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A game created like me to promote counter-vandalism. It's like the Wikipedia RPG thing that was created a few years back, but different. It's a lot more like an RPG than a leaderboard. I've already got a few people who've signed up, and have 23 chapters to the full thing so far. If anyone wants to check it out, it's here! TF { Contribs } { Edit Quest! } 20:35, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
I often read the Simple English page instead of the Regular one. There are different reasons:
Now, you guys might want to figure out, if these five points should become official targets for the Simple English pages, instead of just being for the challenged and those new to English.
While I think this is perfectly doable and would ultimately also sharpen and "kind of legitimize" the Simple pages, if you don't agree, then an English Light version could be created. You could even automate the priorities by monitoring how people behave on long or hard to read pages. That should not be too hard, given how much code even Google's main search page contains. (See xkcd 1605 )
Thank you for the second most important web site, after Google!!!!!!! 91.155.195.65 ( talk) 14:38, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
Hey guys,
I was wondering whether wikipedia could have a more uniform approach for certain recurring sections when dealing with writers, as it happens with musicians and other artists? When a page deals with a writer, I think it should have one fixed section dealing with that writer's bibliography. As it is now, one writer has a list of his books under the header "Bibliography", another under the header "List of works", yet another under the header "Writings", etc. Having one section called "Bibliography" looks less messy and much more clear. When a page deals with musicians, this is much more uniform; virtually all of the pages I have seen have a section called "Discography". Why can't this be uniform with writers? I hope I made my suggestion clear with this. If you have any questions, just let me know here.
Thanks!
J. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:8084:D02:3C80:59B9:CC87:344D:1467 ( talk) 21:14, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
Over at WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles there have been extensive attempts to improve Wikipedia's coverage by comparing it to other encyclopedias, dictionaries, lists of authors, etc. Have there been attempts to simply find articles that are already written on other language Wikipedias and to translate them to English? It seems like a no-brainer to me, but I can't find any "missing article" lists generated this way.
For example, Helia Bravo Hollis, a botanist from Mexico, has articles in five languages including German and Spanish, but not English. Has someone already made lists of such missing articles? And otherwise, would there be interest if I attempted to create some such lists. For example, a list of missing botanists, sorted by number of non-English Wikipedia articles over 500 words? I imagine there would be interest across a broad range of topics for such lists.
I discovered the missing Helia Bravo Hollis entry while editing Wiktionary, when researching the etymology of " hollisae", which is used as part of the scientific name of many plants. It seems odd that there aren't lists of similar missing-in-English topics. — Pengo 03:14, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
Did you know
Have a look! -- Atlasowa ( talk) 20:18, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
@ Magnus Manske: any way you can help out with the above request, either in the context of the not-in tool or otherwise? -- Izno ( talk) 15:31, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
Hello community members,
I've been thinking for a few days now about the need to combat bullying and related abusive kinds of behaviors in Wikipedia editing. I've seen and been subjected to a lot of it myself.
I discovered that there is an essay about bullying at WP:BULLY which is a great starting place, but seems like it could be more fleshed out. And then there is implementing actions to curb bullying.
I've seen too much of it around here, and it often is in regard to content of articles. There is a big difference between reasonable and civil dialogue when there is a difference of opinions. Everyone has a different point of view. We are here to reconcile various points of view, and to decide on content in service of the reader. We want to get articles right and this comes out of such good dialogue.
But far too often, dialogue devolves into name-calling, pushy ways of speaking, condescension, insults, Wikilawyering, taking advantage of the naivete of new editors, and all this sort of thing. It tends to allow some people to swing false power around and to dominate articles, where there more subtle and nuanced voices who may be more polite and less aggressive then get drowned out by the dominators.
I know we have some mechanisms to work out issues about civility, and about people who are pushing content into articles against consensus or against good community judgment.
Often what happens is a long-term pattern where one or more editors will harass or hound another editor or group of editors. Often it works out along some ideological lines, as many topics in Wikipedia have some controversy around them. Some of the more experienced people know just how far they can push their behaviors without being too flagrantly in violation of a guideline and therefore able to be sanctioned. Some know how to insinuate insults, how to ignore another editor's fair points without it being so noticeable, how to change topics constantly or to use strawman arguments to try to make the other person seem wrong and foolish, and many other sorts of things. Some people cite guidelines like WP:IDHT and WP:DEADHORSE to try to get people to back off, especially newbies who can be intimidated by the alphabet soup. Sometimes there is a long-term pattern of one editor giving another editor so-called "friendly warnings" like "when people act like you are, they are often banned..." or "If you continue to act this way, you will go off a cliff" and these are not actually "friendly warnings" but more like understated threats intended to have a chilling effect on another editor. They even lead to a gaslighting effect where the victim can think "i must be wrong here" and clams up and backs off, not continuing to argue a point even though they may be right.
