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Just dropping over here to say firstly that I did see your comments above about the Memorial tablets article - many thanks for those, and I will get back to that eventually. Secondly, I wanted to pick your brains about London cemeteries (not the Big Seven, but the smaller ones). The one I visited the other day was South Ealing Cemetery (red-linking this; unsure what makes a cemetery notable). This was mostly to photograph the Cross of Sacrifice, though ironically there is no real place to use that photo and it was a horribly gloomy day anyway. What I did stumble across was the graves of a couple of Polish generals (Ealing having a big Polish community, during and after WW2). I managed to add the image to the Polish Wikipedia article here ( pl:Henryk Piątkowski (generał)). The other one was pl:Kazimierz Wiśniowski. As far as I can make out, the article over there says he was buried in Gunnersbury Cemetery. Which is still roughly the right area of London, but not the same cemetery. Maybe I should find some Polish editors to help out... Finally, I noticed your user page linked to Yngvadottir's retirement/departure essay. If you are willing to say something about what was said there, would here be a good place? Massive amount said there, and lots of responses that don't seem to actually discuss anything about what was said in that essay. Carcharoth ( talk) 00:44, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
The eastern half of The Roundway is residential with a newsagent, a Chinese takeaway and a Snack Bar in a small parade at the junction with New Road. The western half of The Roundway is also residential with an off licence and an Indian Takeaway, almost opposite Risley Avenue Junior School.), I'd hate to open that particular floodgate, since it would set a precedent for "anything containing something notable is itself notable, and all the potentially notable elements need to be mentioned", and lead to the unwelcome return of pages that look like this.
in American English, "likely" is both an adjective ("it is likely to depict") and an adverb ("it likely depicts"), but in British English it's only an adjective.) actually correct? I felt fairly confident while saying it (and the CUP guide backs me up), but am starting to doubt myself. – iridescent 18:52, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
@ Carcharoth: Any chance for the image for pl:Kazimierz Wiśniowski? -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 01:36, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
Not sure if that lengthy stream of consciousness helps very much; hopefully a few interesting thoughts are buried in there! I will add more if I think of anything pertinent. Will keep this page on my watchlist. PS Good to see Brill on the Main Page today! Hassocks 5489 (Floreat Hova!) 13:24, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
Newyorkbrad, as you may know you have hit one of my pet peeves, the monumental "we've always done it this way" bureaucratic inertia that characterises Wikipedia. (Try to come up with a convincing argument other than "it's the way we've always done it" for the existence of almost any aspect of Wikipedia, from Arbcom to In The News to sidebar navboxes to the civility policy to barnstars. In what other environment would "Block per no climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man" or "obvious duck or at the very least meat" be considered a rational comment? In fact, in what environment other than Wikipedia's warped and un-self-critical culture would WP:No climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man even exist?)
That article assessment scale is a by-product of a decade-old pet project of Jimmy Wales to create an offline version of Wikipedia for that girl in Africa who can save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around her, but only if she's empowered with the knowledge to do so, and the Importance/Quality metric was used to determine which articles got the limited number of berths on the CD-ROM. Nowadays, the girl in Africa is far more likely to have high-speed mobile broadband than she is to have a computer, CD reader and reliable power source to run them, and the CD version of Wikipedia hasn't been published for years. However, "because we've always done it this way" Wikipedia persists with a grading scale which runs "F, G, B, C, Sta, Stu", with an additional grade between G and B only available to articles on hurricanes, computing and military history. You've been here so long it probably seems natural, but stop and think how messed up that must look to every outside observer, and there's no rational reason to keep doing it other than that understanding it gives some people a momentary buzz of "I understand this secret code".
As long as the mainpage remains in its current format [A] I can see grounds for keeping the FA and GA grades, as they determine eligibility for the main page. [B] I can also see grounds for keeping the "stub" classification as it theoretically draws attention to articles in need of expansion, although realistically I question the value of it. (How many people looking to write something actually go through Stub categories looking for something to write about?)
Those "importance" categories were necessary in the days of WP:1.0 when the WMF could talk seriously about "producing a print version of Wikipedia" and it was necessary to decide what was worthy of printing, but are pointless now. Quite aside from "importance" being completely subjective, importance in Wikipedia terms doesn't necessary equate to importance elsewhere, since the most important function of Wikipedia is collating information not easily available elsewhere—for Wikipedia, John Sherman Cooper is a more important article than John F. Kennedy.
I completely agree that "importance" tagging of brand new articles is a pointless and WP:BITEy exercise, except in cases where the article has obviously been moved out of a sandbox in a reasonable state of completion. [C] However, you're not going to change it, since these people have too much time and emotional energy invested in maintaining the status quo. [D] The obsession with tagging and categorization is a perfect storm caused by the interaction of a number of the more toxic aspects of Wikipedia's internal culture and the WMF's inept meddline, and Yngvadottir summed it up better than I ever could.
Carcharoth, I'm not sure how any system running on Mediawiki could avoid pages like John Aiken (disambiguation). No matter how they were categorised and filed, Wikipedia still needs to account for those cases where people type [[John Aiken]] into articles without thinking to check if there's more than one person by that name—the only viable alternative I can see is an unsightly This article is about Air Chief Marshall John Aiken. For the painter, see John Macdonald Aiken. For the hockey player, see John Aiken (ice hockey). For the cricketer, John Aiken (cricketer) and the like at the top of every page which is currently linked to by a disambiguation page, which doesn't seem to be any more user-friendly. – iridescent 17:03, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
With apologies to Iridescent for dumping a huge amount of text here, I'm putting down some thoughts I wrote on another website (Wikipediocracy). It was part of a discussion about missing articles, but might be better placed here, depending on whether there is anything sensible to say.
The initial premise, that there are a large number of articles yet to be written, I don't think anyone here will disagree with. But I've yet to see a systematic approach to demonstrating that. The usual approach tends to be to work from big lists in userspace or projectspace based on the contents of other encyclopedias or similar content.
It would easily be possible to come up with big lists all day long. But the other side of the coin is the number of articles that do exist. If you have been using Wikipedia for years (as many here have), then you will have noticed that red links do get filled in, but it is very difficult to get a feel for the rate at which they are being filled in and created (let alone whether the creations are mostly stubs or proper articles).
Can anyone here think of a way to systematically do that? You need to take a standard list and generate data such as year of creation [many surveys don't bother with this vital piece of information, for some reason] and what state the article was in at the time of the survey. One example I came across today is here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Science and academia/Science Hall of Fame
"This table is a comparison of Wikipedia articles on scientists against Science's January 2011 Science Hall of Fame (SHOF) list."
I came across that because science biographies is one of the areas I read about and edit on in Wikipedia. Deciding where to draw the line is not so easy though. In the past week, I was attempting to find information on a range of early 20th century geneticists and biologists and other scientists. What was interesting was that the list (maybe not completely random, but a fair sample) had about 34 people with articles already.
I then made a list of those 34. I've added the month and year of creation after the article name, and the current talk-page assessment status (plus a re-assessment if I disagree with that). Survey done in April 2015 (this seems to have morphed into a 'is Wikipedia improving' post):
One article from 2001:
Four articles from 2002:
Two articles from 2003:
Six articles from 2004:
Eleven articles from 2005:
Three articles from 2006:
No articles from 2007
Three articles from 2008:
One article from 2009:
No articles from 2010.
One article from 2011:
One article from 2012:
No articles from 2013.
One article from 2014:
No articles from 2015 (yet).
Four (4) stubs; twenty-two (22) starts; five (5) B-class; one (1) GA class; and two (2) FA class.
Ten (10) articles were tagged.
Conclusions from that are nothing new - lots of articles created early on in the history of Wikipedia, with the article creation slowing down but continuing ever since. Article assessments and tagging are often outdated, so are an unreliable guide unless combined with manual checking. Some articles have improved, most have not. Is Wikipedia improving? Probably, but could be better and could be improving faster. Simple tasks are being left undone. More effort and more focus needed.
There were 10 with no Wikipedia articles.
The question is how many of these should have Wikipedia articles? [Why create these articles instead of improving the existing ones?] Some may be too obscure to have anything sensible written about them. My rule of thumb is to see whether the birth and death years are available, and if an obituary was written.
Some are a real struggle to unearth the information (for all the above, I only had the names and nothing else, sometimes just the surname and initials). For Whittinghill, you find a death notice buried deep in an online copy of the November/December 1998 copy of the Carolina Alumni Review. In the case of Nason, it was a real struggle, eventually finding this on some website called 'LibraryThing', which as best I can make out would be someone who owns a book by Nason (who published a number of standard biology textbooks) putting up some biographical details. From that, you get birth and death years, and a possible middle name of Abraham. That then led me to this index (Gale's Literary Index), which has an entry for Nason (and where an obituary was published). Warren Spencer, I eventually found by following a breadcrumb trail from Wooster College to his birth year (1898) to his obituary published 6 years after his death.
Of the above, two have an article in another language Wikipedia:
The only ones I am sure are clearly dead-cert notable are Winthrop Osterhout ( biographical memoir published by the National Academy of Sciences) and Edward Laurens Mark (Hershey Professor of Anatomy and Director of the Zoological Laboratory at Harvard University). The others I am not sure about yet.
[Off-topic: The lack of an article about Edward Laurens Mark is quite ironic in the Wikipedia context, when you realise this guy is said to have invented what became known as the Harvard referencing system. See also parenthetical referencing.]
Anyway, if someone approached this systematically, you might be able to find out whether certain topics are (slowly) being filled in, and at what rate, and you might be able to identify areas that are neglected, but is this sort of analysis something that would point up a glaring deficiency in the current approach (or lack of approach)?
[Another question is who is creating these articles and why?]
One view is that in some cases it is not that the information has not been published, but that it is not yet widely available or online. It might seem that lots is available online, and much more is available than was 10 years or so ago, but there are still huge amounts of published information that the current crowd-sourced approach is not capable of picking up unless libraries and archives and journal/book publishers do more to put information online (but in some cases there is little incentive to do so, and in some cases much incentive not to). Carcharoth ( talk) 01:06, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
<outdent> On "Wikipedia is nowhere near close to filling in the redlinks and entering the maintenance phase", I agree, but some limited areas maybe should be in this fabled 'maintenance phase'. There should be a mechanism for that, a plan of some sort, but there isn't. Carcharoth ( talk) 23:26, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
On "the widely covered core topics by definition can't meet
WP:WIAFA as currently worded" - the example I am most familiar with there is what happened with the improvement and nomination of
sea as a featured article. I went back there for the first time in a while, and found the following on the talk page:
Talk:Sea#Lead sentence and
Talk:Sea#Missing. No idea whether there was any follow up there.
