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I was wondering if we could create a message for pages concerning medical issues such as emergencies and diseases, to the tone that Wikipedia does not mean to advice anyone on medical matters and appropriate medical opinion should be sought after if one suspects of illness or injury... Antonio fake dr. Martin ( dimelo) 05:05, 9 April, 2015 (UTC)
I am going to say a few things in the same section. We know there are two separate Wikipedias : One Simple English another Main English. I haven't seen much difference between the two. Now there are lots of Wiki pages with average english(spelling mistakes , grammatical error) Pages develop over time.
If I feel an article needs better English I need to contact a volunteer with High English writing skills.
1)-If we click user rights , we can see whether they are Check User , Administrator , rollback rights , pending changes reviewer. We must add one more category "English Expert" or any other suitable name. Administrators or arbitration committee will decide who will get this facility.English barnster award should be given to senior editors who are good in English . Talk page discussion , or any other discussion is the best place where we can see the exact command over the language . Then it is upto administrators to propose him/her as "English Expert" .
2)-We must be allowed to put a maintenance template "This page requires better English" , which might get the notice of a an English Expert. Cosmic Emperor ( talk) 08:19, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
One thing that has bothered me for a while is the inability to get a quick estimate of the increase or decrease in character count as the result of a pending edit. The work-around for me has been to paste the old article or section into a sandbox, save it, then edit it and paste the proposed change over it, save it, and finally look at the sandbox article history to see the change in article size — a time-consuming and cumbersome process. There must be a better way.
When I click on the "Show preview" or "Show changes" buttons, I'd like the Wiki software to compute the change in character count and display it just below the editing pane before I commit the change and save it. If there's a script solution that I could save in my user space, that might be alright, although I'd like to see it permanently embedded in the standard editing interface. I'm using the syntax highlighter gadget in my user preferences; with very long articles it times out and stops highlighting, so any add-on script shouldn't make the machine run slower and exacerbate the problem. Thoughts, anyone? — Quicksilver T @ 18:13, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
I spent a few hours doing recent change patrol and quickly got fed up with Special:RecentChanges. To try to scratch that itch, I've written WRCP, a Wiki Recent Change Patrol tool. The goal is to make it easier and more efficient to spot edits that are harmful to the encyclopaedia.
I'd be grateful if others could try the tool out and give ideas for improvement and constructive feedback at User:GoldenRing/WRCP. GoldenRing ( talk) 06:21, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia is rapidly becoming the foremost repository for organizing, summarizing, referencing, and accessing the world’s knowledge. We can think of it as the world’s Knowledge Wiki, the place to go to find out what is.
Our world is beginning the transition from a knowledge basis to a wisdom basis. Examples include the call to transform academic institutions from knowledge based to wisdom based and a recent essay on the rise of the wisdom worker. What aids can help us make wise decisions? Where can we go to obtain sound advice?
If the question motivating knowledge acquisition is “what is?” then the question motivating wisdom acquisition is “what ought to be,” or “what should I do?”
Quora is a popular question-and-answer website where questions are created, answered, edited and organized by its community of users. Today users can ask questions, including “what should I do?” and users post answers. To excel as the world’s wisdom wiki, Quora will have to improve by: refining the questions asked, structuring the questions and answers to improve searching, browsing and retrieval; refining searching, generalizing and structuring linking, refining the answers, encouraging collaboration, adding references, and building upon existing information to become an enduring and reliable repository.
Quora has shown little interest in moving in this direction, therefore I propose that a new Wikimedia project be undertaken to fill this gap. Let’s call the new project WikiWisdom.
WikiWisdom would be driven by user’s questions. Questions asking “What is” would be answered in a wiki with a brief narrative providing links to existing Wikipedia articles. Questions asking “What ought to be” would be answered in a wiki using newly developed material. Original research, often in the form of opinions, would routinely appear, but statements intended to be factual would be held to the same standard of verifiability used in Wikipedia. Typical questions worthy of thoughtful answers and an enduring presence in the WikiWisdom might be:
Developing the WikiWisdom Mediawiki project can help accelerate us into a wiser world. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lbeaumont ( talk • contribs) 02:49, 15 April 2015
After perusing through the Media Viewer arbitration case and the circumstances that led to the arbitration case becoming one, perhaps enwiki should form a new Committee to handle development of the MediaWiki interface (let's call it DevCom for short). Responsibilities of said are simply to review and impliment changes to the namespace as proposed by the community at large.
In essense, this is what I propose:
The global group staff will still, of course, retain editinterface - both for legal and for scope reasons (namely their perimssions exceed enwiki)
Proposed membership:
Size of the committee I leave to the community at large to decide. Also up for thoughts I leave the methodology as to how one gets accepted (two thoughts, others may have more: either via ArbCom's existing process of how OS/CU is handed out, or through a general community election much like how ArbCom's own election process is undertaken)
This will not only reduce the number of chances for someone to accidentally render the site unusuable (a few messages in MediaWiki: are incredibly touchy at the best of times, and a typo in them can have some very far-reaching effects as we all noticed in the aforementioned ArbCom case), but could also be used as a stepping stone for general enwiki denizens to perhaps get a starter into MW development at large without worrying too much about the larger under-the-hood picture.
On the other side of the coin is that, of course, this would be another layer of beauracracy.
Providing some means of limiting the scope of format elements for an included page would be beneficial. For example, on the WP:AfD sub-pages, I keep finding that basic layout errors (such as not including a closing 'div' tag) will propagate downward to the succeeding sections. Thank you. Praemonitus ( talk) 17:01, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
Should we have an analytics tool that objectively rates the likelihood that two or more accounts are actually the same person based on linguistic queues in their contribution history.
For example, say there is an SPI investigation that involves 30 alleged socks. The analytics tool may say that user:Notasock has different syntax patterns in their editing than the other accounts. This may lead to exonerating that editor, whereas otherwise a good faith editor would have been blocked. CorporateM ( Talk) 04:23, 25 April 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.
A new class of article to be introduced. it will be a good list. It would be similar to a good article but in a list format. We need this because the step from list to FL is too great and we need something in the middle. TheMagikCow ( talk) 17:34, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
It covers a topic that lends itself to list format (see WP:List) and, in addition to meeting the requirements for all Wikipedia content (particularly naming conventions, neutrality, no original research, verifiability, citations, reliable sources, living persons, non-free content and what Wikipedia is not) a good list has the following attributes:
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14:01, 4 May 2015 (UTC)I've just opened a discussion here around a possible idea for adding a default signature link to more easily access the revision of the page a person was likely talking about when they made their talk page post.
Per instructions there, I'm putting a note here. What do folks think?
If somebody believes the idea is worth putting up for consensus polling, perhaps after some further development, please go for it (and crosslink to that discussion!) :-).
-- WBTtheFROG ( talk) 23:37, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
I think Wikipedia should follow the same format as just about every other form of media and not mix sports with news items in the "In the news" section on the home page. Maintaining the current situation leads to an overemphasis on sports items and it can easily be solved by just creating a sports section which is the standard in TV, radio, newspapers and news websites. I think this would be the best solution since it would still allow for the sports items to be featured on the home page but it would also allow for more "news" items to also appear. Monopoly31121993 ( talk) 07:14, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
The CSS for <code> (and thus {{code}}) currently uses a grey background, which I find appalingly ugly since it's meant to display source code inline. See, e.g.,
C string handling#Strcat/strcpy replacements. See also
qsort, where I changed qsort
to qsort in violation of the instructions at
Template:Mono; change this back to {{code}} and hit preview to see just how ugly it can be.
I'm not sure what to do: either try to get the CSS for <code> changed, or get the instructions for the {{code}} and {{mono}} changed so that inline code snippets should be displayed in {{mono}}. I'm not really sure how to do either (via RFC?). Suggestions? Thoughts? QVVERTYVS ( hm?) 10:34, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
-- [[
User:Edokter]] {{
talk}}
11:45, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
-- [[
User:Edokter]] {{
talk}}
16:57, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
ls
, cat
, etc. When used once, the grey background stands out, but in articles about these commands, it gets really annoying.
QVVERTYVS (
hm?)
19:34, 8 May 2015 (UTC)code { border: none; background: inherit; color: inherit; }
Right now, templates are used to generate notices and icons indicating that particular pages are protected. My only major problem with them is that they are manually added and are not specifically tied to the article's protection status (meaning that they do not necessarily "disappear" upon the expiration of the page's protection. Some, uneducated editors also believe that adding or removing said templates can change the article's protection status. Plus, it would also make a bit more sense to display the protection status in a location that is contextually
My idea is to replace the inline protection templates with a variation of them that is implemented directly in the software and MediaWiki skin. What I envisioned was a sort of minimalistic padlock icon next to the relevant function that is protected, accompanied by an indication of whether the user can edit the page. So for instance, a page that is semi-protected would show a faded grey padlock next to the Edit button; if the user is eligible to edit the page, the lock will still appear, but it will shop up as opened. A different icon could be used for pending revisions, mainly because I do not feel the padlock is an accurate symbol to signify this process.
Any thoughts? ViperSnake151 Talk 00:29, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
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or {{
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will automatically add a prot padlock where applicable. --
Redrose64 (
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17:51, 14 May 2015 (UTC)This one is rather a large body of suggestions, and written in a rather stern and esoteric prose, so I ask that you try to tolerate it as best that you can. The form it would take as a Proposal would be much simpler, and not some kind of discourse like it is now.
My apologizes to those with smaller displays.
There are some ways in which Wikipedia must be limited, and consequently deficient. It will never be a true compendium of truth, but merely a collection of knowledge, and even then impaired by the need for consensus. Consensus, of course, is neither good or evil alone, as are all things.
However, consensus is derived from a source, the same as any opinion, and in the interest of all users of Wikipedia that source must be chosen so as to provide the maximum appeal.
Fortunately, Wikipedia is not attempting to exclude beliefs in the process of consensus, but only to find the foundation upon which describe those variant beliefs in a way which is accurate for all involved parties. (Here the word 'beliefs' is to be read sans any religious or moral connotations, and is used merely because 'opinions' has other denotations.)
Thus, Wikipedia serves as a documentation of reputed knowledge moreso than as an authority deeming evaluation for it. I.e., in the interest of so-called neutrality, notability is more significant than any pretenses at correctness.
Enough with the musings. Well, not so much, alas, but I'll consider implications to some examples:
I suppose that I should thank you for reading.
JamesEG ( talk) 01:13, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
I...don't understand what your point is, with any of this. That Wikipedia represents reliable sources and not "objective truth"? Yes. That's...the very premise of Wikipedia. Ironholds ( talk) 16:15, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
I also can't make out any sort of proposal here. What, specifically, ought Wikipedia to implement, change, or remove? What particular problem ought we to address? While this Village Pump is certainly dedicated to developing incomplete ideas … this thought seems so incomplete that others can't build on it. JamesEG, can you clarify things for us? {{ Nihiltres| talk| edits}} 18:21, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
I believe that namespace articles should not link to Draft: articles. Am I wrong?
But I have spotted such links ( example) so how about a bot/script/something that would detect them? And either remove such links or create a backlog.
Cheers! Syced ( talk) 06:45, 23 April 2015 (UTC) (Note: Example has been fixed. Alsee ( talk) 19:03, 15 May 2015 (UTC))
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11:33, 23 April 2015 (UTC)Proposal for WikiDesign - a cloud based open source design tool. WikiDesign would incorporate all of the tools to design modern devices and processes in a web based application similar to Wikipedia as well as an intellectual property conservancy user's agreement. Some tools to consider would be autocad and gis applications such as Arcview. There would need to be the other tools for the entire design process. For example a package for economic analysis, a tool for modeling process/controls, and a mechanism to pursue patents on any new intellectual property collaboratively developed by users. The intellectual property user's agreement would state that any design and intellectual property is open source and available to any user who follows the user's terms of agreement free of charge. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RBenn38486 ( talk • contribs) 12:21, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, taking full advantage of the capabilities of a massive interconnected network and an evolving information medium to display an amount of information that would normally be impossible by any other method. However, Wikipedia relies almost exclusively on the same methods of the classical encyclopedia to convey information to the readers of its pages. Text and pictures can only provide so much of an idea of a concept; and at a point it becomes difficult, to a degree tedious, to slog through the massive walls of text that are the amazingly well written Wikipedia articles. While the rest of the internet continues to evolve in ways to convey information to wide audiences, Wikipedia continues to lag behind, still caught up in the vintage methods of textual context with the occasional picture.
I propose that Wikipedia encourages editors to include external links or recommendations to videos discussing the topics contained in an article. Whether Wikipedia encourages this through the implementation of new systems or simply provides the documentation to appropriately link videos is not of immediate importance; the most important thing is that Wikipedia provide editors with the methods to facilitate the use of informational videos on Wikipedia articles. Embedding would of course be a great solution, as would a dedicated "Recommended Viewing" or "See Also: Videos" section at the conclusion of an article.
Either way, Wikipedia needs to take a strong stance to promote the use of informative videos as a medium of information on their articles. Important to note is the fact that not all videos would have to come from unverifiable, unqualified sources on YouTube. In fact, there are multitudes of open source instructional videos to be found on the internet, a stellar example of which is the MIT OpenCourseWare website: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/audio-video-courses/
Wikipedia should aim to inform their readers in the most efficient and effective means possible. Video and audio means of information communication are arguably the best methods to convey information to wide audiences with varied characteristics.
Also, WikiEducation online courseware would be the next big thing, but that's a whole different topic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NuclearLemon ( talk • contribs) 01:48, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
I think we all here have, well, reservations, about the effectiveness of wikinews, including even some of its bigger contributors. And, unfortunately, as can be seen about the recent creation of a WikiProject devoted to a single candidate in the upcoming US Presidential election, there is a real chance that we are going to get a lot more "news"-y editing and information about all the candidates, which we are going to have to, of course, try to insert in our comparatively few overview articles in an NPOV way which doesn't violate WEIGHT, which is, let's be honest, all but impossible.
So, maybe, and possibly even as a provisional matter to deal exclusively with matters of elections, maybe we might be better off effectively allowing some of the people who want to add "news" material to wikipedia, not wikinews, to do so here. In a separate namespace for news articles particularly. I expect we are going to get pretty much daily changes to some of these articles as is shortly, creating any number of problems and sinking the time of lots of people which could be better spent elsewhere.
That's why I'm thinking, maybe, to create a separate namespace for "news" pieces, which would still have to meet the same basic notability requirements, which could then have a link to the category or news portal for the election, or the race or the candidate or whatever, and then, on a fairly regular basis, maybe once a week or month or whatever, updating the main articles to reflect the lesser news updates. If this news site were also used to include information on other matters, like, say, developments in the Catholic Church, or the UK, Russia, or China, or the UN, or any other large entity with an article that gets a lot of coverage in the news, we could do pretty much the same thing.
Alternately, for the latter point, maybe we might institute a second namespace, an "Almanac:" or similar, which could be used to summarize the news stories on a weekly or monthly basis, which could then itself be used to allow for regular, scheduled, updates to the relevant main articles on, maybe, an annual basis for "smaller" items, unlike say natural or man-made disasters, wars, or similar things whose impact generally does reasonably get recorded in articles quickly.