All these sorts of things are forms of intimidation that add up to bullying. I've been seeing it around in my year or so of editing, and now that i have some more experience, i recognize it as a major problem in Wikipedia. I don't think the system as it is, is good at dealing with this dynamic. I think the system as it stands sometimes even has the opposite effect -- it shoots the messenger. If someone does have the guts to stand up to a bully and bring it to a noticeboard, sometimes people come and gang up on that person and try to make them think they're wrong, and the bullying continues even in the forum where it's supposed to be addressed.
Is anyone with me on this? Do you see this going on? Do you have ideas for how to address it better?
Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SageRad ( talk • contribs) 11:08, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
One aspect of why i think this is needed, is that
WP:CIVILITY is not just about "bad words" or one-time interactions. Many times it's a pattern, and a lot of bullying is done with no bad words at all. I seems innocuous enough to the casual observer, because they may not know the deeper meaning, or the history involved between two editors. That's part of how manipulative people work, and how they abuse people without other people noticing.
I would like to quote some good words from user Dennis Brown (who i hope will not mind being pinged) who said here:
We would all love a more civil Wikipedia, but blocking people for using bad words will only mean that the more passive aggressive types who hide their bullying and insults in saccharine laced words will be running the place. Some of the nicest people cuss sometimes. Personally, if I'm going to be insulted, I prefer the honesty of someone who just says it bluntly, not someone who hides it in clever language designed to intimidate and diminish me.
This is the same thing i have found. Repeated behaviors by a few people who have taken to hounding me and trying to grind down my self-esteem, using various turns of phrase and conceptual tricks to make it seem like i should just crawl under a rock and hide because obviously i'm too stupid to be editing at Wikipedia, and my point of view is just worthless, etc.... but using relatively innocuous-sounding words. It's tricky, and that's why i think we could use a volunteer corps of people focused on this. I'd volunteer. SageRad ( talk) 13:22, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
Another aspect is that the person who is being bullied may sometimes react due to
counterwill -- not wanting to be controlled for very good reason, feeling the sliminess of the interaction, and they might cuss in anger, justifiably, but then the bully will use that response to try to further characterize the victim as being unfit for Wikipedia ... and the cycle goes on and on, and the bullies get entrenched and develop gangs of mutual supporting "good old boys" who help each other out.
SageRad (
talk)
13:24, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
The above three statements are definitely good thoughts, in my opinion, but these are not reasons why it couldn't work. Of course there is a relativity among people of different viewpoints. People with more similar viewpoints tend to have better edit histories and to forgive each other more often, and also don't butt heads as often. And of course, if someone is trying to push content into an article that is not supported by reliable sources, then they are probably at fault for contention. Bullying, when it happens, is in the behavior, not in the point of view of an editor. For the content it comes back to sources and having good dialogue. Those who don't have good dialogue and continue to push (either to block content they don't like or to push content that they want) and in the process hurt other users and make the editing climate contentious, especially if they continue to target or to go after or harass a specific editor(s) who they tend to disagree with, then they could be given a kind of notice. "Here's what we see going on... we see you misrepresenting the other editors even after they've explained themselves quite well, and calling them names and being condescending to them, and posting templates on their talk pages that don't appear justified," for instance.
I'm also wary of formalizing this, but it could be an advocacy group of volunteer editors who know enough to advise someone who comes to them if they feel bullied. Then they could use their experience to help work it out, if possible, or advise where and how it could be brought to a noticeboard for the best and speediest resolution. It could use the already existing noticeboards, and simply be a group of advocates (sort of like public defenders in the court system) who volunteer to help out because they've been there before and know what it's like.
