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One of our biggest problems is, of course, how to deal with content disputes. ArbCom cannot do that, and we don't have any sort of other body which can. I know there has been regular discussion about how to develop such a group, but I am not so sure anything specifically like the following has been discussed. Of course, maybe, if it hasn't been discussed, it might be because it is simply a dumb idea.
Anyway, I was wondering whether anyone thinks this might be workable:
We elect a committee of individuals whose specific job it is to try to respond and address concerns raised regarding content. This group will be in no way able to enforce its own opinions, but the individuals in the committee will be free to take part in RfC's regarding the topic just like anyone else.
The specific duties of the members of the committee would be:
The committee as a whole would, presumably, be made up of people willing to spend time finding as many sources as they can relative to a topic who would also, hopefully, like ArbCom members, be willing to recuse themselves to a degree from the final preparation of sources and material if they believe themselves to be biased.
The group would, effectively, function as a "research committee", trying to find the better reliable sources where that's appropriate, or otherwise as many sources meeting RS as possible. Where encyclopedic articles exist, the structure of them would be found and indicated to the community.
But, I think, basically, in at least a lot of the problematic cases I know of dealing with religion related topics and history related topics, one of the big questions is not the one most generally asked, which is how much material on what topic is to be included in one article, but how many articles can and should we have to deal with all the encyclopedic content which we could reasonably have to include it all.
Maybe, if possible, making the members of such a committee individuals elected to serve there by the community and required only to spend half their time or less, in some sort of rotating shifts, might be optimal. Or, alternately, maybe indicating that individuals getting access to the databanks through the Wikipedia Library are expected, to so degree, to help out by checking what material relating to the topic is available through the databanks they have access to.
Anyway, thoughts? John Carter ( talk) 17:14, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
Featured articles and candidates are subjected to a review somewhat akin to this proposal - seems to me this would build on that process for the benefit of high traffic articles that are not (yet) at FA status. NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 23:07, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
The universe of Wikipedia contributors is vast, and they are clustered in galaxies according to their shared interests. To communicate with one another, users typically edit and watch each other's talk pages. SomeUser will create or edit a page that is not being watched by some significant others, and will then perhaps have to "ping" those others on one or more talk pages in order to let them know about it. That has worked well over the years, of course. But in Wikipedia's expanding universe, communication and collaboration ought to be a whole lot simpler and more efficient. So, when viewing a User page, I'd like to see a Follow/Unfollow option next to the normal Watch/Unwatch. And I'd like to have a Followlist in the exact same format as my current Watchlist, but listing page edits by the users that I am following. Jonathan Lane Studeman ( talk) 07:41, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
It's still a tip of the iceberg. To elaborate, the watchlist is useful as it successfully solves the question of "Has the page been changed?". The followlist can solve the problem of "Has user A edited today?", but not "What has user A edited?" which is its main purpose. Zhaofeng Li [ talk... contribs... 13:57, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
Any ed can already monitor my contribs manually. The ed who does that might have honest reasons or abusive ones. If I understand the proposal, it would just make contrib monitoring easier by combining contrib searches for multiple eds into a WP:Others' contribs watchlist (bearing the inevitable shortcut WP:StalkerList). Would that improve the project? I have mixed feelings on that point.... does it encourage honest people to get together more or would it turn turn honest people into POV cabals? Certainly it will encourage the quiescent wikihounds and stalkers to get become more active in their abuse. The already-active wikihounds are already active, so while that group might appreciate this move, the proposal's impact on the active wikihounds should be moot. If I understood it right, so far I think I oppose. PS, If I allow X to follow me, but deny Y, won't that info be used against us at ANI/AE? NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 12:23, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
"improving the topic-specific-collaboration tools, would be more useful and more well-received"... Yes! How to go about that? NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 18:02, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
Although making a redirect is rather easy (you just blank the page and add #REDIRECT [[Article]]
), there may be some who find templates to be smoother and easier. I happen to be one of those, so if we don't have it already, I've been thinking that we should create a template for redirects. For example, to create a redirect with a template, you might type something like this: {{subst:go-to|Article}}
. (I chose "go-to" because the
"redirect" name is already taken.) I have the rather basic code in
my sandbox, if you want to look at it. --
Biblio
worm
19:45, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
This probabbly sounds like the worst idea ever, but I think Wikipedia would be cool if editors could get Wiki Points so they can pay for stuff.
Like, you get 1 point for making an edit and an administrator could give or take points from you.
Maybe it could be like 200 points to nominate yourself for adminship or maybe it costs sone points for other things. 92.16.4.92 ( talk) 22:54, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
Hi,
The situation is like this - child does not know how to read and write, he asks to find something in YouTube, then video finishes and YouTube shows him the pictures of other videos related by keywords. So he then can continue to navigate from one video to another simply by mouse. He likes to watch interesting videos about real life that bring real information but if he at some moment clicks at animation cartoon link then YouTube gives him the links to animation cartoons or toys reviews and he rambles in this garbage. I really need right now something like YouTube but stuffed with really helpful videos that show how something works, some DIY videos, educational videos, etc., anything related to Wikipedia pages. For example, animation cartoon showing how watches work or video showing the DIY smelting furnace or process of making clay pots or multi-storey building, etc. The system should automatically find related videos and present them as pictures so user could navigate inside the content without using the keyboard at all. I would be glad to participate, help and donate for such system right now.
Alexey. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.211.246.141 ( talk) 00:23, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
-- [[
User:Edokter]] {{
talk}}
11:17, 3 January 2015 (UTC)Wow! What a cool idea!
It should be image based. Bit of work. Is there a sandbox where this is being developed right now? Can I volunteer my own sandbox to try things out?
Chrislamic.State (
talk)
22:27, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
Hi
I have an idea which may help improve the pages on Wikipedia, specifically the ones about scientific subjects.
My idea would be to have a simple and advanced page for each thing on here. For example, if you type in "black hole", it comes up with loads of equations about quantum mechanics and space time, which most people wouldn't be able to understand and they'd just stop reading.
You could have a basic introductory version of the page that explains black holes in a way that is more accessible to people. If then you wanted to read more, you could click on the "advanced" tab.
This would make Wikipedia a much better resource for kids and students.
Foot note:- After speaking with a Wikipedia editor, I have been informed there is a simple version of Wikipedia that already exists:- https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
With this in mind, perhaps a specific icon could be inserted at the start of each article which would send users to the simpler version of the page.
What do you think?
David Wardle — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.205.232.226 ( talk) 13:38, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
Whereas I think that those difficult articles should have an "Introduction" section, written in plain terms. -- NaBUru38 ( talk) 15:27, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
I was reading an entry at WP:TFM where an editor decried intricate templates with dozens of parameters that are used or are not used depending on where in the world the subject article lies. So, I was thinking that rather than having "one size fits all" template documentation, we could pull the editor's location from their browser and give the editor documentation tailored to their location. I realize that this would not be useful for those of us editing through a proxy, so there would have to be a location tree as well so you can find the right docs for the right location. – Fredddie ™ 23:02, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
Hello, I am not a native English speaker, but I just want to bring to your attention the existence of User:JMiall/Louis Compton Miall since 2011. That would be worthy to transfer it into the main namespace ( Louis Compton Miall). Regards, Totodu74 ( talk) 23:55, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
@ JMiall: Give yourself some credit. Put it in article space now and you can finish it there. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 07:09, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
To my mind, the failure to retain new editors is the biggest crisis the encyclopedia has right now.
At NPP, we see a lot of new editors creating pages they know aren't ready, either because they don't understand that "Save" makes the page public, or because they don't want to lose their work. Then these editors get discouraged when their pages are immediately speedied. Although we have plenty of drafting options (the Draft namespace, userspace, AfC), many new editors still aren't aware of them. For the sake of new editor retention, I'd love to see a "Save to Draft" button next to the "Save" button on the page creation window for (at least) non-autoconfirmed editors. The idea is not to make it any harder to save to mainspace (if that's what the editor wants to do) but to make the Draft option that much easier to recognize and take.
As the edit notice says, I'd like to get feedback that's more actionable than "Support" or "Oppose". Has this been proposed before? What do editors who've worked in Draft space think about it? Would it just make for a pile-up of bad pages in Draft? — Swpb talk 20:46, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
"these editors get discouraged when their pages are immediately speedied"Then perhaps we should encourage the admins concerned, rather than deleting, to move them to user/ draft space and notify the editors concerned, using a template which includes links to tutorials and the teahouse? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:42, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
In my view, the save to draft button should create a userspace draft, without being tagged as articles for creation. I don't think new editors would be expecting Articles for Creation (they probably don't know what it is), so a user draft would be better. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 07:19, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
There seems to be broad agreement here. Do you feel like we need a more formal consensus, or can we move ahead with implementation at this point (as an on-by-default user preference)? — Swpb talk 13:53, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
See above - It also needs more clarity as to exactly what the proposal is. Is this an AfC submittal, a user draft, or something else? Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 07:20, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
- Before creating an article, please read Wikipedia:Your first article.
- You can also search for an existing article to which you can redirect this title.
- To experiment, please use the sandbox. To use a wizard to create an article, see the Article wizard.
- When creating an article, provide references to reliable published sources. An article without references, especially a biography of a living person, may be deleted.
- You can also start your new article at Special:Mypage/Jingle slap. There, you can develop the article with less risk of deletion, ask other editors to help work on it, and move it into "article space" when it is ready.
And the last bit is completely wrong because is it should be reading 'Draft:Jingle slap' for a long time already. (Jingle slap was my invention for test purposes.) -- Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 00:50, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
To prevent user space abuse, we could implement "probation", which prevents you from editing userspace. This would be issued if you spend a lot of time in userspace. 50.83.140.10 ( talk) 23:57, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
I don't see a lot of need for this. When we encounter Facebooking on user pages, we delete them, and that gets the point across pretty damn well. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 07:08, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
I noticed that there seem to be many users with editing restrictions that are not full site bans. To make it easier to identify when a ban has been violated, could users with bans other than site bans be required to have a template on their userpage? B E C K Y S A Y L E S 06:07, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
2nd: There must e a feature in your watchlist that allows you to see if there has been more than 1 edit in an article since the last time you visited. I know there is an option to show every single edit but it makes your watchlist too long Tetra quark ( don't be shy) 22:44, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
Hi everyone
Let me start off by saying that Wikipedia is awesome! I have a great idea for a partnership with Wikipedia. Any input would be fantastic!
I would love to join forces with Wikipedia to provide readers of such articles as books, TV shows, music, or bands with the opportunity to purchase whatever they are looking at at a given time, I would like to provide my links in tables for things like TV seasons of a specific show, episodes of specific TV shows or other related things. my idea is to edit an table in an article such as the ones that already exist in order to provide the reader the link in a way that they are not bombarded with a million links everywhere they look.
I do understand your need to ensure that the reader is not spammed with links and as a reader I very much appreciate that. I would however find it helpful to be provided a link that would further enhance my reading without taking me out of the experience.
It is my understanding that Wikipedia is a non profit organizeation, but I would be more then happy to donate a portion of whatever is earned during the time my links are on a page. Would anyone be open to this enhancment on Wikipedia?
Any feedback would be very much appreciated.
Thank You — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sledge106 ( talk • contribs) 19:17, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
Wikidata is used to link en:George Washington to fr:George Washington, should the same list of languages generated by Wikidata for en:George Washington also be there for en:Talk:George Washington to enable a single click to get to fr:Discussion:George Washington? I'm sure someone else has come up with this idea before, so this is half a suggestion, half a "I wonder why it isn't" :) Naraht ( talk) 16:23, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
I understand that one of the goals of wikipedia is to encourage people to contribute as editors. So it seems that it would be a good practice to obsessionally survey a sample of ex-editors regarding reasons they have not continued editing.
I'd suggest that every 6 months or so, a survey (which may change as we begin to learn more) be sent out to people who created an account with an email address who have not made an edit in the last 60 days but made more than 5 edits after creating their account, or within the last year, including people in each subgroups such as (1) users who were active for less than on month, (2) users who were active over one month but less than three months, and (3) users who were active over three months but less than a year.
It would not be necessary to email everyone fitting these categories, just a large enough sample to get 100-200 respondents in each subgroup.
Types of questions of interest to be explored using a likert scale: did they leave because it was too confusing, or because they had accomplished their goals, they were exhausted, they were frustrated by having their edits reverted, they found editing policies were inconsistent or not followed. And there should be an open ended text field for them to give their own reasons, which may shape future questions.
The results could be made available (minus the email addresses) for analysis by anyone interested and might help inform future policy and technical goals. – GodBlessYou2 ( talk) 21:53, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
1st: A QuickTalk option. If enabled in the preferences, when you click "talk" next to the name of a user, a popup window will appear to make it easier to send a message. This would be good because it would motivate more dialogs and more feedbacks.also more help Tetra quark ( don't be shy) 22:44, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
In my opinion, the Wikipedia software should attach a counter to both registered and non-registered editors that denotes whether all of the editor's edits should be checked. The counter starts at 0. All the editor's edits will be checked until the counter reaches 100. It reaches 100 after a hundred constructive edits were made with no clearly problematic edits in-between. If the editor ever makes a clearly problematic edit, the counter is reset to 0. There are external links to "Common Language in Marketing Project" here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and several more inline that have not been reverted for almost 3 months. They were added on 7 November 2014 by User:Karenmharvey who on her User page writes "Karen M Scheller on behalf of the Common Language Project at MASB." Clearly WP:PROMO/ WP:SELFPROMOTE/ WP:COI (and possibly WP:PE). I did not revert her edits, and I will not report them - mention them here only as an example of something that could've been prevented with a simple counter. Most vandalism could also be prevented with such a counter. Who's going to check all those edits? Well, first of all, if almost all vandalism (~8% of all edits?) is being prevented, that saves us a lot of time. It takes effort to create an encyclopedia. Just like editors check WP:PC edits, editors can check the edits of editors whose counters have not yet reached 100. The difference would be that WP:PC edits do not immediately go live. ( related) -- 82.136.210.153 ( talk) 09:33, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
(possible Hindi spam removed) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.192.214.195 ( talk) 10:34, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
{{Citation needed|date=June 2013}}
, but you and I both know that Wikipedia is full of nonsense that random people added based on things they heard their friends say. I think that almost all of those problematic changes are from editors with less than 100 constructive edits.