Anyway, any ideas? John Carter ( talk) 14:48, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
@John Carter: Right now, Wikinews is the "news" while you could say the "almanac" is what we see on the wikipedia main page "In the news". So it's already been implemented. 117.221.189.51 ( talk) 03:00, 20 May 2015 (UTC)POV
Does anybody have any ideas about how Wikipedia could change to be very efficient at enabling most newcomers who want to become a good Wikipedian to be able to easily get trained to do so? I don't know how to create a WikiProject that does that. Blackbombchu ( talk) 22:01, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
What about external links which open up actual websites of what is referenced or of the subject. For example if I am seeing a Wiki of list of USA newspapers, all the papers open up their own wiki pages. Well, I would expect to be taken directly to the paper website, right. So how about like two links or option to go visit the actual website.
I interacted with Wikipedia Contact-us representative who mentioned this embedding within content is not found because it would be open to a lot of spamming. This is perfectly a valid reason. But could we find a way around this. Wordpress seems to have a way in preventing spamming on their blogs which are the maximum around the world.
So ive put this in the IDEA LAB to generate a feasible proposal if possible. I am not such a techie person but this handicap of not having external links sure does put one off on researching new subjects. It means again I got to go and google out the actual website. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tb kol ( talk • contribs) 08:44, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
LINKFARM says: External links or Internet directories. There is nothing wrong with adding one or more useful content-relevant links to an article; however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Wikipedia. On articles about topics with many fansites, for example, including a link to one major fansite may be appropriate. See Wikipedia:External links for some guidelines.
It does not say external links may not be used. Further it says its appropriate to include a link to the main website (fansite). Tb kol ( talk) 16:07, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
Could you show me where it says 'in External links section'. Tb kol ( talk) 16:45, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
I checked Wikipedia:External_links#Important_points_to_remember When you read a blog or article, the company referenced to, or the subject if there is a website, it links directly from the article. On wikipedia when its perfect to include links in article of wikipedia pages (internal links)/ why the distinction and step-motherly treatment to external links. Why should good sources not be rewarded on the same footing as wikipedia pages as sources of information on an article. This is bias and injustice.
And when you bring in an excuse as spamming, it shows you don't just like the idea. We know that these spam links can be removed. The authors can be traced and warned if excessive spamming. I mean we can have policing and policies on it.
But it is simply unjustified when you have one set of rules for wikipedia links and another for external links. This is not a proprietary website. It is an open source website.
The advantages you get being open-source and contributed website i guess are a) a lot of people from various subjects of interest writing about their specialization. Surely some external website may be a point of reference on that subject. Now when you don't allow linking of it in the article you are taking it out of consideration for maybe 50-60 per cent of the viewers least. That is imposing a rule unjustifiably. It is giving a picture that wikipedia is the only god-source of online reference.
b) The other thing i ask you is why should wikipedia not be a repository of good reliable online references of external links where required, where justified. Being an online open source project funded by everyone in the world, you are sort of leaving a lot of room empty when you dont upfront say this and this website is worth visiting. And you demand they be inclueded right at the bottom, for all their worth.
As viewers, as supporters, as contributors, as donors to wikipedia we need external links pari passu with internal links. I mean wiki just cannot differentiate between the two when referenceing for an article and say we'll put internal links up in the article and external links right down. And then call yourself open-source. It should be illegal. Please check your licences and rule books. Else I'm going to take this up with open-source licence people who-ever they are and where-ever they be.
This is an Idea Lab, when you come here, and i am saying this to veterans, expect that new people will ask what they think should be asked from Wikipedia. Be considerate, understand from our perspective. And don't stone-wall us out. Most of us may be asking out of wikipedia, spending our time, effort and taking interest for it, for something due to us from this project Tb kol ( talk) 11:40, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
A) By open source I mean not discriminating between sources and on exhibiting sources. Therefore whether it is a wiki-page or an external webpage, both must be held equal while lending a reference within an article. Currently only internal wiki pages have rights to be linked within an article. External pages have a lesser right, that to be mentioned at the bottom of the article.
I would like to draw the meaning of 'No Discrimination', 'Must not restrict' and 'Neutral' from the definition of Open-Source at opensource.org opensource.org/definition
B) Wikipedia is on the Internet as an encyclopedia. It is but natural and contextual to have meaningful and expert links to resourcefull web-pages of the internet. I truly believe it fails in its avatar as an encyclopedia and limits is depth and thereby its readership when it chooses to not allow external links per se within the articles.
Your policies must be framed then to disallow any bad links and check on them. And not have a principle of dis-allowing external links within articles. Tb kol ( talk) 07:39, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
Actually, Open Source (Technical) people at Wikipedia have done it! That is adding a pop-up Reference Tooltip for external links that are cited within the article. I just noticed days back pop-ups opening within the article itself (as i would have liked it) where Reference numbers are given. I was waiting to ascertain the exact date this change took place, but cannot place it. It seems to have come out of a Technical Proposal Reference_Tooltips and see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reference_Tooltips .
It would be good to view their Hypothesis and Rationale:
Rationale Currently, Wikimedia sites list all references at the bottom of the article. For large articles, especially those with many references, this is sub-optimal. Checking an article's references requires several traversals over the entire length of the article, during which time the reader will often lose their place.
Hypotheses This is a general usability feature. It is hypothesized that readers will be more likely to visit references if they are immediately accessible without having to traverse the entire page length.
But its been quite a while for them to roll it out globally in Wikipedia. The dates on the proposal are 2012. But they've done it.
So we're done i guess. Thanks everybody !! Tb kol ( talk) 13:38, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
There is no mention or link to of WP: Teahouse on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Introduction_2 or the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Editing pages. It would be a good idea to add the Teahouse so that new users can get help on editing. 59.96.197.51 ( talk) 10:35, 18 May 2015 (UTC)POV
Currently,
global rollbackers have the permission suppressredirect
. This allows for a page to be removed without creating a redirect. The purpose of
rollbackers on enwiki is to combat vandalism, and sometimes page move vandalism occurs. In the past the permission has been proposed on this wiki, but was shot down because of the fear of page move vandalism. I want to gauge the general opinion on giving suppressredirect to rollbackers here. Just like with the normal rollback, this would be only to combat vandalism and using it otherwise would result in sanctions, including but not limited to removal of the tool. What does everybody think?
Kharkiv07
Talk
02:44, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
Do we take into consideration that small countries with low literacy rates may find little access to Wikipedia for their missionary history if only commercially published sources are trusted, and if use of publicly accessed archives is suspect. Scholars within former colonies must travel abroad to access archives where missionary materials are held. And those outside the country are dependent on unpublished works within the country. I suggest that a provision be added in the case of former colonies to legitimize substantiation through archival material and through books and materials not commercially published. Let the control device be editing or deletion for statements found to be false or where the motivation for placing a statement is suspect.jzsj 12:04, 10 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jzsj ( talk • contribs) jzsj 15:15, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
Jzsj, you might be interested in m:Research:Oral Citations. It was featured in a recent Research Data Showcase (which I missed, but which might still be available on YouTube). WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:48, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
Jzsj, it's hard to tell what specifically you're advocating here, but it seems to be about having a seperate set of reliable-sourcing standards for developing countries. This would be a bad idea, as it would create the impression of bias. In fact, if anything I would say we need to be even more careful about sourcing for subjects in developing nations, as they likely wouldn't have access to the public-relations and legal defences available to those in more affluent countries. If Wikipedia publishes libelous content about Bill Gates or Lady Gaga, it would be cleared up quickly. But libel about an activist or academic with no hired staff in a country with limited Internet access may not even be noticed for a long time. Therefore, it's extremely important to make sure such information is accurate and well-sourced initially.
Andrew Lenahan - Starblind
17:16, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
Content bias is definitely present in Wikipedia for a number of reasons (e.g., the interests of the people who edit, the dominance of US editors leading to a dominance of US-centric content, etc.) and the reliable source "bias" is definitely one. It becomes increasingly hard to demonstrate notability for articles about less developed countries (and the people and companies from these countries) as accessible sources are hard to find, let alone reliable ones. In addition, accessible sources are often presumed to be biased (try writing an article about Iran for example). I presume this is the thrust of the original suggestion - that we soften the standard for less developed countries in acknowledgment of the difficulties. While agreeing it is a problem, I don't see an easy answer. UnreliableWiki perhaps? QuiteUnusual ( talk) 12:14, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
Linking the idea here for a possible incubation. Logos ( talk) 22:42, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
How about an icon on the main wikipedia page featuring a daily random article? There is a link to the side but it would be more useful as an icon on the main page of wikipedia because it would encourage the following advantages:
59.96.197.51 ( talk) 10:28, 18 May 2015 (UTC)POV
Would having user's screennames attached to cleanup tags allow for responsible tagging? Here's my example: {{ {{{|safesubst:}}}#invoke:Unsubst||$N=Confusing |date=__DATE__ |$B= {{Ambox | name = Confusing | subst = <includeonly>{{subst:substcheck}}</includeonly> | type = style | class = ambox-confusing | small = {{{small| {{#ifeq:{{lc: {{{1|}}} }}|section|left}} }}} | issue = This {{{1|article}}} '''may be [[Wikipedia:Vagueness|confusing or unclear]] to readers'''. {{#if:{{{reason|}}}|In particular, {{{reason}}}.}} | fix = Please help us [[Wikipedia:Please clarify|clarify the {{{1|article}}}]]; suggestions may be found on the [[{{{2|{{TALKPAGENAME}}}}}|talk page]]. | date = {{{date|}}} | editor = {{user|[[User:Discuss-Dubious|Discuss-Dubious]] ([[User talk:Discuss-Dubious|t]]/[[Special:Contributions/Discuss-Dubious|c]])}} | cat = Wikipedia articles needing clarification | all = All Wikipedia articles needing clarification }} The flipside for me is that this may be an irresponsible crossing over of articlespace and userspace. However, it would help people ask users what they do and do not like about the article in question. Discuss-Dubious ( t/ c) 19:08, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
{{
Confusing}}
(and not a particularly good one, as demonstrated by that safesubst: stuff at the top) and added one parameter - |editor=
- which is not in fact recognised by {{
ambox}}
. Also, who or what is User:Discuss-Dubious, and why has the {{
user}}
template been misused? It takes one parameter, a bare user name. --
Redrose64 (
talk)
21:13, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
To whom it may concern at Wikipedia,
I am currently a Business Analyst at a financial institution.I majored in the Computer Sciences, with a minor in Mathematics. I was curious one day to find out how many pages fell under a mathematics category in Wikipedia, in the event someone wanted to learn as much as they could about mathematics using only "Mathematics" as their starting point. To accomplish this task, I built a process that queries Wikipedia and looks for pages that have the same top level category as the parent or "seed" site, in this case "Mathematics". While the process looks for pages that fall under "Fields_of_mathematics" (the primary category for "Mathematics"), I noticed that the process was finding something probably more valuable than it's original purpose:
I was hoping to learn a little more about managing sites, and get some input on how this information could be used to assist others in their efforts. I also have no problem taking a more active role and helping improve link integrity and categorization of Wikipedia websites. I am willing to dedicate time to this as I have been looking for a new project to work on in my spare time. I also fear that this process could be accidentally perceived as malicious in nature (due to the automated nature of querying pages), if it is not registered or the right team isn't made aware of its existence.
I am also curious if I have just re-invented the wheel and if this is just a waste of time. I am curious to get feedback from anyone. Thanks for taking the time to read this! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:CD12:4550:65B0:316E:2407:DC3B ( talk) 13:40, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
There are many policies and guidelines lately. Are there too many? What about WP:NCCAPS or WP:CIVIL? I am not saying they are unnecessary or bad. I was setting up examples to review. If they work out well, there must be any other rule that must be deregulated or repealed. -- George Ho ( talk) 04:03, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
I emphasize with the too many policies idea, the question is what we can get rid of, and nothing obvious comes to mind. Here's a crazy thought, though -- Change the meaning of no-consensus, so instead of maintaining the status quo we just delete the contested passage (unless the page would make no sense without it). Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 03:31, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
Hello, I have an idea that will help the new users greatly. I myself have only been a Wikipedian for 10 days, and discovered the Village Pump by default. I propose that there should be pages written an easy format for new users to understand. I don't understand how to create a user page myself! It is extremely hard to understand )-: anyway, thank you for reading my proposal! (I think the pages, or file of pages should be called the NEWBIE ROOM. From, Marshamallow 360! Much love xxx-- Marshamallow 360 ( talk) 18:06, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
Since it is considered good practice to provide edit summaries, would it be a good idea to require IPs and non- autoconfirmed users to supply an edit summary when making edits to the article namespace? This would help prevent misunderstandings and make it easier to patrol edits, and encourage using edit summaries in general. Currently, many new users/IPs do not use edit summaries, even when making constructive edits. Tony Tan · talk 22:55, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
So I've got a proposal on the go for a YouTube Wikiproject (Not blatant advertising) and I'm wondering how bold can I be with such an endeavour. I want to create a Template header and WP: project space to get the infrastructure going and an audit of all the articles. While WP:BOLD is a policy I don't want to find someone getting upset for some unforeseen reason.
--- :D Derry Adama ( talk) 23:37, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
{{U|
Technical 13}} (
e •
t •
c)
16:31, 14 May 2015 (UTC)I think we should introduce age restrictions to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects. Vandalism, unwise selections and childish, non-encyclopedic content popping up is the reason. So the new bit is not allowing under-teens create accounts, and all Wikipedians must have a proper account while editing instead of editing from IP adresses. Is this a good way to prevent vandalism on Wikipedia? -- Corsicanwarrah ( talk) 10:53, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
I posted something to the talk page a while ago concerning this, but I now see that what interested users even look at that thing will probably never it.
Anyway, the list is unwieldy. My suggestion was to narrow the criteria for inclusion in the list, and also to possibly justify the list itself. The biggest reason I can see for which we want a list of hoaxes is to record any resultant infections: the utility whereby someone can study motivations behind the hoaxes is dubious, at best (it provides very little helpful information); reading some of the other comments on its talk page, I wouldn't go so far as to say that it promotes Herostratus, but it certainly looks like people are only interested in added to the list.
Hmm, however, encouraging people to find an undiscovered longest-standing hoax might be a good thing, too. So, that might be another, albeit superfluous, reason to keep it, but I digress.
What should be done with hoaxes that have no known repercussions? Should they be maintained in a list somewhere? That list?
What about those which are obviously not hoaxes, but mere vandalism which happened to escape beyond Wikipedia?
Again, I think the most important reason to keep a list of this stuff is for spin control and to try and regain some ethos when something does spill out.