World War I is another example, a rather topical one given the centenary events. It is an interesting example also of a topic that is being revisited and having more written about it with thousands of books being published in the past few years and over the coming years. Where do you draw the line, though, and at what level of expertise? If someone better able to do such an article comes along (e.g. a retired professor in that subject area), should the article be redone or would effort be better directed elsewhere? Is
Middle Ages a counter-example, or an excellent example of how to do this sort of thing?
Carcharoth (
talk) 23:26, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
it is a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature) it's literally impossible to meet WIAFA with an article on any topic too broad to cover in a single article, since you're by definition leaving something out.
The Manchester article really needs a good wash and brush up at some point, there are some things in there which would make me fail it if it ever came up for review:
Going back to the subject of completeness, I rustled up lists for the awards presented by the
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. The two main awards are the
Hayden Memorial Geological Award and the
Leidy Award. I was pleasantly surprised to find that there is only one article missing from the former (out of 39) and only three articles missing from the latter (out of 26). I wasn't sure whether to make the other two awards into separate lists [no reason not to really, might do that later], so put the lists in the Academy's article:
Gold Medal for Distinction in Natural History Art and
Richard Hopper Day Memorial Medal. Only one (of 11) missing from the former, and four (of 19) missing from the latter. The overall total is nine (9) missing from a total of ninety-five (95). That is 9-10%. A few years ago, I suspect the number of red-links would have been higher (the filling in over time can be shown progressing as you move forward from 2001 to the present).
Anyway, the nine missing articles (with some potential sources) are:
Gilles Joseph Gustave Dewalque
[2]
[3];
Warren Poppino Spencer
[4];
Herbert Barker Hungerford
[5];
Donn Eric Rosen
[6]
[7]
es
species;
Guy Tudor
[8]
[9];
Lawrence A. Shumaker
[10]
[11]
[12];
Andreas B. Rechnitzer
[13];
Charles A. Berry
[14]; and
Robert McCracken Peck
[15]. I've made lists like this in the past, and sometimes it is more interesting to wait and see when (if) the articles get created (and why) rather than create them now. If anyone has a lot of time on their hands, they can look through
Talk:Howard N. Potts Medal,
Talk:Benjamin Franklin Medal (Franklin Institute),
Talk:Franklin Medal,
Talk:Stuart Ballantine Medal (I cheated here and turned three of the redlinks blue myself).
I'm wondering, if I go back to just the lists I created, and make a master list of redlinks still to be filled in, how long that would be and how long it would take to fill in... Reading and writing biographical articles can be rather a surreal experience sometimes. Like living several lifetimes in one.
Carcharoth (
talk) 02:06, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
"I really favour not having a biography article at all until after the subject is dead (and at that point, if needed, the historical assessment process starts, or in some cases concludes) and up until that point you either have no article, or a strictly word-limited article (plus picture if available) with a link to an official website or other resources, if they exist. The reason for limiting the word count is to make it easier to maintain BLP articles as short informative stubs (I mean really short!). On the other hand, if you don't couple that with a tightening of the notability criteria, you end up with a Who's Who directory. But that might still be better than the current situation." - Carcharoth. I then turned up at WP:BLPN and pointed out that Barclay Knapp was a sad lonely article with issues, and SBHB made a bid for a scorched earth approach: "Instead, Wikipedia should have a goal of eliminating 90% of BLPs by year-end 2015." - Short Brigade Harvester Boris.
Starting a new section here simply so my reply doesn't get lost, as the page has moved on since the other day. (I'm pleased to see it, and you, so active here again.)
Thank you for the background and history of the article-rating system, which you are right helps explain why it evolved the way it did.
I agree that "we do it this way because we always did it this way" is a poor reason to do anything. At the same time, we can't be in a state of perpetually reevaluating everything we do, because that leads to a state of too much discussion and not enough action on anything, to say nothing of the distraction from mainspace. And all experienced editors have probably come to the conclusion that "perennial proposals" will never be implemented. But once in awhile, suddenly, consensus changes and proves us wrong about that. (Not that it was a huge change, but the implementation of inactivity rules for administrators, after several years of agreement that there shouldn't be any, is an example that comes to mind.)
I happen to generally approve of the structure of the main page, but again, that might just be out of force of habit or what I am used to, as opposed to thinking that it is what we would design if a group of editors were given the blank page and asked to redesign it. One discussion forum that I've been participating in on-and-off lately is WP:ITN/C, which selects blurbs for the "in the news" feature and the accompanying "recent deaths" (RD) line. Speaking of my pet peeves ... There is a strong view frequently expressed there that no one's death should be posted to RD unless there are abundant inline citations in every section the person's article. The stated rationale for the rule is that the main page is for "our best work" and any article without lots of specific references can't qualify as that. The operational value of enforcing this view is that it can motivate people who want the RD posted to spend the time improving the article and adding references, before attention shifts elsewhere. On the other hand, the downside is that highly notable RDs sometimes don't get posted due to disagreements about article quality, because some or other section is unreferenced, even though the article quality is perfectly reasonable and is well above average for Wikipedia articles as a whole. (I am not talking about unreferenced negative or controversial statements; sometimes it's a list of film credits or the like.) When I urge that such an article get posted before the recent death is no longer "recent," I find myself accused of losing site of the project's goals and seeking to reduce the quality of the encyclopedia. Feh.
Another example I have wondered about literally for years, but hesitate to raise even now, is featured article review (FAR) and featured article removal (FARC). This is a process I haven't yet participated in (I still need to get my FA done, or for that matter started; pfui on me for stalling on article-writing by spending my time writing this sort of thing), and have participated in very occasionally if at all, and I certainly don't mean to be critical in the least of the people who organize the FAR process and participate in FAR. But ... is this a process that serves a purpose that justifies the time spent on it? I can understand reassessing if an article that was promoted to FA long ago hasn't yet been mainpaged. But, let's suppose an article was promoted to FA in 2006 and ran on the mainpage in 2007 (those were the dates for the article that's at the top of the FAR page as I type this). What is the value in asking in 2015 whether the article still meets the FA criteria or not? If the effect is typically that editors move in and further enhance or renew the quality of the article, great! But is that what usually happens?—does this process indeed motivate article improvements, or does it merely distract attention from the next round of articles? (I put to one side the fact that an improvement often demanded is more inline citations, which to my taste threaten to turn articles into footnote salad.)
Or am I asking the wrong question, and undermining one of the few quality control mechanisms we have, when what we need is more of them rather than fewer? We definitely need more quality control. I noted in this book review I wrote last summer that we have a dozen dedicated noticeboards, for everything from copyright problems to sourcing issues to edit-warring ... but we don't have a space (beyond individual article talkpages that may be drastically underwatched) to raise concerns about whether the article content is right or wrong....
I suppose the Village Pump is the place where proposals for changes in how we operate are logically posted—but the discussion there is often diffuse. I wonder if there should be a method of selecting one particular aspect or feature of the project at a time and convening a community discussion for, say, a month about how to improve that aspect? Someone would have to show some leadership in selecting the discussion topic, and since the project is in some ways intentionally leaderless, I don't know if that is practicable.
Thoughts? This has been unusually meandering even for me, so take from it what you will. Newyorkbrad ( talk) 16:03, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
Would {{ Ref supports2}} be able to handle the situation where multiple references support a single fact? This situation isn't wildly uncommon— Jan Bondeson, for instance, is a perfectly respectable medical historian. He's by far the most readily available source on the history of teratology, so I try to cite to him where possible as it makes it easier for readers to check for themselves. However, he also has something of a (well-deserved) reputation for sloppiness and inaccuracy and for passing off his own opinions as undisputed fact, so whenever I cite him for something contentious I try to cite something else to back up the claim, even though it leads to double-footnotes and Brad's dreaded footnote salad.
An obvious drawback I can see is the same problem I have with list-defined references, and even citation templates to some extent; that it makes the edit window absolutely incomprehensible to newcomers. A new editor, even one with no experience, can grasp "put the fact, then put <ref>, then put where you found it, then put </ref>", and even though they may not get the reference formatting correct they'll get the information in place in such a way that it's easy to clean up later, or to see exactly which source they've used and explain why it isn't appropriate to use.
Under the {{
Ref supports2}} system, the edit window is frankly incomprehensible; a new editor wanting to amend
this 16-word paragraph will be confronted with The tender twig of this plant is used as a toothbrush in south-east Africa and India.{{Ref supports2|<ref>Saurabh Rajvaidhya ''et al.'' (2012) [http://www.ijpsr.com/V3I7/13%20Vol.%203,%20Issue%207,%20July%202012,%20RE-654,%20Paper%2013.pdf "A review on ''Acacia Arabica'', an Indian medicinal plant"] ''International Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Research'' Vol 3(7) pp 1995-2005</ref>|"The tender twig of this plant is used as a toothbrush"}}{{Ref supports2|<ref>A Hooda, M Rathee, J Singh (2009) [https://ispub.com/IJFP/9/2/4968 "Chewing Sticks In The Era Of Toothbrush: A Review"], ''The Internet Journal of Family Practice'' Vol 9(2)</ref>|"used as a toothbrush in south-east Africa and India"}}
when they click "edit". To quote
my comment to NYB on the article assessment scale a couple of sections up, "You've been here so long it probably seems natural, but stop and think how messed up that must look to every outside observer".
If I were a new editor confronted with that, my reaction would be "those people who say Wikipedia is a club of self-important nerds speaking an incomprehensible private language were right", and never try to edit again. The academics and professionals Wikipedia wants to attract aren't, in general, going to want to take the time to learn an arcane markup language which isn't used anywhere else; the Visual Editor project may have been an expensive fiasco thanks to the ineptness of Brandon Harris and the arrogance of James Forrester, but the WMF were correct to try to pursue it.