I assure you that my intention in suggesting this is not to enable POV pushing of any kind. In fact, quite the opposite. I advocate for integrity to the sources and articles that reflect reality as best known according to reliable sources. SageRad ( talk) 20:42, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
Here is an example of what happened when i asked what remedies are available for bullying behaviors, at the Administrators Noticeboard -- not good response -- continued bullying in fact. That to me is an argument in favor of needing people to advocate for those who are being attacked or ganged up on. SageRad ( talk) 06:40, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
"editors who are actually bullied are likely simply to leave Wikipedia. Therefore, I think that there is relatively little overlap between claims of bullying and actual cases of bullying."reminds me somewhat of Cucking stool#Use in identifying witches; if she sank, she was innocent, if she survived, she was a witch. I know exactly how it feels to be subjected to that treatment having asked for help, and it isn't at all pleasant. Burninthruthesky ( talk) 08:01, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
For the benefit of those editors at this idea lab who are not familiar with the background, the original poster, User:SageRad, has been editing in the area of genetically modified organisms, a contentious subject, and is, in my opinion, a combative editor who does not accept advice. In June 2015, multiple editors, myself included, advised SageRad to be less combative and more collaborative. The advice was discounted as "punches in the face", "threats", and "bullying". So SageRad has been seeing bullying for months. A case is now pending at ArbCom concerning genetically modified organisms. SageRad is named as a party to the case. ArbCom would have been and is an appropriate venue to discuss bullying and similar conduct issues. SageRad did not present any evidence, which could have included evidence of bullying, and did not present a workshop proposal. Now, as ArbCom is about to finalize the case, SageRad is facing a topic-ban from genetically modified organisms. A few days ago, SageRad, as noted, came to WP:AN to discuss bullying, after never having addressed it to ArbCom. SageRad again claims to have been a victim of bullying, but has not presented any diffs or other evidence to the community either. After SageRad opened this thread here, the AN thread, which wasn’t in the right venue because it wasn’t asking for admin action, was closed. At this point, it isn’t clear whether SageRad is in particular saying that they have been bullied, and that new measures are needed to deal with bullying, or just that Wikipedia has too much bullying, and that new measures are needed to deal with bullying. In any case, the original poster has not presented and has not made an effective effort to present a case either that they have been bullied, or that bullying is such a pervasive problem in Wikipedia that it needs new measures. Robert McClenon ( talk) 18:30, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
My own observations are that many claims of bullying are not justified, and are made by editors who persist in editing against consensus, and are sometimes associated with claims that articles are controlled by cabals. Most of the cases that I have been where there really has been bullying have been cases of article ownership, where one or two editors enforce their article ownership by bullying. I don’t see bullying as the pervasive toxic problem that the original poster sees, but the original poster is, in my opinion, an editor who sees disagreement as bullying. Robert McClenon ( talk) 18:30, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
Although I disagree with almost everything that User;SageRad says, I agree that WP:ANI is not an effective forum for dealing with bullying. "The community" at the noticeboards does not deal effectively with issues that divide or polarize the community. Bullies divide and polarize the community, because any bully always has a few followers as well as a few victims. ArbCom and Arbitration Enforcement are the only forums that are able to deal with issues that divide or polarize the community. Perhaps the English Wikipedia needs sanctions reform, such as some sort of jury system below the ArbCom for dealing with conduct issues. This idea lab is an appropriate place to discuss sanctions reform. I don’t see evidence that bullying is such a pervasive problem that it requires a task force. (The gender gap is identified as a pervasive problem that requires a task force.) It isn’t clear whether a task force would try to mediate, when mediation usually does not work with conduct issues, or whether the task force would impose sanctions on the bullies. If the latter, then the proposal should be for sanctions reform. While I don’t see bullying as the pervasive problem that SageRad does, I do see bullying as a problem that isn’t dealt with effectively at WP:ANI (or WP:AN). Robert McClenon ( talk) 18:30, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
One possible step, short of sanctions reform, not involving a task force, would be to ask admins to identify themselves as admins willing to look into bullying. Maybe the current group of administrators who are willing to make difficult blocks are already the appropriate people to deal with bullying. Robert McClenon ( talk) 18:30, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
I don’t see bullying as a pervasive problem, or Wikipedia as a toxic environment due to bullying. However, bullying is a problem that is not being dealt with effectively below ArbCom and AE. Maybe sanctions reform is needed; I think that it is, because the English Wikipedia is too large and fractious to be self-governing by direct democracy, but others may disagree. Maybe editors who view themselves as being bullied need to know what admins to turn to. Robert McClenon ( talk) 18:30, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
I don't think you are getting the spirit of what i'm suggesting. It's not therapy sessions. It's to address a problem by being in solidarity of sorts with the person who is being beaten down wrongly by another, in Wikispace. Often there is ganging up. The help of a single other person who sees and affirms the reality of what the victim of bullying techniques is saying, can make all the difference. To affirm that something is wrong when it feels wrong can negate the gaslighting aspects of bullying techniques.
From what i have seen lately, when one person is being railroaded by another editor or a group of editors, when someone comes along and sees the situation, witnesses it, and calls it what it is, the person who is being railroaded gets a desperately-needed breath of fresh air. It's the solidarity of being seen -- affirming their own gut feeling that they're being railroaded or bullied, that they're not crazy, that they actually have dignity and as much claim to knowing as the others who are trying to make them feel stupid, wrong, or otherwise bad for speaking their mind. Gaslighting is serious stuff and it happens here on Wikipedia. There are all sorts of rhetorical tropes that effectively are forms of gaslighting -- undercutting the other's sense of even having a worthy voice. Making them start to think they're crazy or stupid or something, when in fact it's a power dynamic of domination.
