, and a good number oppose it with similar warmth. i don't think this is true of any of our other core policies, and that might be worth considering. DES (talk) 03:07, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I think we're debating a (famous?) deliberately instigated GNAA deletion AFD/DRV infinite recursion. Or rather, it would have been infinite if people kept following policy slavishly. I killed the recursion and resulting meatball:ForestFire, centralised the discussion with the assistence of others, and got full backing from the on-duty steward as soon as she woke up and got on-line. Eventually DRV also backed up my decisions, as I predicted would happen upfront.
Note that BRD is the best way to deal with policy pages when the consensus system has broken down.
Hmm, by now you might be starting to notice a pattern in my editing though. I'm one of the people who show up to deal with situations where normal wikipedia policy has failed for some reason.
When doing that kind of thing, people try to stick as close to existing consensus as possible. At the same time, I do use techniques based on IAR, WP:BOLD (like for instance WP:BRD) and Wikipedia:Consensus. Also clever applications of wiki-technology might be sought, use of tools like skype and irc, and documentation might be sought in game theory, systems analysis, sociology, psychology or ethology, and use might be made of documentation on Meatball and WikiWikiWeb. --Kim Bruning 03:33, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I think that WP:IAR should only and strictly be applied when the case in question puts the policy as harmful to the development to the encyclopedia as a whole. Sr13 (T|C) ER 03:29, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
*phew* Thank you for supporting my position here, at least. Though I do think IAR is useful on a wider scale --Kim Bruning 03:37, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
In my opinion, WP:IAR is, at the same time, one of the most important guidelines, and one of the most dangerous ones. Important, since the rules can't possibly give the best result in every situation. Dangerous, because it can be abused easily.
I think that WP:IAR has been getting too much notice by being mentioned on WP:RFA. Any user, including any vandal, who keeps up with that knows about IAR, and some vandal may use that to abuse the system.
In my opinion, IAR says the following: If you know a rule, understand why it exists, and you think that a specific case is different from the general situation, you may choose to ignore it, provided that if asked, you can give a satisfactory reason for it. Od Mishehu 11:31, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
For the record, what I'm objecting to on Wikipedia_talk:Ignore_all_rules is inflexibility with respect to naming the particular role IAR has in the body of official policies and guidelines at Wikipedia. On the talk page, most folks are asserting that IAR is policy, many because Jimbo said so (which is a clearly flawed reason unless Jimbo wants to be the King Midas of policies, and there is evidence that says he doesn't), others because it has been labeled as such for a year, and some have said that they don't consider it or want it to be a policy at all. So why not a guideline? Or why not a more descriptive guidelines and policies box like I proposed (text cribbed from versions earlier than a year ago, and mashed up with current text) already, where IAR is described "considered official policy by some, a guideline by others, and meta-policy by yet others"? --MalcolmGin Talk / Conts 13:29, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
It is policy, it is one of the most important policies we have. The trick is to not ignore people when you ignore the rules. It needs to be a policy not a guideline because it overrides other policies. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 13:32, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) As far as I can see, IAR is useful in the following cases:
  1. When the situation you're in doesn't come up often enough that a rule's been created for it. For instance, this delete of mine was done entirely under IAR; there isn't a CSD for the deletion of MediaWiki pages whose text is identical to the default, but such deletion is nevertheless important.
    • This is especially useful when there's consensus that a rule doesn't apply in a situation (for instance, XfDs where the deletion reason isn't in the deletion policy); this case and the fourth one are I think what are described in Wikipedia:Follow consensus, not policy.
  2. When the rule in question hasn't been designed to take the situation you're in into account, or fails in the specific situation. This is harder to use correctly and more often controversial.
  3. The rules-lawyer interpretation: if IAR didn't exist (and people didn't apply it), the letter of policy would apply rather than the spirit, which would make gaming the system happen a lot more and be hard to prevent. (Note that as WP:POINT also disallows gaming the system, this is less needed; but if someone is busy trying to enforce the letter of policy rather than the system, without necessarily gaming it, that might not go against WP:POINT, but is certainly a 'WP:IAR violation'.)
  4. The Larry Sanger interpretation: According to [3], Larry Sanger says that he created IAR 'humorously' so that people wouldn't worry about getting every exact detail of things right. (The 2003 database snapshot of IAR doesn't have the history going back to its creation, but Larry Sanger is listed there as its first supporter). IAR means that new users don't have to learn all the rules before they start contributing. Incidentally, I notice that WP:WOTTA is policy at Citizendium, enforcable by a ban.)
So what tag to put on IAR? I think it's important that it's a policy, in some form, but there seems to be too much of a problem with just putting {{policy}} on it because people will misinterpret it. No doubt there are people who think that I've misinterpreted it. (I'm not sure what the solution to this problem is, or I'd offer it.) --ais523 13:47, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Malcolm, riddle me this. How is changing the tag on that page into any other tag going to help anybody? You appear to be just making up an arbitrary classification for no reason. >Radiant< 13:48, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
To me, making sure that the truth that consensus is not solid about IAR being policy is told on the project page itself makes for a world of difference in challenging the status quo, in challenging how some folks use IAR to further their private, individual interpretations and judgment calls in spite of consensus, and other ways that IAR's being abused right now. It's also simply more accurate, and given that Wikipedia is about accuracy in its body of knowledge, it seems right to me that the IAR project page be labeled accurately. --MalcolmGin Talk / Conts 13:52, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
  • And you seek to create accuracy by creating new and confusing terms and classifications. That's precisely my point. >Radiant< 14:02, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
No, I wish to leverage existing/previously use terminology. --MalcolmGin Talk / Conts 14:19, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Why don't we add in the clause about consensus that's in all of the other policy templates? I think it could clear up some issues. Rockstar (T/C) 17:21, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
You mean this one:
It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus.
?
I could get behind that. --MalcolmGin Talk / Conts 00:27, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
How about tweaking it a bit (hell, the IAR policy tag was tweaked) to say "...Before invoking this policy, please ensure that your action reflects consensus." Rockstar (T/C) 00:48, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I'll go suggest the wording on the IAR talk page, but I have to note, ironically, that's what I've been trying to do here. Have you detected any consensus? I've seen stonewalling and opinion-touting, but very little actual working together toward a common goal (i.e. building consensus support for this controversial issue). I'm beginning to think that that kind of consensus is simply not possible here. --MalcolmGin Talk / Conts 13:11, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Oops, nevermind. Radiant's installation of the standard policy box sort of makes this moot, so I'll leave it as is. --MalcolmGin Talk / Conts 13:26, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Bah. I'm not sure I like Radiant's change. At least the last version made sure that IAR was seen as something a bit different from the other policies, at least more challenging. Now there really is no difference between this and WP:COPYRIGHT. I'd like to see the old policy tag with the sentence "Before editing using this policy, think about consensus" or something like that. Rockstar (T/C) 22:21, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, I obviously didn't get what I wanted, but Radiant did move a bit, which is something, though I'm not sure he did it because of any kind of mutual respect - probably just to get me to shut the hell up. I'm happy there's phrasing about consensus in there, but I also think it could have/should have gone further if we were talking about actual consensus, since it's clear that I'm not part of the consenting bloc, which means the ideal of true consensus was not met. --MalcolmGin Talk / Conts 13:13, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't see a consensus to prevent people from ignoring rules that prevent helping Wikipeida. This has been standing policy for ages, and if it to become less than that a rather large consensus would be needed. I would not support such a reduction in status for this policy, while often misunderstood it is needed to avoid being bogged down in mud. Think of it as a jet pack. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 13:57, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Jet packs can be fun for a while... untill they kill you. Rockstar (T/C) 17:20, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
And that is why you should always think long and hard before using one. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 17:32, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Or need expert training. And/Or be International Rescue? ;-) --Kim Bruning 17:33, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Can I be a part of the International Wikipedia Rescue? WP:IWR? Rockstar (T/C) 20:20, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps. Though my preference would be for The Interesting Times Gang, who seem to work roughly the same way as wikipedia. I don't think they're into measly jet-packs though. O:-)--Kim Bruning 15:22, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
That universe is teh awes0me. I really enjoyed Excession. --MalcolmGin Talk / Conts 15:25, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Dynamic functions