If I were making the decisions, I'd be pushing a system where one highlights a block of text in edit-mode, clicks "reference this", and fills in a pre-formatted popup citation template, with the references themselves being saved as subpages in a separate namespace so they aren't visible in edit mode unless one clicks "edit references". However, I am not the one making these decisions; that would be these fine characters, none of whom have ever shown any great degree of willingness to listen to anyone suggest things aren't perfect the way they are, unless said suggestion already happens to be their pet project. – iridescent 16:56, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
"...I wanted to share more about the plans for the Community Tech team. The creation of this team is a direct response to community requests for more technical support. Their mission is to understand and support the technical needs of core contributors, including improved support for expert-focused curation and moderation tools, bots, and other features. Their mandate is to work closely with you, and the Community Engagement department, to define their roadmap and deliverables. We are hiring for a leader for this team, as well as additional engineers. We will be looking within our communities to help. Until then, it will be incubated under Toby Negrin, with support from Community Engagement. ..."
Newyorkbrad, to answer a few of your FAR questions.
But ... is this a process that serves a purpose that justifies the time spent on it? I can understand reassessing if an article that was promoted to FA long ago hasn't yet been mainpaged. But, let's suppose an article was promoted to FA in 2006 and ran on the mainpage in 2007 (those were the dates for the article that's at the top of the FAR page as I type this). What is the value in asking in 2015 whether the article still meets the FA criteria or not? If the effect is typically that editors move in and further enhance or renew the quality of the article, great! But is that what usually happens?—does this process indeed motivate article improvements, or does it merely distract attention from the next round of articles? (I put to one side the fact that an improvement often demanded is more inline citations, which to my taste threaten to turn articles into footnote salad.)
See:
This one-way street has led, in turn, to a separate problem of extra review required when choosing Today's featured article for the mainpage, as there are so many deficient FAs "on the books". The TFA schedulers can no longer assume that an FA is mainpage ready. And where one person used to be able to pick and schedule all TFAs, we now need apparently three. Whether we assess at FAR, or assess via a separate effort that has sprung up to address the moribund FAR at User:Dweller/Featured Articles that haven't been on Main Page, resources are going into sorting out the deficient FAs anyway.
Is FAR worth the effort? Well, improvement does happen, regardless of outcome. And, if FA has become a one-way street, why are we still running FAs on the mainpage? Google hits are really where the action is now anyway, so shouldn't we be striving to assure quality across the board, for all readers, rather than focusing review on whichever FA is going to run TFA (that is, focus on overall improvement rather than one day's hits)? What about after TFA, and the third to half of FAs that are full of unvetted crap? Restoring FAR to a functioning process-- and hopefully restoring a culture that values the star across the board, not just as fodder for TFA-- will hopefully bring quality back up across more articles, and not just for those that run TFA. That was how the two processes worked historically-- it was a matter of pride in the bronze star and a desire to maintain quality across the board. Whether that culture can be restored is another question, but I'm game to try. If ongoing reassessment is not done, what is an FA, anyway? It has increasingly become something that three people pass. If we eliminate FAR, why not eliminate FAC as well ? The skill set is the same, and for FAC reviewers to take a moment each day to also check or pitch in on a FAR should not be a big deal.
HTH.Iri, relative to autism and schizophrenia, Tourette syndrome is not densely cited at all ... have a look at that citation wrap issue at autism, for example!
And since you're on the topic of "Pet wikipeeves", one of mine is FA writers who only review FAs of their "friends", won't review anything else to help train up others and improve the overall pool, can't be bothered with FAR, don't care about the overall quality issue, only care about getting TFAs, and will never Oppose a FAC because <gasp>, then someone might oppose one of theirs! If we decide that FAR isn't necessary, let's do away with FAC as well. But please be assured, there was once as much pride associated with restoring an article to status at FAR as there was in getting one promoted at FAC; just ask the old-timers (oh, you can't ... with the exception of Ceoil, most of us who once worked there are mostly departed). SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 03:11, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
I would love it if the WMF configured the Main Page to make every feature opt-in and cookie-controlled, meaning people (including the general public, not just logged-in users) interested in DYK, TFA, OTD etc could choose to keep seeing them, while people could perma-hide those parts they aren't interested in. Not only would it give fields not currently represented on the MP—random articles, featured sounds, country- or topic-specific FAs—a chance to prove their worth, it would also drive home how little most readers care about some of Wikipedia's Cherished Institutions™. I would give reasonable odds that given a free choice, more than 50% of readers would opt for a Google-style main page and choose to hide every element other than a searchbar, and more than 90% (probably more like 99%) would choose to hide In The News and On This Day. Because it holds such exalted status in Wikipedia's internal MMORPG, it's easy to lose sight of how little the outside world cares about the content of the main page. Taking 1955 MacArthur Airport United Airlines crash (not to single it out for any reason, but just because it's a recent TFA on a reasonably interesting topic), it got 18,742 page views on its day in the sun. On the same day, the main page got 17,081,542 page views, meaning the highest profile link on Wikipedia's main page had a click-through rate of roughly one reader in a thousand. It would also finally put a stop to the interminable discussions at Wikipedia:Main page redesign proposals which have been going on without result for eight years now.The overwhelming majority—as in, well over 99%—of visitors to the main page don't click a single one of the links on it and don't care what goes on the main page.
You mentioned LDR, and I had no idea what it stands for, - guessed from the context that you mean list-defined references? I had no idea of background and history but saw them and use them where I may (unless for more complicated articles where I want to quote different sections of one source), example pictured above. They simply make sense to me. Whenever I want to fix a ref in an unknown article (add a title to a bare url being the most frequent wish), I find it so much more helpful to find that thing where I expect it, under the label "References", than searching through the complete article. If I want to fix a date in a ref by some author, I find it so much more helpful to know where to look in an alpha-sorted list. If I want to change text in an article, I find it so much more helpful not to have to "read around" the longish refs. A newbie will probably edit the whole article anyway, - section editing is not the first thing they will see. If editing a section, you may find a named ref in one, while it is defined in another. - I had no idea that my view is a minority but don't mind ;) --- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 11:03, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
You've been here so long it probably seems natural, but stop and think how messed up that must look to every outside observer, and there's no rational reason to keep doing it other than that understanding it gives some people a momentary buzz of "I understand this secret code". Unfortunately AFAIK the WMF have never shown any inclination to grasp that particular nettle. – iridescent 12:06, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
I was initially against LDR when it was first introduced, as it meant either having two edit windows open or editing the entire article rather than just a single section. But I use it all the time now, although I am one of those criminals tainted by being near the top of the WP:WBFAN list. The real solution of course is to completely redesign the citation system, but that will likely never happen. Eric Corbett 20:51, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
I'm told VisualEditor now supports automagically filling in references using just a nytimes.com URL or whatever. I haven't played with it much myself. For references generally, it's increasingly clear the current system isn't working. Every time this comes up, people usually point to Wikidata as the solution. If/when arbitrary Wikidata querying is enabled here (hopefully in 2015), it might be a real option for references. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 00:58, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
"Data may be accessed in client Wikis using a Lua Scribunto interface. Apart from that, all data may be retrieved independently using the API.", which to anyone unfamiliar with web design might as well be written in Japanese. As an experiment, assume you're a new user who doesn't know what API stands for and wants to find out; see how many steps it takes following links from that "introduction" page.)
{{insert birthday of article subject from wikidata}}
for example. That would be neat, I think.★ "ANI flu". pablo 10:02, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
On 10 May 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article The Destroying Angel and Daemons of Evil Interrupting the Orgies of the Vicious and Intemperate, which you recently created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that The Destroying Angel and Daemons of Evil Interrupting the Orgies of the Vicious and Intemperate (detail pictured) depicts around 25 semi-naked human figures, each expressing terror in a different way? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/The Destroying Angel and Daemons of Evil Interrupting the Orgies of the Vicious and Intemperate. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
Heh, The Destroying Angel actually beat Sirens in terms of page views, which kind of ruins my naked women=page views hypothesis. (There are a couple of topless bacchantes, but I'd challenge anyone to make them out at 100px resolution. To be frank, I'd challenge anyone to make out anything of what is actually going on in the picture at this resolution, even cropped down to only show the central Raving Madness tableau.) – iridescent 09:10, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
Wanted to know what improvements can I make to my page to prevent deletion? Himanshu Suri ( talk) 08:01, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
I'd like to review the speedy deltion of "Autoblopnik", please. The page was tagged and deleted within a few hours, and there was no time for adequate discussion. Pages about other web sites with similar content exist on Wikipedia (Sniff Petrol, The Truth About Cars), so I think Autoblopnik should have its own page. The site's appeal is narrow, but it's very well known in the automotive community. Thanks! GH Ack, wasn't logged in. GH Gearhead4847 ( talk) 14:29, 1 June 2015 (UTC)Gearhead4847
I contest the basis of your revision and deletion on the basis the referances
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Polgardi1 ( talk • contribs) 15:21, 1 June 2015 (UTC)Hello, could you please restore Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and AfD it? It is a major research institution and I expect that it meets WP:GNG. I would like the issue examined in AfD. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:19, 1 June 2015 (UTC) |
The phrasing of your opposition to the VP proposal regarding the MoS is inappropriate. Darkfrog24 ( talk) 13:58, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
I have ups and downs in my feelings about how effective the Arbitration Committee was during my years of service; I can think of problems we resolved, and problems we failed to resolve, and things we made better and things we made worse. As I've written more than once (for example, somewhere in here, we especially aren't very good—as a project, I'm not just talking about ArbCom—about systematically going back and reviewing which approaches to dispute resolution have worked well and which have not.
That said, I am going to gratuitously flatter myself and my quondam colleagues to the extent of saying I think that the outcomes, in the matters I participated in at least, were significantly better than random chance. Make of that faint praise what you will. Newyorkbrad ( talk) 21:22, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
Take this somewhere else; my talkpage is neither the Arbcom Appeals Court nor Wikipediocracy Lite, despite the number of people who appear to think otherwise. Why is it that this page seems to be the first place people run to when they feel the need to try to rake over the embers of the infobox wars? If you want to talk about getting FA standards changed, or if you want to chat about whether TFA selections fairly represent the contents of WP:FANMP, I'm sure everyone at WT:FA and WT:TFA would be delighted to have yet another interminable thread on the matter.