Of course there will always be some wrong accusations, and there are false accusations of bullying, but that's the rarity, not the norm. As i would say in a cautious analogy to the subject of rape. Few accusations of rape are made up. Are some? Sure, some percent are, but not many, and the fact that a few accusations are made ingenuinely in no way means that people should not listen very intently when someone says that they have been raped. Or otherwise abused. These things are about power dynamics, and abusive behavior also tries to shut down the victim from speaking out. There is a silencing that occurs that it would be good to provide some assistance, a friendly and trustworthy person to listen and advocate on behalf of the person so they're not so alone. SageRad ( talk) 09:08, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
I will comment that, in my experience, editors who complain of being bullied fall into at least four classes. First, there are aggressive editors who edit against consensus, because they know that they are right. They then complain of being bullied. These editors may or may not themselves be engaged in attempted bullying, but have been pushed back because they are against consensus. Second, there are passive-aggressive editors who edit against consensus, because they know that they are right. They then complain of being bullied. When their own behavior is discussed, they typically say that they need to take a Wikibreak of a few months to recover from their hurts from the personal attacks and bullying. They do not themselves engage in bullying, but are disruptive in a different way. Third, there are editors who run into article ownership, and complain about it, and about the bullying by the article owners. Fourth, there are editors who run into article ownership, and complain about it, but are otherwise disruptive, by flaming or soapboxing. Only the third class of editors who complain of bullying deserve real assistance. The original poster falls into the first class, in my own opinion. However, I would like the original poster to explain what sort of care should be given to bullied editors. I don't think that editors who are actually bullied need care. I think that they need administrative action, to block the bullies, but only if they really are innocent victims of bullying, and most editors who complain of being bullied are not innocent, although some are. Robert McClenon ( talk) 04:09, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
I think it may be useful to recast the issue in different terms, with regards to the feeling of being outnumbered. There is a certain degree of cliquish behaviour that arises in all communities, and Wikipedia is not immune. It's only human nature to feel a greater connection with those whom you've collaborated with before, and to harbour some doubt about newcomers. This can lead to a new editor feeling ignored by an inner circle, which I think underlies some of the emotions described above.
To combat this, experienced editors need to be more self-aware of how their responses may be perceived and make persistent efforts to be inclusive. Conversely, new editors need to be more understanding that other editors may not always craft the perfect response to them. It is, though, a very hard problem. In schools, students can be required to participate in sessions outlining the problems with cliques and techniques to minimize their impact, but in a volunteer environment like Wikipedia, it's hard to target the appropriate persons.
To anyone interested in forming a task force: I suggest you go ahead and just do it. Create a page in Wikipedia project space, and start brainstorming on its talk page about how you can put something into effect that is achievable with your current membership, bearing in mind that people tend to drift away from Wikipedia groups after a few days or weeks. If you are able to make some procedures work, then you can build upon that. If your first attempts fail, it's not a big deal; try something else, instead. In the spirit of wikis, be willing to boldly start a new initiative, evaluate it, and then try again! isaacl ( talk) 04:10, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
Tossing this in at the tail end, maybe all that's needed to resolve a lot of real and perceived bullying, lone editors being swarmed, and various ownership issues - not every one, but some, maybe even the majority - is an informal but defined volunteer role of Guide, to step in with a few words of orientation and context for individual editors (usually new editors, or editors new to more intense editing environments) who may be getting in over their heads in a particular discussion.
We are continually encouraged to focus on content, however, when editing gets intense, comments of one sort or another on behavior are always in the mix, so why not cut to the bottom line and have someone say plainly what needs to be said about a discussion reality, before it turns into a capital case? -- Tsavage ( talk) 01:03, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
It's been suggested that i start a project page for this. How do i do that? Thank you for any help.