This edit lasted over 1.5 years. From an IP editor who has made only seven edits, all vandalistic edits. The very first edit we should've been there to say to warn this person and say we check edits. More than 1.5 years "He also lost from the lange dunne By TKO" and "2011 won the Dutch Koekhappen open in Amsterdam". Yes,
koekhappen. Oh, and I also disagree with
WP:BLUE and in my opinion every single thing on Wikipedia should be properly referenced, and references should be attached to material, so someone can't change "They have 2 dogs: x and y.[1]" and change it to "They have 3 dogs: x and y and z[1]" even though ref 1 only mentions two of the dogs. But let's not go there, let's start with changing what new editors can get away with. No 100 constructive edits, then your edits get checked. Your edits are no longer being checked but you deliberately make a non-constructive edit (not good faith), you're back to 0 and we're checking your edits again. --
82.136.210.153 (
talk)
17:44, 8 February 2015 (UTC)Would it be feasible to have at the bottom of each page a box similar to a navbox that had the full citation for the page it was used on in different formats, ALA, MLA, etc.? And would the community support such a change?
There are many possibilities for implementation:
A template like {{ reflist}} that we put at the the bottom of each page under external links with its own section
A mediawiki feature that is automatically put in every page
We might have to restrict the usage, however, because not all pages are of citable quality, and there might be a backlash by academics if more people cite badly written pages on their college reports.
Should it be only for FAs? FAs + GAs? The aforementioned plus A or B class?
Or should it not use the Wikiproject quality system and use some other bar for entry such as a peer review?
The reason I am proposing this is to try to raise awareness of the great articles we have here on-wiki, that anywhere else would be a reliable source if not for the stigma surrounding Wikipedia. Hopefully this initiative will help remove this stigma and make at least some of Wikipedia a reliable, citable source.
The first phase of this proposal is simply discussion-What articles you want it to be restricted to, how it will be implemented, whether you support the general idea of posting cite information or not, etc. When a general consensus arrives at what different models the community would most like it to use, I will put together 1 or several different proposals and create a formal RfC on VPR.
Thank you and I hope to see your input on the idea. KonveyorBelt 01:12, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
Well, Jimbo himself has said that people shouldn't be citing Wikipedia. Yes, we have some great articles, but the role of Wikipedia is to provide the overview and point to where the best sources are. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 04:36, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
Well Jimmy Wales is often wrong; if you haven't witnessed this fact for yourself, just wait a while. There are some good reasons to cite Wikipedia:
The best advice we can give these researchers is to make sure they reference a given version of an article, talk page, or meta page, & not the general URI of that page. -- llywrch ( talk) 07:28, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
I think that the beta features should be made available to everyone, even if they are not logged in. I constantly miss the hovercard feature when I am not logged in. Perhaps instead of being allowed to comment, people should be given a vote - Did you like (feature)? Yes, No, what could be better. Awesomeshreyo ( talk) 19:17, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
I used to really enjoy the Encarta multimedia encyclopedia (90s). It made exploring and learning new things much more fun and facilitated learning new things in a really good way. For instance there was a page with musical instruments on and you could hover or click each one to get it to play the sound of that instrument. Or you could have the globe and spin around it to find the continents, countries and cities (combine with Google earth?). You could also do 3d tours of capital cities (combine with Google street view?) Wikipedia is really missing this kind of fun and interactivity. Even the pictures are usually dull and sometimes restricted to one picture per article. If you click on the maps often all the borders and place-names are removed so you can't even zoom in on it or get a larger view.
There is just one catch I can think of: Power consumption and server load. If the whole world was using interactive features then it could actually increase global power consumption considerably and I'm not for that so adding features would have to be done sensitively and realistically. Nibinaear ( talk) 12:28, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
I spotted this news story about Facebook. I don't think we have any options, other than offering a sympathetic ear to the requests of family members. It would be a relatively simple thing to include somewhere a low or high tech option for users to indicate what they'd like to happen to their userspace when they eventually die. -- Dweller ( talk) 17:05, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
Why is it so necessary that the date of an added cleanup template be displayed on the articles? I think these should be removed and only work behind the scenes. Back when Wikipedia was new, it may have made a little sense, but today I see articles using Template:Multiple issues showing dates as far back at 2007, and it is very off-putting. It makes us look lazy and was obviously not helpful in drawing people in to clean up the problem. Sure, adding the date better-sorts the template into categories, but if an article requires cleanup, should it really be announced on the page that it still has not been done after so many years? Thoughts? — CobraWiki ( jabber | stuff ) 08:48, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
For discussion pages, I think there should be a quick poll at the top to see the general opinion - eg. Do you think ()? Yes, No, Other This would help especially with issues such as mergers and biased sections, as well as the beta area of Wikipedia where it could be used to see the general consensus in a new feature. Awesomeshreyo ( talk) 19:20, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
User:Awesomeshreyo, there are some article talk pages that have FAQs addressing questions that are asked over and over again. This can be seen at Talk:Waterboarding or Talk:0.999.... If you think there is another article talk page that can benefit from that, raise it at that talk page. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 18:09, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
So, right now we have a task of automatically mapping wikipedia pages to different topics. E.g. pages about politics goes to politics, pages about computer games goes to entertainment and so on. This is done by first mapping our topic structure to top-level wikipedia categories. Then if some category is assigned to page, we select topic associated with some super-category of it. Sometimes this mapping is ambiguous: one page could be assigned to multiple topics.
So we decided to build a system that assigns a subset of page categories to each section on the page (and then rerun our mapping tool on section level).
Do you think it is a good idea to assign categories to sections? For well-developed pages it works great, but for the most of them it is either really hard to do or doesn't make sense.
Can you think of the practical applications of this idea (other than our task)? Like, for example, we can suggest to improve sections that doesn't relate to page categories (or add a new category), or even suggest to write more about a category that is not represented on the page at all (or just briefly described in the first paragraph).
Does it make sense? — YNechaev ( talk) 18:56, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
This must be a silly idea (because I cannot imagine someone else would NOT have proposed it by now). Ok, still: Why not have a bot archive all newly added refs on archive.org website (if not already done by this website already) and automatically add a link in the corresponding WP article's reference using the "wayback machine". This would be a tremendous plus for all editors encountering WP:link rots. 67.87.51.51 ( talk) 08:50, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
Also, Mediawiki is currently working on an automated citing service for WP:Visual editor, called Citoid. It will allow you to enter a DOI, ISBN, URL or other identifier and the software will fill in all the details. There is currently a request to add auto-archiving to this new software. However, it's at a very early stage. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 15:31, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
Automated submission of links to archiving sites drives up the cost for the site and may be against the ToS for that site. Furthermore, this has been suggested in the past (see RotlinkBot and Archive.is debates of usefullness) with at best mixed results. I believe the last time this was brought up, the community's will was for WMF to develop a storage solution that was a DoA pidgin at the foundation's steps. Hasteur ( talk) 15:47, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
Why not have a "boot camp" for new editors (to be made mandatory may be?) Objective: get new WP editors become familiar with WP guidelines and policies SO AS THEY DON'T TAKE THINGS PERSONALLY AND LEARN THE PROCESS OF WP EDITING AT THE SAME TIME. MAKING THE PROCESS *FUN*. The big plus is that ego is removed while training since there is no convictions and no personal confrontation about it (since new WP editors would be required to edit WP:sandbox articles) and it would help a great deal editors IMHO (new and old editors* alike, sometimes). *e.g. This could be used as an alternative to blocking someone. This could even be handled by a BOT on the other side (simulating other editors and a reference to WP guidelines and procedures being explained or tested as an example) through predetermined algorithms. 67.87.51.51 ( talk) 08:59, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
After comparing different Wikipedians of discussion pages of articles I suggest to somehow to do notice-sign on to the interwiki box. This means that, for example, if you know some topic well, then you can easily see that on the other language Wikipedia has also discussion page of the same topic. Some drafts can be seen here: File:Discussion sign on iw box -- Bioneer1 ( talk) 08:16, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
Fantasy probably, but I'd love to draft text in MS word or my antique wordperfect, with embedded citations from my reference software (EndNote) and then be able to import the text, with some behind the scenes formatting of all the references.
The advantages to this are so obvious (to me anyway) that I'm surprised this has not already happened.
Thoughts? NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 19:15, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Given the way this 3RR report is (not) being dealt with, what would y'all think about creating a category of "editor exempt from the 3RR rule"? If we're going to do it in practice, perhaps we should make it a matter of explicit designation. Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 18:38, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
Interjection: @Maunus. Please could you explain what your edit means! Links to what you are talking about would be great. Using English rather than WikiLanguage jargon would be better. Thank-you __ DrChrissy ( talk) 19:20, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
Is there a way to map the branching tree of big topics? For example, Climate and Global warming are top articles on those subjects, with lots of sub levels and subsublevels. Text based outlines are nice, but can we show the branching tree in a picture also? NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 19:19, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
{{
category tree}}
- example on the doc page, or try it in your sandbox. It might not be exactly what you're looking for.
Ivanvector (
talk)
01:12, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
Over the last few years, the number of candidates for RfA has been in decline. There are many reasons for this, not all of which we can do anything about. One thing we can do to get more candidates, however, is to ask more people if they want to run. Some people are proactive about wanting to run for adminship, but others are more reluctant and need some persuasion. I myself only ran for adminship after Worm That Turned nominated me, probably about a year and 10,000 edits after I should have.
There are a few seasoned RfA nominators out there willing to hunt for potential candidates, but it is an imprecise science at best. For my part, my thought process usually goes something like, "Hey, I've seen you around before, and you seem to know what you're talking about; why don't I see if you'd be a good RfA candidate?" That happens quite a lot, but I usually only get round to looking at that editor's edits if a) I have a reasonable amount of time to spare at that moment, and b) I'm not doing in the middle of doing some other wiki-task. And if I do get round to looking at that user's edits, then I might find they have a recent block, or a userbox that says "I will never be an admin, ever." And even if a preliminary check indicates that they would be a good candidate, when I actually ask them if they want to run, it happens quite often that I get the reply "no", or "not yet".
I propose that we take the guesswork out of this process, by creating a bot that check's users' contributions to try and gauge if they are ready for adminship. For example, we could say that a user is a potential admin candidate if they a) have at least 10,000 edits, b) no blocks within the last six months, c) have 50 AfD comments... The exact criteria can be worked out later. Then if the bot thinks that a user is a good potential candidate, then it could leave a message on that user's talk page asking them if they would be interested in running for adminship. This message would only be delivered once for any user, once they satisfy the criteria. The bot would keep a record of users that had already received notices, so that no-one would get any duplicate messages. With just this talk page message, users might think about running for RfA where they wouldn't have before, and people watching their talk page might well chime in with messages of encouragement.
Also, this bot could update a website on Tool Labs that kept track of all the possible admin candidates. So users could indicate whether they want to run on or not on that website, and then users looking for potential RfA candidates could just check the website for eligible users that indicate that they want to run. For nominators, this would be a vast improvement over the current hit-or-miss approach to finding candidates.
I envisioned this system as being most useful for up-and-coming editors that might not have thought about running for adminship otherwise. For established non-admin editors, it may be a good idea to place further limits on who gets asked, to avoid thousands of editors getting talk page messages on the bot's first run. We obviously aren't going to be able to deal with thousands of concurrent RfAs, so we shouldn't be asking thousands of users concurrently if they should run.
Would people be interested in an idea like this? I'd love to hear your thoughts. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 11:50, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
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22:26, 25 February 2015 (UTC)Reading the above, one issue is that this bot would be very complex, which is concerning. We would need a top-notch code writer to make this happen, and the potential for errors would be high. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 19:34, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
So should such a bot directly ask users to run for adminship, or should it produce a list with humans given the job of asking? Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 21:22, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
So what about a bot that periodically goes through all external links of all pages (mainly being references) to check if they are offline/down?
Then, associated with that, there could be some kind of (explicitly or not) a "offline-link-checking-task-force" which then goes through these links to replace them with archived, newer or alternative versions of the pages that are still online. And(/or) those who are watching the article could be notified somehow that a link is down so that they search for an archived (mostly via the Wayback Machine - web.archive.org), newer (sometimes sites just relocate their content) or alternative version. The simplest way this could be done would probably having the bot do a small edit on the page (like a tag or a comment - this would nevertheless require a corresponding change in the Wikipedia platform).
-- Fixuture ( talk) 19:26, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
I found this page relatively hard to find so maybe it could be linked on some pages to improve its visibility etc. Also the user friendliness (for the submission of suggestions) could be improved in various ways. One of the problems is that it's hard to find whether or not a suggestion has already been made -> there should be some easy search for this - and maybe also something like tags.
advertisement for private web site removed
-- Fixuture ( talk) 19:40, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
That would be truly useful. When I first used the watch function on a category-page I actually thought that's what it's for. In 2009 there has been a request for this before. But it remained unresolved. Should one file an issue on the wiki-code or something (if so where)? Or maybe is there any news on that?
-- Fixuture ( talk) 20:36, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
cl_timestamp
in the categorylinks table. I'd whip up something easily, but I'm blocked on Labs. —
Dispenser
17:43, 5 March 2015 (UTC)Hi Fixuture, check out these:
Do also have a look at https://tools.wmflabs.org/magnustools/ -> categories, awesome stuff! -- Atlasowa ( talk) 20:51, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
Often, when writing an article one might think of a fitting photo with no photo of it being available on the net (at least not with creative commons license or in good quality).
So a wish list for photos would be truly useful in such cases. One could simply file a new photo-request there and someone living in proximity of it could go and take a photo of it.
For this there the requests should also include the geolocation of the object/.. so that people could look up requests for their local area. There could also be photo-requests that aren't confined to specific locations but access to specific objects and the like - for these type of photo-requests there could be tags that describe or name the object.
If something like this already exists I couldn't find it.