JamesEG ( talk) 11:14, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
Requested moves has a backlog that just keeps on going; adding to just one more thing that admins have to do with. Hypothetically; what do people think about giving editors who have several RM closures the powers to:
These permissions could only be used to either close move requests or fix obvious page-move vandalism. I fully realize that this is yet another unbundling of the tools; however it seems that it could be given to editors who perhaps aren't quite qualified for the mop, and that it could easily be removed from an editor if there was an issue. Thoughts? Kharkiv07 ( T) 00:37, 30 May 2015 (UTC), amended 00:48, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
This idea has been churning in my brain for a while now, so I might as well throw it out here since it's related. My idea is to merge requested moves into redirects for discussion, and rename the process Article titles for discussion. Disambiguation pages would makes sense in this process too. Discussions about all three of these center around what titles should be and where they should point, so it seems to make some logical sense to put them together. And having fewer processes could hopefully reduce these backlogs we got. I'm curious what people think of this idea. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 04:08, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
I tried to upgrade the information in a company infobox by using the company's annual report. One thing led to another so my bold edit has now resulted in something that is too complex both as it appears to the reader and to an editor. The result probably uses the Footnotes/References section of the infobox totally incorrectly. It also probably over-references the source, which is a 300 plus page report with the data scattered all over it. I am unsure as to how to improve the style without cutting the referencing down to something that is not as friendly for someone who is checking the references. Maybe there is another template out there that can help me. I would have preferred to use a separate footnote list created with the Short Footnote template, but that would have meant changing the existing referencing style of the article. I am hoping that whoever reverts my edit can suggest a better alternative. My Gussie ( talk) 14:38, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
...</ref>{{rp|6}}
, the next <ref name="AR2014" />{{rp|7}}
, the next <ref name="AR2014" />{{rp|177}}
and so on. Technically this template was created for situations where you are using a single reference so many times that even shortened footnotes would be a bit silly, but this would work here to make verifiability much easier and would solve your problem I think. Best regards--
Fuhghettaboutit (
talk)
21:21, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
⁠
to avoid this. If that doesn't work, there always {{
nowrap}} and the paired {{
nowrap begin}} + {{
nowrap end}}. I have had problems in the past using these though when trying to wrap templates with their own functionality inside them.--
Fuhghettaboutit (
talk)
13:38, 31 May 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.
Some check users are very busy with SPI cases. I don't want to burden them. There are other users who have Check User powers but, I don't see them much in SPI. There are some sockmasters who have two three sock accounts. But there are some sockmasters who are socking for more than a year. After sometime they become inactive. But there is a huge chance that they might come back as a new user and pretend to be different. Check Users must be allowed to run surprise checks on known habitual sockmasters after months of the blocking of last sock account. Don't call this fishing.
I don't want that, they(sockmasters) should get vandalism hall of fame status, but we need to find their socks.-- Cosmic Emperor 10:37, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
link of RFC at Meta.? Cosmic Emperor 12:28, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
This will not happen. We are not the NSA and are not going to be running surprise checks on IP ranges or random users. Reaper Eternal ( talk) 00:46, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
Reaper Eternal ( talk)Reaper, It's not about random users, but sockers. Cosmic Emperor 05:34, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
Please consider my reflection and challenge, found here. 74.127.175.164 ( talk) 00:52, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
I do a lot of searching for citations to re-use, so I look for the citation title, edit the article, grab the citation template, then merge it into another article. Do others follow this practice much? I'm wondering how efficient it would be to consolidate the lot, so I search on a citation and it pops up a template to use? (Yes I'm familiar with {{ cite doi}}, but sometimes those can result in inconsistent template layouts.) Praemonitus ( talk) 21:51, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
Unfortunately most of Wikipedia shows a distinct affinity for US politics or military. The English Wikipedia is international therefore I propose that all items(images) relating to the military or political activity stay to articles strictly of military or of political activity. Eg.: Physical exercise 117.248.15.77 ( talk) 11:55, 18 June 2015 (UTC)Inc
I request you to please add Sound Designer and Production Designer section in the page for movies. Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1.187.110.160 ( talk) 02:58, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
The news section on the Main page just gives a handful of recent news stories. Has consideration ever been given to having a blue link on the Main page news section to a longer news section (perhaps an article entitled "Recent news events"), which would cover more issues? This could make WP a better news resource than it is currently. OnBeyondZebrax • TALK 10:53, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
On this information page Wikipedia:User pages and in various other places, new users are encouraged to make draft articles in their sandboxes. Often these "drafts" are then moved to mainspace, leaving a redirect, and the sandboxes are then reused for different topics. This leads to the creation of each subsequent article being attributed to whoever moved the first draft. Here's an example of an article that is attributed to me, although I have never edited it at all: Atacama B-Mode Search. If there are any notifications sent to the creator of this article, I will be the one notified, not the real creator.
Now that we have Draft: space, IMO we should rewrite any text which encourages draft creation in user subpages named "Sandbox" to encourage only temporary and experimental material there. If users want to work alone or collect information over time for a topic, they can always make a subpage with a more descriptive name which won't be recycled. This seems sensible to me, but maybe I'm missing something. What say?— Anne Delong ( talk) 16:07, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
Iridescent, the example above shows one possible problem. It is true that if the redirect is suppressed (i.e not created) when a draft is moved to mainspace, then this problem won't occur. However, quite aside from the reasons that Anne Delong mentoned above to retain such a redir (which i don't fully agree with), many AfC reviewers aren't admins. Only admins can supress the redirect when doing a move, unless I am badly mistaken.
As for the difference between User:DESiegel/Draftarticle and Draft:DESiegel's new article, the latter invites other editors, while the former discourages them. There are cases where a user may want to complete a full draft before inviting others to edit. (and other cases where having other users join in is the best possible thing.) As for the difference between User:DESiegel/Draftarticle and User:DESiegel/Sandbox, it isn't so big, IMO. If a reviewer moves the 'sandbox' to mainspace wihtout supressing the redir, the problem of false attribution can later arise, as described above. The "Draftarticle" name helps indicate what is going on, and will help reviewers find and return to the Draft at need. It also encourages working on multiple drafts. But none of these are major issues, in my view, except for the false attribution one. By the way, Up thread you seem to be discussing revising a specific help or project page. Which one? It doesn't seem to be Wikipedia:User pages, but that is the only page I see linked in the thread, unless I mised the link. DES (talk) 01:45, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
Would it be plausible to include the latest version of a program/game (patches) in the corresponding template? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.30.5.208 ( talk) 18:02, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
There has recently been discussion of admins who perform a very low number of edits each year and thus retain their admin tools due to the inactivity desysopping requirement being zero edits or actions for one year. Additionally, primarily sparked by the recent desysopping of AntonioMartin, there has been discussion of those admins who received their tools in the early years of Wikipedia when adminship was viewed much more lightly than it is now. I'd like to request opinions on a number of related aspects of these two things.
This isn't an RfC and isn't a discussion for assessing new policy, rather I'd like to have a discussion about these points with the view of taking something actionable to WP:VPP for an official RfC once we've ironed out the details. Discussions on this topic are worth a read and can be found here, here, and here. Sam Walton ( talk) 21:21, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
I think our current metric for what constitutes an active admin paints a totally inacurate picture. An admin should be considered active if they make at least 10 admin uses of the tools and or discussion closures in 365 days. As always, Beeblebrox is right on topic with his coment here. I've done a lot of research into adminship over the past 4 or 5 years and I have always maintained that the most problematic admins today are those from the pre 2007 'promotions'. Not many of them are active in the drama areas and most appear to gnome away on essential but 'safe' tasks such as working through the CSD and XfD backlogs. Some occasionally come out of the woodwork to vote on an RfA. Those sysops got their bits in different times and while adminship is for life we cannot expect admins to stay on board and be active for life. A 20 year old admin in the early years of WP is now well into adult life with family and career committments. They might come back when they retire at 65 or they might not.
I don't think we're looking at boatloads of drama getting the criteria changed - we hold an RfC and see what happens. What we do need are some realistic stats and some pruning of numbers in order to plan contingencies for when we reach negative equity - when new 'promotions' no longer cover the attrition and workload. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 06:09, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
This is an idea I generally don't support in either the real world or WP, but if done right it could be the right solution here. Something like this:
Or something like that.
I'm putting this in it's own subsection because it is not an alternate proposal and is totally compatible with the current process that desyspos for simple inactivity. This would simply be a second set of requirements, like a performance review after ten years. We can determine different thresholds for the success or failure of reconfirmation RFAs if needed. Beeblebrox ( talk) 02:22, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
Re: "I think this puts good admins at risk of being subject to grudge voting based on past hard decisions they have made that people merely disagree with" I can only wonder why an admin should be protected from this but not an editor who does mediation at WP:DRN or even joins discussions at ANI and later runs for admin. Even editors who post a lot of AfDs or warn/revert/report a lot of spammers and vandals collect enemies, but they get none of the special protection that is being suggested for administrators here.
This gets us back to the basic problem that to pass an RfA one should spend a year or two engaging in pretty much nothing but content creation in noncontroversial areas, withdrawing and moving on to another page whenever anyone shows any sings of disagreement or opposition. In other words, prove that you are the kind of person who pretty much has zero interest in doing the sort of work administrators are asked to do. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 05:47, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
Beeblebrox, there is already a process to get rid of bad eggs. The process your suggesting would create huge, unnecessary bureaucracy and backlog. There are over 700 admins who have had the bits for 10 or more years. Even if only half of them ran their new RfA, that would still be 60 a month over the next half year. It's just impracticable, especially when nearly all the admins are doing a fine job. Furthermore, community standards for RfA passage become more stringent every year. We would be unnecessarily putting fine standing admins through the ringer. As I said, there is already a process. Kingturtle = ( talk) 13:56, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
What about bureaucrats? If we look down the list at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats, some of them haven't done anything bureaucrat related in years, and some are just making enough edits to hold onto the tools. -- Rs chen 7754 04:06, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
My understanding was that when this user group was created, it was deliberately givent he most boring name possible in order to indicate that it is actually not a very interesting job. And with SUL there is even less for crats to do. However, piling those few tasks onto arbcom would basically guarantee they would not get done in a timely matter. Look at unblocks: onwiki unblock requests take minutes to hours in most cases, a day or two is exceptionally long. WP:BASC on the other hand, takes 2-6 weeks to handle each request. I don't think stewards should take it on either as they are not supposed to really use their powers on their "home wiki" so we would have to rely on folks who are by definition not very familiar with out policies.
All that being said, we probably don't need the largely inactive ones who appear to just be gaming to keep their rights intact as there simply is no benefit to anyone in theor continuing to retain those tools and the current crop of active crats is able to handle their diminished workload just fine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beeblebrox ( talk • contribs) 19:00, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
Bureaucrats are all wise enough after an absence to review policies and procedures, neither of which are all that complicated. Also, there is already a procedure to remove a bureaucrat for tool misuse. And all those misuses are easily reversible. Is there any evidence that unlimited terms for bureaucrats is a problem? Kingturtle = ( talk) 14:20, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
With all due respect to Sam, and while I think that there definitely may be a problem with inactive or inept admins who were named years ago, I think that there is a broader issue that needs to be addressed: a lack of routine, non-drama oversight for admins.
AntonioMartin had serious WP:CIR issues. Yet even so, it was plain that until he clumsily sockpuppeted, nothing was going to be done. There is no mechanism for dealing with administrators who should not be admins. Perhaps, as in this case, they are clearly incompetent, without a clue as to content or deletion policies, and creating articles that they themselves admit do not have adequate sourcing. Yet nothing can be done, as he was not abusing his tools or committing gross misconduct (until the absurdly obvious sockpuppeting was uncovered by checkuser and behavioral evidence).
There are other admins with clear temperament issues. WP:NPA is only loosely enforced, but admins are supposed to set an example. "Abusive administrators" is one of the common themes at a certain off-wiki website. While I'm not a big fan of that website, it does provide an escape valve for complaints re administrators that might not be heard here. There is no method that ordinary editors can turn to, re an abusive admin, with any hope that it will be dealt with fairly and without undue drama.
Then there's the issue of retaliation. If you bring a case against an admin at ANI or arbcom, your own behavior will be scrutinized. I'm not against "boomerang" - it's essential in most cases. But the problem is that it can translate into what is known in the real world as "retaliation against the whistleblower." In the ANI on AntonioMartin, there was talk that if anything was done, Damiens (the editor who blew the whistle) might be blocked as well. It took considerable guts, considering that he already had a block history, for him to take this case against Antonio.
Perhaps what is needed is a committee of arbcom that can look into complaints against admins with a minimum of drama, without the threat of "boomerang" retaliation, and at the same time swiftly throwing out meritless complaints. Desysoping would be just one of the things such a mechanism would do. It could order mentoring, or simply admonish admins. I think you need this so that the community feels that being an admin is not a lifelong entitlement, and maybe if that happens RfAs will be less of a trial by fire, as they should be until admins get their house in order and consent to this kind of mechanism. Coretheapple ( talk) 13:59, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
As I said above, I think that adminship ought to be given out much more often than it presently is (and also be easier to remove). In my opinion there are probably many hundreds of active and experienced editors who would be helpful as admins if A) we could identify them, and B) we could promote them. Setting aside the mess that is RFA, I would like to solicit suggestions for ways to help identify users who would potentially be good as admins?
Personally, I tend to think the most important attributes are maturity, responsibility, and community trust, etc. Unfortunately, all of those are pretty hard to measure in any systematic, automated way. However, we can probably at least come up with a short list of possible candidates using automated tools that look at long-term active editors. For example, X total edits, averaging at least Y edits per month in the last six months, and has been active at least Z years. Do people have suggestions for what technical tests you'd prefer to help identify possible candidates? For example, edit thresholds, time commitments, patterns of editing by namespace, contributions in certain areas, etc. On the technical side, what characteristics does the current community think exemplify an ideal admin candidate? Obviously, not every good candidate would necessarily pass every possible technical test, but if we can make a short list of users who seems like good candidates then it might be easier to look at individual cases and encourage the best ones.
In the past there have been some other attempts to identify potential admin candidates on the basis of technical evidence, does anyone remember where those lists ended up and what criteria were used? Dragons flight ( talk) 04:30, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
Tags at the top of article-space are intended to encourage editors to correct an article's problems, but more often than not, they are just an eye-sore and a waste of time when petty edit-wars emerge over tags, where that energy could have been better-focused on actual article-content. It struck me that this could be done in a better way that's more focused on the tags' objective - encouraging editors to improve the article.
Something like this:
![]() | Editors have made suggestions for how this article can be improved >>>> |
Then you click on it and it shows something like this:
![]() | Editors have made suggestions for how this article can be improved >>>> In June 2014, CorporateM said the article read like an advertisement. Click here for possible suggestions on how to reduce promotionalism in an article. In August 2013, the neutrality of this article was disputed by user:CorporateM. See the Talk page to join the discussion. In March 2012, User:CorporateM said this article focuses excessively on recent controversies. This can usually be address by adding more historical information from credible, independent sources. |
Details aside, it seems like something roughly along these lines would be much more effective at fulfilling the tags' intended objective of encouraging editors to improve the article and even providing actionable next steps on how readers can get involved. Beckoning readers to become editors. CorporateM ( Talk) 06:05, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
The 'preview' and 'show changes' buttons are redundant functions that could be merged. The new button would be called Preview Changes, and would highlight the changes inline. At the top middle of the screen there would be a Show difference button, which would expand into a comparison of the changed portions side-by-side with the previous version. (like in the Show Changes window)
I'd love to have a "Preview changes" button. Now, the merged button should be opt-in, as every major website redesign. --21:31, 8 June 2015 (UTC)~
The AbuseFilter is an extension that checks edits against a specified set of criteria with a primary aim of tagging edits and stopping abusive edits. Recent actions related to one user's use of the edit filter has called into question whether we should have some policies related to the use of this rather powerful tool, so I'd like to start a discussion with the view of then properly proposing specific policies that should hopefully reflect the community's feelings.