I feel this idea may shape up to be a group of volunteers who discuss bullying behaviors, keep an eye out for them, discuss and try out some basic ways to help people who are subject to bullying behaviors, and to have a place where people can go to ask for help. Not really a task force in the sense of having authority, but rather a hub of volunteers who can advocate for people being bullied or railroaded or ganged up on, and try to untangle conflicts more productively. SageRad ( talk) 16:14, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
I do not agree with NeilN. I agree with his list of actions that "are bullying" on Wikipedia, and for that, he is obviously expert. On his page you can see that he regularly puts notches, for each his edit/delete action and he is obviously boasts with that. Of course he has a good excuse for his actions, and that is "Wikipedia's policies and guidelines". Now we can see, which's actually causing the problem. We can just imagine the number of people which the NeilN deprive the right to information, which is the number of people he is deprive the right to freedom of opinion and expression in the media, which is advertised as "free". Wikipedia policy: that this is not a forum, it is not important truth, and that is important verifiability is complete nonsense. Wikipedia, ruled by self-appointed, editors and administrators, who have their own purpose, and which are hidden behind their hooligan nicknames = bullying. So who is this "Big Brother" or "Great Leader" or "The great administrator" ever brought the benefit to mankind? Wikipedia has to change policy! Wikipedia has to be a serious forum! On the Wikipedia in the first place, must be the truth, and the right to creative freedom of opinion and expression! Hopefully, that Wikipedia, as soon as possible, change its policy and that the work of the administrator like NeilN, will no longer be needed, in fact it will be banned. Otherwise, we should forget the Wikipedia! Your initiative SageRad is a praiseworthy and I congratulate you on it. I am a few days ago at the same place, raised the question: "What is with the truth on Wikipedia?" and look where it is now this question? Vjekoslav Brkić, Osijek. 213.202.80.195 ( talk) 09:34, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
I fully agree, as a result of painful experience, that bullying is a problem in Wikipedia, specifically the form of bullying known as Mobbing. But it is difficult to see how it can be fixed from within Wikipedia (as opposed to outsiders bringing a multi-million dollar lawsuit against both individual editors and Wikipedia demanding punitive damages if and when, for example, somebody kills themselves leaving a suicide note saying it was due to Wikipedia's failure to adequately protect them from bullying). The trouble is that Mobbing is all too often an integral part of the way 'consensus' is reached, though it is called 'piling on' by those editors who think it's a good thing precisely because it can achieve 'consensus' (and who say so - see some comments above). And since 'piling on' is not seen as bullying, Arbcom couldn't protect its victims even if they wanted to (and many of its members probably don't want to). Within Wikipedia, this requirement for 'consensus' can only be got rid of by 'consensus', which won't be forthcoming given that many Wikipedians support it - indeed there'll presumably be no consensus for banning 'piling on' either, given how many Wikipedians use it - indeed anybody proposing such a ban risks being mobbed by the supporters of 'piling on'. I've been 'piled on' myself when I made what I thought (and still think) was a perfectly sensible suggestion (arguably unrelated to mobbing, a term unknown to me at the time) to reduce what I saw as a bullying risk, but I was far too traumatized by that experience to have any wish to risk pointlessly going through it again. But I wish you, SageRad, the best of luck with your proposed task force, even if I suspect it can't succeed without the sort of outside lawsuits I mentioned above, but hopefully I'll turn out to be wrong about that - indeed if you do ever succeed in getting your task force started, please let me know, as I just might then want to think about joining it. Tlhslobus ( talk) 01:35, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
Of course one approach might be for somebody (possibly but not necessarily your proposed task force, SageRad) to try to persuade the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) that they are at serious risk of being successfully sued (with punitive damages) for psychological trauma caused by their lack of an adequate anti-mobbing policy. (Note: I'm NOT suggesting you or anybody else threaten to sue them, which our rules don't allow, but that you or some expert warns them that currently unknown others might successfully sue them.) But persuading them would require a legal expert from a jurisdiction that allows punitive damages for such things (I'm no legal expert, and my country doesn't allow any punitive damages, without which WMF almost certainly have no need to worry except in the seemingly unlikely event that there's an actual suicide, and one that can be convincingly blamed on WMF failures), and I'd expect their own legal experts have made sure that WMF (but perhaps not mobbing editors and/or mob-tolerating admins and/or mob-tolerating arbcom members) have nothing to worry about. My own experience was that WMF (unlike Arbcom, who were rude and 100% dismissive, telling me I was simply wrong without saying why, and warning me not to waste their time like that again) responded in a polite but non-committal way to my above-mentioned anti-bullying suggestion, saying their lawyers would look into the matter and might get back to me but probably wouldn't. They never did get back to me, but a few months later my most serious complaint got fixed, though not as a result of any public action by WMF (private action by them may have played some part, but I don't know whether there was any). Please let me know if you'd like more details and copies of related documents (some of which might be helpful to your cause), which I could then supply to you, perhaps by private message. Tlhslobus ( talk) 04:27, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
MOS:CT and WP:NCCAPS say lowercase "like" if it is used as a preposition. However, consensus at Talk:People Like Us (film), Talk:Hurts Like Heaven, and Talk:Love You like a Love Song contradict each other. This matter has been discussed elsewhere, like Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters and WT:AT. However, every time a discussion led to nowhere. Shall I do another discussion or the proposal? If the latter, what kind? -- George Ho ( talk) 16:14, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