Re. previous comment posted on Technical board, 17th April

I'm looking to make a template that will display a custom page when sent data - specifically to illustrate the position of a certain time in the geological time scale. I've written a template which will perform as I wish, and whilst I can include the template in a page, I hoped to be able to link a date using Template:Ma so that clicking on the year would take the user directly to a timeline with the specified year marked. I've spoken to a couple of experienced editors who are unaware of a solution to this problem. Is there any way I can carry this out? (I hope I've explained what I want clearly enough...)

Many thanks, Verisimilus 21:12, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

That does not seem possible. We would need m:DynamicFunctions##arg: - instead of including a page for given parameter values, this allows linking to a page for given parameter values.--Patrick 00:42, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


I'm not sure whether this is the best place to post this.
What are the arguments against getting m:DynamicFunctions##arg?

I'd quite like to campaign to have it installed, since I feel it could add useful content to Wikipedia.

Verisimilus T 18:51, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that would be useful.--Patrick 13:45, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't know whether this is the reason it's not enabled or not, but it seems to me that any page using any of these functions (except perhaps #skin) could not be cached in the front end Squid caches which serve roughly 3/4 of the site's traffic (see m:Wikimedia servers). This would not be an issue unless a significant number of pages (by access count, not by raw number) started using these functions. If you want to pursue this, I'd suggest posting a query to the wikitech-l mailing list. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:17, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't foresee this being a huge contributor to traffic, so I've posted a request on the list. Thanks for your pointers! Verisimilus T 13:41, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

BirthdayBot discussion

Hello community, I have since been declined my request to run a new bot called BirthdayBot. Firstly, I will tell you a little about it, and then get the community's thoughts about it (as that was the suggestion made on the request).

Now it's time for your say on this. I am really enthusiastic and want this bot running, but many people say it's like a welcome bot - that's not the case - it only greets 5 users per day at a maximum, whereas a welcome bot could do thousands. Looking forward to your thoughts. Many thanks, Extranet (Talk | Contribs) 20:34, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Why is the mass sending of templatized messages worth the time and server resources? Isn't the point of a birthday greeting that it's done by a person who notices and therefore cares? Λυδαcιτγ 03:15, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Oppose bot; keep doing it manually. If the Birthday Committee is being inactive, then its purposes should be reconsidered, not replaced by a bot. –Pomte 03:38, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
sigh...an impersonal waste of server use for something unrelated to the project goal, we've been through similar things several times before. Voice-of-All 04:39, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Thats fine, I just really needed to see what the community thought and it looks like the bot won't be going ahead. Thanks again. Extranet (Talk | Contribs) 04:47, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Move protected much-edited pages

May I suggest that every article in the top 10, 25, or even 50 of Special:Mostrevisions is move protected? Some already are. Let's use common sense: there are a lot of revisions for most of them (by definition), and there's not a chance in hell that (m)any would need to be moved. The openness of our wiki is important, but let's invite people to experience it in more constructive ways.