-- Fixuture ( talk) 22:39, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
Hi Fixuture and Trackinfo, have a look:
Happy hunting! :-) -- Atlasowa ( talk) 21:07, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
Not sure if this is the right place to bring this up, but anyway. A few years ago there was a tool developed by some people at UCSC called WikiTrust (see also WP:WikiTrust and http://wikitrust.soe.ucsc.edu/home). It worked like this: "When installed on a MediaWiki website it enables users of that website to obtain information about the author, origin, and reliability of that website's wiki text. Content that is stable, based on an analysis of article history, is displayed in normal black-on-white type, and content that is not stable is highlighted in varying shades of yellow or orange." (from WP:WikiTrust) I found this to be very useful, since I've found that vandalism often gets past unnoticed at Special:RecentChanges because another, constructive edit is made on top of the vandalism, or a bot reverts the most recent vandalism but misses vandalism by a different user directly before the reverted user. WikiTrust also allowed the user to click on a word and be taken back to the diff in which it was added, which is a lot easier than having to laboriously go back through the changes by hand. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the tool was taken offline in 2012 and hasn't been back since. WikiTrust itself naturally had many bugs and flaws, but the idea, I think, has a lot of potential. The WikiTrust is opensource, so the original code could be relaunched, or something new with a similar function could be created. I know next to nothing about coding myself, so I've brought this here. Maybe it could be developed by MediaWiki? Liam987 (talk) 01:45, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
mw.loader.load('//de.wikipedia.org/?title=Benutzer:Schnark/js/artikel-statistik.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript'); //[[Benutzer:Schnark/js/artikel-statistik.js]]
I'm offering a diff lookup service. Where would be a good place to let others know about its existance? Two kinds of pork Makin' Bacon 06:45, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
(Note: This discussion was moved from Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#General_opinion_on_physically_restricting_access_to_the_New_Pages_Feed per a suggestion at the beginning of the discussion. -- Biblio worm 20:33, 18 February 2015 (UTC))
As of late, there have been plans by Jim Carter to start an RfC concerning physically restricting access to the the New Pages Feed. He has even started a JavaScript file that could perform that function. I have personally made it clear that I would oppose such a proposal, but that's not the point of this thread. I'm curious to see what the general community's opinion about this is before the formal RfC, should it go live sometime in the near future. I think it would be good to have a more public discussion about this. Thanks, -- Biblio worm 01:57, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
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02:52, 11 February 2015 (UTC)I see no reason to block anyone from seeing the new pages feed. I don't even see a reason to restrict access to the curation toolbar. The potential damage from misuse is pretty much nil. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 23:38, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
About the topic of sources and reliability. The commentfield in the sources should be able to help out since there's some (Not all of course) intelligent discussions back and forth between several/many people on how they have read the situations (And for most comment field in most sources that has them enable). Wouldn't that be a point of interest for an observation depending on how well recieved a source is? The less comments complaining (If generally has been viewed/read of course) point out how well that source is? Perhaps something to think about, although maybe not relevant in the current situation but just a thought for the future since if they have a consensus it should be as objective as possible. Although it would hamper controversial articles but the more people that gather at a source the more fact splitting would come up to point of wether that part of the article can be trusted. Hmm. This is just a thought I just had when I was reading several articles and noticed the comment field below. As Such this is, as stated, a crazy hypothesis idea. Anything to gain from it? TheRealVordox ( talk) 20:56, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
"WikiLink"
I'm not sure if this idea has been posed before, but most websites now come with the Facebook, linkedin, twitter icons that allow you to share articles etc.
An idea that came to me recently was a similar WikiLink icon. Once clicked, the website or news article would allow you to click on certain words right within the text itself and would bring up the relevant wiki page (perhaps a pop up window or embedded in the website itself). This would remove the need to open a new window, log into wiki and look up an item. You could click right on the text of the news article (for example). If you don't want the hyperlinks, just click back on the WikiLink icon to switch it off.
I think this development would widen wiki's reach (even more!) and help people look up info faster and easier.
This may have been posed before, so apologies if it has! I for one would find it useful and kinda fun.
Thoughts / comments / critique welcome!
Best
Tom-- Tompope999 ( talk) 15:53, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
I have begun listening to audio books (.mp3 files) and find there are thousands of them available for free on the web, many of these are in the public domain because the copyright on the underlying text expired long ago. I think it wold be a nice feature to have links to these recordings on the "book pages" in wikipedia; Not as a requirement, but an encouraged option. What do you folks think of this? There are various locations on the web where these files can be found and perhaps we could come up with a standardized, boiler-plate, template for referencing them. (each site with a different template) TimoleonWash ( talk) 01:36, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
I have investigated the links you provided and learned a lot, thx again Oiyarbepsy ( talk). Then I discovered a template for an outfit called LibriVox which is the website where I have downloaded most of my .mp3s from. It looks like the template doesn't work anymore. How would I go about creating a new template for LibriVox and how would I go about locating all the existing wikipedia pages that use the existing, broken link to fix them? TimoleonWash ( talk) 01:23, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia shouldn't be a vehicle for gun lobbying, however the Americans have done exactly that. There is a gun_control article which is hopeless, mostly telling readers how "complex" the issue is . The several country articles all harmonised to say Gun politics in XXX, even though it's only a political issue in the US, and these articles are about the uncontested and implemented policy. Let the Americans enjoy their school-hall massacres, if that's what they want. I'm sure it makes gripping television*. If you're a proud citizen of a developed country, don't let Americans twist your laws, as politics. Call it what it is: gun control or gun policy, and make sure your children have easy access to stable, unbiased information. (*this is sarcasm. The US situation is unbelievably appalling.) 120.136.34.176 ( talk) 06:28, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
When looking for how to use Not only...but also (grammar) the answer is impossible to find unless you know they are conjunctions. 117.221.177.142 ( talk) 00:49, 23 March 2015 (UTC)Biblio
This came up on review for an article at FAC: "In some places where there are two citations covering one fact, they are not arranged in numerical order." It took a gnome to fix it, but seems like something a bot could handle, at cheaper wages. Does anyone know if that is a possible task for a bot? If so, how does one go about getting it made or learning to make it? Sorry if this is not correct forum. -- Gaff ( talk) 07:46, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
I think that three articles
need editing
any suggestions thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by NatsukiKazuhiko ( talk • contribs) 23:13, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
@ NatsukiKazuhiko: yes; be bold and make the edits. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:01, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
I remember when I had just joined Wikipedia a little over a year ago. I remember feeling really confused and wondering where I should look for information on policy, guidelines, and rules. I have spent the last year learning about these policies, guidelines, and rules, yet I am still learning new policies every day. Part of this is because there is no central collection of policies guidelines, and rules.
My proposal is to start the equivalent of the US Code and United States Reports for the English Wikipedia and if successful for the Wikimedia community at large. The Wikipedia Code (as I am calling it) shall follow the following guidelines:
What do you think? StudiesWorld ( talk) 19:59, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
In case you hadn't seen it, Cinderella157 brought up something similar (but not, I think, the same) at WP:VPR#Suggested improvement for accessibility by editors. – Philosopher Let us reason together. 01:38, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
The Original Poster has suggested that a code, in the legal sense, be developed. I would be very interested in seeing a framework or draft in user space for the code, which could consist of pointers to existing policies, or could actually work the policies together. The main criticism that I have seen is actually an argument in favor, which is that every policy has exceptions. In a legal code, the exceptions are also codified as exceptions. It is also stated that there is too much to codify. That is also an argument in favor of codification. Has anyone actually seen the entire United States Code, which took my grandfather at least ten years to codify and which occupies a whole shelf in bound form (which is seldom used anymore because it is now on-line)? The large number of disjointed policies and guidelines are an argument in favor of codification in some form, probably an index with pointers to the multiple policies and guidelines. The one problem that I see is the concept of Ignore All Rules, which does not really mean what it appears to mean anyway, but means to use common sense when the rules are too restrictive. Its problem is that it is sometimes cited by editors who don't have common sense. (Fortunately, most administrators do have common sense, and the RFA process usually gets editors who have common sense.) Some sort of a code framework seems to me to be an excellent idea, at least as a draft. Robert McClenon ( talk) 16:09, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
Don't copy any categories that are reserved for Wikipedia space into user space (such as the Wikipedia content policies category). - Dank ( push to talk) 20:05, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
There is currently a proposal on Phabricator to add a new feature to MediaWiki where one could link to a specific part of an article's content. When someone visits this special link, they would be scrolled down to the relevant part of the content and possibly, the specific portion would be highlighted.
Before we get started with work on this, we wanted to know if this would be useful at all or whether it would help in any way. Comments? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vghaisas ( talk • contribs) 19:04, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
The proposed feature isn't really meant for editors. It's a feature that will let readers link to arbitrary portions of the content. So it won't add any complexity to the work of editors.
However, I do agree with the other objection you raised. Sections shouldn't be so long that parts of them need to be linked to. However, how many pages match that objective? If there are still enough pages whose sections are long, would it not help readers to be able to link to specific portions of the content? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vghaisas ( talk • contribs) 19:04, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
Vghaisas, what would happen to your link when someone removes those words from the article? Text changes more often than section headings. Or what happens when someone adds multiple copies of those words, and I meant to highlight the third instance? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 00:36, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
More tweets! Looks really good, except for the CC-BY-SA image attributions... Ping User:DarTar? -- Atlasowa ( talk) 22:11, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
Linking to text in a specific revision wouldn't have any of those complications and shouldn't be to hard to do, and still useful. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 03:26, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
What do people think of this idea... Posting a message to user talk pages of users who have not edited in X amount of time but made constructive edits before to try coaxing them back into editing. An obvious factor that would exclude a user is they are on a break, either involuntarily (user is currently blocked for any reason) or voluntarily (a template in Category:Wikibreak templates is on their user page). Included in the message would be mentions of things that either didn't exist when they stopped editing, or a user may not know exist. Here's my impetus for this suggestion: I was speaking in person to a user who said that although they received a welcome template when they started in 2009, they didn't know that there are so many help resources available, specifically the Teahouse, the Help Desk or the IRC channels because they weren't mentioned in the welcome. The Teahouse was created in 2012, so it wouldn't have been. If there is opposition to bot-placed messages of this kind, is there a way of compiling a list of users who haven't edited in say, 6 months, and are not blocked or on break so it could be done manually? -- Geniac ( talk) 16:31, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
There is currently a proposal on Phabricator to add a new feature to MediaWiki where one could link to a specific part of an article's content. When someone visits this special link, they would be scrolled down to the relevant part of the content and possibly, the specific portion would be highlighted.
Before we get started with work on this, we wanted to know if this would be useful at all or whether it would help in any way. Comments? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vghaisas ( talk • contribs) 19:04, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
The proposed feature isn't really meant for editors. It's a feature that will let readers link to arbitrary portions of the content. So it won't add any complexity to the work of editors.
However, I do agree with the other objection you raised. Sections shouldn't be so long that parts of them need to be linked to. However, how many pages match that objective? If there are still enough pages whose sections are long, would it not help readers to be able to link to specific portions of the content? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vghaisas ( talk • contribs) 19:04, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
Vghaisas, what would happen to your link when someone removes those words from the article? Text changes more often than section headings. Or what happens when someone adds multiple copies of those words, and I meant to highlight the third instance? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 00:36, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
More tweets! Looks really good, except for the CC-BY-SA image attributions... Ping User:DarTar? -- Atlasowa ( talk) 22:11, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
Linking to text in a specific revision wouldn't have any of those complications and shouldn't be to hard to do, and still useful. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 03:26, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
What do people think of this idea... Posting a message to user talk pages of users who have not edited in X amount of time but made constructive edits before to try coaxing them back into editing. An obvious factor that would exclude a user is they are on a break, either involuntarily (user is currently blocked for any reason) or voluntarily (a template in Category:Wikibreak templates is on their user page). Included in the message would be mentions of things that either didn't exist when they stopped editing, or a user may not know exist. Here's my impetus for this suggestion: I was speaking in person to a user who said that although they received a welcome template when they started in 2009, they didn't know that there are so many help resources available, specifically the Teahouse, the Help Desk or the IRC channels because they weren't mentioned in the welcome. The Teahouse was created in 2012, so it wouldn't have been. If there is opposition to bot-placed messages of this kind, is there a way of compiling a list of users who haven't edited in say, 6 months, and are not blocked or on break so it could be done manually? -- Geniac ( talk) 16:31, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
Hello everyone!
I'd like to share something I've been hacking on in the past few days. It's a simple tool for exploring articles with unsourced statements, currently hosted at https://citationhunt.herokuapp.com. The full code can be found at https://github.com/guilherme-pg/citationhunt. I mostly built this to explore a few technologies I wasn't too familiar with, but I hope it could be useful to the community: it seems to me that adding citations where they're needed could be a good entry point for new editors, so I tried to make that a little easier. There's lots of room for improvement, of course, but I would love to hear any feedback you might have, and I'm definitely willing to work on making this better suited for real-world usage if the idea is any good.
Thanks, and apologies if this is the wrong place to share this. -- Surlycyborg ( talk) 22:36, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
Sometimes I need to find a section which I have edited and go back to my edit history. I then click on that link (e.g. "Archive.org BOT?") but the section is no more there because it has been ARCHIVED. It would be nice to have an script that retrieves that section automatically if it has been archived. 67.83.6.149 ( talk) 18:03, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
After seeing a number of recent ANI discussions reach several thousand words and dozens of postings each with little or no admin input, some later archived without a single admin comment, I would like to look at possibilities for focusing ANI discussions in general. I participated in an RFC/U a few years ago and found the structure imposed by that system beneficial. I recognize that RFC/U had its problems and has been depreciated, but its highly structured design had merit. There doesn't appear to be any structure to many of the longer discussions at ANI. This is a problem because reading through and making judgements on long, tangled threads is a waste of admin time, and because large amounts of tangential commenting and sub-discussions can derail resolution of what would otherwise be clearcut issues.
Given the range of issues raised at ANI, a rigid structure could be difficult to apply, but there is a wide area between a highly codified discussion and a totally open one. A few possibilities: (1)limit post word count by non-admin users other than the filer and the target of the filing to 1000 words, perhaps a voluntary limit (2)add a default structure to new ANI posts, something like RFC/U's Statement of the dispute, Response, Additional views, Proposed solutions sections (3)put in place some limitation on posting new 'charges' outside of the scope of the initial dispute being raised later in the discussion (4)have separate sections in each ani for non-admin and admin responses. I am not proposing these, just throwing them out as a starting point, and I am sure there are other alternative solutions. Dialectric ( talk) 14:38, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Sometimes, multiple redirects should always point to the same article because they refer to the same thing. However, the way Wikipedia currently works, some redirects end up pointing in inconsistent ways. Let me explain with an example. Here are the redirects to the article Spirited Away:
These redirects can be grouped by the following:
It is conceivable that an article about the character Chihiro Ogino could be newly written, or essentially for any subtopic. Some redirects end up pointing to the new subtopic, while some stale redirects end up pointing to the old parent topic. Because of this, and many other ways, redirects can become stale even if editors can have a forethought of how similar redirects should point to the same target.