{{
cn}}
is not used outside mainspace, because it categorizes things into article maintenance categories; the template for smart-aleck "citation needed" one-liners on discussion pages is {{
talkfact}}
. —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
04:30, 28 December 2015 (UTC)which is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources). Weight for
the usage of major international organizations, major English-language media outlets, quality encyclopedias, geographic name servers, major scientific bodies, and notable scientific journals. I would suggest "academic" in preference to "scientific", to better cover the arts. I do realise that this approach has its own drawbacks when compared to a fixed, firm standard; but seeing as we're brainstorming. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 02:14, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia generally prefers the name that is most commonly used..." It does not say case as a name might not require uppercasing per WP:NCCAPS unless the name is a proper noun. As for sources, it discusses "
which of several alternative names is most frequently used[.]" We can't twist and misinterpret the words and the principle. -- George Ho ( talk) 03:35, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
Short version: Do what MoS says. When a conflict arises despite what MoS says, do what the majority of the most respected off-WP works on English-language usage do. Ignore biased (music magazines, etc.) and other low-quality (blogs, e-commerce sites, etc.) source material. Allow exceptions (iPod, Deadmau5, "A Boy was Born") only when virtually all actually independent reliable sources on the topic, writing about it as a notable topic, consistently use the non-standard stylization. Basically, every RfC and other debate on this kind of question ends up reinforcing that decision-making flowchart. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 04:47, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
I know this sounds crystal-ballish, but one day Her Majesty the Queen of the UK of GB and I is going to be succeeded by, well, a successor. Now, the first in line to succession is Charles, Prince of Wales then Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, then Prince George of Cambridge. In short, the British succession to the throne is topped by males. The obvious problem arises. There are loads and loads of articles using words like Her Majesty's Government. Once the Queen dies, she will likely be succeeded by a King. The problem is that most mentions of the words "Her Majesty" and "the Queen's _____" would have to be replaced by the masculine versions of these phrases. I'm not sure if there's a protocol to handle this, but the job will be spectacularly difficult. Any thoughts? The Average Wikipedian ( talk) 00:56, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
We recently went through such a change in the Netherlands when Willem-Alexander succeeded his mother in 2013. I guess this was solved by "grinding thru it". I have neither noticed problems, nor heard any editor complaining about the workload. After all, it is a fairly minor edit (albeit at many articles). So let's not put a lot of effort in solving a problem that is probably fairly minor. Arnoutf ( talk) 11:24, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
Just the other day I stub-sorted
Papua New Guinea–United Kingdom relations, noticed the phrase Papua New Guinea and the United Kingdom share
Queen Elizabeth as their head of state.
, and wondered whether that's her personally or rather the
Head of the Commonwealth, which is not precisely the same (in theory) as the Monarch of the UK. One of these days there'll be a lot of editing needed.
Pam
D
13:37, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
I agree with the comments above: this isn't a big deal. We'll sort it out when the need arises. The UK has done this before, and so has the Netherlands. Note however that not all occurrences of "Her Majesty['s]" throughout Wikipedia will necessarily become "His Majesty['s]" – it'll depend on the context – so it'll need intelligent reading of each article, not 10-seconds-per-article AWB-bashing. Similarly, not all occurrences of QC will automatically become KC, and so on. Stanning ( talk) 15:00, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
I'm a little puzzled: Why have we written any articles to be time-dependent? Most such instances can be rewritten now to be independent of "who's" government it is, no? -- Izno ( talk) 15:37, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for the above comments. Although we might not need a thoroughly planned procedure for dealing with the situation, I think there should be some sort of guideline to specify what has to be changed and what doesn't. Not everything is exactly that straightforward. The Average Wikipedian ( talk) 01:46, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
A lot of times I have seen articles where e.g. the infobox is broken because of some good faith edits. I think some of the editors knew they messed up the article (how could they not see it), but didnt knew how to fix it (they have to figure out that they should press the "history" button). Therefore, I suggest to add some kind of a "panic button" (revert button) for IP users. (I know its a MediaWiki feature request, but I want to hear if anybody support the idea). Christian75 ( talk) 14:47, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
For background, please see Wikipedia talk:Village pump (policy)#The page is impossible to load or edit
I'd like to get ideas on ways that we could better manage the size of the village pump pages. For reference, the current sizes (as of/not including this edit) of the village pumps are:
For reference, WP:TOOBIG suggests that pages larger than 100kb are likely to be difficult to load to the point of being unusable, especially for users on slower connections. It seems at the moment that this is only a problem for the policy and idea lab pages, but it means that the pages meant for centralized discussion can't be easily loaded by a number of users, so conversations meant for broad community input are exposed to a systemic bias for users with faster connections and/or faster computers. This doesn't seem like a lot at the moment, but the policy page is routinely over half a megabyte when there is a busy discussion ( here it's 608,591), and that means that some users probably can't load the page at all nor participate in those important discussions.