See the history of Adolf Hitler. Are there better reasons than "BCUZ" to move some of these pages? GracenotesT § 01:53, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I've advocated this before, we should common sense and move protect the obvious (e.g. Tree, water, George W. Bush. John Reaves (talk) 02:24, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
I am not against this idea, but only after several moves have been reverted. -- ReyBrujo 02:32, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
I could arrange that :P Personally, I see nothing wrong with a small amount of ignorance of the protection policy, especially since move vandalism makes everyone depressed and nervous. GracenotesT § 02:38, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
Eh, I guess we'll see what happens. No exigencies implicated in this, but "why not". GracenotesT § 02:55, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
First and foremost, we are an open free encyclopedia, and ideally, all articles should be open (as in, not protected). Everytime we protect an article, at least personally, it is a step back in our mission. And second, because we may encourage massive move vandalism of less known articles. -- ReyBrujo 03:00, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
If you're talking about semi-protection, that's perfectly correct. But move protection? GracenotesT § 03:05, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Sounds reasonable. If an article has no plausible reason to be moved (I mean come on, is Bush going to change his name any time this century?) then a moveprot doesn't hurt. >Radiant< 16:29, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Isn't this covered by point 3 at WP:PROT#Move protection? –Pomte 21:39, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
    • That point certainly is an argument that it could be a good idea for someone (an administrator) to take a more systematic approach to protecting high-revision pages. As for "all pages should be open", common sense says that if there were in fact consensus to move (rename) a high-traffic page, it wouldn't be much of an effort to get an administrator to do so, and obviously this would be extremely rare. So add a support from me. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:06, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Yep, it's covered; I thought that Mostrevisions would be a good place to start. GracenotesT § 20:25, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User names merge to Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention

With the Meta for Deletion entry on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User names heading for a keep/no consensus there is a proposal to merge the functions of that board into Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention. Please comment at WT:RFCN. -Mask? 22:16, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Pimp my village

Did you know that the village pump is really hard to find? Unless you know the shortcut you generally have to scroll up and down in the community portal hoping you'll spot the link. And when I type 'Village pump" into the search field I am redirected to an article called 'water well'. Maybe Village Pump could be made more prominent and easier to find. Lgh 04:21, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

  • There are links on the main page below the featured picture, and at the Community Portal near the top. Changing these might be hard to sell people on; the simpler strategy is for you to link WP:PUMP from your user page. YechielMan 07:33, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
  • There is a link here from Village pump. WP:VP is a shorter shortcut. –Pomte 07:37, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Actually, for all Wikipedia space pages, you can access them by typing "Wikipedia:" followed by the name of the page you would like to find. So, you type Wikipedia:Village Pump to get here.--Kylohk 21:59, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Category idea

I don't want to create a category just to see it get deleted, so...Category:National anthem writers? Does that sound useful? Nyttend 00:10, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Sounds great! But how about Category:Authors of national anthems instead? Reywas92Talk 00:20, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, anything along that line. Tonight I came across the author of the Aruba anthem, and I realised that there was nothing connecting him with the writers of other national anthems. Nyttend 04:11, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
I've created it under my proposed name because those who compose written text are categorised as "writers", not as "authors". Frankly I like the sound of "Authors of National anthems" better, but it wouldn't fit too well with other category names. Nyttend 13:27, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

AN rename

Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive 16#Requested move. --Random832 23:23, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

This article is within the scope of WikiProject X

Can we please get rid of these templates already? See Talk:Gibberellic acid, for one of many examples. — Omegatron 16:00, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

There exists a Template:WikiProject Banners which can combine multiple banners into one to clean up talk pages a bit. Dr. Cash 00:48, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
There is no other content on that talk page, so the banners are not being disruptive there. –Pomte 23:45, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
I think the banners are disruptive altogether.
Especially so when they're the only thing on a talk page and prevent the talk from being a redlink. — Omegatron 18:06, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
You may be interested in Wikipedia:WikiProject reform. –Pomte 20:03, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
its very annoying to see article's "talk" button in blue, expecting there to be some discussion there, only to discover some wikiproject banners - you have just wasted your click. the banners provide very little benefit, and could easily be replaced by lists held in the wikiproject's space instead of spamming every article's talk page. 86.31.103.208 12:49, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Where to discuss long-term systemic problems with Wikipedia?

I noticed that there are many long-term systemic problems with Wikipedia, which are not dealt with because some will "cover their backside", pretend the problems don't exist, and discussion eventually dies out, only to start up again a week or month later.

For example, on the talk page of AIV, there are complaints that we are too soft on vandals. A couple of users will pretend this problem doesn't exist, and let discussion die. A week later, someone will raise this complaint again.

There are also many who believe that some processes, such as RFA and AFD, are broken. Yet nothing is done to reform them.

If you check the list of missing Wikipedians, and read the reasons why established users leave, you will see the same few problems being mentioned over and over again. Why are these problems not resolved?

Other sites criticise Wikipedia for allegedly being anti-elitist, lacking credibility, and some admins abusing their powers. Shouldn't we do something to address these concerns?

I think we need a place for centralised discussion on such issues. This would ensure that discussion does not die out just because some pretend the problems don't exist. By creating a place where we can openly discuss problems with Wikipedia, contributors will be less tempted to join Wikipedia Watch and other anti-Wikipedia sites.

Wikis are meant to be dynamic, so problems can be quickly dealt with. However, with systemic problems, this evidently isn't the case. While unlike some, I don't believe Wikipedia is irredeemably broken, I believe that it eventually will be if we don't quickly deal with these systemic problems. Please note that I am not anti-Wikipedia - I believe it has great potential and that's why I hope these systemic problems can be dealt with.