We have posted an article titled - Seer Akademi. It was our first experience on writing article on Wikipedia. It was deleted under Speedy Deletion category with G11 - unambiguous promotional material. We are absolutely certain that we neither were promoting the organization, individual or product or service. We have provided the following:
1. Evolution of an organization to tell the path it had taken and it served as a background or context to the article. 2. A unique pedagogy or teaching approach that has been innovated we wanted others to learn from it.
Would like to understand in detail the reasons so that we can either make the improvement or drop the idea of publishing an article on Wiki.
Any mentoring will be highly appreciated.
Seer A123 ( talk) 11:23, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
Hi,
I noticed that you deleted the article Saleh Al-Talib. Could you also delete the redirect Salih_Al-Talib?
Thanks RookTaker ( talk) 17:17, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
I must say that's a first. What was wrong? -- BDD ( talk) 21:59, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Technical 13. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Technical 13/Evidence. Please add your evidence by June 30, 2015, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Technical 13/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Liz Read! Talk! 01:49, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Did you see this Cleopatra? How does it compare? -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 11:42, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article The World Before the Flood you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Poltair -- Poltair ( talk) 13:41, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
The article The World Before the Flood you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:The World Before the Flood for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Poltair -- Poltair ( talk) 22:01, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
Hello, Iridescent. From the literary side of the fence, the words "a level of offensiveness one would expect from a foreign, not a British, artist" in the hook currently in prep read like a quote, but are not in quotation marks. If they are a direct quote (which I can't verify), how would you feel about indicating the fact? Or I could be wrong … Awien ( talk) 21:53, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
On 25 June 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews his Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of his Ministers, as She Goes to Bed, which you recently created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews his Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of his Ministers, as She Goes to Bed (pictured) was accused of a level of offensiveness one would expect from a foreign, not a British, artist? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews his Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of his Ministers, as She Goes to Bed. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
On 28 June 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Portrait of Mlle Rachel, which you recently created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that Portrait of Mlle Rachel (detail pictured) has an oil sketch of a crouching nude woman on its reverse? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Portrait of Mlle Rachel. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
On July 1 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Musidora: The Bather 'At the Doubtful Breeze Alarmed', which you recently nominated. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Musidora: The Bather 'At the Doubtful Breeze Alarmed'. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
Very good article - bravo!
Awien (
talk) 11:40, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
Hello! Your submission of Template:Did you know nominations/The Wrestlers (painting) at the Did You Know nominations page is not complete; see step 3 of the nomination procedure. If you do not want to continue with the nomination, tag the nomination page with {{ db-g7}}, or ask a DYK admin. Thank you. DYKHousekeepingBot ( talk) 00:54, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
Hello! Your submission of Template:Did you know nominations/The World Before the Flood at the Did You Know nominations page is not complete; see step 3 of the nomination procedure. If you do not want to continue with the nomination, tag the nomination page with {{ db-g7}}, or ask a DYK admin. Thank you. DYKHousekeepingBot ( talk) 00:54, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
Hello! Your submission of Template:Did you know nominations/Youth on the Prow, and Pleasure at the Helm at the Did You Know nominations page is not complete; see step 3 of the nomination procedure. If you do not want to continue with the nomination, tag the nomination page with {{ db-g7}}, or ask a DYK admin. Thank you. DYKHousekeepingBot ( talk) 00:54, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
Hello! Your submission of Template:Did you know nominations/The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished at the Did You Know nominations page is not complete; see step 3 of the nomination procedure. If you do not want to continue with the nomination, tag the nomination page with {{ db-g7}}, or ask a DYK admin. Thank you. DYKHousekeepingBot ( talk) 00:54, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
On 5 July 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Youth on the Prow, and Pleasure at the Helm, which you recently created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that the exhibition of Youth on the Prow, and Pleasure at the Helm (detail pictured) prompted the comment that "no decent family can hang such sights against their wall"? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Youth on the Prow, and Pleasure at the Helm. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
On 7 July 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article The Wrestlers (painting), which you recently created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that the intense lighting of The Wrestlers (pictured) highlights the curves, musculature, and sweat of the participants' naked bodies as they embrace and grapple? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/The Wrestlers (painting). You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
Greetings!
I am happy to introduce you to the new WikiProject Hampshire! The newly designed WikiProject features automatically updated work lists, article quality class predictions, and a feed that tracks discussions on the 2,690 talk pages tagged by the WikiProject. Our hope is that these new tools will help you as a Wikipedia editor interested in Hampshire.
Hope to see you join! Harej ( talk) 20:42, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
A summary of a Featured Article you nominated at WP:FAC will appear on the Main Page soon. Was there anything I left out you'd like to see put back in? - Dank ( push to talk) 00:13, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
On 12 July 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished, which you recently created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that the right foot of the female figure in The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished "seems actually to glow with the rich juice of life"? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
On 13 July 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article The World Before the Flood, which you recently created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that The World Before the Flood (detail pictured) was described on its initial exhibition as a "deadly sin against good taste"? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/The World Before the Flood. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
Thanks, thanks, thanks. I am new, so I have a lot to learn. I get it now and will rewrite accordingly. I am glad to see you are working on behalf of the arts. Many fine craft and woodworker pages are pretty lame. It would be great to see those improve radically over time. Several craft curators, critics, and historians have commented on Sartorius, but hardly anyone ever says anything even slightly negative, unlike other fine arts. The print media tends to be positive and therefore sounds nothing but promotional. I get the idea now on how to cover the juried craft shows,awards, etc. I'll get to it tonight, after the day job. I appreciate your work on behalf of Wikipedia 130.160.143.223 ( talk) 14:55, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
On 3 July 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball, which you recently created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball (pictured) was commissioned from England's foremost painter of nudes by a Conservative Member of Parliament who wanted a picture of his daughters? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
I've seen you pop up and down my watchlist with your AWB runs and it reminded me of this discussion at the WP:India noticeboard regarding AWB runs on our numerous village articles. Would it be possible for you to do those runs when you have some time? A lot of these articles need some amount of typo fixing, grammar checks, and MOS changes among other minor changes. The can be addressed by districts, and typically each district can come with one census reference which could be added to all articles under that district. cheers. — Spaceman Spiff 17:18, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
The Chungtia war dance is one of the most macho war dances which is a treat to watchfrom 2007 until about 30 seconds ago, and you can see something similar in the history of a substantial proportion of articles.) Sitush, do you have any thoughts on this? – iridescent 17:41, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
While it's not a statistically significant sample, I think the general pattern of the village articles is likely to follow this sort of a split. #1 and #3 have mostly bot/AWB activity outside of the creator. #2 has had its share of problems unaddressed for quite a while now, so I'm not entirely sure that running AWB might hide the problem for a longer duration, but I see that an AWB run on the other two groupings would definitely be helpful. RexxS, I'm not active on the indic wikis, but if you think testing something like a Wikidata populated set of village articles might be worth a try I can check with some of them on that. — Spaceman Spiff 04:26, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
"That article assessment scale is a by-product of a decade-old pet project of Jimmy Wales to create an offline version of Wikipedia for that girl in Africa who can save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around her, but only if she's empowered with the knowledge to do so, and the Importance/Quality metric was used to determine which articles got the limited number of berths on the CD-ROM. Nowadays, the girl in Africa is far more likely to have high-speed mobile broadband than she is to have a computer, CD reader and reliable power source to run them, and the CD version of Wikipedia hasn't been published for years. However, "because we've always done it this way" Wikipedia persists with a grading scale which runs "F, G, B, C, Sta, Stu", with an additional grade between G and B only available to articles on hurricanes, computing and military history. You've been here so long it probably seems natural, but stop and think how messed up that must look to every outside observer, and there's no rational reason to keep doing it other than that understanding it gives some people a momentary buzz of "I understand this secret code". Those "importance" categories were necessary in the days of WP:1.0 when the WMF could talk seriously about "producing a print version of Wikipedia" and it was necessary to decide what was worthy of printing, but are pointless now. Quite aside from "importance" being completely subjective, importance in Wikipedia terms doesn't necessary equate to importance elsewhere, since the most important function of Wikipedia is collating information not easily available elsewhere—for Wikipedia, John Sherman Cooper is a more important article than John F. Kennedy.", if you missed it.) Personally, I would say the only assessment categories Wikipedia should have should be "Needs major work", "Adequate" and "Realistically as good as it's likely to get".
The [ page you've deleted] on June 8 2015 was missing sources to prove the subject's notability. I am happy to work on correcting that if you put it back in a sandbox under my account. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Youreadme ( talk • contribs) 23:24, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
On 7 August 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article William Etty, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the art of William Etty (pictured) was considered so obscene, the press were concerned that it discouraged women from entering rooms where it was on display? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/William Etty. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
Hello there! Thanks for getting in touch. I've not spoken to the folks at the Scottish National Gallery so far, but I can certainly make enquiries... :) Lirazelf ( talk) 10:27, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
On 8 August 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article The Triumph of Cleopatra, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that The Triumph of Cleopatra depicts Cleopatra's golden poop? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/The Triumph of Cleopatra. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
(cur | prev) 17:11, 7 August 2015 Iridescent (talk | contribs) . . (131,644 bytes) (-22) . . (Undid revision 675004524 by ♥Golf (talk) The one in England is clearly the primary usage; there's no need to specify the country) (undo | thank)
What in the hell is your problem? Do you have a corn cob stuck up your ass or what? You are the rudest son-of-a-bitch I've ever come across. Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on. -- EditorExtraordinaire ( talk) 22:43, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
Etty never even visited America, stop trying to change this to en-usand
The one in England is clearly the primary usage; there's no need to specify the countryare "the rudest things you've ever come across" and on a par with "Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on", I'm really not sure how to respond to you, nor do I have any particular desire to. ( Newyorkbrad, remind me again how this is OK but "sycophant" isn't?) – iridescent 23:22, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
Love the William Etty article! Maury Markowitz ( talk) 13:01, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 15 | Archive 16 | Archive 17 | Archive 18 | Archive 19 | Archive 20 | → | Archive 25 |
Just dropping over here to say firstly that I did see your comments above about the Memorial tablets article - many thanks for those, and I will get back to that eventually. Secondly, I wanted to pick your brains about London cemeteries (not the Big Seven, but the smaller ones). The one I visited the other day was South Ealing Cemetery (red-linking this; unsure what makes a cemetery notable). This was mostly to photograph the Cross of Sacrifice, though ironically there is no real place to use that photo and it was a horribly gloomy day anyway. What I did stumble across was the graves of a couple of Polish generals (Ealing having a big Polish community, during and after WW2). I managed to add the image to the Polish Wikipedia article here ( pl:Henryk Piątkowski (generał)). The other one was pl:Kazimierz Wiśniowski. As far as I can make out, the article over there says he was buried in Gunnersbury Cemetery. Which is still roughly the right area of London, but not the same cemetery. Maybe I should find some Polish editors to help out... Finally, I noticed your user page linked to Yngvadottir's retirement/departure essay. If you are willing to say something about what was said there, would here be a good place? Massive amount said there, and lots of responses that don't seem to actually discuss anything about what was said in that essay. Carcharoth ( talk) 00:44, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
The eastern half of The Roundway is residential with a newsagent, a Chinese takeaway and a Snack Bar in a small parade at the junction with New Road. The western half of The Roundway is also residential with an off licence and an Indian Takeaway, almost opposite Risley Avenue Junior School.), I'd hate to open that particular floodgate, since it would set a precedent for "anything containing something notable is itself notable, and all the potentially notable elements need to be mentioned", and lead to the unwelcome return of pages that look like this.