On the English Wikipedia the extension was added in 2009 and shortly thereafter renamed to the Edit Filter as, though it was originally designed to counter abusive edits, the more recent usage has broadened from that. In order to create a filter an editor must have the 'edit filter manager' user right, which has in all but a few rare cases only been available to administrators, who are currently free to assign it to themselves as required (new admins do not have the right by default). There are currently around 170 users with the user right, and I would estimate that around 10 actively contribute to filters.
Filters take a number of conditions in order to track edits that fit those rules in the log for that filter. As an example, Special:AbuseFilter/3 tracks new users (who are not confirmed), taking an article of over 300 characters and reducing it to less than 50, in the article namespace (with a few extras to avoid false positives). The output is stored in the abuse log for that filter, and the filter is currently set to warn the user with a message before tagging the edit ('blanking') if they choose to continue. New filters are usually left in 'log only' mode for at least a week before switching on any warning or tagging in order to check for false positives.
I'd like to start a few sections with areas that I think would be worth discussing, feel free to add more if there's something in particular you feel is important. Of course, if you feel that the current standing works fine, do say so. Sam Walton ( talk) 00:41, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
Useful links:
As mentioned above, the user right is currently primarily used by admins who assign themselves the right if they're interested in contributing to filters. It has, rarely, been given out to competent non-admins in the past. Should there be a better process for assigning the user right? Should admins be able to give themselves the right with no oversight? Should non-admins be able to request the right with a realistic chance of obtaining it? Discuss. Sam Walton ( talk) 00:41, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
In some cases it may be sensible to hide a filter from public view. This is useful for long term vandals who may otherwise work out how to avoid the filter, but is generally not used unless deemed necessary. Should there be a policy regarding when a filter should be hidden from public view? If so, what should be the condition for hiding a filter, and how would that be enforced? Sam Walton ( talk) 00:41, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
When a user creates a new edit filter, should there be checks from other editors at any stage of the process? For example, should a new filter be checked over before it goes into log only mode, or perhaps only before it's switched to disallow edits? Or do we trust that edit filter managers know what they're doing and shouldn't require checks? Sam Walton ( talk) 00:41, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
I see filters as the surgical arm of Page Protection, so perhaps that may be a process to look at, as an example take edit filter 656. The Driver 3 article has suffered from repetitive vandalism by a single editor, the vandalism started in October 2014. The user would add links and text referring to a specific Disney franchise (Liv and Maddie), there is no link whatsoever between Driver 3 and Liv and Maddie, this is just pure repetitive vandalism. I requested an edit filter in January 2015 and it duly stopped the vandalism (The preceding 3 months had seen 88% of the article edits being vandalism by this one editor).
I saw the edit filter as the only sensible and fair way around the problem. An IP block wasn't an option as the vandal changed IP addresses. range block wasn't an option as thousands of innocent users could have been hit. Semi-Protection would have blocked genuine IP editors. Full protection would have been overkill, and probably not granted. But a single, specific filter that blocked this one repetitive vandal has resulted in no vandalism and the article being available for everyone else to edit.
The problem now, as detailed in the "Hiding" section above, is that someone has disabled the filter and the vandalism has re-started. I don't know who or why the filter was disabled, but I have a pending request for it to be re-enabled. At least with Page protection we're able to see the reasoning for protection removal and can be sure which admin was responsible for it, at the moment we're not able to see that with edit filters. - X201 ( talk) 09:10, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
I've updated the Wikipedia:Edit filter to hopefully better reflect community consensus on these issues. If anything there doesn't seem right to you or could be explained more clearly, please do post on the talk page or change it yourself. Sam Walton ( talk) 19:46, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kww and The Rambling Man/Workshop#Comments about timelines may be of interest. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 04:17, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
Hello! My name is Coderenius [1], and here is my proposal.
In my opinion, the current Wikipedia skin is becoming increasingly outdated, and I believe humble efforts should be taken to create a more modern looking default skin. The current vector skin is fine, but I would prefer a skin that agrees graphically with some of the beta gadgets we have right now, such as VisualEditor [2] and Hovercards. Tools like Wikiwand do a good job at this, but it's missing a lot of functionality and didn't seem to be able to co-exist with the current Wikipedia workflow that I've grown accustomed to. If anyone is proficient with CSS coding and web design, perhaps a new skin could be designed with these beta features in mind.
As most major websites are moving to more streamlined interfaces, we here at Wikipedia have been using the same since around early 2010, if I'm not mistaken. And yet, currently, we are the 7th largest website in the world! [3] We are above Yandex, Blogspot, and even Twitter. I am not a hipster or trying to get on a bandwagon, if you were beginning to feel that way about my statements, I assure you. I have not been a registered user for a very long time here. Actually, I am an extremely new user. However, I have been loyal to Wikipedia as a reliable source of information since I was a child (I am not too old right now, if you ask how), and have been reading articles and gaining a sublime knowledge of culture and knowledge for many, many years. And now, as I present my idea here amongst my fellow contributors, I am quite pleased at where I have come now. That's enough about me, now.
Even though the current Vector skin is certainly not intrinsically flawed, I would prefer an interface that is minimalistic, smooth, and yet still retains all the functionality of our current Wikipedia, with anti-aliased, bigger, and slightly lighter text with perhaps some different fonts. The borders around articles should be removed, and the gradients the tabs in the top nav have should be redesigned as well, as some of these features are distracting. Overall, I really liked the way the Hovercards and VisualEditor were designed, but I would prefer an original motif, preferably without frameworks such as Bootstrap. If any one is up for the challenge, or knows someone such as an admin who you think is up for the challenge, please let them know as well.
Overall, I know this is not a high priority issue, but if you agree that this is something that should be implemented, or if you believe this idea should be brought up on the proposals page, please reply and let me know. I would love to hear from the community, as of right now I have heard very little from any other user, and my experience has been quite isolated. Thank you for your time, and by all means, suggest more ideas and critique my own.
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What problems with editing or reading the encylopedia do you see this update solving? Sam Walton ( talk) 19:25, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
Is anyone in for taking a poll of any kind? Just a suggestion, I want to see what everyone thinks on the matter. Coderenius ( talk) 22:53, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
I’m writing a book on vintage port. That brings me across references to people and places that might not otherwise be known, which are nonetheless unworthy of comment in the articles. See, as examples as good as any other, H. H. Asquith, Stephen Gaselee, John Vaughan, and Cyfarthfa Castle. It seems to me that these talk comments should be tagged with something identifying their nature (not about article, about subject of article, of interest to those trying to enlarge current state of knowledge, not to be archived). What should I do? What should I have done? JDAWiseman ( talk) 23:17, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
Would it be possible to have a link to toggle the watchlist between showing only the most recent changes (current default) vs. showing all changes (can be done, but buried in the preferences)? I'm thinking it could be a link on the watchlist itself, alongside " Hide minor edits | Hide bots | Hide unregistered users..." etc.
Currently it is possible to "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" but only in a buried preference. By default it is off, but I much prefer it on; nevertheless, sometimes the occasional edit spree means that my watchlist gets very long because of one or two articles, and turning it off briefly could help highlight edits I'm most interested in. At that time, it would be useful to quickly toggle to only the most recent edits.
In my dream world, the default for this setting would be "on", since I have seen several occasions where new, well-meaning folks revert only the most recent edit in a string of vandalism, since it is very easy to miss the effects of a series of edits with only the most recent showing. Having a quick toggle (with persistent default view via preferences) could make it easy to manage the impacts that "show all edits" would have for folks who have huge watchlists, or watch ever-changing articles.
At the very least this would be much more useful for some (IMO) than the option to show/hide wikidata. Any thoughts? Antepenultimate ( talk) 03:02, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
Dear wikipedian,
I'm tossing with the idea of not having any administrator anymore.
I'm on wikipedia since 2004 and I've witnessed a lot of change in Wikipedias (and MediaWiki the fabulous software behind it).
One important change since that, is that Administrator (formerly know as sysop for system operator), had very difficult and important task to make at that time that requires special skills.
In the meantime, MediaWiki impoved so much that a lot of the task can basically be made by any regular contributor to Wikipedia.
Furthermore, MediaWiki is now bulletproof in the sens that almost all the operations can be reverted without too much harm and hence allow more flexibility to do those operations.
So here is my proposal, isn't it the time for Wikipedia to allow all the regular contributors to do those operations. Xmlizer ( talk) 14:24, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
I'm looking for Hmong Dawb speakers to do editing on the Hmong Dawb Wikipedia (still in the incubator) and also for doing some translations on the Commons. I would like for the Hmong Dawb Wikipedia to go in the mainspace and there needs to be an editing community for that to happen.
I'm asking here because the potential users are likely editing the English Wikipedia: Many Hmong Dawb speakers originated from Laos but now live in the United States. Large numbers reside in the California Central Valley region (Fresno, Merced, Sacramento, etc.), the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area, and parts of Wisconsin, with smaller numbers in the Detroit area and in North Carolina. I hope that the speakers may start articles in Hmong related to those parts of the U.S., so more Hmong speakers may read the articles and join the Hmong Wikipedia.
I have previously e-mailed Hmong student' associations and Hmong mutual aid associations in the US under my Wikipedia name (I did not use my real name in corresponding with them), but I hadn't made much headway. Does anybody have any suggestions on what I could do? WhisperToMe ( talk) 13:02, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
I have observed that the CSD A7 criterion is frequently (even usually) applied in a way that is inconsistent with the CSD A7 policy page and supplementary essay WP:Credible claim of significance as they are currently written. In particular, articles that I do not find to be covered under A7 are routinely tagged and speedied as A7. To prevent the confusion and unintentional biting that may arise from this situation, I suggest that the statement and application of A7 be brought into accordance. This can happen either by changing the statement of A7 to match its application or by changing the application of A7 to match its statement, or a bit of both. Below I explain how the present application of A7 is inconsistent with the policy as it is currently written and propose solutions to this problem.
The disconnect between the statement and application of A7 derives from differing interpretations of the phrase "credible claim of significance". A7 revolves around this phrase because anything that does not make such a claim can be speedied under A7. I will argue that "credible claim of significance" can be read either as " verifiable claim of notability" or "plausible claim to belong to a category of which the members are often notable", and that while articles are very frequently deleted under the former interpretation, WP:A7 and WP:Credible claim of significance actually indicate the latter interpretation.
The differences between the two interpretations hinge on two central points:
To sum up, my reading of current policy "credible claim of significance" gives the interpretation "plausible claim to belong to a category of which the members are often notable". However, I have observed that A7 is often applied according to a different interpretation (which would be equally valid if there were no additional material explaining what the phrase means): " verifiable claim of notability". For example, I have recently seen articles for film directors and television broadcasters deleted. I have doubts about whether those articles would have survived an AfD, but the claims to significance (i.e. being a film director or television broadcaster) were certainly plausible and, in my opinion, film directors and television broadcasters are often notable.
There are two possible solutions to this problem:
In addition to these solutions, we can also mix-and-match on the two central points, changing practice for one and not the other.
Many thanks for reading all this! I would certainly appreciate any and all opinions and feedback. A2soup ( talk) 15:05, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
I think that now it seems fairly clear that all of the deletions are going to be endorsed (or at least, not restored), it's time to acknowledge that while this particular suggestion looks like a nonstarter, CSD A7 is still widely misapplied. See for instance Paul Johnson (Broadcaster), which is a valid G3, but if it wasn't G3 wouldn't by any stretch of the imagination be valid as A7. Is there anything that can be done to better educate patrollers and admins active in this space on when and where A7 actually applies? Lankiveil ( speak to me) 02:42, 19 July 2015 (UTC).
I've been looking at the way that our username policy and our conflict of interest policy interact, and I'm concerned that there's an unintended and perverse effect of the way the two work together. Consider a typical scenario. A company creates a Wikipedia account named something obvious related to their company, and they start editing their company's article. We tell them "no, no, no," we can't let you have an account that looks like it's shared, and then we tell them to make a new account. Haven't we just given them license to create a non-obvious promotional/shared account? Now, instead of it being clear that there's a conflict, the company editor has an account that just makes them look like a normal editor.
I've noticed now a few occasions where we block a company user, and then another brand new innocuous-sounding user shows up and begins editing only the blocked company's article. We don't want to be accusing such editors of having a conflict, because really, we have no idea. They're not socks because we told them to make a new account. But they're still violating the TOS by not disclosing their paid editing (which we would have known about if we hadn't blocked them the first time around). I understand the good policy sense in requiring everyone to have an individual account, but I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas about how to avoid this perverse effect. Agtx ( talk) 13:01, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
I think SmokeyJoe has it about right. I've put together a draft proposal based on the feedback above. I'd appreciate any comments you have. agtx 02:59, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
... account creators. -- Unready ( talk) 19:11, 18 July 2015 (UTC)are allowed tokeep their accounts ...
If we could just get a notice added at Special:UserLogin/signup which said something like: "Please note that your username cannot represent a company, organisation or group" (instead of the silly "Help me choose" → link to massive policy page which no new user is ever going to wade through) then this problem would be much less of a problem. </grumble> Yunshui 雲 水 13:04, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
I think I'm getting about ready to bring the draft proposal over to the proposals section in the next few days. Any thoughts on the way the proposal is set up (too detailed? too pushy?) are certainly appreciated. agtx 19:48, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
On multiple occasions I have made an edit to a talk page, signed with the tildes, and saved. Only then to realise that I wasn’t logged in. Sigh: log in; edit the signature to say me. My fault. There’s a simple UI solution. If I’m editing without being logged in, please could the background colour of the whole page, including the typing box, be non-white (perhaps pale red or pale blue)? That visual clue, delivered before I start typing, would prevent the error. JDAWiseman ( talk) 23:41, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
#wpTextbox1 { background-color: #ddeeff; }
in
User:JDAWiseman/common.css. That'll change the color when you are logged in, not when you aren't; but it accomplishes the same purpose. —
Cryptic
00:02, 20 July 2015 (UTC)#wpSave {background-color: green;}
#wpSave {background-color: green; color: white;}
makes the button easier to read.
Eman235/
talk
19:06, 21 July 2015 (UTC)Certain warning templates appear inappropriate for articles flagged with a stub tag, namely {{ Empty section}}, {{ Expand section}}, {{ Inadequate lead}}, {{ Incomplete}}, {{ Lead missing}}, and {{ Lead too short}}, among others. If an article is already flagged as a stub (and has no more than ten sentences of prose), then that should be sufficient notice to the reader that it needs more content. I think a bot should remove those templates from all stub articles as all they do is disrupt reading and make it look untidy.