--Kaypoh 07:30, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

(sticking fingers in ears)... La La La... I can't hear you... La La La La  :>) Blueboar 16:50, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
On a more serious note, this page is OK. You can also write an Wikipedia:Essay in Project space or your own userspace and ask users to comment on it. x42bn6 Talk 17:22, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
I think that the discussion will quickly die out, the thread will be archived in a week or so, and nothing will be done to deal with these problems. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 08:47, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes, please write an essay on this, with some brief examples. Then the essay's talk page can be the centralized discussion for this meta-issue, and hopefully the discussions won't die out there. Get the Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost to cover them. –Pomte 09:02, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Done. Wikipedia:Reform. All comments, edits, and additions are more than welcome. Seraphimblade Talk to me 09:16, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

number comments on that page to date: zero. heh heh heh. 86.31.103.208 12:44, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Adding a new upload link to the sidebar

There is a proposal to add a new upload link, to Project:Upload, to the sidebar. Discussion is at MediaWiki talk:Uploadtext#Proposal for mass overhaul, matching Commons. Uncle G 18:35, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Image URLs

I'm not really sure how easily this could be accomplished, or if it could be at all, but my school system has recently blocked all wikipedia images because of the adult entertainment sections of the website, it's really annoying to search for some sort of plant or animal and not be able to see what it looks like. Earlier this year I was instrumental in getting the complete ban of wikipedia revoked but I was told that there is no chance of doing that on this one unless wikipedia was willing to host all its non-school appropriate images in one place that they could then block. It does not seem like it'd be hard to have a check box that you simply check if the image is an "adult" image, but then of course I don't really know about it. If this is not possible, how hard would it be to produce a "safe" list, a list that people can go to and put "safe" image url's onto that I could compile and give to the tech department at school. They won't just ban the adult ones because wikipedia is ever changing and new pictures would be added daily. Mrstenoien 6:39, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, see Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not censored, Wikipedia:No disclaimer templates, Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedians against censorship, and Wikipedia:Pornography. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:48, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
It's highly unlikely that photos of nudity would appear on pages about plants and such. Suggest that your school block certain pages, or pages with certain keywords. wikipediatrix 21:52, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

According to the tech people down at the district office blocking certain pages is not acceptable because of the ever changing nature of wikipedia. Thats why I was thinking of a whitelist of pictures instead of a blacklist, although a whitelist would be very hard to keep up to date it would be better than no pictures whatsoever, where would I go to get help compiling a list such as that? User:Mrstenoien:Mrstenoien 4:30, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Any whitelist would be an open invitation to vandals, who would replace the images in it with dodgy ones. It would work no better than self-certification. An encyclopedia editable by anyone cannot be guaranteed to exclude any particular type of content, all of the time, because some of the people who edit are there to create mischief. Notinasnaid 17:05, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Start Tag?

What do people think of this? After a stub is no longer a stub, it can be tagged with a "start tag" signifying that it is no longer short,etc etc(whatever a stub is defined as) but now a start(whatever a start is correctly defined as). There could be the same start tags as there are the same stubs (eg "disease stub" with "disease start", and once the stub gets enough content it can move on to the start tag, where more people will have ability to see it and possibly work on it. Thus once the start taged article is worked on long enough it will then go on to the next up level (but by then the article will be far better than what a typical 'start' type article looks like. I know there are already articles labeled as "starts" on their talk page, but there are also "stubs" labeled as such on their talk page as well (articles that are usually rated by their wikiproject) and furthermore, not everyone looks (or bothers) to look at the discussion page anyway (personal random choice really)(Furthermore this is not to say that a "start" tag will trigger a impulse in someone's brain to say, hey lets make this article beter, but they can also say that for the stub tag as well true?..applies to new users in particular). Unless of course youre thinking that having MORE tags is a bad thing, and now it would take FOREVER to implent into the countless "start" articles, im sure it can be achieved.(Probably with the creation of a new wiki fix up project? or bot?). So yeah, sorry if this has already been asked before or its written in the wrong place. Thanks in advance. petze 03:35, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

There are thousands and thoudsands of stubs, and no matter what you object, it will take a very long time to do that. There should always be an improvement impule in one's brain. Labelling something as Start rather than Stub will do nothing. IMO, the rating of articles with Featured, Good, stub, or none is fine enough, without A or B. Reywas92Talk 03:53, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

That depends on the individual new users then again. I was on wikipedia for years and years and looking at articles, didnt make me want to improve them even after i signed in with a user name (so as a new user). I would have liked it if someone else did in a few months time but that is not the same. Start from stub wont necessairly do nothing, but it would be a way of beter organizing maybe? And wouldnt having something, be better than nothing? I mean they can be 'nothing' when they are rated B's or A's in their talk page, after the start improvment? And once they are nothing they can be worked at until they become Good Articles? I dunno my random 2 cents. Thanks for the input either way. Oh btw it wont take that long... only as long as every other wikiproject out there individually ;).petze 04:31, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Any other proposals?Suggestions?Comments?Does silence mean we dont like ur idea, plz go away lol? Give me advice peoplee...hehe. petze 07:25, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Wouldn't this just be redundant to the wikiproject banners? For stubs, the tag serves as an open plea for someone to fix the article since nobody is currently editing it, but once a page is start class there is obviously someone who knows and cares about the page so it's assumed that it will improve normally. On an unrelated note, would you please go to your preferences and uncheck the "use raw signature" box, so that your sig will link to your userpage and others can contact you more easily? --tjstrf talk 07:38, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Yeah but why stop at getting it out of stub? Dont we want more than just "start" type articles filling up wikipedia (better than a million stub articles but still..) and you cant say 100% of people who turn a stub into a start, necessairly continue working on it... but i guess I could be wrong. Ah yeah thanks, i had no idea about the raw sig thing... i just assumed i had to type in "four tildas" with the double closed brackets to make a link to my page. Still new to this alll.... Thanks for ur comments either way. Later then.petze 08:03, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, don't understand. Articles are categorized (stub, start, A, B, etc.) on talk pages - see Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Assessment FAQ. Hundreds of thousands of articles have already been so categorized. There really isn't any reason to duplicate the assessments by putting them on the articles as well. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:10, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
In my opinion, any tag that is a quality indicator should be avoided on the article itself, since it may appear unsightly. Only FAs and maybe GAs should be labelled, albeit with a small one, so people can know whether the article is the cream of the crop.--Kylohk 13:56, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Creation of stubs for every human gene and RNA family

At the MCB Wikiproject we are gearing up to import several databases into Wikipedia. These would include families of RNAs in collaboration with the Rfam database and the complete set of publicly-available data on each human gene in collaboration with the Novartis/GNF SymAtlas project.