Solution-wise, there are several options.
-- Makkachin ( talk) 14:27, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
{{same target as|other redirect}}
, which bots could read and then use to automatically update the redirect if the other changes.
Oiyarbepsy (
talk)
19:56, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
{{would redirect to|target}}
. We'd also have to decide whether
WP:CSD#G8 applies if target
is deleted.
Anomie
⚔
12:50, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
I BOLDly moved my draft live as Module:R avoided double redirect and made a wrapper at Template:R avoided double redirect. It probably needs some improvements to its messages, and possibly a better name, though the template will be easier to understand if it's used at an actual article redirect. See it at Makkachin's original example of Chihiro (Spirited Away). SiBr4 ( talk) 20:01, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
If any of you have ever looked at WP:Requested articles you know it's an absolute mess. The issue is there's a huge amount of pages on Wikipedia that link here, the article wizard, the navigation bar on the proposal village pump, AfC, the list goes on and on. This leads to a huge amount of article ideas listed here,
shortcut | Page | Bytes |
---|---|---|
WP:RA | / | 11,755 |
WP:RA/B | /Biography | 596 |
/Business and economics/Businesses and organizations | 618 | |
/By country | 5,834 | |
/Social sciences/Geography, cities, regions and named places/Kosovo* | 4,997 |
every page has an absurd amount, the thing is, there are some that are legitimately good ideas. Granted some of them aren't notable or don't have any potential content, but a lot of them are. The issue is requested articles is a never ending black hole, tons of additions are made every day but none of them are ever created, presumably because of the level of difficulty to dig into them.
The way I see it one of two things have to happen, either the entire thing has to be shut down, and all links to it across the project need to be removed, or a process that allows for a systematic review of every selection (without having to edit the entire thing by hand), and getting the lists to editors who'd be interested in doing it. I believe that latter is the better option, as this could lead to hundreds of good articles, though I'd like to hear some ideas on what the best way of going about this is, or if they entire thing should be scrapped.
Thanks! Kharkiv07 Talk 02:00, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
I'm currently working on ThePhantomBot, ( bot request for approval) a bot that looks for LTA and other issues that aren't as obvious as the ones found by bots like ClueBot. Since there's a lack of certainty with some of the things the bot looks for and since not all of it is something that would be handled at AIV, the bot would need some way to notify users that it has come across something needing attention. I don't think this can be done effectively by users just coming across the bot and following a page in its user space used to post reports, it would require that every time a user takes action on something the bot notices they credit the bot, which is not something users are likely to do and could bring unnecessary attention to the bot from the problematic users it targets. Here's a list of the things the bot currently detects (or will be detecting soon) and how I think it would best be reported:
The best idea I have so far for reporting to AN/I is to have a permanently transuded template at the top of AN/I which includes a list of reports along with a row of links to the user pages the other reports are filed on. The transclusion prevents users who don't care about the bot's reports from getting updates in their watchlist but makes users on AN/I aware the bot exists. I'm wondering if anyone has any better ideas for how the reporting should work or thinks there are problems with my current plan, after a bit of discussion here I'll decide what the best way to implement the reporting is and seek consensus at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). Here is the bot's current debug log and what the bot currently detects. PhantomTech ( talk) 05:51, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
sock_prob = yes
or sock_prob = daily
could be used at the discretion of the editors at SPI to get a constant or daily list of probable sock puppets, while LTA_high = daily
and Admin_template_misuse = daily
would allow
WP:ANI to get a daily report on possible long-term vandalism and IPs using administrative templates. A given editor who is interested in any or all of the information your bot comes up with can likewise have the same information delivered at regular intervals, eg all = yes
, all = 12h | sock_low = no | LTA_low = no
, all = daily
, bad_page_detect = 2d
, etc.
Van
Isaac
WS
cont
18:32, 29 March 2015 (UTC)report_X = yes
is used outside the Wikipedia / Wikipedia talk namespaces, just transclude
User:ThePhantomBot/report_X and give the option report_X = transclude
for within the Wikipedia namespaces. That page would get the same constant updates of your ANI/AIV/SPI reports, so someone could check their user or user talk page to see whatever reports they want in real time. Periodic reports (eg, daily) could still be used in user talk spaces, and it could be as simple as doing a
WP:subst of that report page onto those user talk pages.
Van
Isaac
WS
cont
19:47, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
Please define this. I don't understand what it means. This has the potential to put a huge amount of useless garbage on the admin noticeboard. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 01:55, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
I've made a navbox at my sandbox that could be placed right under the header at ANI. My bot would log to a page (the main log) that the template gets info from along with other page's in its user space which are linked to in the navbox this way people can put the main log on their watchlist if they want updates but won't be updated if ANI is the only thing on their watchlist. The template automatically changes colors depending on if the main log is empty, has something or is backlogged and automatically collapses if it is backlogged so it doesn't take too much space on the page at ANI. I have it setup on my sandbox simulating a few "random" pages as if they were the main log to show what it looks like in its three different states and I put some placeholders in it for links to other logs so you can see what it would look like. The thresholds for page size are just rough estimates and will have to be modified depending on what format the reports are in. PhantomTech ( talk) 04:48, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
The other day I noticed an edit war over the music genres in an infobox, and I think I might have an idea that could all but eliminate that type of time sink. What if articles that have a long history of this kind of dispute had a dedicated template for the infobox? I don't know much about them, but if we had {{Infobox Thriller (album)}} that transuded all the agreed upon information from a fully-protected template, it would be nearly impossible to edit war over it.
Anyone wanting to make a change to the infobox template would be required to first gain consensus at the relevant talk page before asking for the change to be made at the template page. Of course not every article would need them, but editors working on pages where routine edit warring occurred over the infobox could request them on a case-by-case basis. This way we could "lock down" only the infobox during edit wars related to it. Rationalobserver ( talk) 21:35, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
Ivanvector per your above comment: "However, full-protecting infobox templates seems to be a form of the perennial proposal to lock 'finished' pages, and pages are never perfect and never finished." Some aspects of article content are determined by prior consensus, and that's all this would do; lock-down the infobox when consensus has determined what info it should include. WP:CITEVAR, for example, says that you cannot change one style to another without first gaining consensus, and music genres should be treated the same way. Rationalobserver ( talk) 18:59, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
@ Risker and AmaryllisGardener: As a recent changes patroller I always come across this kind of vandalism without any clue if it's right or not and I'm more than willing to propose the change, are you guys thinking removing the genre field from all music related infoboxes, or just certain ones? Kharkiv07 Talk 01:11, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
Of all the CSDs I've seen contested the number of times I've seen it done right is a fairly low percentage, even for reasonably experienced editors. I think we need clearer, simpler and less error-prone text offered to the editors contesting CSDs. Bazj ( talk) 22:07, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
What about modifying the templates? Some templates work where it takes you to an edit screen with all the required information pre-filled. So, when clicking on the contest button for the a7 tag, the edit screen could be pre-filled with something like this:
<!-- Please explain why this topic is significant. The best way to do this is to show us a reliable source that isn't connected with the subject of the article. Don't tell us that the article is correct - we're not saying that it's wrong, but that it doesn't meet our inclusion criteria. Please explain why the article shouldn't be deleted below this line. --> <!-- Please only type above this line. --> ~~~~
This should help new editors know what to do, and also ensures that the message is signed. Each criteria would need a different pre-filled message. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 20:16, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
Template:Hangon preload XX
, with XX replaced by the letter/number combination of the criterion, i.e., A7's is at {{
Hangon preload A7}} and so on. Regarding signing, it's already included in them. However, just note we had a problem back at the beginning when we implemented the contest button with commented out text – users were placing their protests inside those tags hiding their CSD contest basis
resulting in this edit, but I don't think the same commented out tags issue will arise with any instructions set off above with a few lines skipped. Please note a secondary reason for providing the diff in the last sentence. It shows you the coding gyrations you must go through to place the commented out notes, so they pass through to the pages from the template (i.e.., you can't just use <!-- TEXT -->) --
Fuhghettaboutit (
talk)
04:15, 17 March 2015 (UTC)The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
We are short of new editors, particularly women. If a new editor is "bitten" as soon as they start a new article, they may give up on Wikipedia in disgust. This is to ask for feedback on the idea of adding a process to Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers similar to that for Wikipedia:Vandalism, a series of escalating warnings to compulsive biters that eventually lead to blocks. The details are tentative, so any suggestions would be welcome to improve the concept before putting it to the vote. Aymatth2 ( talk) 12:55, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
I would define a new editor as an editor with less than 100 edits, and a new article as one that is less than 24 hours old.
Type A bite: This kind of "bite" adds cleanup templates to a new article by a new editor, e.g.
![]() | This article needs more
links to other articles to help
integrate it into the encyclopedia. |
![]() | This article may have too many links. |
![]() | This article's tone or style may not reflect the
encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia. |
There is nothing wrong with adding cleanup templates in general (although fixing the problem is better), but a lot wrong with greeting a new editor with a banner like this. An experienced editor would shrug it off, but a new editor may well see it as hostile, saying Wikipedia is not a friendly, collaborative site. Much better to leave a {{ welcome}} note on the new editor's talk page, explain the problem and offer to help. Again, this would apply only to a new article by a new user. They make their first rough outline, save it, get a coffee, and come back to see an aggressive criticism of their work. Wikipedia does not want them.
Type B bite: This kind of "bite", more serious, is an inappropriate request to delete a new article by a new editor ( Speedy, PROD, AfD). The request is "inappropriate" if it is rejected: the nominator did not do their homework. Some well-meant requests will of course be rejected, which is fine. But if an editor is repeatedly requesting deletion of new articles by new editors on inadequate grounds, they are doing damage. An inappropriate Speedy request on Natalie Smith Henry managed to get attention from the New York Times and BBC News, and a year later from Huffington Port. We do not need this sort of publicity, which may discourage potential new editors from even starting. Aymatth2 ( talk) 12:55, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
We could add teeth to Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers by defining an escalating series of user warning templates to be placed on the biter's talk page:
Type A bites (Cleanup banners)
![]() |
Welcome, and thank you for adding a cleanup template to Sample article. This is a new article by a new editor, so adding a note explaining your concern to their talk page would be more appropriate. See Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers for a discussion of this concept. |
![]() |
Please refrain from adding cleanup templates to new articles by new editors such as Sample article. See Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers. |
![]() |
Please stop adding cleanup templates to new articles by new editors, as you did with Sample article. |
![]() |
You may be blocked from editing without further warning if you continue to add cleanup templates to new articles by new editors, as you did with Sample article. |
Type B bites (Deletion requests)
![]() |
Welcome, and thank you for suggesting deletion of Sample article. Your suggestion has been declined. This is a new article by a new editor, so you should be very careful about proposing deletion without careful research and discussing your concerns with the creator. See Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers for a discussion of this concept. |
![]() |
Before requesting deletion please take more care to check whether a new article by a new editor such as Sample article does in fact meet the criteria for deletion. See Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers. |
![]() |
Please stop requesting deletion of new articles by new editors on inappropriate grounds, as you did with Sample article. |
![]() |
You may be blocked from editing without further warning if you continue to add propose deletion of new articles by new editors on inappropriate grounds,, as you did with Sample article. |
I do not see a proposal like this in Wikipedia:Perennial proposals. Perhaps it is crazy? Aymatth2 ( talk) 12:55, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
This is unnecessary WP:CREEP. Type B, persistent bad deletion tagging, is already sanctionable as disruptive editing. Your process for type A amounts to a ban on maintenance templates; while a WP:SOFIXIT attitude is desirable, your proposal would prevent unfixed articles from being tagged for cleanup and so they would fall behind the metaphorical sofa and never see the light again. BethNaught ( talk) 15:25, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
Disruptive editing is a pattern of editing that may extend over a long time or many articles, and disrupts progress towards improving an article or building the encyclopaedia.I would contend that repeated bad deletion tagging would fall under that definition. BethNaught ( talk) 23:41, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
We already have quite a few templates... Template:Uw-bite, Template:Uw-csd, Template:Uw-hasty, as well as four levels of assuming good faith Template:agf1 and harassment Template:harass1. Besides, in general, the people who are going to be tagging this are people who you should probably talk it out on their talk page instead of templating them. Right? Kharkiv07 Talk 03:09, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
@ Aymatth2: What if, when a page is tagged for speedy deletion and it's not pure vandalism, an admin userfies the article instead of deleting it, and leaves a notice? Kharkiv07 Talk 00:15, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
No all maintenance tags are created equal. There are a couple issues that I pretty much always tag on new page patrol - {{ linkrot}}, {{ No categories}} and {{ stub}}. Linkrot and categories are "just so you know" kind of tags that would apply to a very well-written article with these issues that a new editor wouldn't know about. If you tag as a stub, you shouldn't put any other tags on the article, since that is part of it being a stub. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 01:53, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
@ Aymatth2: Are you saying that cleanup and/or deletion tags should not be added to new articles created by newbies? -- AmaryllisGardener talk 00:11, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
To increase power-saving awareness (and actually save a lot of electricity) citation needed, as well as to make reading easier for users in some cases, especially on mobiles phones when reading in the dark - I suggest adding a dark Wikipedia color theme, and add a button to change between the regular and the alternative color modes.
There's a Stylebot theme for Wikipedia which is called " Dark Wikipedia Rounded", and I believe this is how the dark Wikipedia theme should look. It's very nice and easy on the eyes. You can see how it looks in the style's page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.138.33.253 ( talk) 01:40, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
Hi Wiki Team,
I request you to keep right click option on every English word if we do not understand the word, We can right click on the word and check synonyms then and there, So we would not need to go away from Wikipedia to understand a word.
Keep Synonyms option the way Microsoft kept in MS Outlook and MS word.