in American English, "likely" is both an adjective ("it is likely to depict") and an adverb ("it likely depicts"), but in British English it's only an adjective.) actually correct? I felt fairly confident while saying it (and the CUP guide backs me up), but am starting to doubt myself. – iridescent 18:52, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
@ Carcharoth: Any chance for the image for pl:Kazimierz Wiśniowski? -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 01:36, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
Not sure if that lengthy stream of consciousness helps very much; hopefully a few interesting thoughts are buried in there! I will add more if I think of anything pertinent. Will keep this page on my watchlist. PS Good to see Brill on the Main Page today! Hassocks 5489 (Floreat Hova!) 13:24, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
Newyorkbrad, as you may know you have hit one of my pet peeves, the monumental "we've always done it this way" bureaucratic inertia that characterises Wikipedia. (Try to come up with a convincing argument other than "it's the way we've always done it" for the existence of almost any aspect of Wikipedia, from Arbcom to In The News to sidebar navboxes to the civility policy to barnstars. In what other environment would "Block per no climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man" or "obvious duck or at the very least meat" be considered a rational comment? In fact, in what environment other than Wikipedia's warped and un-self-critical culture would WP:No climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man even exist?)
That article assessment scale is a by-product of a decade-old pet project of Jimmy Wales to create an offline version of Wikipedia for that girl in Africa who can save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around her, but only if she's empowered with the knowledge to do so, and the Importance/Quality metric was used to determine which articles got the limited number of berths on the CD-ROM. Nowadays, the girl in Africa is far more likely to have high-speed mobile broadband than she is to have a computer, CD reader and reliable power source to run them, and the CD version of Wikipedia hasn't been published for years. However, "because we've always done it this way" Wikipedia persists with a grading scale which runs "F, G, B, C, Sta, Stu", with an additional grade between G and B only available to articles on hurricanes, computing and military history. You've been here so long it probably seems natural, but stop and think how messed up that must look to every outside observer, and there's no rational reason to keep doing it other than that understanding it gives some people a momentary buzz of "I understand this secret code".
As long as the mainpage remains in its current format [A] I can see grounds for keeping the FA and GA grades, as they determine eligibility for the main page. [B] I can also see grounds for keeping the "stub" classification as it theoretically draws attention to articles in need of expansion, although realistically I question the value of it. (How many people looking to write something actually go through Stub categories looking for something to write about?)
Those "importance" categories were necessary in the days of WP:1.0 when the WMF could talk seriously about "producing a print version of Wikipedia" and it was necessary to decide what was worthy of printing, but are pointless now. Quite aside from "importance" being completely subjective, importance in Wikipedia terms doesn't necessary equate to importance elsewhere, since the most important function of Wikipedia is collating information not easily available elsewhere—for Wikipedia, John Sherman Cooper is a more important article than John F. Kennedy.
I completely agree that "importance" tagging of brand new articles is a pointless and WP:BITEy exercise, except in cases where the article has obviously been moved out of a sandbox in a reasonable state of completion. [C] However, you're not going to change it, since these people have too much time and emotional energy invested in maintaining the status quo. [D] The obsession with tagging and categorization is a perfect storm caused by the interaction of a number of the more toxic aspects of Wikipedia's internal culture and the WMF's inept meddline, and Yngvadottir summed it up better than I ever could.
Carcharoth, I'm not sure how any system running on Mediawiki could avoid pages like John Aiken (disambiguation). No matter how they were categorised and filed, Wikipedia still needs to account for those cases where people type [[John Aiken]] into articles without thinking to check if there's more than one person by that name—the only viable alternative I can see is an unsightly This article is about Air Chief Marshall John Aiken. For the painter, see John Macdonald Aiken. For the hockey player, see John Aiken (ice hockey). For the cricketer, John Aiken (cricketer) and the like at the top of every page which is currently linked to by a disambiguation page, which doesn't seem to be any more user-friendly. – iridescent 17:03, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
With apologies to Iridescent for dumping a huge amount of text here, I'm putting down some thoughts I wrote on another website (Wikipediocracy). It was part of a discussion about missing articles, but might be better placed here, depending on whether there is anything sensible to say.
The initial premise, that there are a large number of articles yet to be written, I don't think anyone here will disagree with. But I've yet to see a systematic approach to demonstrating that. The usual approach tends to be to work from big lists in userspace or projectspace based on the contents of other encyclopedias or similar content.
It would easily be possible to come up with big lists all day long. But the other side of the coin is the number of articles that do exist. If you have been using Wikipedia for years (as many here have), then you will have noticed that red links do get filled in, but it is very difficult to get a feel for the rate at which they are being filled in and created (let alone whether the creations are mostly stubs or proper articles).
Can anyone here think of a way to systematically do that? You need to take a standard list and generate data such as year of creation [many surveys don't bother with this vital piece of information, for some reason] and what state the article was in at the time of the survey. One example I came across today is here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Science and academia/Science Hall of Fame
"This table is a comparison of Wikipedia articles on scientists against Science's January 2011 Science Hall of Fame (SHOF) list."
I came across that because science biographies is one of the areas I read about and edit on in Wikipedia. Deciding where to draw the line is not so easy though. In the past week, I was attempting to find information on a range of early 20th century geneticists and biologists and other scientists. What was interesting was that the list (maybe not completely random, but a fair sample) had about 34 people with articles already.
I then made a list of those 34. I've added the month and year of creation after the article name, and the current talk-page assessment status (plus a re-assessment if I disagree with that). Survey done in April 2015 (this seems to have morphed into a 'is Wikipedia improving' post):
One article from 2001:
Four articles from 2002:
Two articles from 2003:
Six articles from 2004:
Eleven articles from 2005:
Three articles from 2006:
No articles from 2007
Three articles from 2008:
One article from 2009:
No articles from 2010.
One article from 2011:
One article from 2012:
No articles from 2013.
One article from 2014:
No articles from 2015 (yet).
Four (4) stubs; twenty-two (22) starts; five (5) B-class; one (1) GA class; and two (2) FA class.
Ten (10) articles were tagged.
Conclusions from that are nothing new - lots of articles created early on in the history of Wikipedia, with the article creation slowing down but continuing ever since. Article assessments and tagging are often outdated, so are an unreliable guide unless combined with manual checking. Some articles have improved, most have not. Is Wikipedia improving? Probably, but could be better and could be improving faster. Simple tasks are being left undone. More effort and more focus needed.
There were 10 with no Wikipedia articles.
The question is how many of these should have Wikipedia articles? [Why create these articles instead of improving the existing ones?] Some may be too obscure to have anything sensible written about them. My rule of thumb is to see whether the birth and death years are available, and if an obituary was written.
Some are a real struggle to unearth the information (for all the above, I only had the names and nothing else, sometimes just the surname and initials). For Whittinghill, you find a death notice buried deep in an online copy of the November/December 1998 copy of the Carolina Alumni Review. In the case of Nason, it was a real struggle, eventually finding this on some website called 'LibraryThing', which as best I can make out would be someone who owns a book by Nason (who published a number of standard biology textbooks) putting up some biographical details. From that, you get birth and death years, and a possible middle name of Abraham. That then led me to this index (Gale's Literary Index), which has an entry for Nason (and where an obituary was published). Warren Spencer, I eventually found by following a breadcrumb trail from Wooster College to his birth year (1898) to his obituary published 6 years after his death.
Of the above, two have an article in another language Wikipedia:
The only ones I am sure are clearly dead-cert notable are Winthrop Osterhout ( biographical memoir published by the National Academy of Sciences) and Edward Laurens Mark (Hershey Professor of Anatomy and Director of the Zoological Laboratory at Harvard University). The others I am not sure about yet.
[Off-topic: The lack of an article about Edward Laurens Mark is quite ironic in the Wikipedia context, when you realise this guy is said to have invented what became known as the Harvard referencing system. See also parenthetical referencing.]
Anyway, if someone approached this systematically, you might be able to find out whether certain topics are (slowly) being filled in, and at what rate, and you might be able to identify areas that are neglected, but is this sort of analysis something that would point up a glaring deficiency in the current approach (or lack of approach)?
[Another question is who is creating these articles and why?]