What do you think? Praemonitus ( talk) 17:08, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
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I was wondering if we could create a message for pages concerning medical issues such as emergencies and diseases, to the tone that Wikipedia does not mean to advice anyone on medical matters and appropriate medical opinion should be sought after if one suspects of illness or injury... Antonio fake dr. Martin ( dimelo) 05:05, 9 April, 2015 (UTC)
I am going to say a few things in the same section. We know there are two separate Wikipedias : One Simple English another Main English. I haven't seen much difference between the two. Now there are lots of Wiki pages with average english(spelling mistakes , grammatical error) Pages develop over time.
If I feel an article needs better English I need to contact a volunteer with High English writing skills.
1)-If we click user rights , we can see whether they are Check User , Administrator , rollback rights , pending changes reviewer. We must add one more category "English Expert" or any other suitable name. Administrators or arbitration committee will decide who will get this facility.English barnster award should be given to senior editors who are good in English . Talk page discussion , or any other discussion is the best place where we can see the exact command over the language . Then it is upto administrators to propose him/her as "English Expert" .
2)-We must be allowed to put a maintenance template "This page requires better English" , which might get the notice of a an English Expert. Cosmic Emperor ( talk) 08:19, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
One thing that has bothered me for a while is the inability to get a quick estimate of the increase or decrease in character count as the result of a pending edit. The work-around for me has been to paste the old article or section into a sandbox, save it, then edit it and paste the proposed change over it, save it, and finally look at the sandbox article history to see the change in article size — a time-consuming and cumbersome process. There must be a better way.
When I click on the "Show preview" or "Show changes" buttons, I'd like the Wiki software to compute the change in character count and display it just below the editing pane before I commit the change and save it. If there's a script solution that I could save in my user space, that might be alright, although I'd like to see it permanently embedded in the standard editing interface. I'm using the syntax highlighter gadget in my user preferences; with very long articles it times out and stops highlighting, so any add-on script shouldn't make the machine run slower and exacerbate the problem. Thoughts, anyone? — Quicksilver T @ 18:13, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
I spent a few hours doing recent change patrol and quickly got fed up with Special:RecentChanges. To try to scratch that itch, I've written WRCP, a Wiki Recent Change Patrol tool. The goal is to make it easier and more efficient to spot edits that are harmful to the encyclopaedia.
I'd be grateful if others could try the tool out and give ideas for improvement and constructive feedback at User:GoldenRing/WRCP. GoldenRing ( talk) 06:21, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia is rapidly becoming the foremost repository for organizing, summarizing, referencing, and accessing the world’s knowledge. We can think of it as the world’s Knowledge Wiki, the place to go to find out what is.
Our world is beginning the transition from a knowledge basis to a wisdom basis. Examples include the call to transform academic institutions from knowledge based to wisdom based and a recent essay on the rise of the wisdom worker. What aids can help us make wise decisions? Where can we go to obtain sound advice?
If the question motivating knowledge acquisition is “what is?” then the question motivating wisdom acquisition is “what ought to be,” or “what should I do?”
Quora is a popular question-and-answer website where questions are created, answered, edited and organized by its community of users. Today users can ask questions, including “what should I do?” and users post answers. To excel as the world’s wisdom wiki, Quora will have to improve by: refining the questions asked, structuring the questions and answers to improve searching, browsing and retrieval; refining searching, generalizing and structuring linking, refining the answers, encouraging collaboration, adding references, and building upon existing information to become an enduring and reliable repository.
Quora has shown little interest in moving in this direction, therefore I propose that a new Wikimedia project be undertaken to fill this gap. Let’s call the new project WikiWisdom.
WikiWisdom would be driven by user’s questions. Questions asking “What is” would be answered in a wiki with a brief narrative providing links to existing Wikipedia articles. Questions asking “What ought to be” would be answered in a wiki using newly developed material. Original research, often in the form of opinions, would routinely appear, but statements intended to be factual would be held to the same standard of verifiability used in Wikipedia. Typical questions worthy of thoughtful answers and an enduring presence in the WikiWisdom might be:
Developing the WikiWisdom Mediawiki project can help accelerate us into a wiser world. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lbeaumont ( talk • contribs) 02:49, 15 April 2015
After perusing through the Media Viewer arbitration case and the circumstances that led to the arbitration case becoming one, perhaps enwiki should form a new Committee to handle development of the MediaWiki interface (let's call it DevCom for short). Responsibilities of said are simply to review and impliment changes to the namespace as proposed by the community at large.
In essense, this is what I propose:
The global group staff will still, of course, retain editinterface - both for legal and for scope reasons (namely their perimssions exceed enwiki)
Proposed membership:
Size of the committee I leave to the community at large to decide. Also up for thoughts I leave the methodology as to how one gets accepted (two thoughts, others may have more: either via ArbCom's existing process of how OS/CU is handed out, or through a general community election much like how ArbCom's own election process is undertaken)
This will not only reduce the number of chances for someone to accidentally render the site unusuable (a few messages in MediaWiki: are incredibly touchy at the best of times, and a typo in them can have some very far-reaching effects as we all noticed in the aforementioned ArbCom case), but could also be used as a stepping stone for general enwiki denizens to perhaps get a starter into MW development at large without worrying too much about the larger under-the-hood picture.
On the other side of the coin is that, of course, this would be another layer of beauracracy.
Providing some means of limiting the scope of format elements for an included page would be beneficial. For example, on the WP:AfD sub-pages, I keep finding that basic layout errors (such as not including a closing 'div' tag) will propagate downward to the succeeding sections. Thank you. Praemonitus ( talk) 17:01, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
Should we have an analytics tool that objectively rates the likelihood that two or more accounts are actually the same person based on linguistic queues in their contribution history.
For example, say there is an SPI investigation that involves 30 alleged socks. The analytics tool may say that user:Notasock has different syntax patterns in their editing than the other accounts. This may lead to exonerating that editor, whereas otherwise a good faith editor would have been blocked. CorporateM ( Talk) 04:23, 25 April 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.
A new class of article to be introduced. it will be a good list. It would be similar to a good article but in a list format. We need this because the step from list to FL is too great and we need something in the middle. TheMagikCow ( talk) 17:34, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
It covers a topic that lends itself to list format (see WP:List) and, in addition to meeting the requirements for all Wikipedia content (particularly naming conventions, neutrality, no original research, verifiability, citations, reliable sources, living persons, non-free content and what Wikipedia is not) a good list has the following attributes:
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14:01, 4 May 2015 (UTC)I've just opened a discussion here around a possible idea for adding a default signature link to more easily access the revision of the page a person was likely talking about when they made their talk page post.
Per instructions there, I'm putting a note here. What do folks think?
If somebody believes the idea is worth putting up for consensus polling, perhaps after some further development, please go for it (and crosslink to that discussion!) :-).
-- WBTtheFROG ( talk) 23:37, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
I think Wikipedia should follow the same format as just about every other form of media and not mix sports with news items in the "In the news" section on the home page. Maintaining the current situation leads to an overemphasis on sports items and it can easily be solved by just creating a sports section which is the standard in TV, radio, newspapers and news websites. I think this would be the best solution since it would still allow for the sports items to be featured on the home page but it would also allow for more "news" items to also appear. Monopoly31121993 ( talk) 07:14, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
The CSS for <code> (and thus {{code}}) currently uses a grey background, which I find appalingly ugly since it's meant to display source code inline. See, e.g.,
C string handling#Strcat/strcpy replacements. See also
qsort, where I changed qsort
to qsort in violation of the instructions at
Template:Mono; change this back to {{code}} and hit preview to see just how ugly it can be.
I'm not sure what to do: either try to get the CSS for <code> changed, or get the instructions for the {{code}} and {{mono}} changed so that inline code snippets should be displayed in {{mono}}. I'm not really sure how to do either (via RFC?). Suggestions? Thoughts? QVVERTYVS ( hm?) 10:34, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
-- [[
User:Edokter]] {{
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-- [[
User:Edokter]] {{
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ls
, cat
, etc. When used once, the grey background stands out, but in articles about these commands, it gets really annoying.
QVVERTYVS (
hm?)
19:34, 8 May 2015 (UTC)code { border: none; background: inherit; color: inherit; }
Right now, templates are used to generate notices and icons indicating that particular pages are protected. My only major problem with them is that they are manually added and are not specifically tied to the article's protection status (meaning that they do not necessarily "disappear" upon the expiration of the page's protection. Some, uneducated editors also believe that adding or removing said templates can change the article's protection status. Plus, it would also make a bit more sense to display the protection status in a location that is contextually
My idea is to replace the inline protection templates with a variation of them that is implemented directly in the software and MediaWiki skin. What I envisioned was a sort of minimalistic padlock icon next to the relevant function that is protected, accompanied by an indication of whether the user can edit the page. So for instance, a page that is semi-protected would show a faded grey padlock next to the Edit button; if the user is eligible to edit the page, the lock will still appear, but it will shop up as opened. A different icon could be used for pending revisions, mainly because I do not feel the padlock is an accurate symbol to signify this process.
Any thoughts? ViperSnake151 Talk 00:29, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
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will automatically add a prot padlock where applicable. --
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17:51, 14 May 2015 (UTC)This one is rather a large body of suggestions, and written in a rather stern and esoteric prose, so I ask that you try to tolerate it as best that you can. The form it would take as a Proposal would be much simpler, and not some kind of discourse like it is now.
My apologizes to those with smaller displays.
There are some ways in which Wikipedia must be limited, and consequently deficient. It will never be a true compendium of truth, but merely a collection of knowledge, and even then impaired by the need for consensus. Consensus, of course, is neither good or evil alone, as are all things.
However, consensus is derived from a source, the same as any opinion, and in the interest of all users of Wikipedia that source must be chosen so as to provide the maximum appeal.
Fortunately, Wikipedia is not attempting to exclude beliefs in the process of consensus, but only to find the foundation upon which describe those variant beliefs in a way which is accurate for all involved parties. (Here the word 'beliefs' is to be read sans any religious or moral connotations, and is used merely because 'opinions' has other denotations.)
Thus, Wikipedia serves as a documentation of reputed knowledge moreso than as an authority deeming evaluation for it. I.e., in the interest of so-called neutrality, notability is more significant than any pretenses at correctness.
Enough with the musings. Well, not so much, alas, but I'll consider implications to some examples:
I suppose that I should thank you for reading.
JamesEG ( talk) 01:13, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
I...don't understand what your point is, with any of this. That Wikipedia represents reliable sources and not "objective truth"? Yes. That's...the very premise of Wikipedia. Ironholds ( talk) 16:15, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
I also can't make out any sort of proposal here. What, specifically, ought Wikipedia to implement, change, or remove? What particular problem ought we to address? While this Village Pump is certainly dedicated to developing incomplete ideas … this thought seems so incomplete that others can't build on it. JamesEG, can you clarify things for us? {{ Nihiltres| talk| edits}} 18:21, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
I believe that namespace articles should not link to Draft: articles. Am I wrong?
But I have spotted such links ( example) so how about a bot/script/something that would detect them? And either remove such links or create a backlog.
Cheers! Syced ( talk) 06:45, 23 April 2015 (UTC) (Note: Example has been fixed. Alsee ( talk) 19:03, 15 May 2015 (UTC))
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11:33, 23 April 2015 (UTC)Proposal for WikiDesign - a cloud based open source design tool. WikiDesign would incorporate all of the tools to design modern devices and processes in a web based application similar to Wikipedia as well as an intellectual property conservancy user's agreement. Some tools to consider would be autocad and gis applications such as Arcview. There would need to be the other tools for the entire design process. For example a package for economic analysis, a tool for modeling process/controls, and a mechanism to pursue patents on any new intellectual property collaboratively developed by users. The intellectual property user's agreement would state that any design and intellectual property is open source and available to any user who follows the user's terms of agreement free of charge. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RBenn38486 ( talk • contribs) 12:21, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, taking full advantage of the capabilities of a massive interconnected network and an evolving information medium to display an amount of information that would normally be impossible by any other method. However, Wikipedia relies almost exclusively on the same methods of the classical encyclopedia to convey information to the readers of its pages. Text and pictures can only provide so much of an idea of a concept; and at a point it becomes difficult, to a degree tedious, to slog through the massive walls of text that are the amazingly well written Wikipedia articles. While the rest of the internet continues to evolve in ways to convey information to wide audiences, Wikipedia continues to lag behind, still caught up in the vintage methods of textual context with the occasional picture.
I propose that Wikipedia encourages editors to include external links or recommendations to videos discussing the topics contained in an article. Whether Wikipedia encourages this through the implementation of new systems or simply provides the documentation to appropriately link videos is not of immediate importance; the most important thing is that Wikipedia provide editors with the methods to facilitate the use of informational videos on Wikipedia articles. Embedding would of course be a great solution, as would a dedicated "Recommended Viewing" or "See Also: Videos" section at the conclusion of an article.
Either way, Wikipedia needs to take a strong stance to promote the use of informative videos as a medium of information on their articles. Important to note is the fact that not all videos would have to come from unverifiable, unqualified sources on YouTube. In fact, there are multitudes of open source instructional videos to be found on the internet, a stellar example of which is the MIT OpenCourseWare website: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/audio-video-courses/
Wikipedia should aim to inform their readers in the most efficient and effective means possible. Video and audio means of information communication are arguably the best methods to convey information to wide audiences with varied characteristics.
Also, WikiEducation online courseware would be the next big thing, but that's a whole different topic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NuclearLemon ( talk • contribs) 01:48, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
I think we all here have, well, reservations, about the effectiveness of wikinews, including even some of its bigger contributors. And, unfortunately, as can be seen about the recent creation of a WikiProject devoted to a single candidate in the upcoming US Presidential election, there is a real chance that we are going to get a lot more "news"-y editing and information about all the candidates, which we are going to have to, of course, try to insert in our comparatively few overview articles in an NPOV way which doesn't violate WEIGHT, which is, let's be honest, all but impossible.
So, maybe, and possibly even as a provisional matter to deal exclusively with matters of elections, maybe we might be better off effectively allowing some of the people who want to add "news" material to wikipedia, not wikinews, to do so here. In a separate namespace for news articles particularly. I expect we are going to get pretty much daily changes to some of these articles as is shortly, creating any number of problems and sinking the time of lots of people which could be better spent elsewhere.
That's why I'm thinking, maybe, to create a separate namespace for "news" pieces, which would still have to meet the same basic notability requirements, which could then have a link to the category or news portal for the election, or the race or the candidate or whatever, and then, on a fairly regular basis, maybe once a week or month or whatever, updating the main articles to reflect the lesser news updates. If this news site were also used to include information on other matters, like, say, developments in the Catholic Church, or the UK, Russia, or China, or the UN, or any other large entity with an article that gets a lot of coverage in the news, we could do pretty much the same thing.
Alternately, for the latter point, maybe we might institute a second namespace, an "Almanac:" or similar, which could be used to summarize the news stories on a weekly or monthly basis, which could then itself be used to allow for regular, scheduled, updates to the relevant main articles on, maybe, an annual basis for "smaller" items, unlike say natural or man-made disasters, wars, or similar things whose impact generally does reasonably get recorded in articles quickly.