Please do it as soon as possible. It would be very useful for the world specially who uses English as their secondary language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shanus444 ( talk • contribs) 08:54, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
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One of our biggest problems is, of course, how to deal with content disputes. ArbCom cannot do that, and we don't have any sort of other body which can. I know there has been regular discussion about how to develop such a group, but I am not so sure anything specifically like the following has been discussed. Of course, maybe, if it hasn't been discussed, it might be because it is simply a dumb idea.
Anyway, I was wondering whether anyone thinks this might be workable:
We elect a committee of individuals whose specific job it is to try to respond and address concerns raised regarding content. This group will be in no way able to enforce its own opinions, but the individuals in the committee will be free to take part in RfC's regarding the topic just like anyone else.
The specific duties of the members of the committee would be:
The committee as a whole would, presumably, be made up of people willing to spend time finding as many sources as they can relative to a topic who would also, hopefully, like ArbCom members, be willing to recuse themselves to a degree from the final preparation of sources and material if they believe themselves to be biased.
The group would, effectively, function as a "research committee", trying to find the better reliable sources where that's appropriate, or otherwise as many sources meeting RS as possible. Where encyclopedic articles exist, the structure of them would be found and indicated to the community.
But, I think, basically, in at least a lot of the problematic cases I know of dealing with religion related topics and history related topics, one of the big questions is not the one most generally asked, which is how much material on what topic is to be included in one article, but how many articles can and should we have to deal with all the encyclopedic content which we could reasonably have to include it all.
Maybe, if possible, making the members of such a committee individuals elected to serve there by the community and required only to spend half their time or less, in some sort of rotating shifts, might be optimal. Or, alternately, maybe indicating that individuals getting access to the databanks through the Wikipedia Library are expected, to so degree, to help out by checking what material relating to the topic is available through the databanks they have access to.
Anyway, thoughts? John Carter ( talk) 17:14, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
Featured articles and candidates are subjected to a review somewhat akin to this proposal - seems to me this would build on that process for the benefit of high traffic articles that are not (yet) at FA status. NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 23:07, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
The universe of Wikipedia contributors is vast, and they are clustered in galaxies according to their shared interests. To communicate with one another, users typically edit and watch each other's talk pages. SomeUser will create or edit a page that is not being watched by some significant others, and will then perhaps have to "ping" those others on one or more talk pages in order to let them know about it. That has worked well over the years, of course. But in Wikipedia's expanding universe, communication and collaboration ought to be a whole lot simpler and more efficient. So, when viewing a User page, I'd like to see a Follow/Unfollow option next to the normal Watch/Unwatch. And I'd like to have a Followlist in the exact same format as my current Watchlist, but listing page edits by the users that I am following. Jonathan Lane Studeman ( talk) 07:41, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
It's still a tip of the iceberg. To elaborate, the watchlist is useful as it successfully solves the question of "Has the page been changed?". The followlist can solve the problem of "Has user A edited today?", but not "What has user A edited?" which is its main purpose. Zhaofeng Li [ talk... contribs... 13:57, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
Any ed can already monitor my contribs manually. The ed who does that might have honest reasons or abusive ones. If I understand the proposal, it would just make contrib monitoring easier by combining contrib searches for multiple eds into a WP:Others' contribs watchlist (bearing the inevitable shortcut WP:StalkerList). Would that improve the project? I have mixed feelings on that point.... does it encourage honest people to get together more or would it turn turn honest people into POV cabals? Certainly it will encourage the quiescent wikihounds and stalkers to get become more active in their abuse. The already-active wikihounds are already active, so while that group might appreciate this move, the proposal's impact on the active wikihounds should be moot. If I understood it right, so far I think I oppose. PS, If I allow X to follow me, but deny Y, won't that info be used against us at ANI/AE? NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 12:23, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
"improving the topic-specific-collaboration tools, would be more useful and more well-received"... Yes! How to go about that? NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 18:02, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
Although making a redirect is rather easy (you just blank the page and add #REDIRECT [[Article]]
), there may be some who find templates to be smoother and easier. I happen to be one of those, so if we don't have it already, I've been thinking that we should create a template for redirects. For example, to create a redirect with a template, you might type something like this: {{subst:go-to|Article}}
. (I chose "go-to" because the
"redirect" name is already taken.) I have the rather basic code in
my sandbox, if you want to look at it. --
Biblio
worm
19:45, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
This probabbly sounds like the worst idea ever, but I think Wikipedia would be cool if editors could get Wiki Points so they can pay for stuff.
Like, you get 1 point for making an edit and an administrator could give or take points from you.
Maybe it could be like 200 points to nominate yourself for adminship or maybe it costs sone points for other things. 92.16.4.92 ( talk) 22:54, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
Hi,
The situation is like this - child does not know how to read and write, he asks to find something in YouTube, then video finishes and YouTube shows him the pictures of other videos related by keywords. So he then can continue to navigate from one video to another simply by mouse. He likes to watch interesting videos about real life that bring real information but if he at some moment clicks at animation cartoon link then YouTube gives him the links to animation cartoons or toys reviews and he rambles in this garbage. I really need right now something like YouTube but stuffed with really helpful videos that show how something works, some DIY videos, educational videos, etc., anything related to Wikipedia pages. For example, animation cartoon showing how watches work or video showing the DIY smelting furnace or process of making clay pots or multi-storey building, etc. The system should automatically find related videos and present them as pictures so user could navigate inside the content without using the keyboard at all. I would be glad to participate, help and donate for such system right now.
Alexey. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.211.246.141 ( talk) 00:23, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
-- [[
User:Edokter]] {{
talk}}
11:17, 3 January 2015 (UTC)Wow! What a cool idea!
It should be image based. Bit of work. Is there a sandbox where this is being developed right now? Can I volunteer my own sandbox to try things out?
Chrislamic.State (
talk)
22:27, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
Hi
I have an idea which may help improve the pages on Wikipedia, specifically the ones about scientific subjects.
My idea would be to have a simple and advanced page for each thing on here. For example, if you type in "black hole", it comes up with loads of equations about quantum mechanics and space time, which most people wouldn't be able to understand and they'd just stop reading.
You could have a basic introductory version of the page that explains black holes in a way that is more accessible to people. If then you wanted to read more, you could click on the "advanced" tab.
This would make Wikipedia a much better resource for kids and students.
Foot note:- After speaking with a Wikipedia editor, I have been informed there is a simple version of Wikipedia that already exists:- https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
With this in mind, perhaps a specific icon could be inserted at the start of each article which would send users to the simpler version of the page.
What do you think?
David Wardle — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.205.232.226 ( talk) 13:38, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
Whereas I think that those difficult articles should have an "Introduction" section, written in plain terms. -- NaBUru38 ( talk) 15:27, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
I was reading an entry at WP:TFM where an editor decried intricate templates with dozens of parameters that are used or are not used depending on where in the world the subject article lies. So, I was thinking that rather than having "one size fits all" template documentation, we could pull the editor's location from their browser and give the editor documentation tailored to their location. I realize that this would not be useful for those of us editing through a proxy, so there would have to be a location tree as well so you can find the right docs for the right location. – Fredddie ™ 23:02, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
Hello, I am not a native English speaker, but I just want to bring to your attention the existence of User:JMiall/Louis Compton Miall since 2011. That would be worthy to transfer it into the main namespace ( Louis Compton Miall). Regards, Totodu74 ( talk) 23:55, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
@ JMiall: Give yourself some credit. Put it in article space now and you can finish it there. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 07:09, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
To my mind, the failure to retain new editors is the biggest crisis the encyclopedia has right now.
At NPP, we see a lot of new editors creating pages they know aren't ready, either because they don't understand that "Save" makes the page public, or because they don't want to lose their work. Then these editors get discouraged when their pages are immediately speedied. Although we have plenty of drafting options (the Draft namespace, userspace, AfC), many new editors still aren't aware of them. For the sake of new editor retention, I'd love to see a "Save to Draft" button next to the "Save" button on the page creation window for (at least) non-autoconfirmed editors. The idea is not to make it any harder to save to mainspace (if that's what the editor wants to do) but to make the Draft option that much easier to recognize and take.
As the edit notice says, I'd like to get feedback that's more actionable than "Support" or "Oppose". Has this been proposed before? What do editors who've worked in Draft space think about it? Would it just make for a pile-up of bad pages in Draft? — Swpb talk 20:46, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
"these editors get discouraged when their pages are immediately speedied"Then perhaps we should encourage the admins concerned, rather than deleting, to move them to user/ draft space and notify the editors concerned, using a template which includes links to tutorials and the teahouse? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:42, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
In my view, the save to draft button should create a userspace draft, without being tagged as articles for creation. I don't think new editors would be expecting Articles for Creation (they probably don't know what it is), so a user draft would be better. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 07:19, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
There seems to be broad agreement here. Do you feel like we need a more formal consensus, or can we move ahead with implementation at this point (as an on-by-default user preference)? — Swpb talk 13:53, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
See above - It also needs more clarity as to exactly what the proposal is. Is this an AfC submittal, a user draft, or something else? Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 07:20, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
- Before creating an article, please read Wikipedia:Your first article.
- You can also search for an existing article to which you can redirect this title.
- To experiment, please use the sandbox. To use a wizard to create an article, see the Article wizard.
- When creating an article, provide references to reliable published sources. An article without references, especially a biography of a living person, may be deleted.
- You can also start your new article at Special:Mypage/Jingle slap. There, you can develop the article with less risk of deletion, ask other editors to help work on it, and move it into "article space" when it is ready.
And the last bit is completely wrong because is it should be reading 'Draft:Jingle slap' for a long time already. (Jingle slap was my invention for test purposes.) -- Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 00:50, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
To prevent user space abuse, we could implement "probation", which prevents you from editing userspace. This would be issued if you spend a lot of time in userspace. 50.83.140.10 ( talk) 23:57, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
I don't see a lot of need for this. When we encounter Facebooking on user pages, we delete them, and that gets the point across pretty damn well. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 07:08, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
I noticed that there seem to be many users with editing restrictions that are not full site bans. To make it easier to identify when a ban has been violated, could users with bans other than site bans be required to have a template on their userpage? B E C K Y S A Y L E S 06:07, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
2nd: There must e a feature in your watchlist that allows you to see if there has been more than 1 edit in an article since the last time you visited. I know there is an option to show every single edit but it makes your watchlist too long Tetra quark ( don't be shy) 22:44, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
Hi everyone
Let me start off by saying that Wikipedia is awesome! I have a great idea for a partnership with Wikipedia. Any input would be fantastic!
I would love to join forces with Wikipedia to provide readers of such articles as books, TV shows, music, or bands with the opportunity to purchase whatever they are looking at at a given time, I would like to provide my links in tables for things like TV seasons of a specific show, episodes of specific TV shows or other related things. my idea is to edit an table in an article such as the ones that already exist in order to provide the reader the link in a way that they are not bombarded with a million links everywhere they look.
I do understand your need to ensure that the reader is not spammed with links and as a reader I very much appreciate that. I would however find it helpful to be provided a link that would further enhance my reading without taking me out of the experience.
It is my understanding that Wikipedia is a non profit organizeation, but I would be more then happy to donate a portion of whatever is earned during the time my links are on a page. Would anyone be open to this enhancment on Wikipedia?
Any feedback would be very much appreciated.
Thank You — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sledge106 ( talk • contribs) 19:17, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
Wikidata is used to link en:George Washington to fr:George Washington, should the same list of languages generated by Wikidata for en:George Washington also be there for en:Talk:George Washington to enable a single click to get to fr:Discussion:George Washington? I'm sure someone else has come up with this idea before, so this is half a suggestion, half a "I wonder why it isn't" :) Naraht ( talk) 16:23, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
I understand that one of the goals of wikipedia is to encourage people to contribute as editors. So it seems that it would be a good practice to obsessionally survey a sample of ex-editors regarding reasons they have not continued editing.
I'd suggest that every 6 months or so, a survey (which may change as we begin to learn more) be sent out to people who created an account with an email address who have not made an edit in the last 60 days but made more than 5 edits after creating their account, or within the last year, including people in each subgroups such as (1) users who were active for less than on month, (2) users who were active over one month but less than three months, and (3) users who were active over three months but less than a year.
It would not be necessary to email everyone fitting these categories, just a large enough sample to get 100-200 respondents in each subgroup.
Types of questions of interest to be explored using a likert scale: did they leave because it was too confusing, or because they had accomplished their goals, they were exhausted, they were frustrated by having their edits reverted, they found editing policies were inconsistent or not followed. And there should be an open ended text field for them to give their own reasons, which may shape future questions.
The results could be made available (minus the email addresses) for analysis by anyone interested and might help inform future policy and technical goals. – GodBlessYou2 ( talk) 21:53, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
1st: A QuickTalk option. If enabled in the preferences, when you click "talk" next to the name of a user, a popup window will appear to make it easier to send a message. This would be good because it would motivate more dialogs and more feedbacks.also more help Tetra quark ( don't be shy) 22:44, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
In my opinion, the Wikipedia software should attach a counter to both registered and non-registered editors that denotes whether all of the editor's edits should be checked. The counter starts at 0. All the editor's edits will be checked until the counter reaches 100. It reaches 100 after a hundred constructive edits were made with no clearly problematic edits in-between. If the editor ever makes a clearly problematic edit, the counter is reset to 0. There are external links to "Common Language in Marketing Project" here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and several more inline that have not been reverted for almost 3 months. They were added on 7 November 2014 by User:Karenmharvey who on her User page writes "Karen M Scheller on behalf of the Common Language Project at MASB." Clearly WP:PROMO/ WP:SELFPROMOTE/ WP:COI (and possibly WP:PE). I did not revert her edits, and I will not report them - mention them here only as an example of something that could've been prevented with a simple counter. Most vandalism could also be prevented with such a counter. Who's going to check all those edits? Well, first of all, if almost all vandalism (~8% of all edits?) is being prevented, that saves us a lot of time. It takes effort to create an encyclopedia. Just like editors check WP:PC edits, editors can check the edits of editors whose counters have not yet reached 100. The difference would be that WP:PC edits do not immediately go live. ( related) -- 82.136.210.153 ( talk) 09:33, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
(possible Hindi spam removed) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.192.214.195 ( talk) 10:34, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
{{Citation needed|date=June 2013}}
, but you and I both know that Wikipedia is full of nonsense that random people added based on things they heard their friends say. I think that almost all of those problematic changes are from editors with less than 100 constructive edits.