One view is that in some cases it is not that the information has not been published, but that it is not yet widely available or online. It might seem that lots is available online, and much more is available than was 10 years or so ago, but there are still huge amounts of published information that the current crowd-sourced approach is not capable of picking up unless libraries and archives and journal/book publishers do more to put information online (but in some cases there is little incentive to do so, and in some cases much incentive not to). Carcharoth ( talk) 01:06, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
<outdent> On "Wikipedia is nowhere near close to filling in the redlinks and entering the maintenance phase", I agree, but some limited areas maybe should be in this fabled 'maintenance phase'. There should be a mechanism for that, a plan of some sort, but there isn't. Carcharoth ( talk) 23:26, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
On "the widely covered core topics by definition can't meet
WP:WIAFA as currently worded" - the example I am most familiar with there is what happened with the improvement and nomination of
sea as a featured article. I went back there for the first time in a while, and found the following on the talk page:
Talk:Sea#Lead sentence and
Talk:Sea#Missing. No idea whether there was any follow up there.
World War I is another example, a rather topical one given the centenary events. It is an interesting example also of a topic that is being revisited and having more written about it with thousands of books being published in the past few years and over the coming years. Where do you draw the line, though, and at what level of expertise? If someone better able to do such an article comes along (e.g. a retired professor in that subject area), should the article be redone or would effort be better directed elsewhere? Is
Middle Ages a counter-example, or an excellent example of how to do this sort of thing?
Carcharoth (
talk) 23:26, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
it is a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature) it's literally impossible to meet WIAFA with an article on any topic too broad to cover in a single article, since you're by definition leaving something out.
The Manchester article really needs a good wash and brush up at some point, there are some things in there which would make me fail it if it ever came up for review:
Going back to the subject of completeness, I rustled up lists for the awards presented by the
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. The two main awards are the
Hayden Memorial Geological Award and the
Leidy Award. I was pleasantly surprised to find that there is only one article missing from the former (out of 39) and only three articles missing from the latter (out of 26). I wasn't sure whether to make the other two awards into separate lists [no reason not to really, might do that later], so put the lists in the Academy's article:
Gold Medal for Distinction in Natural History Art and
Richard Hopper Day Memorial Medal. Only one (of 11) missing from the former, and four (of 19) missing from the latter. The overall total is nine (9) missing from a total of ninety-five (95). That is 9-10%. A few years ago, I suspect the number of red-links would have been higher (the filling in over time can be shown progressing as you move forward from 2001 to the present).
Anyway, the nine missing articles (with some potential sources) are:
Gilles Joseph Gustave Dewalque
[2]
[3];
Warren Poppino Spencer
[4];
Herbert Barker Hungerford
[5];
Donn Eric Rosen
[6]
[7]
es
species;
Guy Tudor
[8]
[9];
Lawrence A. Shumaker
[10]
[11]
[12];
Andreas B. Rechnitzer
[13];
Charles A. Berry
[14]; and
Robert McCracken Peck
[15]. I've made lists like this in the past, and sometimes it is more interesting to wait and see when (if) the articles get created (and why) rather than create them now. If anyone has a lot of time on their hands, they can look through
Talk:Howard N. Potts Medal,
Talk:Benjamin Franklin Medal (Franklin Institute),
Talk:Franklin Medal,
Talk:Stuart Ballantine Medal (I cheated here and turned three of the redlinks blue myself).
I'm wondering, if I go back to just the lists I created, and make a master list of redlinks still to be filled in, how long that would be and how long it would take to fill in... Reading and writing biographical articles can be rather a surreal experience sometimes. Like living several lifetimes in one.
Carcharoth (
talk) 02:06, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
"I really favour not having a biography article at all until after the subject is dead (and at that point, if needed, the historical assessment process starts, or in some cases concludes) and up until that point you either have no article, or a strictly word-limited article (plus picture if available) with a link to an official website or other resources, if they exist. The reason for limiting the word count is to make it easier to maintain BLP articles as short informative stubs (I mean really short!). On the other hand, if you don't couple that with a tightening of the notability criteria, you end up with a Who's Who directory. But that might still be better than the current situation." - Carcharoth. I then turned up at WP:BLPN and pointed out that Barclay Knapp was a sad lonely article with issues, and SBHB made a bid for a scorched earth approach: "Instead, Wikipedia should have a goal of eliminating 90% of BLPs by year-end 2015." - Short Brigade Harvester Boris.
Starting a new section here simply so my reply doesn't get lost, as the page has moved on since the other day. (I'm pleased to see it, and you, so active here again.)
Thank you for the background and history of the article-rating system, which you are right helps explain why it evolved the way it did.
I agree that "we do it this way because we always did it this way" is a poor reason to do anything. At the same time, we can't be in a state of perpetually reevaluating everything we do, because that leads to a state of too much discussion and not enough action on anything, to say nothing of the distraction from mainspace. And all experienced editors have probably come to the conclusion that "perennial proposals" will never be implemented. But once in awhile, suddenly, consensus changes and proves us wrong about that. (Not that it was a huge change, but the implementation of inactivity rules for administrators, after several years of agreement that there shouldn't be any, is an example that comes to mind.)
I happen to generally approve of the structure of the main page, but again, that might just be out of force of habit or what I am used to, as opposed to thinking that it is what we would design if a group of editors were given the blank page and asked to redesign it. One discussion forum that I've been participating in on-and-off lately is WP:ITN/C, which selects blurbs for the "in the news" feature and the accompanying "recent deaths" (RD) line. Speaking of my pet peeves ... There is a strong view frequently expressed there that no one's death should be posted to RD unless there are abundant inline citations in every section the person's article. The stated rationale for the rule is that the main page is for "our best work" and any article without lots of specific references can't qualify as that. The operational value of enforcing this view is that it can motivate people who want the RD posted to spend the time improving the article and adding references, before attention shifts elsewhere. On the other hand, the downside is that highly notable RDs sometimes don't get posted due to disagreements about article quality, because some or other section is unreferenced, even though the article quality is perfectly reasonable and is well above average for Wikipedia articles as a whole. (I am not talking about unreferenced negative or controversial statements; sometimes it's a list of film credits or the like.) When I urge that such an article get posted before the recent death is no longer "recent," I find myself accused of losing site of the project's goals and seeking to reduce the quality of the encyclopedia. Feh.
Another example I have wondered about literally for years, but hesitate to raise even now, is featured article review (FAR) and featured article removal (FARC). This is a process I haven't yet participated in (I still need to get my FA done, or for that matter started; pfui on me for stalling on article-writing by spending my time writing this sort of thing), and have participated in very occasionally if at all, and I certainly don't mean to be critical in the least of the people who organize the FAR process and participate in FAR. But ... is this a process that serves a purpose that justifies the time spent on it? I can understand reassessing if an article that was promoted to FA long ago hasn't yet been mainpaged. But, let's suppose an article was promoted to FA in 2006 and ran on the mainpage in 2007 (those were the dates for the article that's at the top of the FAR page as I type this). What is the value in asking in 2015 whether the article still meets the FA criteria or not? If the effect is typically that editors move in and further enhance or renew the quality of the article, great! But is that what usually happens?—does this process indeed motivate article improvements, or does it merely distract attention from the next round of articles? (I put to one side the fact that an improvement often demanded is more inline citations, which to my taste threaten to turn articles into footnote salad.)
Or am I asking the wrong question, and undermining one of the few quality control mechanisms we have, when what we need is more of them rather than fewer? We definitely need more quality control. I noted in this book review I wrote last summer that we have a dozen dedicated noticeboards, for everything from copyright problems to sourcing issues to edit-warring ... but we don't have a space (beyond individual article talkpages that may be drastically underwatched) to raise concerns about whether the article content is right or wrong....
I suppose the Village Pump is the place where proposals for changes in how we operate are logically posted—but the discussion there is often diffuse. I wonder if there should be a method of selecting one particular aspect or feature of the project at a time and convening a community discussion for, say, a month about how to improve that aspect? Someone would have to show some leadership in selecting the discussion topic, and since the project is in some ways intentionally leaderless, I don't know if that is practicable.
Thoughts? This has been unusually meandering even for me, so take from it what you will. Newyorkbrad ( talk) 16:03, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
Would {{ Ref supports2}} be able to handle the situation where multiple references support a single fact? This situation isn't wildly uncommon— Jan Bondeson, for instance, is a perfectly respectable medical historian. He's by far the most readily available source on the history of teratology, so I try to cite to him where possible as it makes it easier for readers to check for themselves. However, he also has something of a (well-deserved) reputation for sloppiness and inaccuracy and for passing off his own opinions as undisputed fact, so whenever I cite him for something contentious I try to cite something else to back up the claim, even though it leads to double-footnotes and Brad's dreaded footnote salad.
An obvious drawback I can see is the same problem I have with list-defined references, and even citation templates to some extent; that it makes the edit window absolutely incomprehensible to newcomers. A new editor, even one with no experience, can grasp "put the fact, then put <ref>, then put where you found it, then put </ref>", and even though they may not get the reference formatting correct they'll get the information in place in such a way that it's easy to clean up later, or to see exactly which source they've used and explain why it isn't appropriate to use.
Under the {{
Ref supports2}} system, the edit window is frankly incomprehensible; a new editor wanting to amend
this 16-word paragraph will be confronted with The tender twig of this plant is used as a toothbrush in south-east Africa and India.{{Ref supports2|<ref>Saurabh Rajvaidhya ''et al.'' (2012) [http://www.ijpsr.com/V3I7/13%20Vol.%203,%20Issue%207,%20July%202012,%20RE-654,%20Paper%2013.pdf "A review on ''Acacia Arabica'', an Indian medicinal plant"] ''International Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Research'' Vol 3(7) pp 1995-2005</ref>|"The tender twig of this plant is used as a toothbrush"}}{{Ref supports2|<ref>A Hooda, M Rathee, J Singh (2009) [https://ispub.com/IJFP/9/2/4968 "Chewing Sticks In The Era Of Toothbrush: A Review"], ''The Internet Journal of Family Practice'' Vol 9(2)</ref>|"used as a toothbrush in south-east Africa and India"}}
when they click "edit". To quote
my comment to NYB on the article assessment scale a couple of sections up, "You've been here so long it probably seems natural, but stop and think how messed up that must look to every outside observer".
If I were a new editor confronted with that, my reaction would be "those people who say Wikipedia is a club of self-important nerds speaking an incomprehensible private language were right", and never try to edit again. The academics and professionals Wikipedia wants to attract aren't, in general, going to want to take the time to learn an arcane markup language which isn't used anywhere else; the Visual Editor project may have been an expensive fiasco thanks to the ineptness of Brandon Harris and the arrogance of James Forrester, but the WMF were correct to try to pursue it.