One idea I have is to suggest that large threads be moved to subpages, with a link left on the pump page to the subpage, so that the page size is kept manageable. Or a derivative of this: have every thread on a subpage and transclude them onto the pump page, like we do with WP:AFD and some others. That way users (especially those with slow connections) could watch and/or load only the threads that interest them, and very large discussions would not clutter the page. Ivanvector 🍁 ( talk) 16:41, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
When closing some AfDs today, I observed that many AfDs become disorderly and confusing because of their disorderly format. Controversial AfDs, in particular, become sprawling messes of text that are almost impossible to follow. (For examples, just look at any day's AfD page.) I think it would be a good idea to reformat AfDs so that there are sections for different opinions. We could have the basic "Delete" and "Keep" sections, and an "Other" section for opinions such as merge, redirect, userfy, etc. There could also be a "Comments" section for those who wish to comment without !voting. Biblio worm 20:29, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
"Do not reorder comments on the deletion page to group them by keep/delete/other. Such reordering can disrupt the flow of discussion, polarize an issue, and emphasize vote count or word count."-- samtar whisper 13:15, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
This matter has been discussed at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content and Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). Somehow, no one there agreed to downgrade non-free SVG files to PNG. Where else can I discuss it? -- George Ho ( talk) 06:27, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
Then how do we else limit the use of SVG files without downgrading to PNG besides reducing details? George Ho ( talk) 05:07, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
I've heard nothing but bad things when it comes to ArbCom, and admins have all told me to stay away from it. So the question is: Do we need arbcom? If we do need it, does it need to be reformed? Also who is in control of Arbcom and how does one join Arbcom? This is important for a lot of reasons. I think right now, just based on how others have spoken about ARbcom, its the almighty word, and yet not the word people want to go for. Lucia Black ( talk) 08:25, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
Yes we need someone to make unpopular decisions when the community is deadlocked. It is only natural that people will grumble about such a group. HighInBC 21:59, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
dear wikipedia organisation,
as a regular user of your webpage I have a suggetsion to add to the articles.
I, and im sure many other reader as well, would be thankful if there was a automatic readers voice that could read the article to the user.
>this would help ppl who want to learn the language (I myself regularly use wikipeda to practise languages im not fluent in by reading the articles in both the foreighn and my native language) and are struggling with pronouncing certain words.
>it would help blind or old people who cant read (well)
>it would help ppl with a low concentration capacity to not always get lost in the articles and get distracted.
i hope you take my suggestion into concideration and i hope ii send this to the right department. I simply couldnt find another place to submit it — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.189.196.12 ( talk) 11:07, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
Thinking out loud: do we have a tool which can list the instances where a user has converted a redirect to an article? My thought process here is that one common way that new articles are created is from overwriting previously existing redirects, and the tool that counts articles created doesn't count these. A side effect is we've had a few editors who "sit on" redirects: they create a redirect for a topic that might possibly become notable in the future, expecting that when another editor creates the article, they'll get credit for it (and they do, according to the tool). As a side effect of that, we occasionally have redirects brought to WP:RFD by newbie-ish editors insisting that we must delete the redirect first before they create the article, because they want the credit. Which becomes a burden on RFD watchers and on deleting admins. Of course, this is all WP:EDITCOUNTITIS, and it doesn't happen often, but it does happen.
Plus it would just be nice to see a list of redirects that I've turned into articles, without having to do it manually. Ivanvector 🍁 ( talk) 21:49, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
Looking at the Featured content section of recent Signpost issues, it seems that the rate of featured article and featured list promotions is roughly equivalent. Yet, we still only have today's featured list twice a week. Category:Featured lists that have not appeared on the main page has 3,209 pages, while Category:Featured articles that have not appeared on the main page has only 707 pages. At the current rate of two featured lists per week, it would take 25+ years to burn through all current featured lists even if no more featured lists get promoted, compared to less than 4 years for featured articles. It may be a good idea to increase TFL to daily, or at least more times a week, so that editors are rewarded for their efforts and to make sure that most featured lists get a chance to appear on the main page. Thoughts? sst✈ 11:07, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
I like the idea of shortened footnotes in the case of quoting different pages of a single source, but it has some drawbacks:
How about being able to produce something like
The brontosaurus [1] is big [1] and thin at one end. [1a] Then it becomes much thicker in the middle. [1b] But at the end it is really thin. [1a] The Norwegian Blue Parrot will not move if its feet are nailed to the perch. [2] Its metabolic processes are a matter of interest only to historians. [2] References
|
by markup
The brontosaurus<ref name=Elk>Elk, Anne. [[Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses]].</ref> is big<ref name=Elk/> and thin at one end.<ref parent=Elk name=thin>p. 5: "Lorem ipsum"</ref> Then it becomes much thicker in the middle.<ref parent=Elk>p. 6: "sit amet"</ref> But at the end it is really thin.<ref name=thin/> The Norwegian Blue Parrot will not move if its feet are nailed to the perch.<ref name=Praline>Praline, Eric. [[Dead Parrot sketch]].</ref> Its metabolic processes are a matter of interest only to historians.<ref name=Praline/> == References == {{reflist}}
Petr Matas 12:03, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
(I hope I'm in the right place.)