This edit lasted over 1.5 years. From an IP editor who has made only seven edits, all vandalistic edits. The very first edit we should've been there to say to warn this person and say we check edits. More than 1.5 years "He also lost from the lange dunne By TKO" and "2011 won the Dutch Koekhappen open in Amsterdam". Yes,
koekhappen. Oh, and I also disagree with
WP:BLUE and in my opinion every single thing on Wikipedia should be properly referenced, and references should be attached to material, so someone can't change "They have 2 dogs: x and y.[1]" and change it to "They have 3 dogs: x and y and z[1]" even though ref 1 only mentions two of the dogs. But let's not go there, let's start with changing what new editors can get away with. No 100 constructive edits, then your edits get checked. Your edits are no longer being checked but you deliberately make a non-constructive edit (not good faith), you're back to 0 and we're checking your edits again. --
82.136.210.153 (
talk)
17:44, 8 February 2015 (UTC)Would it be feasible to have at the bottom of each page a box similar to a navbox that had the full citation for the page it was used on in different formats, ALA, MLA, etc.? And would the community support such a change?
There are many possibilities for implementation:
A template like {{ reflist}} that we put at the the bottom of each page under external links with its own section
A mediawiki feature that is automatically put in every page
We might have to restrict the usage, however, because not all pages are of citable quality, and there might be a backlash by academics if more people cite badly written pages on their college reports.
Should it be only for FAs? FAs + GAs? The aforementioned plus A or B class?
Or should it not use the Wikiproject quality system and use some other bar for entry such as a peer review?
The reason I am proposing this is to try to raise awareness of the great articles we have here on-wiki, that anywhere else would be a reliable source if not for the stigma surrounding Wikipedia. Hopefully this initiative will help remove this stigma and make at least some of Wikipedia a reliable, citable source.
The first phase of this proposal is simply discussion-What articles you want it to be restricted to, how it will be implemented, whether you support the general idea of posting cite information or not, etc. When a general consensus arrives at what different models the community would most like it to use, I will put together 1 or several different proposals and create a formal RfC on VPR.
Thank you and I hope to see your input on the idea. KonveyorBelt 01:12, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
Well, Jimbo himself has said that people shouldn't be citing Wikipedia. Yes, we have some great articles, but the role of Wikipedia is to provide the overview and point to where the best sources are. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 04:36, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
Well Jimmy Wales is often wrong; if you haven't witnessed this fact for yourself, just wait a while. There are some good reasons to cite Wikipedia:
The best advice we can give these researchers is to make sure they reference a given version of an article, talk page, or meta page, & not the general URI of that page. -- llywrch ( talk) 07:28, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
I think that the beta features should be made available to everyone, even if they are not logged in. I constantly miss the hovercard feature when I am not logged in. Perhaps instead of being allowed to comment, people should be given a vote - Did you like (feature)? Yes, No, what could be better. Awesomeshreyo ( talk) 19:17, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
I used to really enjoy the Encarta multimedia encyclopedia (90s). It made exploring and learning new things much more fun and facilitated learning new things in a really good way. For instance there was a page with musical instruments on and you could hover or click each one to get it to play the sound of that instrument. Or you could have the globe and spin around it to find the continents, countries and cities (combine with Google earth?). You could also do 3d tours of capital cities (combine with Google street view?) Wikipedia is really missing this kind of fun and interactivity. Even the pictures are usually dull and sometimes restricted to one picture per article. If you click on the maps often all the borders and place-names are removed so you can't even zoom in on it or get a larger view.
There is just one catch I can think of: Power consumption and server load. If the whole world was using interactive features then it could actually increase global power consumption considerably and I'm not for that so adding features would have to be done sensitively and realistically. Nibinaear ( talk) 12:28, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
I spotted this news story about Facebook. I don't think we have any options, other than offering a sympathetic ear to the requests of family members. It would be a relatively simple thing to include somewhere a low or high tech option for users to indicate what they'd like to happen to their userspace when they eventually die. -- Dweller ( talk) 17:05, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
Why is it so necessary that the date of an added cleanup template be displayed on the articles? I think these should be removed and only work behind the scenes. Back when Wikipedia was new, it may have made a little sense, but today I see articles using Template:Multiple issues showing dates as far back at 2007, and it is very off-putting. It makes us look lazy and was obviously not helpful in drawing people in to clean up the problem. Sure, adding the date better-sorts the template into categories, but if an article requires cleanup, should it really be announced on the page that it still has not been done after so many years? Thoughts? — CobraWiki ( jabber | stuff ) 08:48, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
For discussion pages, I think there should be a quick poll at the top to see the general opinion - eg. Do you think ()? Yes, No, Other This would help especially with issues such as mergers and biased sections, as well as the beta area of Wikipedia where it could be used to see the general consensus in a new feature. Awesomeshreyo ( talk) 19:20, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
User:Awesomeshreyo, there are some article talk pages that have FAQs addressing questions that are asked over and over again. This can be seen at Talk:Waterboarding or Talk:0.999.... If you think there is another article talk page that can benefit from that, raise it at that talk page. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 18:09, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
So, right now we have a task of automatically mapping wikipedia pages to different topics. E.g. pages about politics goes to politics, pages about computer games goes to entertainment and so on. This is done by first mapping our topic structure to top-level wikipedia categories. Then if some category is assigned to page, we select topic associated with some super-category of it. Sometimes this mapping is ambiguous: one page could be assigned to multiple topics.
So we decided to build a system that assigns a subset of page categories to each section on the page (and then rerun our mapping tool on section level).
Do you think it is a good idea to assign categories to sections? For well-developed pages it works great, but for the most of them it is either really hard to do or doesn't make sense.
Can you think of the practical applications of this idea (other than our task)? Like, for example, we can suggest to improve sections that doesn't relate to page categories (or add a new category), or even suggest to write more about a category that is not represented on the page at all (or just briefly described in the first paragraph).
Does it make sense? — YNechaev ( talk) 18:56, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
This must be a silly idea (because I cannot imagine someone else would NOT have proposed it by now). Ok, still: Why not have a bot archive all newly added refs on archive.org website (if not already done by this website already) and automatically add a link in the corresponding WP article's reference using the "wayback machine". This would be a tremendous plus for all editors encountering WP:link rots. 67.87.51.51 ( talk) 08:50, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
Also, Mediawiki is currently working on an automated citing service for WP:Visual editor, called Citoid. It will allow you to enter a DOI, ISBN, URL or other identifier and the software will fill in all the details. There is currently a request to add auto-archiving to this new software. However, it's at a very early stage. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 15:31, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
Automated submission of links to archiving sites drives up the cost for the site and may be against the ToS for that site. Furthermore, this has been suggested in the past (see RotlinkBot and Archive.is debates of usefullness) with at best mixed results. I believe the last time this was brought up, the community's will was for WMF to develop a storage solution that was a DoA pidgin at the foundation's steps. Hasteur ( talk) 15:47, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
Why not have a "boot camp" for new editors (to be made mandatory may be?) Objective: get new WP editors become familiar with WP guidelines and policies SO AS THEY DON'T TAKE THINGS PERSONALLY AND LEARN THE PROCESS OF WP EDITING AT THE SAME TIME. MAKING THE PROCESS *FUN*. The big plus is that ego is removed while training since there is no convictions and no personal confrontation about it (since new WP editors would be required to edit WP:sandbox articles) and it would help a great deal editors IMHO (new and old editors* alike, sometimes). *e.g. This could be used as an alternative to blocking someone. This could even be handled by a BOT on the other side (simulating other editors and a reference to WP guidelines and procedures being explained or tested as an example) through predetermined algorithms. 67.87.51.51 ( talk) 08:59, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
After comparing different Wikipedians of discussion pages of articles I suggest to somehow to do notice-sign on to the interwiki box. This means that, for example, if you know some topic well, then you can easily see that on the other language Wikipedia has also discussion page of the same topic. Some drafts can be seen here: File:Discussion sign on iw box -- Bioneer1 ( talk) 08:16, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
Fantasy probably, but I'd love to draft text in MS word or my antique wordperfect, with embedded citations from my reference software (EndNote) and then be able to import the text, with some behind the scenes formatting of all the references.
The advantages to this are so obvious (to me anyway) that I'm surprised this has not already happened.
Thoughts? NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 19:15, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Given the way this 3RR report is (not) being dealt with, what would y'all think about creating a category of "editor exempt from the 3RR rule"? If we're going to do it in practice, perhaps we should make it a matter of explicit designation. Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 18:38, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
Interjection: @Maunus. Please could you explain what your edit means! Links to what you are talking about would be great. Using English rather than WikiLanguage jargon would be better. Thank-you __ DrChrissy ( talk) 19:20, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
Is there a way to map the branching tree of big topics? For example, Climate and Global warming are top articles on those subjects, with lots of sub levels and subsublevels. Text based outlines are nice, but can we show the branching tree in a picture also? NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 19:19, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
{{
category tree}}
- example on the doc page, or try it in your sandbox. It might not be exactly what you're looking for.
Ivanvector (
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01:12, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
Over the last few years, the number of candidates for RfA has been in decline. There are many reasons for this, not all of which we can do anything about. One thing we can do to get more candidates, however, is to ask more people if they want to run. Some people are proactive about wanting to run for adminship, but others are more reluctant and need some persuasion. I myself only ran for adminship after Worm That Turned nominated me, probably about a year and 10,000 edits after I should have.
There are a few seasoned RfA nominators out there willing to hunt for potential candidates, but it is an imprecise science at best. For my part, my thought process usually goes something like, "Hey, I've seen you around before, and you seem to know what you're talking about; why don't I see if you'd be a good RfA candidate?" That happens quite a lot, but I usually only get round to looking at that editor's edits if a) I have a reasonable amount of time to spare at that moment, and b) I'm not doing in the middle of doing some other wiki-task. And if I do get round to looking at that user's edits, then I might find they have a recent block, or a userbox that says "I will never be an admin, ever." And even if a preliminary check indicates that they would be a good candidate, when I actually ask them if they want to run, it happens quite often that I get the reply "no", or "not yet".
I propose that we take the guesswork out of this process, by creating a bot that check's users' contributions to try and gauge if they are ready for adminship. For example, we could say that a user is a potential admin candidate if they a) have at least 10,000 edits, b) no blocks within the last six months, c) have 50 AfD comments... The exact criteria can be worked out later. Then if the bot thinks that a user is a good potential candidate, then it could leave a message on that user's talk page asking them if they would be interested in running for adminship. This message would only be delivered once for any user, once they satisfy the criteria. The bot would keep a record of users that had already received notices, so that no-one would get any duplicate messages. With just this talk page message, users might think about running for RfA where they wouldn't have before, and people watching their talk page might well chime in with messages of encouragement.
Also, this bot could update a website on Tool Labs that kept track of all the possible admin candidates. So users could indicate whether they want to run on or not on that website, and then users looking for potential RfA candidates could just check the website for eligible users that indicate that they want to run. For nominators, this would be a vast improvement over the current hit-or-miss approach to finding candidates.
I envisioned this system as being most useful for up-and-coming editors that might not have thought about running for adminship otherwise. For established non-admin editors, it may be a good idea to place further limits on who gets asked, to avoid thousands of editors getting talk page messages on the bot's first run. We obviously aren't going to be able to deal with thousands of concurrent RfAs, so we shouldn't be asking thousands of users concurrently if they should run.
Would people be interested in an idea like this? I'd love to hear your thoughts. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 11:50, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
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22:26, 25 February 2015 (UTC)Reading the above, one issue is that this bot would be very complex, which is concerning. We would need a top-notch code writer to make this happen, and the potential for errors would be high. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 19:34, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
So should such a bot directly ask users to run for adminship, or should it produce a list with humans given the job of asking? Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 21:22, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
So what about a bot that periodically goes through all external links of all pages (mainly being references) to check if they are offline/down?
Then, associated with that, there could be some kind of (explicitly or not) a "offline-link-checking-task-force" which then goes through these links to replace them with archived, newer or alternative versions of the pages that are still online. And(/or) those who are watching the article could be notified somehow that a link is down so that they search for an archived (mostly via the Wayback Machine - web.archive.org), newer (sometimes sites just relocate their content) or alternative version. The simplest way this could be done would probably having the bot do a small edit on the page (like a tag or a comment - this would nevertheless require a corresponding change in the Wikipedia platform).
-- Fixuture ( talk) 19:26, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
I found this page relatively hard to find so maybe it could be linked on some pages to improve its visibility etc. Also the user friendliness (for the submission of suggestions) could be improved in various ways. One of the problems is that it's hard to find whether or not a suggestion has already been made -> there should be some easy search for this - and maybe also something like tags.
advertisement for private web site removed
-- Fixuture ( talk) 19:40, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
That would be truly useful. When I first used the watch function on a category-page I actually thought that's what it's for. In 2009 there has been a request for this before. But it remained unresolved. Should one file an issue on the wiki-code or something (if so where)? Or maybe is there any news on that?
-- Fixuture ( talk) 20:36, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
cl_timestamp
in the categorylinks table. I'd whip up something easily, but I'm blocked on Labs. —
Dispenser
17:43, 5 March 2015 (UTC)Hi Fixuture, check out these:
Do also have a look at https://tools.wmflabs.org/magnustools/ -> categories, awesome stuff! -- Atlasowa ( talk) 20:51, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
Often, when writing an article one might think of a fitting photo with no photo of it being available on the net (at least not with creative commons license or in good quality).
So a wish list for photos would be truly useful in such cases. One could simply file a new photo-request there and someone living in proximity of it could go and take a photo of it.
For this there the requests should also include the geolocation of the object/.. so that people could look up requests for their local area. There could also be photo-requests that aren't confined to specific locations but access to specific objects and the like - for these type of photo-requests there could be tags that describe or name the object.
If something like this already exists I couldn't find it.