I'm worried that people may object to the automated creation of these stubs on the ground of notability and wanted to float the idea here. What are people's opinions? Should we restrict this to gene families, rather than individual genes, or should we regard this as the basis for future additions as scientific knowledge grows? Each gene stub would have several references to other databases and information, an example can be seen here.

Thanks for comments. TimVickers 21:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

How many of these are you going to create? I've always hated rapid creation of stubs, especially ones that won't have much of a future. Keep them only to gene families, expanding only if one goes further than a stub. Reywas92Talk 21:46, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

The number depends on the level that we go into the database. I'd be most happy restricting this to genes with known or proposed functions, as these will have some literature associated with them and can therefore be easily expanded in the future. On the other hand, the simple completeness of Wikipedia having an entry for every human gene is attractive, and could help us recruit more expert editors from the science community. TimVickers 22:07, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

It would be nice if the bot creating the stubs put a list of known associated sources on the talk page. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 22:35, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Good idea, the references in the Entrez gene page could be used. TimVickers 22:43, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

How many are we talking here, and is there any reason they couldn't be bot-generated into a list by family and then split out upon sufficient development? This was done with "geographic locations" a while back and we've still got tons of botstubs around from that, I don't know about anyone else but that soured me on the idea of bot-generated articles a bit. At least if it were into families there would be some meat to the article, and they'd be more likely to get eyes on them and get expanded. Seraphimblade Talk to me 23:15, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Depending on which estimate you listen to, there are about 20,000 human genes annotated at present. The bot proposal is for 10,000 of these to be imported, these are the genes for which published information is available. The question isn't really how these articles are created, that's just mechanics, but instead we need to discuss what the content will be and if this content will be useful and notable. For example, is the ITK (gene) a notable subject, or does this stub not contain enough information? TimVickers 23:33, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea. I've added some wikilinks to the sample article, which I think the bot should be able to add, and commented on the talk page for it.-gadfium 00:21, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
I wonder if it would be possible to create these articles in a gradual fashion rather than 10,000 at once. For example, maybe the bot could identify the top 100 genes (as ranked by number of GeneRIFs in the database) that have no existing Wikipedia article and create stubs for them. A list of these could be created on a subpage of the MCB WikiProject in an attempt to attract Wikipedia editors to the new stubs. Then after a month, do the next batch, maybe 200 for the second month. --JWSchmidt 00:36, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
The bot won't create all the genes at once, that would be a tall order indeed. The first run is planned to create just 10 new stubs. What I'm trying to do here is get a feel for the community's ideas on the eventual scope of the project, which could run over many months. TimVickers 00:42, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

20,000 is one in every 88 articles! I really don't think articles should be made for every one. I'm not even quite convinced that the gene families are very notable or encyclopedic. Sorry. Reywas92Talk 00:28, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

What do you think of the example page Reywas? Does this meet the standard of notability in your opinion? Do you think only genes that have been the subject of scientific papers should be included? TimVickers 00:31, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Your going to need reliable sources for each of these to show their notability, otherwise it's going to put intense pressure on CAT:CSD. Ryan Postlethwaite 00:35, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
OK, so far there are three main proposals:
  1. Create a page for each gene.
  2. Create a page for each gene that has references in the scientific literature (meeting reliable sources)
  3. Create a page for each gene family and a list of the individual genes.
TimVickers 00:38, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
I'd go for number 2, there's 20,000 gene's genes, but there they're not all notable, many of the notable ones are only notable because the are linked to a disease, in which case, a merge with the disease page may be all that is required. Also, don't forget we're an encyclopedia, outside users should be able to understand the articles, not just profesionals on the subject. Ryan Postlethwaite 00:44, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I choose number three. How many of them are there? Reywas92Talk 00:53, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

There's a problem in that option with classification. If we use Gene Ontology terms, each gene could fit under one of several classifications, as you can see with the ITK (gene) example. This option might seem simpler, but it would be much more complicated than any of the other options. TimVickers 01:13, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
I would support number 2, also, I made a couple of style edits to the sample page. It had some extra line spaces between the box and the start of the prose content, creating extra whitespace at the top. Second, the title wasn't bolded in the first use. Also, most of the links on the template box under "function" and "Orthologs" are external links. Links to Wikipedia articles, if they exist are preferred (a link to an article explaining what Orthologs means would be nice as well, I had to look that one up) Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 01:00, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, we seem to be coming to consensus on proposal 2. This would involve the import of approximately 10,000 individual genes into stubs with 76,000 separate citations added to these stubs in order to meet WP:Reliable sources (numbers from GeneRIF statistics).