If I were making the decisions, I'd be pushing a system where one highlights a block of text in edit-mode, clicks "reference this", and fills in a pre-formatted popup citation template, with the references themselves being saved as subpages in a separate namespace so they aren't visible in edit mode unless one clicks "edit references". However, I am not the one making these decisions; that would be these fine characters, none of whom have ever shown any great degree of willingness to listen to anyone suggest things aren't perfect the way they are, unless said suggestion already happens to be their pet project. – iridescent 16:56, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
"...I wanted to share more about the plans for the Community Tech team. The creation of this team is a direct response to community requests for more technical support. Their mission is to understand and support the technical needs of core contributors, including improved support for expert-focused curation and moderation tools, bots, and other features. Their mandate is to work closely with you, and the Community Engagement department, to define their roadmap and deliverables. We are hiring for a leader for this team, as well as additional engineers. We will be looking within our communities to help. Until then, it will be incubated under Toby Negrin, with support from Community Engagement. ..."
Newyorkbrad, to answer a few of your FAR questions.
But ... is this a process that serves a purpose that justifies the time spent on it? I can understand reassessing if an article that was promoted to FA long ago hasn't yet been mainpaged. But, let's suppose an article was promoted to FA in 2006 and ran on the mainpage in 2007 (those were the dates for the article that's at the top of the FAR page as I type this). What is the value in asking in 2015 whether the article still meets the FA criteria or not? If the effect is typically that editors move in and further enhance or renew the quality of the article, great! But is that what usually happens?—does this process indeed motivate article improvements, or does it merely distract attention from the next round of articles? (I put to one side the fact that an improvement often demanded is more inline citations, which to my taste threaten to turn articles into footnote salad.)
See:
This one-way street has led, in turn, to a separate problem of extra review required when choosing Today's featured article for the mainpage, as there are so many deficient FAs "on the books". The TFA schedulers can no longer assume that an FA is mainpage ready. And where one person used to be able to pick and schedule all TFAs, we now need apparently three. Whether we assess at FAR, or assess via a separate effort that has sprung up to address the moribund FAR at User:Dweller/Featured Articles that haven't been on Main Page, resources are going into sorting out the deficient FAs anyway.
Is FAR worth the effort? Well, improvement does happen, regardless of outcome. And, if FA has become a one-way street, why are we still running FAs on the mainpage? Google hits are really where the action is now anyway, so shouldn't we be striving to assure quality across the board, for all readers, rather than focusing review on whichever FA is going to run TFA (that is, focus on overall improvement rather than one day's hits)? What about after TFA, and the third to half of FAs that are full of unvetted crap? Restoring FAR to a functioning process-- and hopefully restoring a culture that values the star across the board, not just as fodder for TFA-- will hopefully bring quality back up across more articles, and not just for those that run TFA. That was how the two processes worked historically-- it was a matter of pride in the bronze star and a desire to maintain quality across the board. Whether that culture can be restored is another question, but I'm game to try. If ongoing reassessment is not done, what is an FA, anyway? It has increasingly become something that three people pass. If we eliminate FAR, why not eliminate FAC as well ? The skill set is the same, and for FAC reviewers to take a moment each day to also check or pitch in on a FAR should not be a big deal.
HTH.Iri, relative to autism and schizophrenia, Tourette syndrome is not densely cited at all ... have a look at that citation wrap issue at autism, for example!
And since you're on the topic of "Pet wikipeeves", one of mine is FA writers who only review FAs of their "friends", won't review anything else to help train up others and improve the overall pool, can't be bothered with FAR, don't care about the overall quality issue, only care about getting TFAs, and will never Oppose a FAC because <gasp>, then someone might oppose one of theirs! If we decide that FAR isn't necessary, let's do away with FAC as well. But please be assured, there was once as much pride associated with restoring an article to status at FAR as there was in getting one promoted at FAC; just ask the old-timers (oh, you can't ... with the exception of Ceoil, most of us who once worked there are mostly departed). SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 03:11, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
I would love it if the WMF configured the Main Page to make every feature opt-in and cookie-controlled, meaning people (including the general public, not just logged-in users) interested in DYK, TFA, OTD etc could choose to keep seeing them, while people could perma-hide those parts they aren't interested in. Not only would it give fields not currently represented on the MP—random articles, featured sounds, country- or topic-specific FAs—a chance to prove their worth, it would also drive home how little most readers care about some of Wikipedia's Cherished Institutions™. I would give reasonable odds that given a free choice, more than 50% of readers would opt for a Google-style main page and choose to hide every element other than a searchbar, and more than 90% (probably more like 99%) would choose to hide In The News and On This Day. Because it holds such exalted status in Wikipedia's internal MMORPG, it's easy to lose sight of how little the outside world cares about the content of the main page. Taking 1955 MacArthur Airport United Airlines crash (not to single it out for any reason, but just because it's a recent TFA on a reasonably interesting topic), it got 18,742 page views on its day in the sun. On the same day, the main page got 17,081,542 page views, meaning the highest profile link on Wikipedia's main page had a click-through rate of roughly one reader in a thousand. It would also finally put a stop to the interminable discussions at Wikipedia:Main page redesign proposals which have been going on without result for eight years now.The overwhelming majority—as in, well over 99%—of visitors to the main page don't click a single one of the links on it and don't care what goes on the main page.
You mentioned LDR, and I had no idea what it stands for, - guessed from the context that you mean list-defined references? I had no idea of background and history but saw them and use them where I may (unless for more complicated articles where I want to quote different sections of one source), example pictured above. They simply make sense to me. Whenever I want to fix a ref in an unknown article (add a title to a bare url being the most frequent wish), I find it so much more helpful to find that thing where I expect it, under the label "References", than searching through the complete article. If I want to fix a date in a ref by some author, I find it so much more helpful to know where to look in an alpha-sorted list. If I want to change text in an article, I find it so much more helpful not to have to "read around" the longish refs. A newbie will probably edit the whole article anyway, - section editing is not the first thing they will see. If editing a section, you may find a named ref in one, while it is defined in another. - I had no idea that my view is a minority but don't mind ;) --- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 11:03, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
You've been here so long it probably seems natural, but stop and think how messed up that must look to every outside observer, and there's no rational reason to keep doing it other than that understanding it gives some people a momentary buzz of "I understand this secret code". Unfortunately AFAIK the WMF have never shown any inclination to grasp that particular nettle. – iridescent 12:06, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
I was initially against LDR when it was first introduced, as it meant either having two edit windows open or editing the entire article rather than just a single section. But I use it all the time now, although I am one of those criminals tainted by being near the top of the WP:WBFAN list. The real solution of course is to completely redesign the citation system, but that will likely never happen. Eric Corbett 20:51, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
I'm told VisualEditor now supports automagically filling in references using just a nytimes.com URL or whatever. I haven't played with it much myself. For references generally, it's increasingly clear the current system isn't working. Every time this comes up, people usually point to Wikidata as the solution. If/when arbitrary Wikidata querying is enabled here (hopefully in 2015), it might be a real option for references. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 00:58, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
"Data may be accessed in client Wikis using a Lua Scribunto interface. Apart from that, all data may be retrieved independently using the API.", which to anyone unfamiliar with web design might as well be written in Japanese. As an experiment, assume you're a new user who doesn't know what API stands for and wants to find out; see how many steps it takes following links from that "introduction" page.)
{{insert birthday of article subject from wikidata}}
for example. That would be neat, I think.★ "ANI flu". pablo 10:02, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
On 10 May 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article The Destroying Angel and Daemons of Evil Interrupting the Orgies of the Vicious and Intemperate, which you recently created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that The Destroying Angel and Daemons of Evil Interrupting the Orgies of the Vicious and Intemperate (detail pictured) depicts around 25 semi-naked human figures, each expressing terror in a different way? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/The Destroying Angel and Daemons of Evil Interrupting the Orgies of the Vicious and Intemperate. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
Heh, The Destroying Angel actually beat Sirens in terms of page views, which kind of ruins my naked women=page views hypothesis. (There are a couple of topless bacchantes, but I'd challenge anyone to make them out at 100px resolution. To be frank, I'd challenge anyone to make out anything of what is actually going on in the picture at this resolution, even cropped down to only show the central Raving Madness tableau.) – iridescent 09:10, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
Wanted to know what improvements can I make to my page to prevent deletion? Himanshu Suri ( talk) 08:01, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
I'd like to review the speedy deltion of "Autoblopnik", please. The page was tagged and deleted within a few hours, and there was no time for adequate discussion. Pages about other web sites with similar content exist on Wikipedia (Sniff Petrol, The Truth About Cars), so I think Autoblopnik should have its own page. The site's appeal is narrow, but it's very well known in the automotive community. Thanks! GH Ack, wasn't logged in. GH Gearhead4847 ( talk) 14:29, 1 June 2015 (UTC)Gearhead4847
I contest the basis of your revision and deletion on the basis the referances
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Polgardi1 ( talk • contribs) 15:21, 1 June 2015 (UTC)Hello, could you please restore Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and AfD it? It is a major research institution and I expect that it meets WP:GNG. I would like the issue examined in AfD. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:19, 1 June 2015 (UTC) |
The phrasing of your opposition to the VP proposal regarding the MoS is inappropriate. Darkfrog24 ( talk) 13:58, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
I have ups and downs in my feelings about how effective the Arbitration Committee was during my years of service; I can think of problems we resolved, and problems we failed to resolve, and things we made better and things we made worse. As I've written more than once (for example, somewhere in here, we especially aren't very good—as a project, I'm not just talking about ArbCom—about systematically going back and reviewing which approaches to dispute resolution have worked well and which have not.
That said, I am going to gratuitously flatter myself and my quondam colleagues to the extent of saying I think that the outcomes, in the matters I participated in at least, were significantly better than random chance. Make of that faint praise what you will. Newyorkbrad ( talk) 21:22, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
Take this somewhere else; my talkpage is neither the Arbcom Appeals Court nor Wikipediocracy Lite, despite the number of people who appear to think otherwise. Why is it that this page seems to be the first place people run to when they feel the need to try to rake over the embers of the infobox wars? If you want to talk about getting FA standards changed, or if you want to chat about whether TFA selections fairly represent the contents of WP:FANMP, I'm sure everyone at WT:FA and WT:TFA would be delighted to have yet another interminable thread on the matter.