-- Fixuture ( talk) 22:39, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
Hi Fixuture and Trackinfo, have a look:
Happy hunting! :-) -- Atlasowa ( talk) 21:07, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
Not sure if this is the right place to bring this up, but anyway. A few years ago there was a tool developed by some people at UCSC called WikiTrust (see also WP:WikiTrust and http://wikitrust.soe.ucsc.edu/home). It worked like this: "When installed on a MediaWiki website it enables users of that website to obtain information about the author, origin, and reliability of that website's wiki text. Content that is stable, based on an analysis of article history, is displayed in normal black-on-white type, and content that is not stable is highlighted in varying shades of yellow or orange." (from WP:WikiTrust) I found this to be very useful, since I've found that vandalism often gets past unnoticed at Special:RecentChanges because another, constructive edit is made on top of the vandalism, or a bot reverts the most recent vandalism but misses vandalism by a different user directly before the reverted user. WikiTrust also allowed the user to click on a word and be taken back to the diff in which it was added, which is a lot easier than having to laboriously go back through the changes by hand. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the tool was taken offline in 2012 and hasn't been back since. WikiTrust itself naturally had many bugs and flaws, but the idea, I think, has a lot of potential. The WikiTrust is opensource, so the original code could be relaunched, or something new with a similar function could be created. I know next to nothing about coding myself, so I've brought this here. Maybe it could be developed by MediaWiki? Liam987 (talk) 01:45, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
mw.loader.load('//de.wikipedia.org/?title=Benutzer:Schnark/js/artikel-statistik.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript'); //[[Benutzer:Schnark/js/artikel-statistik.js]]
I'm offering a diff lookup service. Where would be a good place to let others know about its existance? Two kinds of pork Makin' Bacon 06:45, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
(Note: This discussion was moved from Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#General_opinion_on_physically_restricting_access_to_the_New_Pages_Feed per a suggestion at the beginning of the discussion. -- Biblio worm 20:33, 18 February 2015 (UTC))
As of late, there have been plans by Jim Carter to start an RfC concerning physically restricting access to the the New Pages Feed. He has even started a JavaScript file that could perform that function. I have personally made it clear that I would oppose such a proposal, but that's not the point of this thread. I'm curious to see what the general community's opinion about this is before the formal RfC, should it go live sometime in the near future. I think it would be good to have a more public discussion about this. Thanks, -- Biblio worm 01:57, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
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02:52, 11 February 2015 (UTC)I see no reason to block anyone from seeing the new pages feed. I don't even see a reason to restrict access to the curation toolbar. The potential damage from misuse is pretty much nil. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 23:38, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
About the topic of sources and reliability. The commentfield in the sources should be able to help out since there's some (Not all of course) intelligent discussions back and forth between several/many people on how they have read the situations (And for most comment field in most sources that has them enable). Wouldn't that be a point of interest for an observation depending on how well recieved a source is? The less comments complaining (If generally has been viewed/read of course) point out how well that source is? Perhaps something to think about, although maybe not relevant in the current situation but just a thought for the future since if they have a consensus it should be as objective as possible. Although it would hamper controversial articles but the more people that gather at a source the more fact splitting would come up to point of wether that part of the article can be trusted. Hmm. This is just a thought I just had when I was reading several articles and noticed the comment field below. As Such this is, as stated, a crazy hypothesis idea. Anything to gain from it? TheRealVordox ( talk) 20:56, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
"WikiLink"
I'm not sure if this idea has been posed before, but most websites now come with the Facebook, linkedin, twitter icons that allow you to share articles etc.
An idea that came to me recently was a similar WikiLink icon. Once clicked, the website or news article would allow you to click on certain words right within the text itself and would bring up the relevant wiki page (perhaps a pop up window or embedded in the website itself). This would remove the need to open a new window, log into wiki and look up an item. You could click right on the text of the news article (for example). If you don't want the hyperlinks, just click back on the WikiLink icon to switch it off.
I think this development would widen wiki's reach (even more!) and help people look up info faster and easier.
This may have been posed before, so apologies if it has! I for one would find it useful and kinda fun.
Thoughts / comments / critique welcome!
Best
Tom-- Tompope999 ( talk) 15:53, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
I have begun listening to audio books (.mp3 files) and find there are thousands of them available for free on the web, many of these are in the public domain because the copyright on the underlying text expired long ago. I think it wold be a nice feature to have links to these recordings on the "book pages" in wikipedia; Not as a requirement, but an encouraged option. What do you folks think of this? There are various locations on the web where these files can be found and perhaps we could come up with a standardized, boiler-plate, template for referencing them. (each site with a different template) TimoleonWash ( talk) 01:36, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
I have investigated the links you provided and learned a lot, thx again Oiyarbepsy ( talk). Then I discovered a template for an outfit called LibriVox which is the website where I have downloaded most of my .mp3s from. It looks like the template doesn't work anymore. How would I go about creating a new template for LibriVox and how would I go about locating all the existing wikipedia pages that use the existing, broken link to fix them? TimoleonWash ( talk) 01:23, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia shouldn't be a vehicle for gun lobbying, however the Americans have done exactly that. There is a gun_control article which is hopeless, mostly telling readers how "complex" the issue is . The several country articles all harmonised to say Gun politics in XXX, even though it's only a political issue in the US, and these articles are about the uncontested and implemented policy. Let the Americans enjoy their school-hall massacres, if that's what they want. I'm sure it makes gripping television*. If you're a proud citizen of a developed country, don't let Americans twist your laws, as politics. Call it what it is: gun control or gun policy, and make sure your children have easy access to stable, unbiased information. (*this is sarcasm. The US situation is unbelievably appalling.) 120.136.34.176 ( talk) 06:28, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
When looking for how to use Not only...but also (grammar) the answer is impossible to find unless you know they are conjunctions. 117.221.177.142 ( talk) 00:49, 23 March 2015 (UTC)Biblio
This came up on review for an article at FAC: "In some places where there are two citations covering one fact, they are not arranged in numerical order." It took a gnome to fix it, but seems like something a bot could handle, at cheaper wages. Does anyone know if that is a possible task for a bot? If so, how does one go about getting it made or learning to make it? Sorry if this is not correct forum. -- Gaff ( talk) 07:46, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
I think that three articles
need editing
any suggestions thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by NatsukiKazuhiko ( talk • contribs) 23:13, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
@ NatsukiKazuhiko: yes; be bold and make the edits. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:01, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
I remember when I had just joined Wikipedia a little over a year ago. I remember feeling really confused and wondering where I should look for information on policy, guidelines, and rules. I have spent the last year learning about these policies, guidelines, and rules, yet I am still learning new policies every day. Part of this is because there is no central collection of policies guidelines, and rules.
My proposal is to start the equivalent of the US Code and United States Reports for the English Wikipedia and if successful for the Wikimedia community at large. The Wikipedia Code (as I am calling it) shall follow the following guidelines:
What do you think? StudiesWorld ( talk) 19:59, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
In case you hadn't seen it, Cinderella157 brought up something similar (but not, I think, the same) at WP:VPR#Suggested improvement for accessibility by editors. – Philosopher Let us reason together. 01:38, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
The Original Poster has suggested that a code, in the legal sense, be developed. I would be very interested in seeing a framework or draft in user space for the code, which could consist of pointers to existing policies, or could actually work the policies together. The main criticism that I have seen is actually an argument in favor, which is that every policy has exceptions. In a legal code, the exceptions are also codified as exceptions. It is also stated that there is too much to codify. That is also an argument in favor of codification. Has anyone actually seen the entire United States Code, which took my grandfather at least ten years to codify and which occupies a whole shelf in bound form (which is seldom used anymore because it is now on-line)? The large number of disjointed policies and guidelines are an argument in favor of codification in some form, probably an index with pointers to the multiple policies and guidelines. The one problem that I see is the concept of Ignore All Rules, which does not really mean what it appears to mean anyway, but means to use common sense when the rules are too restrictive. Its problem is that it is sometimes cited by editors who don't have common sense. (Fortunately, most administrators do have common sense, and the RFA process usually gets editors who have common sense.) Some sort of a code framework seems to me to be an excellent idea, at least as a draft. Robert McClenon ( talk) 16:09, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
Don't copy any categories that are reserved for Wikipedia space into user space (such as the Wikipedia content policies category). - Dank ( push to talk) 20:05, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
There is currently a proposal on Phabricator to add a new feature to MediaWiki where one could link to a specific part of an article's content. When someone visits this special link, they would be scrolled down to the relevant part of the content and possibly, the specific portion would be highlighted.
Before we get started with work on this, we wanted to know if this would be useful at all or whether it would help in any way. Comments? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vghaisas ( talk • contribs) 19:04, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
The proposed feature isn't really meant for editors. It's a feature that will let readers link to arbitrary portions of the content. So it won't add any complexity to the work of editors.
However, I do agree with the other objection you raised. Sections shouldn't be so long that parts of them need to be linked to. However, how many pages match that objective? If there are still enough pages whose sections are long, would it not help readers to be able to link to specific portions of the content? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vghaisas ( talk • contribs) 19:04, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
Vghaisas, what would happen to your link when someone removes those words from the article? Text changes more often than section headings. Or what happens when someone adds multiple copies of those words, and I meant to highlight the third instance? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 00:36, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
More tweets! Looks really good, except for the CC-BY-SA image attributions... Ping User:DarTar? -- Atlasowa ( talk) 22:11, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
Linking to text in a specific revision wouldn't have any of those complications and shouldn't be to hard to do, and still useful. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 03:26, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
What do people think of this idea... Posting a message to user talk pages of users who have not edited in X amount of time but made constructive edits before to try coaxing them back into editing. An obvious factor that would exclude a user is they are on a break, either involuntarily (user is currently blocked for any reason) or voluntarily (a template in Category:Wikibreak templates is on their user page). Included in the message would be mentions of things that either didn't exist when they stopped editing, or a user may not know exist. Here's my impetus for this suggestion: I was speaking in person to a user who said that although they received a welcome template when they started in 2009, they didn't know that there are so many help resources available, specifically the Teahouse, the Help Desk or the IRC channels because they weren't mentioned in the welcome. The Teahouse was created in 2012, so it wouldn't have been. If there is opposition to bot-placed messages of this kind, is there a way of compiling a list of users who haven't edited in say, 6 months, and are not blocked or on break so it could be done manually? -- Geniac ( talk) 16:31, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
There is currently a proposal on Phabricator to add a new feature to MediaWiki where one could link to a specific part of an article's content. When someone visits this special link, they would be scrolled down to the relevant part of the content and possibly, the specific portion would be highlighted.
Before we get started with work on this, we wanted to know if this would be useful at all or whether it would help in any way. Comments? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vghaisas ( talk • contribs) 19:04, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
The proposed feature isn't really meant for editors. It's a feature that will let readers link to arbitrary portions of the content. So it won't add any complexity to the work of editors.
However, I do agree with the other objection you raised. Sections shouldn't be so long that parts of them need to be linked to. However, how many pages match that objective? If there are still enough pages whose sections are long, would it not help readers to be able to link to specific portions of the content? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vghaisas ( talk • contribs) 19:04, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
Vghaisas, what would happen to your link when someone removes those words from the article? Text changes more often than section headings. Or what happens when someone adds multiple copies of those words, and I meant to highlight the third instance? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 00:36, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
More tweets! Looks really good, except for the CC-BY-SA image attributions... Ping User:DarTar? -- Atlasowa ( talk) 22:11, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
Linking to text in a specific revision wouldn't have any of those complications and shouldn't be to hard to do, and still useful. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 03:26, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
What do people think of this idea... Posting a message to user talk pages of users who have not edited in X amount of time but made constructive edits before to try coaxing them back into editing. An obvious factor that would exclude a user is they are on a break, either involuntarily (user is currently blocked for any reason) or voluntarily (a template in Category:Wikibreak templates is on their user page). Included in the message would be mentions of things that either didn't exist when they stopped editing, or a user may not know exist. Here's my impetus for this suggestion: I was speaking in person to a user who said that although they received a welcome template when they started in 2009, they didn't know that there are so many help resources available, specifically the Teahouse, the Help Desk or the IRC channels because they weren't mentioned in the welcome. The Teahouse was created in 2012, so it wouldn't have been. If there is opposition to bot-placed messages of this kind, is there a way of compiling a list of users who haven't edited in say, 6 months, and are not blocked or on break so it could be done manually? -- Geniac ( talk) 16:31, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
Hello everyone!
I'd like to share something I've been hacking on in the past few days. It's a simple tool for exploring articles with unsourced statements, currently hosted at https://citationhunt.herokuapp.com. The full code can be found at https://github.com/guilherme-pg/citationhunt. I mostly built this to explore a few technologies I wasn't too familiar with, but I hope it could be useful to the community: it seems to me that adding citations where they're needed could be a good entry point for new editors, so I tried to make that a little easier. There's lots of room for improvement, of course, but I would love to hear any feedback you might have, and I'm definitely willing to work on making this better suited for real-world usage if the idea is any good.
Thanks, and apologies if this is the wrong place to share this. -- Surlycyborg ( talk) 22:36, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
Sometimes I need to find a section which I have edited and go back to my edit history. I then click on that link (e.g. "Archive.org BOT?") but the section is no more there because it has been ARCHIVED. It would be nice to have an script that retrieves that section automatically if it has been archived. 67.83.6.149 ( talk) 18:03, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
After seeing a number of recent ANI discussions reach several thousand words and dozens of postings each with little or no admin input, some later archived without a single admin comment, I would like to look at possibilities for focusing ANI discussions in general. I participated in an RFC/U a few years ago and found the structure imposed by that system beneficial. I recognize that RFC/U had its problems and has been depreciated, but its highly structured design had merit. There doesn't appear to be any structure to many of the longer discussions at ANI. This is a problem because reading through and making judgements on long, tangled threads is a waste of admin time, and because large amounts of tangential commenting and sub-discussions can derail resolution of what would otherwise be clearcut issues.
Given the range of issues raised at ANI, a rigid structure could be difficult to apply, but there is a wide area between a highly codified discussion and a totally open one. A few possibilities: (1)limit post word count by non-admin users other than the filer and the target of the filing to 1000 words, perhaps a voluntary limit (2)add a default structure to new ANI posts, something like RFC/U's Statement of the dispute, Response, Additional views, Proposed solutions sections (3)put in place some limitation on posting new 'charges' outside of the scope of the initial dispute being raised later in the discussion (4)have separate sections in each ani for non-admin and admin responses. I am not proposing these, just throwing them out as a starting point, and I am sure there are other alternative solutions. Dialectric ( talk) 14:38, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Sometimes, multiple redirects should always point to the same article because they refer to the same thing. However, the way Wikipedia currently works, some redirects end up pointing in inconsistent ways. Let me explain with an example. Here are the redirects to the article Spirited Away:
These redirects can be grouped by the following:
It is conceivable that an article about the character Chihiro Ogino could be newly written, or essentially for any subtopic. Some redirects end up pointing to the new subtopic, while some stale redirects end up pointing to the old parent topic. Because of this, and many other ways, redirects can become stale even if editors can have a forethought of how similar redirects should point to the same target.