That's an interesting point Mr.Z-man, we could create a page for each GO term, and then use Wikilinks rather than external inks to the GO pages, however, then you would lose the classification information you get on GO pages such as this. I think external links are a better choice for the infoboxes (as with the standard Chembox). TimVickers 01:08, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Having a article for every gene is not so bad? As time goes on, more and more research goes into each, and the articles will definetelly(sp?) not stay stubs forever. I am going for number 2.petze 04:48, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Well...I hate to rain on the parade here, because it's great to see information on genetics and such, but do remember individual articles must assert, and show, notability, since we're not, among other things, a directory. I think bot-copies of a directory of genes, for however noble a purpose, would be counter to that. Now if the various information could be ordered by gene-family, with some additional information on the family, that would probably work quite a bit better. If it turns out later that a ton of information on an individual gene is available, a splitout article can always happen later. Right now, though, I'm convinced a lot of these may remain permastubs. Seraphimblade Talk to me 12:29, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

How about an entirely new wiki for the genes? GeneWiki ? With perhaps thirty thousand genes, it may deserve its own wiki, and be easier to write articles around each notably gene, around each family, around different theories surrounding certain classes of genes, etc, it will be a lot of articles. DanielDemaret 12:36, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
That's possible, but not what we need to decide here. TimVickers 16:03, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Seraphimblade, I agree that a complete list of all the 20,000 - 30,000 predicted genes would not be notable, mainly as many of these may not be real and they may not be annotated as genes in the future (as noted in this review). Therefore, however attractive option 1 is in terms of simplicity and completeness, I don't see it meeting notability. This leaves us with deciding on our cut-off criteria. Being specific is useful here. Looking at the example posted ITK (gene), I certainly feel this is a notable subject, and with the addition of the references in it's Entrez page would make a reasonable stub. Comments? TimVickers 16:03, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
"Looking at the example posted ITK (gene) [...] Comments?" It needs more context data to be a useful general encyclopedia article. It should in the text clearly specify which species have this gene, on what named molecules, and what genes it is associated with in terms of genes evoluting from other genes. Futher: alternative names if any and if the letters stand for anything - if not then say so. Further: humanize it by adding dates and places and people. Somebody at some time at some place did something that lets us know the data in the article. So tell us the story. WAS 4.250 20:49, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
I know such a page requires more text in order to become a comprehensive article, but these initial entries are intended to be stubs, not fully-fledged articles. In my opinion, a stub containing a short definition of what the gene is, a list of references for more details and a box containing a plethora of links to information in other databases is a good solid stub. Such a stub will form the basis of future additions, such as you describe, and could one day become a full article, perhaps even a featured article. TimVickers 22:44, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
If there are adequate sources to eventually fill out stubs as I suggested, then it is appropriate to create such stubs. My !vote is in favor of creating all such stubs. WAS 4.250 23:10, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Option #2 looks good to me. I'm okay with stub articles, and think the articles would grow over time provided the particular genes are discussed in enough references. If a particular human gene as been cited a number of times in scholarly literature, then I would consider it notable. In general, I like the idea of bringing this information to the masses, in a more readable and accessible manner, as Wikipedia usually does. --Aude (talk) 22:51, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Another advantage we haven't touched on yet is the ability to bring Wiki-based annotation to the wider scientific community. With the Rfam RNA database (about 570 RNA families) the Sanger centre would not only put its data on Wikipedia in the public domain under GFDL, but it would also promote this Wikipedia resource at scientific meetings (see here for discussion of this point). This expansion of Wikipedia's coverage of bioinformatics could help us recruit a large number of experts to further expand our coverage - a beneficial cycle. TimVickers 23:07, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
This proposal has a great potential. This may not be the stuff for every Tom, Dick and Harry, but it may attract new scientific contributors. The fact that such a transfer from a database is possible, is proof that wikipedia is gradually being taken more and more seriously by the scientific community. In my opinion, go for option 2, since this conforms to Wikipedia:Attribution. JoJan 19:44, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Might be handier to cooperate with the knewco/omegawiki/wikidata people on this kind of thing? Though I'm cool with this either way. It'll be fun. :-) --Kim Bruning 19:48, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi everyone... I've been spearheading the creation of the gene pages (including the example ITK) and so I'm very interested in the discussion above. Thanks all for the great discussion so far... A few additional comments to the above...
  • The idea of presenting gene families instead of individual genes is not a good substitute I think. The reason is that there are many layers of how to describe gene function. The biologists in the room will probably recognize the distinction between "molecular function" and "biological processes"; gene families generally tell you something about molecular function (e.g., "Genes in Gene Family X catalyze a certain chemical reaction and bind to DNA"), but genes within that family can have very diverse biological functions (e.g., "Mutations in Gene Y are associated with diabetes", "Gene Z is involved in immune response to viruses", etc.). IMHO, WP pages on gene families I think is a good idea, but not a substitute for indivdidual gene pages.
  • Agreed, we can definitely err on the side of creating fewer stubs. As Tim mention above, original bot trial proposal was for 10 genes only. Part of the goal of this was to define a threshold amount of information to make a useful stub (i.e., one that is likely to nucleate further manual contributions). If it's not clear where that threshold would be based on 10, we can make a conservative guess and do 100 in a second trial run. For those who are interested, here are the proposed bot specs.
  • Although we could go off and create a completely separate wiki instance, I really would like to do this project with WP. Not only because the obvious domain names have already been registered ;), but I really think there is a huge potential synergy here. As Tim mentioned, our gene portal already has a substantial user base, but our gene portal is pretty much for well-structured content only. WP is the natural home for unstructured information on gene function. (Other biological wikis either have a different focus or lack critical mass.) I view this project as bringing together the critical mass on the biology side with the extensive infrastructure and expertise at WP. Perhaps as an indicator of good things to come, our ITK stub is already the third hit on google when searching "itk gene"... AndrewGNF 01:11, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Andrew, this is somewhere I think Wikipedia can gain a great deal by drawing in expertise to add content, and the experts we recruit gaining through free and open distribution of the information they contribute. TimVickers 02:42, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

If anybody is interested, I've written an essay on this topic. TimVickers 17:15, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I would second the comment above about adding more information. Dates and people in particular (ie. history). That may be difficult now, but in the future as more history is written, that may be possible. Take the story of the discovery of DNA for example. If similar stories are written in the future about the research on particular genes, then this should be added. Database and basic scientific information is good, but don't forget to add encyclopedic value (and historical context) to avoid just being a copy of a database. Carcharoth 23:35, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