Anyway, any ideas? John Carter ( talk) 14:48, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
@John Carter: Right now, Wikinews is the "news" while you could say the "almanac" is what we see on the wikipedia main page "In the news". So it's already been implemented. 117.221.189.51 ( talk) 03:00, 20 May 2015 (UTC)POV
Does anybody have any ideas about how Wikipedia could change to be very efficient at enabling most newcomers who want to become a good Wikipedian to be able to easily get trained to do so? I don't know how to create a WikiProject that does that. Blackbombchu ( talk) 22:01, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
What about external links which open up actual websites of what is referenced or of the subject. For example if I am seeing a Wiki of list of USA newspapers, all the papers open up their own wiki pages. Well, I would expect to be taken directly to the paper website, right. So how about like two links or option to go visit the actual website.
I interacted with Wikipedia Contact-us representative who mentioned this embedding within content is not found because it would be open to a lot of spamming. This is perfectly a valid reason. But could we find a way around this. Wordpress seems to have a way in preventing spamming on their blogs which are the maximum around the world.
So ive put this in the IDEA LAB to generate a feasible proposal if possible. I am not such a techie person but this handicap of not having external links sure does put one off on researching new subjects. It means again I got to go and google out the actual website. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tb kol ( talk • contribs) 08:44, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
LINKFARM says: External links or Internet directories. There is nothing wrong with adding one or more useful content-relevant links to an article; however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Wikipedia. On articles about topics with many fansites, for example, including a link to one major fansite may be appropriate. See Wikipedia:External links for some guidelines.
It does not say external links may not be used. Further it says its appropriate to include a link to the main website (fansite). Tb kol ( talk) 16:07, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
Could you show me where it says 'in External links section'. Tb kol ( talk) 16:45, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
I checked Wikipedia:External_links#Important_points_to_remember When you read a blog or article, the company referenced to, or the subject if there is a website, it links directly from the article. On wikipedia when its perfect to include links in article of wikipedia pages (internal links)/ why the distinction and step-motherly treatment to external links. Why should good sources not be rewarded on the same footing as wikipedia pages as sources of information on an article. This is bias and injustice.
And when you bring in an excuse as spamming, it shows you don't just like the idea. We know that these spam links can be removed. The authors can be traced and warned if excessive spamming. I mean we can have policing and policies on it.
But it is simply unjustified when you have one set of rules for wikipedia links and another for external links. This is not a proprietary website. It is an open source website.
The advantages you get being open-source and contributed website i guess are a) a lot of people from various subjects of interest writing about their specialization. Surely some external website may be a point of reference on that subject. Now when you don't allow linking of it in the article you are taking it out of consideration for maybe 50-60 per cent of the viewers least. That is imposing a rule unjustifiably. It is giving a picture that wikipedia is the only god-source of online reference.
b) The other thing i ask you is why should wikipedia not be a repository of good reliable online references of external links where required, where justified. Being an online open source project funded by everyone in the world, you are sort of leaving a lot of room empty when you dont upfront say this and this website is worth visiting. And you demand they be inclueded right at the bottom, for all their worth.
As viewers, as supporters, as contributors, as donors to wikipedia we need external links pari passu with internal links. I mean wiki just cannot differentiate between the two when referenceing for an article and say we'll put internal links up in the article and external links right down. And then call yourself open-source. It should be illegal. Please check your licences and rule books. Else I'm going to take this up with open-source licence people who-ever they are and where-ever they be.
This is an Idea Lab, when you come here, and i am saying this to veterans, expect that new people will ask what they think should be asked from Wikipedia. Be considerate, understand from our perspective. And don't stone-wall us out. Most of us may be asking out of wikipedia, spending our time, effort and taking interest for it, for something due to us from this project Tb kol ( talk) 11:40, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
A) By open source I mean not discriminating between sources and on exhibiting sources. Therefore whether it is a wiki-page or an external webpage, both must be held equal while lending a reference within an article. Currently only internal wiki pages have rights to be linked within an article. External pages have a lesser right, that to be mentioned at the bottom of the article.
I would like to draw the meaning of 'No Discrimination', 'Must not restrict' and 'Neutral' from the definition of Open-Source at opensource.org opensource.org/definition
B) Wikipedia is on the Internet as an encyclopedia. It is but natural and contextual to have meaningful and expert links to resourcefull web-pages of the internet. I truly believe it fails in its avatar as an encyclopedia and limits is depth and thereby its readership when it chooses to not allow external links per se within the articles.
Your policies must be framed then to disallow any bad links and check on them. And not have a principle of dis-allowing external links within articles. Tb kol ( talk) 07:39, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
Actually, Open Source (Technical) people at Wikipedia have done it! That is adding a pop-up Reference Tooltip for external links that are cited within the article. I just noticed days back pop-ups opening within the article itself (as i would have liked it) where Reference numbers are given. I was waiting to ascertain the exact date this change took place, but cannot place it. It seems to have come out of a Technical Proposal Reference_Tooltips and see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reference_Tooltips .
It would be good to view their Hypothesis and Rationale:
Rationale Currently, Wikimedia sites list all references at the bottom of the article. For large articles, especially those with many references, this is sub-optimal. Checking an article's references requires several traversals over the entire length of the article, during which time the reader will often lose their place.
Hypotheses This is a general usability feature. It is hypothesized that readers will be more likely to visit references if they are immediately accessible without having to traverse the entire page length.
But its been quite a while for them to roll it out globally in Wikipedia. The dates on the proposal are 2012. But they've done it.
So we're done i guess. Thanks everybody !! Tb kol ( talk) 13:38, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
There is no mention or link to of WP: Teahouse on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Introduction_2 or the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Editing pages. It would be a good idea to add the Teahouse so that new users can get help on editing. 59.96.197.51 ( talk) 10:35, 18 May 2015 (UTC)POV
Currently,
global rollbackers have the permission suppressredirect
. This allows for a page to be removed without creating a redirect. The purpose of
rollbackers on enwiki is to combat vandalism, and sometimes page move vandalism occurs. In the past the permission has been proposed on this wiki, but was shot down because of the fear of page move vandalism. I want to gauge the general opinion on giving suppressredirect to rollbackers here. Just like with the normal rollback, this would be only to combat vandalism and using it otherwise would result in sanctions, including but not limited to removal of the tool. What does everybody think?
Kharkiv07
Talk
02:44, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
Do we take into consideration that small countries with low literacy rates may find little access to Wikipedia for their missionary history if only commercially published sources are trusted, and if use of publicly accessed archives is suspect. Scholars within former colonies must travel abroad to access archives where missionary materials are held. And those outside the country are dependent on unpublished works within the country. I suggest that a provision be added in the case of former colonies to legitimize substantiation through archival material and through books and materials not commercially published. Let the control device be editing or deletion for statements found to be false or where the motivation for placing a statement is suspect.jzsj 12:04, 10 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jzsj ( talk • contribs) jzsj 15:15, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
Jzsj, you might be interested in m:Research:Oral Citations. It was featured in a recent Research Data Showcase (which I missed, but which might still be available on YouTube). WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:48, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
Jzsj, it's hard to tell what specifically you're advocating here, but it seems to be about having a seperate set of reliable-sourcing standards for developing countries. This would be a bad idea, as it would create the impression of bias. In fact, if anything I would say we need to be even more careful about sourcing for subjects in developing nations, as they likely wouldn't have access to the public-relations and legal defences available to those in more affluent countries. If Wikipedia publishes libelous content about Bill Gates or Lady Gaga, it would be cleared up quickly. But libel about an activist or academic with no hired staff in a country with limited Internet access may not even be noticed for a long time. Therefore, it's extremely important to make sure such information is accurate and well-sourced initially.
Andrew Lenahan - Starblind
17:16, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
Content bias is definitely present in Wikipedia for a number of reasons (e.g., the interests of the people who edit, the dominance of US editors leading to a dominance of US-centric content, etc.) and the reliable source "bias" is definitely one. It becomes increasingly hard to demonstrate notability for articles about less developed countries (and the people and companies from these countries) as accessible sources are hard to find, let alone reliable ones. In addition, accessible sources are often presumed to be biased (try writing an article about Iran for example). I presume this is the thrust of the original suggestion - that we soften the standard for less developed countries in acknowledgment of the difficulties. While agreeing it is a problem, I don't see an easy answer. UnreliableWiki perhaps? QuiteUnusual ( talk) 12:14, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
Linking the idea here for a possible incubation. Logos ( talk) 22:42, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
How about an icon on the main wikipedia page featuring a daily random article? There is a link to the side but it would be more useful as an icon on the main page of wikipedia because it would encourage the following advantages:
59.96.197.51 ( talk) 10:28, 18 May 2015 (UTC)POV
Would having user's screennames attached to cleanup tags allow for responsible tagging? Here's my example: {{ {{{|safesubst:}}}#invoke:Unsubst||$N=Confusing |date=__DATE__ |$B= {{Ambox | name = Confusing | subst = <includeonly>{{subst:substcheck}}</includeonly> | type = style | class = ambox-confusing | small = {{{small| {{#ifeq:{{lc: {{{1|}}} }}|section|left}} }}} | issue = This {{{1|article}}} '''may be [[Wikipedia:Vagueness|confusing or unclear]] to readers'''. {{#if:{{{reason|}}}|In particular, {{{reason}}}.}} | fix = Please help us [[Wikipedia:Please clarify|clarify the {{{1|article}}}]]; suggestions may be found on the [[{{{2|{{TALKPAGENAME}}}}}|talk page]]. | date = {{{date|}}} | editor = {{user|[[User:Discuss-Dubious|Discuss-Dubious]] ([[User talk:Discuss-Dubious|t]]/[[Special:Contributions/Discuss-Dubious|c]])}} | cat = Wikipedia articles needing clarification | all = All Wikipedia articles needing clarification }} The flipside for me is that this may be an irresponsible crossing over of articlespace and userspace. However, it would help people ask users what they do and do not like about the article in question. Discuss-Dubious ( t/ c) 19:08, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
{{
Confusing}}
(and not a particularly good one, as demonstrated by that safesubst: stuff at the top) and added one parameter - |editor=
- which is not in fact recognised by {{
ambox}}
. Also, who or what is User:Discuss-Dubious, and why has the {{
user}}
template been misused? It takes one parameter, a bare user name. --
Redrose64 (
talk)
21:13, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
To whom it may concern at Wikipedia,
I am currently a Business Analyst at a financial institution.I majored in the Computer Sciences, with a minor in Mathematics. I was curious one day to find out how many pages fell under a mathematics category in Wikipedia, in the event someone wanted to learn as much as they could about mathematics using only "Mathematics" as their starting point. To accomplish this task, I built a process that queries Wikipedia and looks for pages that have the same top level category as the parent or "seed" site, in this case "Mathematics". While the process looks for pages that fall under "Fields_of_mathematics" (the primary category for "Mathematics"), I noticed that the process was finding something probably more valuable than it's original purpose:
I was hoping to learn a little more about managing sites, and get some input on how this information could be used to assist others in their efforts. I also have no problem taking a more active role and helping improve link integrity and categorization of Wikipedia websites. I am willing to dedicate time to this as I have been looking for a new project to work on in my spare time. I also fear that this process could be accidentally perceived as malicious in nature (due to the automated nature of querying pages), if it is not registered or the right team isn't made aware of its existence.
I am also curious if I have just re-invented the wheel and if this is just a waste of time. I am curious to get feedback from anyone. Thanks for taking the time to read this! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:CD12:4550:65B0:316E:2407:DC3B ( talk) 13:40, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
There are many policies and guidelines lately. Are there too many? What about WP:NCCAPS or WP:CIVIL? I am not saying they are unnecessary or bad. I was setting up examples to review. If they work out well, there must be any other rule that must be deregulated or repealed. -- George Ho ( talk) 04:03, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
I emphasize with the too many policies idea, the question is what we can get rid of, and nothing obvious comes to mind. Here's a crazy thought, though -- Change the meaning of no-consensus, so instead of maintaining the status quo we just delete the contested passage (unless the page would make no sense without it). Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 03:31, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
Hello, I have an idea that will help the new users greatly. I myself have only been a Wikipedian for 10 days, and discovered the Village Pump by default. I propose that there should be pages written an easy format for new users to understand. I don't understand how to create a user page myself! It is extremely hard to understand )-: anyway, thank you for reading my proposal! (I think the pages, or file of pages should be called the NEWBIE ROOM. From, Marshamallow 360! Much love xxx-- Marshamallow 360 ( talk) 18:06, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
Since it is considered good practice to provide edit summaries, would it be a good idea to require IPs and non- autoconfirmed users to supply an edit summary when making edits to the article namespace? This would help prevent misunderstandings and make it easier to patrol edits, and encourage using edit summaries in general. Currently, many new users/IPs do not use edit summaries, even when making constructive edits. Tony Tan · talk 22:55, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
So I've got a proposal on the go for a YouTube Wikiproject (Not blatant advertising) and I'm wondering how bold can I be with such an endeavour. I want to create a Template header and WP: project space to get the infrastructure going and an audit of all the articles. While WP:BOLD is a policy I don't want to find someone getting upset for some unforeseen reason.
--- :D Derry Adama ( talk) 23:37, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
{{U|
Technical 13}} (
e •
t •
c)
16:31, 14 May 2015 (UTC)I think we should introduce age restrictions to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects. Vandalism, unwise selections and childish, non-encyclopedic content popping up is the reason. So the new bit is not allowing under-teens create accounts, and all Wikipedians must have a proper account while editing instead of editing from IP adresses. Is this a good way to prevent vandalism on Wikipedia? -- Corsicanwarrah ( talk) 10:53, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
I posted something to the talk page a while ago concerning this, but I now see that what interested users even look at that thing will probably never it.
Anyway, the list is unwieldy. My suggestion was to narrow the criteria for inclusion in the list, and also to possibly justify the list itself. The biggest reason I can see for which we want a list of hoaxes is to record any resultant infections: the utility whereby someone can study motivations behind the hoaxes is dubious, at best (it provides very little helpful information); reading some of the other comments on its talk page, I wouldn't go so far as to say that it promotes Herostratus, but it certainly looks like people are only interested in added to the list.
Hmm, however, encouraging people to find an undiscovered longest-standing hoax might be a good thing, too. So, that might be another, albeit superfluous, reason to keep it, but I digress.
What should be done with hoaxes that have no known repercussions? Should they be maintained in a list somewhere? That list?
What about those which are obviously not hoaxes, but mere vandalism which happened to escape beyond Wikipedia?
Again, I think the most important reason to keep a list of this stuff is for spin control and to try and regain some ethos when something does spill out.