Solution-wise, there are several options.
-- Makkachin ( talk) 14:27, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
{{same target as|other redirect}}
, which bots could read and then use to automatically update the redirect if the other changes.
Oiyarbepsy (
talk)
19:56, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
{{would redirect to|target}}
. We'd also have to decide whether
WP:CSD#G8 applies if target
is deleted.
Anomie
⚔
12:50, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
I BOLDly moved my draft live as Module:R avoided double redirect and made a wrapper at Template:R avoided double redirect. It probably needs some improvements to its messages, and possibly a better name, though the template will be easier to understand if it's used at an actual article redirect. See it at Makkachin's original example of Chihiro (Spirited Away). SiBr4 ( talk) 20:01, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
If any of you have ever looked at WP:Requested articles you know it's an absolute mess. The issue is there's a huge amount of pages on Wikipedia that link here, the article wizard, the navigation bar on the proposal village pump, AfC, the list goes on and on. This leads to a huge amount of article ideas listed here,
shortcut | Page | Bytes |
---|---|---|
WP:RA | / | 11,755 |
WP:RA/B | /Biography | 596 |
/Business and economics/Businesses and organizations | 618 | |
/By country | 5,834 | |
/Social sciences/Geography, cities, regions and named places/Kosovo* | 4,997 |
every page has an absurd amount, the thing is, there are some that are legitimately good ideas. Granted some of them aren't notable or don't have any potential content, but a lot of them are. The issue is requested articles is a never ending black hole, tons of additions are made every day but none of them are ever created, presumably because of the level of difficulty to dig into them.
The way I see it one of two things have to happen, either the entire thing has to be shut down, and all links to it across the project need to be removed, or a process that allows for a systematic review of every selection (without having to edit the entire thing by hand), and getting the lists to editors who'd be interested in doing it. I believe that latter is the better option, as this could lead to hundreds of good articles, though I'd like to hear some ideas on what the best way of going about this is, or if they entire thing should be scrapped.
Thanks! Kharkiv07 Talk 02:00, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
I'm currently working on ThePhantomBot, ( bot request for approval) a bot that looks for LTA and other issues that aren't as obvious as the ones found by bots like ClueBot. Since there's a lack of certainty with some of the things the bot looks for and since not all of it is something that would be handled at AIV, the bot would need some way to notify users that it has come across something needing attention. I don't think this can be done effectively by users just coming across the bot and following a page in its user space used to post reports, it would require that every time a user takes action on something the bot notices they credit the bot, which is not something users are likely to do and could bring unnecessary attention to the bot from the problematic users it targets. Here's a list of the things the bot currently detects (or will be detecting soon) and how I think it would best be reported:
The best idea I have so far for reporting to AN/I is to have a permanently transuded template at the top of AN/I which includes a list of reports along with a row of links to the user pages the other reports are filed on. The transclusion prevents users who don't care about the bot's reports from getting updates in their watchlist but makes users on AN/I aware the bot exists. I'm wondering if anyone has any better ideas for how the reporting should work or thinks there are problems with my current plan, after a bit of discussion here I'll decide what the best way to implement the reporting is and seek consensus at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). Here is the bot's current debug log and what the bot currently detects. PhantomTech ( talk) 05:51, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
sock_prob = yes
or sock_prob = daily
could be used at the discretion of the editors at SPI to get a constant or daily list of probable sock puppets, while LTA_high = daily
and Admin_template_misuse = daily
would allow
WP:ANI to get a daily report on possible long-term vandalism and IPs using administrative templates. A given editor who is interested in any or all of the information your bot comes up with can likewise have the same information delivered at regular intervals, eg all = yes
, all = 12h | sock_low = no | LTA_low = no
, all = daily
, bad_page_detect = 2d
, etc.
Van
Isaac
WS
cont
18:32, 29 March 2015 (UTC)report_X = yes
is used outside the Wikipedia / Wikipedia talk namespaces, just transclude
User:ThePhantomBot/report_X and give the option report_X = transclude
for within the Wikipedia namespaces. That page would get the same constant updates of your ANI/AIV/SPI reports, so someone could check their user or user talk page to see whatever reports they want in real time. Periodic reports (eg, daily) could still be used in user talk spaces, and it could be as simple as doing a
WP:subst of that report page onto those user talk pages.
Van
Isaac
WS
cont
19:47, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
Please define this. I don't understand what it means. This has the potential to put a huge amount of useless garbage on the admin noticeboard. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 01:55, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
I've made a navbox at my sandbox that could be placed right under the header at ANI. My bot would log to a page (the main log) that the template gets info from along with other page's in its user space which are linked to in the navbox this way people can put the main log on their watchlist if they want updates but won't be updated if ANI is the only thing on their watchlist. The template automatically changes colors depending on if the main log is empty, has something or is backlogged and automatically collapses if it is backlogged so it doesn't take too much space on the page at ANI. I have it setup on my sandbox simulating a few "random" pages as if they were the main log to show what it looks like in its three different states and I put some placeholders in it for links to other logs so you can see what it would look like. The thresholds for page size are just rough estimates and will have to be modified depending on what format the reports are in. PhantomTech ( talk) 04:48, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
The other day I noticed an edit war over the music genres in an infobox, and I think I might have an idea that could all but eliminate that type of time sink. What if articles that have a long history of this kind of dispute had a dedicated template for the infobox? I don't know much about them, but if we had {{Infobox Thriller (album)}} that transuded all the agreed upon information from a fully-protected template, it would be nearly impossible to edit war over it.
Anyone wanting to make a change to the infobox template would be required to first gain consensus at the relevant talk page before asking for the change to be made at the template page. Of course not every article would need them, but editors working on pages where routine edit warring occurred over the infobox could request them on a case-by-case basis. This way we could "lock down" only the infobox during edit wars related to it. Rationalobserver ( talk) 21:35, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
Ivanvector per your above comment: "However, full-protecting infobox templates seems to be a form of the perennial proposal to lock 'finished' pages, and pages are never perfect and never finished." Some aspects of article content are determined by prior consensus, and that's all this would do; lock-down the infobox when consensus has determined what info it should include. WP:CITEVAR, for example, says that you cannot change one style to another without first gaining consensus, and music genres should be treated the same way. Rationalobserver ( talk) 18:59, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
@ Risker and AmaryllisGardener: As a recent changes patroller I always come across this kind of vandalism without any clue if it's right or not and I'm more than willing to propose the change, are you guys thinking removing the genre field from all music related infoboxes, or just certain ones? Kharkiv07 Talk 01:11, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
Of all the CSDs I've seen contested the number of times I've seen it done right is a fairly low percentage, even for reasonably experienced editors. I think we need clearer, simpler and less error-prone text offered to the editors contesting CSDs. Bazj ( talk) 22:07, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
What about modifying the templates? Some templates work where it takes you to an edit screen with all the required information pre-filled. So, when clicking on the contest button for the a7 tag, the edit screen could be pre-filled with something like this:
<!-- Please explain why this topic is significant. The best way to do this is to show us a reliable source that isn't connected with the subject of the article. Don't tell us that the article is correct - we're not saying that it's wrong, but that it doesn't meet our inclusion criteria. Please explain why the article shouldn't be deleted below this line. --> <!-- Please only type above this line. --> ~~~~
This should help new editors know what to do, and also ensures that the message is signed. Each criteria would need a different pre-filled message. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 20:16, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
Template:Hangon preload XX
, with XX replaced by the letter/number combination of the criterion, i.e., A7's is at {{
Hangon preload A7}} and so on. Regarding signing, it's already included in them. However, just note we had a problem back at the beginning when we implemented the contest button with commented out text – users were placing their protests inside those tags hiding their CSD contest basis
resulting in this edit, but I don't think the same commented out tags issue will arise with any instructions set off above with a few lines skipped. Please note a secondary reason for providing the diff in the last sentence. It shows you the coding gyrations you must go through to place the commented out notes, so they pass through to the pages from the template (i.e.., you can't just use <!-- TEXT -->) --
Fuhghettaboutit (
talk)
04:15, 17 March 2015 (UTC)The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
We are short of new editors, particularly women. If a new editor is "bitten" as soon as they start a new article, they may give up on Wikipedia in disgust. This is to ask for feedback on the idea of adding a process to Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers similar to that for Wikipedia:Vandalism, a series of escalating warnings to compulsive biters that eventually lead to blocks. The details are tentative, so any suggestions would be welcome to improve the concept before putting it to the vote. Aymatth2 ( talk) 12:55, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
I would define a new editor as an editor with less than 100 edits, and a new article as one that is less than 24 hours old.
Type A bite: This kind of "bite" adds cleanup templates to a new article by a new editor, e.g.
![]() | This article needs more
links to other articles to help
integrate it into the encyclopedia. |
![]() | This article may have too many links. |
![]() | This article's tone or style may not reflect the
encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia. |
There is nothing wrong with adding cleanup templates in general (although fixing the problem is better), but a lot wrong with greeting a new editor with a banner like this. An experienced editor would shrug it off, but a new editor may well see it as hostile, saying Wikipedia is not a friendly, collaborative site. Much better to leave a {{ welcome}} note on the new editor's talk page, explain the problem and offer to help. Again, this would apply only to a new article by a new user. They make their first rough outline, save it, get a coffee, and come back to see an aggressive criticism of their work. Wikipedia does not want them.
Type B bite: This kind of "bite", more serious, is an inappropriate request to delete a new article by a new editor ( Speedy, PROD, AfD). The request is "inappropriate" if it is rejected: the nominator did not do their homework. Some well-meant requests will of course be rejected, which is fine. But if an editor is repeatedly requesting deletion of new articles by new editors on inadequate grounds, they are doing damage. An inappropriate Speedy request on Natalie Smith Henry managed to get attention from the New York Times and BBC News, and a year later from Huffington Port. We do not need this sort of publicity, which may discourage potential new editors from even starting. Aymatth2 ( talk) 12:55, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
We could add teeth to Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers by defining an escalating series of user warning templates to be placed on the biter's talk page:
Type A bites (Cleanup banners)
![]() |
Welcome, and thank you for adding a cleanup template to Sample article. This is a new article by a new editor, so adding a note explaining your concern to their talk page would be more appropriate. See Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers for a discussion of this concept. |
![]() |
Please refrain from adding cleanup templates to new articles by new editors such as Sample article. See Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers. |
![]() |
Please stop adding cleanup templates to new articles by new editors, as you did with Sample article. |
![]() |
You may be blocked from editing without further warning if you continue to add cleanup templates to new articles by new editors, as you did with Sample article. |
Type B bites (Deletion requests)
![]() |
Welcome, and thank you for suggesting deletion of Sample article. Your suggestion has been declined. This is a new article by a new editor, so you should be very careful about proposing deletion without careful research and discussing your concerns with the creator. See Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers for a discussion of this concept. |
![]() |
Before requesting deletion please take more care to check whether a new article by a new editor such as Sample article does in fact meet the criteria for deletion. See Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers. |
![]() |
Please stop requesting deletion of new articles by new editors on inappropriate grounds, as you did with Sample article. |
![]() |
You may be blocked from editing without further warning if you continue to add propose deletion of new articles by new editors on inappropriate grounds,, as you did with Sample article. |
I do not see a proposal like this in Wikipedia:Perennial proposals. Perhaps it is crazy? Aymatth2 ( talk) 12:55, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
This is unnecessary WP:CREEP. Type B, persistent bad deletion tagging, is already sanctionable as disruptive editing. Your process for type A amounts to a ban on maintenance templates; while a WP:SOFIXIT attitude is desirable, your proposal would prevent unfixed articles from being tagged for cleanup and so they would fall behind the metaphorical sofa and never see the light again. BethNaught ( talk) 15:25, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
Disruptive editing is a pattern of editing that may extend over a long time or many articles, and disrupts progress towards improving an article or building the encyclopaedia.I would contend that repeated bad deletion tagging would fall under that definition. BethNaught ( talk) 23:41, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
We already have quite a few templates... Template:Uw-bite, Template:Uw-csd, Template:Uw-hasty, as well as four levels of assuming good faith Template:agf1 and harassment Template:harass1. Besides, in general, the people who are going to be tagging this are people who you should probably talk it out on their talk page instead of templating them. Right? Kharkiv07 Talk 03:09, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
@ Aymatth2: What if, when a page is tagged for speedy deletion and it's not pure vandalism, an admin userfies the article instead of deleting it, and leaves a notice? Kharkiv07 Talk 00:15, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
No all maintenance tags are created equal. There are a couple issues that I pretty much always tag on new page patrol - {{ linkrot}}, {{ No categories}} and {{ stub}}. Linkrot and categories are "just so you know" kind of tags that would apply to a very well-written article with these issues that a new editor wouldn't know about. If you tag as a stub, you shouldn't put any other tags on the article, since that is part of it being a stub. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 01:53, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
@ Aymatth2: Are you saying that cleanup and/or deletion tags should not be added to new articles created by newbies? -- AmaryllisGardener talk 00:11, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
To increase power-saving awareness (and actually save a lot of electricity) citation needed, as well as to make reading easier for users in some cases, especially on mobiles phones when reading in the dark - I suggest adding a dark Wikipedia color theme, and add a button to change between the regular and the alternative color modes.
There's a Stylebot theme for Wikipedia which is called " Dark Wikipedia Rounded", and I believe this is how the dark Wikipedia theme should look. It's very nice and easy on the eyes. You can see how it looks in the style's page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.138.33.253 ( talk) 01:40, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
Hi Wiki Team,
I request you to keep right click option on every English word if we do not understand the word, We can right click on the word and check synonyms then and there, So we would not need to go away from Wikipedia to understand a word.
Keep Synonyms option the way Microsoft kept in MS Outlook and MS word.
Please do it as soon as possible. It would be very useful for the world specially who uses English as their secondary language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shanus444 ( talk • contribs) 08:54, 6 April 2015 (UTC)