There is precedent for doing the stub approach in wikipedia. Didn't a bot create articles for all the cities, towns and villages? Many of these have now grown as i believe many of these gene pages will grow.
Consider that there is far more to gain from this approach than just 20,000 new stubs. This is a fantastic recruitment tool for scientists who are very sceptical of the whole wiki, anybody can edit, approach. Just look at how many of the science articles are underdeveloped for proof of this scepticism. While no one wants wikipedia to become elitist it is hard to imagine who else will feel comfortable enough to come in and fact check/improve these science related articles. I think if these stubs are set up there is a very good chance that scientists will come into wikipedia and improve the content of the gene articles related to their own research. I'll bet money that in the process they will improve many of our other science related articles too. Who knows, they may even hang around edit regularly?
In summary, if this proposal happens, and I think it should, wikipedia will get a massive amount of positive press for bringing together amateur science editors with those from academia and biotech. More to the point, i expect the positive press will be where it really counts (from the perspective of recruitment), in the scientific journals. So let's not focus on whether each one of these stubs is notable or not and focus on whether the whole package is notable. Think about where wikipedia heading in the next five years not what wikipedia is now. David D. (Talk) 19:14, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Freeing GFDL from "disclaimers"

Please see Wikipedia:GFDL standardization, which intends to address the legal morass of having added "Subject to disclaimers" to {{GFDL}} and hence creating a licensing tag that is technically incompatible with the normal GFDL applied at most other projects and Commons. Comments welcome at Wikipedia talk:GFDL standardization. Dragons flight 02:02, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Open external links in a new tab/window

This seems really obvious, so I'm sure it must have come up before, but I can't find it on the Perennial proposals page or elsewhere. It's really annoying to lose one's page when following links to external articles (eg from the references section), so why not force them to open in a new tab or window? Maybe by changing the way the software handles links, or by adding it as an option in the user preferences? EyeSereneTALK 10:18, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

As a workaround for the time being, you can use shift-click on the links in Firefox or IE. If you just want this feature for yourself, you could make a request at Wikiproject User scripts' request page for a script that would do this on your account; otherwise, it will need a software change, and you can ask at bugzilla:. --ais523 11:35, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the response. I already use shift-click in Firefox as a workaround, but I was wondering if this is would be generally regarded as a user-friendly idea for people less familiar with Ff/IE. As you point out, I suppose I should have posted this at Bugzilla as it's essentially a request for a software change. I thought I'd sound out opinion first though. My personal preference would be to add Open links in a new tab as an option in the User prefences menus (under 'Misc'?). EyeSereneTALK 12:58, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
I agree. I'm used to holding the Control key while clicking a link (Shift opens a new window, not a tab), but it would be preferable to have an option to automate it. Links in new tabs/windows can be controlled by Javascript, which can be written in such a way that the link still works when scripts are blocked. If external links were given an appropriate Javascript class, it would be easy to incorporate it into a user's .js file or make it an option in Preferences. But we end users don't have the necessary control over the MediaWiki software to go around changing or adding classes to the markup. Take ais523's advice to ask at Bugzilla. Adrian M. H. 13:18, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
Request submitted at Bugzilla. EyeSereneTALK 15:01, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
I would oppose forcing this, the user should have control -- and the user does no have such control, as every brrowser that I am aware of has a way to do this with any link. If it were a preferences item, that would not be a problem, but why bother, since the user already has control anyway. DES (talk) 15:05, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
As a preference item, it's superfluous but non-harmful (except in developer time). I would oppose making this the global default, as many people find it annoying, and as already mentioned, it's doable on the part of the user through most modern browsers. -- nae'blis 15:36, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

In firefox, middle-click opens a page in a new tab. You already have full control yourself. I would be very irritated if you *removed* my ability to left-click and made it the same function as middle-click. :-/ The rule is: Let the user and their client determine what to do, not your site. --Kim Bruning 15:44, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

There are a lot of times where it is useful to have an external link open in-window, such as when providing diffs, or other in-wiki links in the form of an external link--VectorPotentialTalk 16:03, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't think anyone suggested that it should be the default option (not here and now, I mean). This issue always seems to provoke more negative votes than positive (whether raised on/about Wikipedia, or in any other situation), and I don't know why. There is some question over whether it is disadvantaging to users with cognitive disabilities, but that is hardly applicable here if it is an option. Editors won't be forced to use it if they don't want to; they can view diffs in the same tab. I prefer to view anything that relates to what I am currently reading, such as diffs, in another tab. And a lot of PC users do not have anything to "middle-click". Adrian M. H. 16:08, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
In that case, as long as it isn't set to default it seems like a good idea--VectorPotentialTalk 16:11, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
This was my point. The request I submitted on Bugzilla was for options added to the preferences menu that allow users to change the default behaviour to open (internal or external) links in either a new tab or window. I realise that most browsers can have this set from their own preferences menu, but that would mean setting it for all sites visited, not just Wikipedia. I also realise that many users would not want this behaviour, so I haven't suggested it as being a default. It just seems to me that, for the sake of convenience, it would be a nice choice to have available. Anyway, the current status of the request is at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3213 - I don't fully follow the jargon but it looks like nothing's going to happen. What do I know... I'm only an end-user ;) EyeSereneTALK 19:54, 6 May 2007 (UTC) [addendum] There is however a script available at the above link to do this, if anyone is interested EyeSereneTALK 20:01, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your efforts and the feedback. Adrian M. H. 20:31, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (songs)

I've reopened discussion on this. At the moment we have no criteria. --Mel Etitis (Talk) 17:39, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