We have posted an article titled - Seer Akademi. It was our first experience on writing article on Wikipedia. It was deleted under Speedy Deletion category with G11 - unambiguous promotional material. We are absolutely certain that we neither were promoting the organization, individual or product or service. We have provided the following:
1. Evolution of an organization to tell the path it had taken and it served as a background or context to the article. 2. A unique pedagogy or teaching approach that has been innovated we wanted others to learn from it.
Would like to understand in detail the reasons so that we can either make the improvement or drop the idea of publishing an article on Wiki.
Any mentoring will be highly appreciated.
Seer A123 ( talk) 11:23, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
Hi,
I noticed that you deleted the article Saleh Al-Talib. Could you also delete the redirect Salih_Al-Talib?
Thanks RookTaker ( talk) 17:17, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
I must say that's a first. What was wrong? -- BDD ( talk) 21:59, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Technical 13. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Technical 13/Evidence. Please add your evidence by June 30, 2015, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Technical 13/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Liz Read! Talk! 01:49, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Did you see this Cleopatra? How does it compare? -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 11:42, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article The World Before the Flood you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Poltair -- Poltair ( talk) 13:41, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
The article The World Before the Flood you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:The World Before the Flood for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Poltair -- Poltair ( talk) 22:01, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
Hello, Iridescent. From the literary side of the fence, the words "a level of offensiveness one would expect from a foreign, not a British, artist" in the hook currently in prep read like a quote, but are not in quotation marks. If they are a direct quote (which I can't verify), how would you feel about indicating the fact? Or I could be wrong … Awien ( talk) 21:53, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
On 25 June 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews his Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of his Ministers, as She Goes to Bed, which you recently created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews his Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of his Ministers, as She Goes to Bed (pictured) was accused of a level of offensiveness one would expect from a foreign, not a British, artist? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews his Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of his Ministers, as She Goes to Bed. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
On 28 June 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Portrait of Mlle Rachel, which you recently created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that Portrait of Mlle Rachel (detail pictured) has an oil sketch of a crouching nude woman on its reverse? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Portrait of Mlle Rachel. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
On July 1 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Musidora: The Bather 'At the Doubtful Breeze Alarmed', which you recently nominated. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Musidora: The Bather 'At the Doubtful Breeze Alarmed'. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
Very good article - bravo!
Awien (
talk) 11:40, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
Hello! Your submission of Template:Did you know nominations/The Wrestlers (painting) at the Did You Know nominations page is not complete; see step 3 of the nomination procedure. If you do not want to continue with the nomination, tag the nomination page with {{ db-g7}}, or ask a DYK admin. Thank you. DYKHousekeepingBot ( talk) 00:54, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
Hello! Your submission of Template:Did you know nominations/The World Before the Flood at the Did You Know nominations page is not complete; see step 3 of the nomination procedure. If you do not want to continue with the nomination, tag the nomination page with {{ db-g7}}, or ask a DYK admin. Thank you. DYKHousekeepingBot ( talk) 00:54, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
Hello! Your submission of Template:Did you know nominations/Youth on the Prow, and Pleasure at the Helm at the Did You Know nominations page is not complete; see step 3 of the nomination procedure. If you do not want to continue with the nomination, tag the nomination page with {{ db-g7}}, or ask a DYK admin. Thank you. DYKHousekeepingBot ( talk) 00:54, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
Hello! Your submission of Template:Did you know nominations/The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished at the Did You Know nominations page is not complete; see step 3 of the nomination procedure. If you do not want to continue with the nomination, tag the nomination page with {{ db-g7}}, or ask a DYK admin. Thank you. DYKHousekeepingBot ( talk) 00:54, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
On 5 July 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Youth on the Prow, and Pleasure at the Helm, which you recently created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that the exhibition of Youth on the Prow, and Pleasure at the Helm (detail pictured) prompted the comment that "no decent family can hang such sights against their wall"? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Youth on the Prow, and Pleasure at the Helm. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
On 7 July 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article The Wrestlers (painting), which you recently created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that the intense lighting of The Wrestlers (pictured) highlights the curves, musculature, and sweat of the participants' naked bodies as they embrace and grapple? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/The Wrestlers (painting). You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
Greetings!
I am happy to introduce you to the new WikiProject Hampshire! The newly designed WikiProject features automatically updated work lists, article quality class predictions, and a feed that tracks discussions on the 2,690 talk pages tagged by the WikiProject. Our hope is that these new tools will help you as a Wikipedia editor interested in Hampshire.
Hope to see you join! Harej ( talk) 20:42, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
A summary of a Featured Article you nominated at WP:FAC will appear on the Main Page soon. Was there anything I left out you'd like to see put back in? - Dank ( push to talk) 00:13, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
On 12 July 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished, which you recently created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that the right foot of the female figure in The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished "seems actually to glow with the rich juice of life"? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
On 13 July 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article The World Before the Flood, which you recently created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that The World Before the Flood (detail pictured) was described on its initial exhibition as a "deadly sin against good taste"? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/The World Before the Flood. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
Thanks, thanks, thanks. I am new, so I have a lot to learn. I get it now and will rewrite accordingly. I am glad to see you are working on behalf of the arts. Many fine craft and woodworker pages are pretty lame. It would be great to see those improve radically over time. Several craft curators, critics, and historians have commented on Sartorius, but hardly anyone ever says anything even slightly negative, unlike other fine arts. The print media tends to be positive and therefore sounds nothing but promotional. I get the idea now on how to cover the juried craft shows,awards, etc. I'll get to it tonight, after the day job. I appreciate your work on behalf of Wikipedia 130.160.143.223 ( talk) 14:55, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
On 3 July 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball, which you recently created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball (pictured) was commissioned from England's foremost painter of nudes by a Conservative Member of Parliament who wanted a picture of his daughters? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
I've seen you pop up and down my watchlist with your AWB runs and it reminded me of this discussion at the WP:India noticeboard regarding AWB runs on our numerous village articles. Would it be possible for you to do those runs when you have some time? A lot of these articles need some amount of typo fixing, grammar checks, and MOS changes among other minor changes. The can be addressed by districts, and typically each district can come with one census reference which could be added to all articles under that district. cheers. — Spaceman Spiff 17:18, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
The Chungtia war dance is one of the most macho war dances which is a treat to watchfrom 2007 until about 30 seconds ago, and you can see something similar in the history of a substantial proportion of articles.) Sitush, do you have any thoughts on this? – iridescent 17:41, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
While it's not a statistically significant sample, I think the general pattern of the village articles is likely to follow this sort of a split. #1 and #3 have mostly bot/AWB activity outside of the creator. #2 has had its share of problems unaddressed for quite a while now, so I'm not entirely sure that running AWB might hide the problem for a longer duration, but I see that an AWB run on the other two groupings would definitely be helpful. RexxS, I'm not active on the indic wikis, but if you think testing something like a Wikidata populated set of village articles might be worth a try I can check with some of them on that. — Spaceman Spiff 04:26, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
"That article assessment scale is a by-product of a decade-old pet project of Jimmy Wales to create an offline version of Wikipedia for that girl in Africa who can save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around her, but only if she's empowered with the knowledge to do so, and the Importance/Quality metric was used to determine which articles got the limited number of berths on the CD-ROM. Nowadays, the girl in Africa is far more likely to have high-speed mobile broadband than she is to have a computer, CD reader and reliable power source to run them, and the CD version of Wikipedia hasn't been published for years. However, "because we've always done it this way" Wikipedia persists with a grading scale which runs "F, G, B, C, Sta, Stu", with an additional grade between G and B only available to articles on hurricanes, computing and military history. You've been here so long it probably seems natural, but stop and think how messed up that must look to every outside observer, and there's no rational reason to keep doing it other than that understanding it gives some people a momentary buzz of "I understand this secret code". Those "importance" categories were necessary in the days of WP:1.0 when the WMF could talk seriously about "producing a print version of Wikipedia" and it was necessary to decide what was worthy of printing, but are pointless now. Quite aside from "importance" being completely subjective, importance in Wikipedia terms doesn't necessary equate to importance elsewhere, since the most important function of Wikipedia is collating information not easily available elsewhere—for Wikipedia, John Sherman Cooper is a more important article than John F. Kennedy.", if you missed it.) Personally, I would say the only assessment categories Wikipedia should have should be "Needs major work", "Adequate" and "Realistically as good as it's likely to get".
The [ page you've deleted] on June 8 2015 was missing sources to prove the subject's notability. I am happy to work on correcting that if you put it back in a sandbox under my account. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Youreadme ( talk • contribs) 23:24, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
On 7 August 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article William Etty, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the art of William Etty (pictured) was considered so obscene, the press were concerned that it discouraged women from entering rooms where it was on display? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/William Etty. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
Hello there! Thanks for getting in touch. I've not spoken to the folks at the Scottish National Gallery so far, but I can certainly make enquiries... :) Lirazelf ( talk) 10:27, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
On 8 August 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article The Triumph of Cleopatra, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that The Triumph of Cleopatra depicts Cleopatra's golden poop? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/The Triumph of Cleopatra. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
(cur | prev) 17:11, 7 August 2015 Iridescent (talk | contribs) . . (131,644 bytes) (-22) . . (Undid revision 675004524 by ♥Golf (talk) The one in England is clearly the primary usage; there's no need to specify the country) (undo | thank)
What in the hell is your problem? Do you have a corn cob stuck up your ass or what? You are the rudest son-of-a-bitch I've ever come across. Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on. -- EditorExtraordinaire ( talk) 22:43, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
Etty never even visited America, stop trying to change this to en-usand
The one in England is clearly the primary usage; there's no need to specify the countryare "the rudest things you've ever come across" and on a par with "Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on", I'm really not sure how to respond to you, nor do I have any particular desire to. ( Newyorkbrad, remind me again how this is OK but "sycophant" isn't?) – iridescent 23:22, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
Love the William Etty article! Maury Markowitz ( talk) 13:01, 7 August 2015 (UTC)