JamesEG ( talk) 11:14, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
Requested moves has a backlog that just keeps on going; adding to just one more thing that admins have to do with. Hypothetically; what do people think about giving editors who have several RM closures the powers to:
These permissions could only be used to either close move requests or fix obvious page-move vandalism. I fully realize that this is yet another unbundling of the tools; however it seems that it could be given to editors who perhaps aren't quite qualified for the mop, and that it could easily be removed from an editor if there was an issue. Thoughts? Kharkiv07 ( T) 00:37, 30 May 2015 (UTC), amended 00:48, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
This idea has been churning in my brain for a while now, so I might as well throw it out here since it's related. My idea is to merge requested moves into redirects for discussion, and rename the process Article titles for discussion. Disambiguation pages would makes sense in this process too. Discussions about all three of these center around what titles should be and where they should point, so it seems to make some logical sense to put them together. And having fewer processes could hopefully reduce these backlogs we got. I'm curious what people think of this idea. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 04:08, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
I tried to upgrade the information in a company infobox by using the company's annual report. One thing led to another so my bold edit has now resulted in something that is too complex both as it appears to the reader and to an editor. The result probably uses the Footnotes/References section of the infobox totally incorrectly. It also probably over-references the source, which is a 300 plus page report with the data scattered all over it. I am unsure as to how to improve the style without cutting the referencing down to something that is not as friendly for someone who is checking the references. Maybe there is another template out there that can help me. I would have preferred to use a separate footnote list created with the Short Footnote template, but that would have meant changing the existing referencing style of the article. I am hoping that whoever reverts my edit can suggest a better alternative. My Gussie ( talk) 14:38, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
...</ref>{{rp|6}}
, the next <ref name="AR2014" />{{rp|7}}
, the next <ref name="AR2014" />{{rp|177}}
and so on. Technically this template was created for situations where you are using a single reference so many times that even shortened footnotes would be a bit silly, but this would work here to make verifiability much easier and would solve your problem I think. Best regards--
Fuhghettaboutit (
talk)
21:21, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
⁠
to avoid this. If that doesn't work, there always {{
nowrap}} and the paired {{
nowrap begin}} + {{
nowrap end}}. I have had problems in the past using these though when trying to wrap templates with their own functionality inside them.--
Fuhghettaboutit (
talk)
13:38, 31 May 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.
Some check users are very busy with SPI cases. I don't want to burden them. There are other users who have Check User powers but, I don't see them much in SPI. There are some sockmasters who have two three sock accounts. But there are some sockmasters who are socking for more than a year. After sometime they become inactive. But there is a huge chance that they might come back as a new user and pretend to be different. Check Users must be allowed to run surprise checks on known habitual sockmasters after months of the blocking of last sock account. Don't call this fishing.
I don't want that, they(sockmasters) should get vandalism hall of fame status, but we need to find their socks.-- Cosmic Emperor 10:37, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
link of RFC at Meta.? Cosmic Emperor 12:28, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
This will not happen. We are not the NSA and are not going to be running surprise checks on IP ranges or random users. Reaper Eternal ( talk) 00:46, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
Reaper Eternal ( talk)Reaper, It's not about random users, but sockers. Cosmic Emperor 05:34, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
Please consider my reflection and challenge, found here. 74.127.175.164 ( talk) 00:52, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
I do a lot of searching for citations to re-use, so I look for the citation title, edit the article, grab the citation template, then merge it into another article. Do others follow this practice much? I'm wondering how efficient it would be to consolidate the lot, so I search on a citation and it pops up a template to use? (Yes I'm familiar with {{ cite doi}}, but sometimes those can result in inconsistent template layouts.) Praemonitus ( talk) 21:51, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
Unfortunately most of Wikipedia shows a distinct affinity for US politics or military. The English Wikipedia is international therefore I propose that all items(images) relating to the military or political activity stay to articles strictly of military or of political activity. Eg.: Physical exercise 117.248.15.77 ( talk) 11:55, 18 June 2015 (UTC)Inc
I request you to please add Sound Designer and Production Designer section in the page for movies. Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1.187.110.160 ( talk) 02:58, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
The news section on the Main page just gives a handful of recent news stories. Has consideration ever been given to having a blue link on the Main page news section to a longer news section (perhaps an article entitled "Recent news events"), which would cover more issues? This could make WP a better news resource than it is currently. OnBeyondZebrax • TALK 10:53, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
On this information page Wikipedia:User pages and in various other places, new users are encouraged to make draft articles in their sandboxes. Often these "drafts" are then moved to mainspace, leaving a redirect, and the sandboxes are then reused for different topics. This leads to the creation of each subsequent article being attributed to whoever moved the first draft. Here's an example of an article that is attributed to me, although I have never edited it at all: Atacama B-Mode Search. If there are any notifications sent to the creator of this article, I will be the one notified, not the real creator.
Now that we have Draft: space, IMO we should rewrite any text which encourages draft creation in user subpages named "Sandbox" to encourage only temporary and experimental material there. If users want to work alone or collect information over time for a topic, they can always make a subpage with a more descriptive name which won't be recycled. This seems sensible to me, but maybe I'm missing something. What say?— Anne Delong ( talk) 16:07, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
Iridescent, the example above shows one possible problem. It is true that if the redirect is suppressed (i.e not created) when a draft is moved to mainspace, then this problem won't occur. However, quite aside from the reasons that Anne Delong mentoned above to retain such a redir (which i don't fully agree with), many AfC reviewers aren't admins. Only admins can supress the redirect when doing a move, unless I am badly mistaken.
As for the difference between User:DESiegel/Draftarticle and Draft:DESiegel's new article, the latter invites other editors, while the former discourages them. There are cases where a user may want to complete a full draft before inviting others to edit. (and other cases where having other users join in is the best possible thing.) As for the difference between User:DESiegel/Draftarticle and User:DESiegel/Sandbox, it isn't so big, IMO. If a reviewer moves the 'sandbox' to mainspace wihtout supressing the redir, the problem of false attribution can later arise, as described above. The "Draftarticle" name helps indicate what is going on, and will help reviewers find and return to the Draft at need. It also encourages working on multiple drafts. But none of these are major issues, in my view, except for the false attribution one. By the way, Up thread you seem to be discussing revising a specific help or project page. Which one? It doesn't seem to be Wikipedia:User pages, but that is the only page I see linked in the thread, unless I mised the link. DES (talk) 01:45, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
Would it be plausible to include the latest version of a program/game (patches) in the corresponding template? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.30.5.208 ( talk) 18:02, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
There has recently been discussion of admins who perform a very low number of edits each year and thus retain their admin tools due to the inactivity desysopping requirement being zero edits or actions for one year. Additionally, primarily sparked by the recent desysopping of AntonioMartin, there has been discussion of those admins who received their tools in the early years of Wikipedia when adminship was viewed much more lightly than it is now. I'd like to request opinions on a number of related aspects of these two things.
This isn't an RfC and isn't a discussion for assessing new policy, rather I'd like to have a discussion about these points with the view of taking something actionable to WP:VPP for an official RfC once we've ironed out the details. Discussions on this topic are worth a read and can be found here, here, and here. Sam Walton ( talk) 21:21, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
I think our current metric for what constitutes an active admin paints a totally inacurate picture. An admin should be considered active if they make at least 10 admin uses of the tools and or discussion closures in 365 days. As always, Beeblebrox is right on topic with his coment here. I've done a lot of research into adminship over the past 4 or 5 years and I have always maintained that the most problematic admins today are those from the pre 2007 'promotions'. Not many of them are active in the drama areas and most appear to gnome away on essential but 'safe' tasks such as working through the CSD and XfD backlogs. Some occasionally come out of the woodwork to vote on an RfA. Those sysops got their bits in different times and while adminship is for life we cannot expect admins to stay on board and be active for life. A 20 year old admin in the early years of WP is now well into adult life with family and career committments. They might come back when they retire at 65 or they might not.
I don't think we're looking at boatloads of drama getting the criteria changed - we hold an RfC and see what happens. What we do need are some realistic stats and some pruning of numbers in order to plan contingencies for when we reach negative equity - when new 'promotions' no longer cover the attrition and workload. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 06:09, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
This is an idea I generally don't support in either the real world or WP, but if done right it could be the right solution here. Something like this:
Or something like that.
I'm putting this in it's own subsection because it is not an alternate proposal and is totally compatible with the current process that desyspos for simple inactivity. This would simply be a second set of requirements, like a performance review after ten years. We can determine different thresholds for the success or failure of reconfirmation RFAs if needed. Beeblebrox ( talk) 02:22, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
Re: "I think this puts good admins at risk of being subject to grudge voting based on past hard decisions they have made that people merely disagree with" I can only wonder why an admin should be protected from this but not an editor who does mediation at WP:DRN or even joins discussions at ANI and later runs for admin. Even editors who post a lot of AfDs or warn/revert/report a lot of spammers and vandals collect enemies, but they get none of the special protection that is being suggested for administrators here.
This gets us back to the basic problem that to pass an RfA one should spend a year or two engaging in pretty much nothing but content creation in noncontroversial areas, withdrawing and moving on to another page whenever anyone shows any sings of disagreement or opposition. In other words, prove that you are the kind of person who pretty much has zero interest in doing the sort of work administrators are asked to do. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 05:47, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
Beeblebrox, there is already a process to get rid of bad eggs. The process your suggesting would create huge, unnecessary bureaucracy and backlog. There are over 700 admins who have had the bits for 10 or more years. Even if only half of them ran their new RfA, that would still be 60 a month over the next half year. It's just impracticable, especially when nearly all the admins are doing a fine job. Furthermore, community standards for RfA passage become more stringent every year. We would be unnecessarily putting fine standing admins through the ringer. As I said, there is already a process. Kingturtle = ( talk) 13:56, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
What about bureaucrats? If we look down the list at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats, some of them haven't done anything bureaucrat related in years, and some are just making enough edits to hold onto the tools. -- Rs chen 7754 04:06, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
My understanding was that when this user group was created, it was deliberately givent he most boring name possible in order to indicate that it is actually not a very interesting job. And with SUL there is even less for crats to do. However, piling those few tasks onto arbcom would basically guarantee they would not get done in a timely matter. Look at unblocks: onwiki unblock requests take minutes to hours in most cases, a day or two is exceptionally long. WP:BASC on the other hand, takes 2-6 weeks to handle each request. I don't think stewards should take it on either as they are not supposed to really use their powers on their "home wiki" so we would have to rely on folks who are by definition not very familiar with out policies.
All that being said, we probably don't need the largely inactive ones who appear to just be gaming to keep their rights intact as there simply is no benefit to anyone in theor continuing to retain those tools and the current crop of active crats is able to handle their diminished workload just fine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beeblebrox ( talk • contribs) 19:00, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
Bureaucrats are all wise enough after an absence to review policies and procedures, neither of which are all that complicated. Also, there is already a procedure to remove a bureaucrat for tool misuse. And all those misuses are easily reversible. Is there any evidence that unlimited terms for bureaucrats is a problem? Kingturtle = ( talk) 14:20, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
With all due respect to Sam, and while I think that there definitely may be a problem with inactive or inept admins who were named years ago, I think that there is a broader issue that needs to be addressed: a lack of routine, non-drama oversight for admins.
AntonioMartin had serious WP:CIR issues. Yet even so, it was plain that until he clumsily sockpuppeted, nothing was going to be done. There is no mechanism for dealing with administrators who should not be admins. Perhaps, as in this case, they are clearly incompetent, without a clue as to content or deletion policies, and creating articles that they themselves admit do not have adequate sourcing. Yet nothing can be done, as he was not abusing his tools or committing gross misconduct (until the absurdly obvious sockpuppeting was uncovered by checkuser and behavioral evidence).
There are other admins with clear temperament issues. WP:NPA is only loosely enforced, but admins are supposed to set an example. "Abusive administrators" is one of the common themes at a certain off-wiki website. While I'm not a big fan of that website, it does provide an escape valve for complaints re administrators that might not be heard here. There is no method that ordinary editors can turn to, re an abusive admin, with any hope that it will be dealt with fairly and without undue drama.
Then there's the issue of retaliation. If you bring a case against an admin at ANI or arbcom, your own behavior will be scrutinized. I'm not against "boomerang" - it's essential in most cases. But the problem is that it can translate into what is known in the real world as "retaliation against the whistleblower." In the ANI on AntonioMartin, there was talk that if anything was done, Damiens (the editor who blew the whistle) might be blocked as well. It took considerable guts, considering that he already had a block history, for him to take this case against Antonio.
Perhaps what is needed is a committee of arbcom that can look into complaints against admins with a minimum of drama, without the threat of "boomerang" retaliation, and at the same time swiftly throwing out meritless complaints. Desysoping would be just one of the things such a mechanism would do. It could order mentoring, or simply admonish admins. I think you need this so that the community feels that being an admin is not a lifelong entitlement, and maybe if that happens RfAs will be less of a trial by fire, as they should be until admins get their house in order and consent to this kind of mechanism. Coretheapple ( talk) 13:59, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
As I said above, I think that adminship ought to be given out much more often than it presently is (and also be easier to remove). In my opinion there are probably many hundreds of active and experienced editors who would be helpful as admins if A) we could identify them, and B) we could promote them. Setting aside the mess that is RFA, I would like to solicit suggestions for ways to help identify users who would potentially be good as admins?
Personally, I tend to think the most important attributes are maturity, responsibility, and community trust, etc. Unfortunately, all of those are pretty hard to measure in any systematic, automated way. However, we can probably at least come up with a short list of possible candidates using automated tools that look at long-term active editors. For example, X total edits, averaging at least Y edits per month in the last six months, and has been active at least Z years. Do people have suggestions for what technical tests you'd prefer to help identify possible candidates? For example, edit thresholds, time commitments, patterns of editing by namespace, contributions in certain areas, etc. On the technical side, what characteristics does the current community think exemplify an ideal admin candidate? Obviously, not every good candidate would necessarily pass every possible technical test, but if we can make a short list of users who seems like good candidates then it might be easier to look at individual cases and encourage the best ones.
In the past there have been some other attempts to identify potential admin candidates on the basis of technical evidence, does anyone remember where those lists ended up and what criteria were used? Dragons flight ( talk) 04:30, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
Tags at the top of article-space are intended to encourage editors to correct an article's problems, but more often than not, they are just an eye-sore and a waste of time when petty edit-wars emerge over tags, where that energy could have been better-focused on actual article-content. It struck me that this could be done in a better way that's more focused on the tags' objective - encouraging editors to improve the article.
Something like this:
![]() | Editors have made suggestions for how this article can be improved >>>> |
Then you click on it and it shows something like this:
![]() | Editors have made suggestions for how this article can be improved >>>> In June 2014, CorporateM said the article read like an advertisement. Click here for possible suggestions on how to reduce promotionalism in an article. In August 2013, the neutrality of this article was disputed by user:CorporateM. See the Talk page to join the discussion. In March 2012, User:CorporateM said this article focuses excessively on recent controversies. This can usually be address by adding more historical information from credible, independent sources. |
Details aside, it seems like something roughly along these lines would be much more effective at fulfilling the tags' intended objective of encouraging editors to improve the article and even providing actionable next steps on how readers can get involved. Beckoning readers to become editors. CorporateM ( Talk) 06:05, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
The 'preview' and 'show changes' buttons are redundant functions that could be merged. The new button would be called Preview Changes, and would highlight the changes inline. At the top middle of the screen there would be a Show difference button, which would expand into a comparison of the changed portions side-by-side with the previous version. (like in the Show Changes window)
I'd love to have a "Preview changes" button. Now, the merged button should be opt-in, as every major website redesign. --21:31, 8 June 2015 (UTC)~
The AbuseFilter is an extension that checks edits against a specified set of criteria with a primary aim of tagging edits and stopping abusive edits. Recent actions related to one user's use of the edit filter has called into question whether we should have some policies related to the use of this rather powerful tool, so I'd like to start a discussion with the view of then properly proposing specific policies that should hopefully reflect the community's feelings.