A new user warning template

I have been working on a new template. It is a communication aid, and not in the same boat as the uw-vandalism things. This template deals with improper speedy deletion tags apllied, which through sifting a bit through Cat:CSD, I find it becomes more and more useful. The template is temporartily here. It is the first level warning, however. I'd appreciate some feedback as to whether it really has any use, and ways to improve, etc. Evilclown93 20:24, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if you already did this, but you may want to post a link to this discussion on WT:UTM (user talk messages) and on WT:CSD and possibly WP:AN as admins are most likely to use this. I'm not sure if this should be a multi-level template or not, that would imply that some users are doing that for disruption, are they? If this is a problem, by all means make multi-level. If not, I would make it a little stronger (level 2-ish) and make it a single level warning. I'm not sure either if I would include the WP:NPP reference. While most speedy tags are put on new pages, being new isn't a requirement for speedy. It is a good idea though. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 20:46, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Even though you describe it as different to warning templates, is there not still some good faith issue with this? I wouldn't want to receive a template just because someone else had a slightly different take an article's suitability for SD. They can just remove the tag as normal. The wording of your template is very patronising in my view. Adrian M. H. 22:18, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't mean it to sound patronising at all. That is exactly one of the reasons why I'm bringing it up generate feedback. Out of curiousity, Adrian, how would you like it to sound? Any ideas? 22:20, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
I would rather not see it implemented at all, to be honest. It's unnecessary, in my view. If inexperienced editors get involved in making SD noms, either they will get them mostly right or mostly wrong. If they make a lot of ill-judged noms, a hand-written message is more appropriate, because their intentions are positive. In such instances, a template message may either offend an experienced editor who made an isolated inappropriate nom or discourage those who are new to the deletion nom process. Adrian M. H. 22:32, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Here's the level two warning. I'm working on a different version of the one template, but it's not working just know. Gimme a couple more minutes, and I link it here. Evilclown93 22:41, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Here's the new level one template. Evilclown93 22:47, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Suggestion---don;t say reverted, say removed. And give a link to WP:CSD for the rules. I think I would personally rather use a custom-written message most of the time, but there are times when a formal one does the job--it can actually seem less rather then more confrontational. I suggest this also be discussed on the talk page for WP:CSD DGG 05:53, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
if you disagree with the placing of a CSD tag, remove it, explaining why in the edit summary and talkpage. dont use warning templates in edit disputes and remember WP:AGF. as a long-term editor who prefers anon-editing, i have encountered several over-zealous editors who immediately assume bad faith and begin firing off vandalism warnings - its a surefire way to rile a newbie. 86.31.103.208 13:08, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
What if there was a newbie notice, guiding them to WP:CSD, another notice (probably 1.1) as a quick note telling that someone removed the template, and a level 2 more vandal-warning-like notice. For level 3 and 4, it's more classified as vandalism. These notices are more quick easy notices, but you could always provide more comment (example: In Twinkle, you can add an extra comment to an AIV report, for example.) Evilclown93 13:43, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
  • It would help if the language was less condescending. Imho. >Radiant< 10:36, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Move button for images

It would be nice to have a move button for images. That way if the title is wrong you could move it to the correct title instead of re-uploading the image. (I know, kinda short) «razorclaw» 18:35, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Everyone agrees with that, but at this point the software unfortunately cannot move images. If the name must be changed, you can re-upload the file with the new name and have the old one deleted. Be sure to link any pages using the image to the new one. Reywas92Talk 19:36, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Arabic

I would like to see Wiki available in Arabic with contributions from arabic speakers (writers) in the native arabic language. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 90.38.63.150 (talk • contribs).

Have you checked http://ar.wikipedia.org ? -- ReyBrujo 13:15, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

numbering posts

On VP as well as in all talk pages it would be good if each post was headed with its number as it appears in the contents/hyperlinking box at the head of the whole page. For example this post's heading would read: 42. numbering posts, ie as it appears in the contents box. This is because I quite often look at a page's contents box and say to myself: I would like to look at posts 3,4,17 and 44 (for example) then I have to either memorise these numbers and the headings or scroll up and down all the time. To summarise: It would be good if the program that created the post inlcuded the post's number in the heading. Lgh 01:26, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

There's an option in preferences (under Misc in the classic skin) to do just what you want.-gadfium 03:11, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Or, instead of scrolling, you could click the links in the table of contents to get to the sections you want. –Pomte 10:32, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
apart from being a fine piece of surreal poetry, the phrase "under misc in the classic skin" means nothing to me. lol. On the other hand, my point is that it is easier to memorise or write down a series of numbers rather than a series of headings. Lgh 23:56, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Assuming that you have not customised the "skin" of Wikipedia, go to "My preferences" at the top of your screen. There's a series of tabs, and the last one is called "Misc". On that tab, you'll see a checkbox called "Auto-number headings". Thanks for the compliment about my poetry.-gadfium 08:59, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Request for a new Category

I propose a new topic called "Internet Video" just like there is a "Voice over IP" Category. Currently there are a lot of apparently unrelated articles with overlapping information such as Internet TV, IPTV and even Internet video which for some surprising reason redirects to Video clip. The "Internet Video" page should contain basic information and then should link to the above mentioned pages. I can start editing the Internet Video page if that is OK. I am new to this level of contribution, so please tell me wha to do next. Oh, and if I have put this in the wrong place, please let me know where to put it. I searched all over for "Category request" and found nothing. Agupte 06:36, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Be bold and create it yourself. Add the articles you want to the category by adding [[Category:Internet video]] to the bottom of the article. Click on the new red-link and create the category page by, at least, adding a parent category. Look at some existing categories to see what the source is like. --Kimontalk 13:19, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
Agupte it sounds like you have done the research and you have a good idea. I echo Kimon's response above, be bold and build it. Jeepday (talk) 13:35, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
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