On the English Wikipedia the extension was added in 2009 and shortly thereafter renamed to the Edit Filter as, though it was originally designed to counter abusive edits, the more recent usage has broadened from that. In order to create a filter an editor must have the 'edit filter manager' user right, which has in all but a few rare cases only been available to administrators, who are currently free to assign it to themselves as required (new admins do not have the right by default). There are currently around 170 users with the user right, and I would estimate that around 10 actively contribute to filters.
Filters take a number of conditions in order to track edits that fit those rules in the log for that filter. As an example, Special:AbuseFilter/3 tracks new users (who are not confirmed), taking an article of over 300 characters and reducing it to less than 50, in the article namespace (with a few extras to avoid false positives). The output is stored in the abuse log for that filter, and the filter is currently set to warn the user with a message before tagging the edit ('blanking') if they choose to continue. New filters are usually left in 'log only' mode for at least a week before switching on any warning or tagging in order to check for false positives.
I'd like to start a few sections with areas that I think would be worth discussing, feel free to add more if there's something in particular you feel is important. Of course, if you feel that the current standing works fine, do say so. Sam Walton ( talk) 00:41, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
Useful links:
As mentioned above, the user right is currently primarily used by admins who assign themselves the right if they're interested in contributing to filters. It has, rarely, been given out to competent non-admins in the past. Should there be a better process for assigning the user right? Should admins be able to give themselves the right with no oversight? Should non-admins be able to request the right with a realistic chance of obtaining it? Discuss. Sam Walton ( talk) 00:41, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
In some cases it may be sensible to hide a filter from public view. This is useful for long term vandals who may otherwise work out how to avoid the filter, but is generally not used unless deemed necessary. Should there be a policy regarding when a filter should be hidden from public view? If so, what should be the condition for hiding a filter, and how would that be enforced? Sam Walton ( talk) 00:41, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
When a user creates a new edit filter, should there be checks from other editors at any stage of the process? For example, should a new filter be checked over before it goes into log only mode, or perhaps only before it's switched to disallow edits? Or do we trust that edit filter managers know what they're doing and shouldn't require checks? Sam Walton ( talk) 00:41, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
I see filters as the surgical arm of Page Protection, so perhaps that may be a process to look at, as an example take edit filter 656. The Driver 3 article has suffered from repetitive vandalism by a single editor, the vandalism started in October 2014. The user would add links and text referring to a specific Disney franchise (Liv and Maddie), there is no link whatsoever between Driver 3 and Liv and Maddie, this is just pure repetitive vandalism. I requested an edit filter in January 2015 and it duly stopped the vandalism (The preceding 3 months had seen 88% of the article edits being vandalism by this one editor).
I saw the edit filter as the only sensible and fair way around the problem. An IP block wasn't an option as the vandal changed IP addresses. range block wasn't an option as thousands of innocent users could have been hit. Semi-Protection would have blocked genuine IP editors. Full protection would have been overkill, and probably not granted. But a single, specific filter that blocked this one repetitive vandal has resulted in no vandalism and the article being available for everyone else to edit.
The problem now, as detailed in the "Hiding" section above, is that someone has disabled the filter and the vandalism has re-started. I don't know who or why the filter was disabled, but I have a pending request for it to be re-enabled. At least with Page protection we're able to see the reasoning for protection removal and can be sure which admin was responsible for it, at the moment we're not able to see that with edit filters. - X201 ( talk) 09:10, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
I've updated the Wikipedia:Edit filter to hopefully better reflect community consensus on these issues. If anything there doesn't seem right to you or could be explained more clearly, please do post on the talk page or change it yourself. Sam Walton ( talk) 19:46, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kww and The Rambling Man/Workshop#Comments about timelines may be of interest. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 04:17, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
Hello! My name is Coderenius [1], and here is my proposal.
In my opinion, the current Wikipedia skin is becoming increasingly outdated, and I believe humble efforts should be taken to create a more modern looking default skin. The current vector skin is fine, but I would prefer a skin that agrees graphically with some of the beta gadgets we have right now, such as VisualEditor [2] and Hovercards. Tools like Wikiwand do a good job at this, but it's missing a lot of functionality and didn't seem to be able to co-exist with the current Wikipedia workflow that I've grown accustomed to. If anyone is proficient with CSS coding and web design, perhaps a new skin could be designed with these beta features in mind.
As most major websites are moving to more streamlined interfaces, we here at Wikipedia have been using the same since around early 2010, if I'm not mistaken. And yet, currently, we are the 7th largest website in the world! [3] We are above Yandex, Blogspot, and even Twitter. I am not a hipster or trying to get on a bandwagon, if you were beginning to feel that way about my statements, I assure you. I have not been a registered user for a very long time here. Actually, I am an extremely new user. However, I have been loyal to Wikipedia as a reliable source of information since I was a child (I am not too old right now, if you ask how), and have been reading articles and gaining a sublime knowledge of culture and knowledge for many, many years. And now, as I present my idea here amongst my fellow contributors, I am quite pleased at where I have come now. That's enough about me, now.
Even though the current Vector skin is certainly not intrinsically flawed, I would prefer an interface that is minimalistic, smooth, and yet still retains all the functionality of our current Wikipedia, with anti-aliased, bigger, and slightly lighter text with perhaps some different fonts. The borders around articles should be removed, and the gradients the tabs in the top nav have should be redesigned as well, as some of these features are distracting. Overall, I really liked the way the Hovercards and VisualEditor were designed, but I would prefer an original motif, preferably without frameworks such as Bootstrap. If any one is up for the challenge, or knows someone such as an admin who you think is up for the challenge, please let them know as well.
Overall, I know this is not a high priority issue, but if you agree that this is something that should be implemented, or if you believe this idea should be brought up on the proposals page, please reply and let me know. I would love to hear from the community, as of right now I have heard very little from any other user, and my experience has been quite isolated. Thank you for your time, and by all means, suggest more ideas and critique my own.
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What problems with editing or reading the encylopedia do you see this update solving? Sam Walton ( talk) 19:25, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
Is anyone in for taking a poll of any kind? Just a suggestion, I want to see what everyone thinks on the matter. Coderenius ( talk) 22:53, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
I’m writing a book on vintage port. That brings me across references to people and places that might not otherwise be known, which are nonetheless unworthy of comment in the articles. See, as examples as good as any other, H. H. Asquith, Stephen Gaselee, John Vaughan, and Cyfarthfa Castle. It seems to me that these talk comments should be tagged with something identifying their nature (not about article, about subject of article, of interest to those trying to enlarge current state of knowledge, not to be archived). What should I do? What should I have done? JDAWiseman ( talk) 23:17, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
Would it be possible to have a link to toggle the watchlist between showing only the most recent changes (current default) vs. showing all changes (can be done, but buried in the preferences)? I'm thinking it could be a link on the watchlist itself, alongside " Hide minor edits | Hide bots | Hide unregistered users..." etc.
Currently it is possible to "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" but only in a buried preference. By default it is off, but I much prefer it on; nevertheless, sometimes the occasional edit spree means that my watchlist gets very long because of one or two articles, and turning it off briefly could help highlight edits I'm most interested in. At that time, it would be useful to quickly toggle to only the most recent edits.
In my dream world, the default for this setting would be "on", since I have seen several occasions where new, well-meaning folks revert only the most recent edit in a string of vandalism, since it is very easy to miss the effects of a series of edits with only the most recent showing. Having a quick toggle (with persistent default view via preferences) could make it easy to manage the impacts that "show all edits" would have for folks who have huge watchlists, or watch ever-changing articles.
At the very least this would be much more useful for some (IMO) than the option to show/hide wikidata. Any thoughts? Antepenultimate ( talk) 03:02, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
Dear wikipedian,
I'm tossing with the idea of not having any administrator anymore.
I'm on wikipedia since 2004 and I've witnessed a lot of change in Wikipedias (and MediaWiki the fabulous software behind it).
One important change since that, is that Administrator (formerly know as sysop for system operator), had very difficult and important task to make at that time that requires special skills.
In the meantime, MediaWiki impoved so much that a lot of the task can basically be made by any regular contributor to Wikipedia.
Furthermore, MediaWiki is now bulletproof in the sens that almost all the operations can be reverted without too much harm and hence allow more flexibility to do those operations.
So here is my proposal, isn't it the time for Wikipedia to allow all the regular contributors to do those operations. Xmlizer ( talk) 14:24, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
I'm looking for Hmong Dawb speakers to do editing on the Hmong Dawb Wikipedia (still in the incubator) and also for doing some translations on the Commons. I would like for the Hmong Dawb Wikipedia to go in the mainspace and there needs to be an editing community for that to happen.
I'm asking here because the potential users are likely editing the English Wikipedia: Many Hmong Dawb speakers originated from Laos but now live in the United States. Large numbers reside in the California Central Valley region (Fresno, Merced, Sacramento, etc.), the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area, and parts of Wisconsin, with smaller numbers in the Detroit area and in North Carolina. I hope that the speakers may start articles in Hmong related to those parts of the U.S., so more Hmong speakers may read the articles and join the Hmong Wikipedia.
I have previously e-mailed Hmong student' associations and Hmong mutual aid associations in the US under my Wikipedia name (I did not use my real name in corresponding with them), but I hadn't made much headway. Does anybody have any suggestions on what I could do? WhisperToMe ( talk) 13:02, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
I have observed that the CSD A7 criterion is frequently (even usually) applied in a way that is inconsistent with the CSD A7 policy page and supplementary essay WP:Credible claim of significance as they are currently written. In particular, articles that I do not find to be covered under A7 are routinely tagged and speedied as A7. To prevent the confusion and unintentional biting that may arise from this situation, I suggest that the statement and application of A7 be brought into accordance. This can happen either by changing the statement of A7 to match its application or by changing the application of A7 to match its statement, or a bit of both. Below I explain how the present application of A7 is inconsistent with the policy as it is currently written and propose solutions to this problem.
The disconnect between the statement and application of A7 derives from differing interpretations of the phrase "credible claim of significance". A7 revolves around this phrase because anything that does not make such a claim can be speedied under A7. I will argue that "credible claim of significance" can be read either as " verifiable claim of notability" or "plausible claim to belong to a category of which the members are often notable", and that while articles are very frequently deleted under the former interpretation, WP:A7 and WP:Credible claim of significance actually indicate the latter interpretation.
The differences between the two interpretations hinge on two central points:
To sum up, my reading of current policy "credible claim of significance" gives the interpretation "plausible claim to belong to a category of which the members are often notable". However, I have observed that A7 is often applied according to a different interpretation (which would be equally valid if there were no additional material explaining what the phrase means): " verifiable claim of notability". For example, I have recently seen articles for film directors and television broadcasters deleted. I have doubts about whether those articles would have survived an AfD, but the claims to significance (i.e. being a film director or television broadcaster) were certainly plausible and, in my opinion, film directors and television broadcasters are often notable.
There are two possible solutions to this problem:
In addition to these solutions, we can also mix-and-match on the two central points, changing practice for one and not the other.
Many thanks for reading all this! I would certainly appreciate any and all opinions and feedback. A2soup ( talk) 15:05, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
I think that now it seems fairly clear that all of the deletions are going to be endorsed (or at least, not restored), it's time to acknowledge that while this particular suggestion looks like a nonstarter, CSD A7 is still widely misapplied. See for instance Paul Johnson (Broadcaster), which is a valid G3, but if it wasn't G3 wouldn't by any stretch of the imagination be valid as A7. Is there anything that can be done to better educate patrollers and admins active in this space on when and where A7 actually applies? Lankiveil ( speak to me) 02:42, 19 July 2015 (UTC).
I've been looking at the way that our username policy and our conflict of interest policy interact, and I'm concerned that there's an unintended and perverse effect of the way the two work together. Consider a typical scenario. A company creates a Wikipedia account named something obvious related to their company, and they start editing their company's article. We tell them "no, no, no," we can't let you have an account that looks like it's shared, and then we tell them to make a new account. Haven't we just given them license to create a non-obvious promotional/shared account? Now, instead of it being clear that there's a conflict, the company editor has an account that just makes them look like a normal editor.
I've noticed now a few occasions where we block a company user, and then another brand new innocuous-sounding user shows up and begins editing only the blocked company's article. We don't want to be accusing such editors of having a conflict, because really, we have no idea. They're not socks because we told them to make a new account. But they're still violating the TOS by not disclosing their paid editing (which we would have known about if we hadn't blocked them the first time around). I understand the good policy sense in requiring everyone to have an individual account, but I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas about how to avoid this perverse effect. Agtx ( talk) 13:01, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
I think SmokeyJoe has it about right. I've put together a draft proposal based on the feedback above. I'd appreciate any comments you have. agtx 02:59, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
... account creators. -- Unready ( talk) 19:11, 18 July 2015 (UTC)are allowed tokeep their accounts ...
If we could just get a notice added at Special:UserLogin/signup which said something like: "Please note that your username cannot represent a company, organisation or group" (instead of the silly "Help me choose" → link to massive policy page which no new user is ever going to wade through) then this problem would be much less of a problem. </grumble> Yunshui 雲 水 13:04, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
I think I'm getting about ready to bring the draft proposal over to the proposals section in the next few days. Any thoughts on the way the proposal is set up (too detailed? too pushy?) are certainly appreciated. agtx 19:48, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
On multiple occasions I have made an edit to a talk page, signed with the tildes, and saved. Only then to realise that I wasn’t logged in. Sigh: log in; edit the signature to say me. My fault. There’s a simple UI solution. If I’m editing without being logged in, please could the background colour of the whole page, including the typing box, be non-white (perhaps pale red or pale blue)? That visual clue, delivered before I start typing, would prevent the error. JDAWiseman ( talk) 23:41, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
#wpTextbox1 { background-color: #ddeeff; }
in
User:JDAWiseman/common.css. That'll change the color when you are logged in, not when you aren't; but it accomplishes the same purpose. —
Cryptic
00:02, 20 July 2015 (UTC)#wpSave {background-color: green;}
#wpSave {background-color: green; color: white;}
makes the button easier to read.
Eman235/
talk
19:06, 21 July 2015 (UTC)Certain warning templates appear inappropriate for articles flagged with a stub tag, namely {{ Empty section}}, {{ Expand section}}, {{ Inadequate lead}}, {{ Incomplete}}, {{ Lead missing}}, and {{ Lead too short}}, among others. If an article is already flagged as a stub (and has no more than ten sentences of prose), then that should be sufficient notice to the reader that it needs more content. I think a bot should remove those templates from all stub articles as all they do is disrupt reading and make it look untidy.
What do you think? Praemonitus ( talk) 17:08, 21 July 2015 (UTC)