From time to time a newbie posts at the Reference Desk, "An obscure article has an error. Please fix it." And one of the RD regulars (today it was me) may grumble, "If raising the issue on the article's Talk page didn't help, right at the top of the Talk page is a notice about where to find editors likely to be willing and able to do something."
But, it now strikes me, the wording of the Project Box doesn't say that; it's addressed to editors with a broad and deep interest in $FIELD, not to those wishing to call attention to a concern with a specific article. How can it be worded to invite such questions more explicitly?
I've been around a long time but I don't pay much attention to such issues; my involvement in WikiProjects (as such) has been slight. Maybe this has been debated to death in the past, and the Projects prefer not to risk inviting a flood of such comments. — Tamfang ( talk) 22:59, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
Here the real solution:
It's crazy to expect our new editors to know to post at the wikiprojects. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 06:34, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
My apologies if this has already been proposed, I was unable to find it
I know that many, many, many forms of flagged revisions have been proposed and subsequently rejected by the community, but I was curious what people would think about changing the current template protection to a system where high-risk templates were editable by everyone or autocomfirmed users, and then approved by template editors or admins in a similar way to pending changes works now? I'm just curious what the reaction to something like this would be... thanks for feedback! Kharkiv07 ( T) 00:39, 8 January 2016 (UTC)
At search, could we have clicky buttons to dump "intitle:", "prefix:", "insource:" into the search box so we don't have to type them again and again? Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 22:54, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
importScript( "User:Fred Gandt/searchSpecifics.js" );
to
your common JavaScript page for an interpretation of the requested functionality. I'm not suggesting this is an end to the proposal, just trying to be helpful. Is this kind of what you had in mind?
fredgandt
01:39, 12 February 2016 (UTC)I just created a new essay, Wikipedia:Revert notification opt-out, with an accompanying userbox. It came from an idea that I got, about how to maybe make editing more peaceful. It seems to me that getting notifications that "Your edit has been reverted by..." can create needless drama. I don't think opting out will work for everyone, but maybe it will be helpful for some editors, as it seems to be for me. So I figured I would point it out here. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 23:23, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
Been pondering this idea for a while, just wanted to express it at an early stage, and perhaps get some thought on preliminary system design.
Imagine a really good investigative journalist's personal notebook of facts related to a breaking story. This project (early design phase ONLY at this point) would be to "generalize" that single user notebook into a multi-user tool that would permit collaborative fact reporting, in near-real-time, for news stories large enough to be potentially included in WikiNews and/or WikiPedia.
More preliminary design concepts in bullet form, in no particular order.
Again, this is so far from any proposal, just a fuzzy concept floating around at this point. Only looking for thoughts around preliminary system design concepts. No rush. If it ever moved forward we would want to deep engage with news professionals (especially associated with investigative journalism) on a world wide basis to really to elicit all system requirements, engage academics in journalism, pay close attention to news values, media bias, reporting bias, publication bias, etc. Would want the design to be global friendly and up to date at the outset to encourage potential broad scale use.
Might be fun to engage even the professional news censors in heavily censored States to find out what their precise requirements are? Perhaps the need for censorship might "expire" after a certain embargo? Even censored news States need a flow of reports to pick and choose what to broadcast. A system that also accommodated those needs might bring the benefit of potentially increased future collaboration?
All feedback more than welcome :) Rick ( talk) 17:29, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
Iridescent - thanks for the valuable feedback. Quality negative feedback is just as valuable as positive. I may have picked the wrong spot to discuss this very preliminary concept/idea only (and its far from "I'm proposing"). Reporter's Notebook as conceived would be a support tool, not at all under the Wikipeida or Wikinews "brands/service marks/etc." Its a behind the scene tool (#1 above) designed from the ground up to aid authors and editors. No, its not at all something turning Wikipedia into a hybrid of Twitter and the Google News Lab, its not about Wikipedia in general, only about Wikipedia news articles. Its a time/date stamped reporters notebook tool for news events that are likely to reach the Wikinews/Wikipedia WP:Notability standard and result in an article. I wholeheartedly agree Wikinews is an utter failure, didn't know it was expensive. Perhaps more preliminary design thought up front and more disciplined failure analysis would have put that on a better track. As of right now I'm not sure Wikipedia or Wikinews is hitting the ball out of the park with quality news reporting. Wikipedia articles sometimes "mature" gradually over time but the preliminary reporting, when it gets the very most viewership is highly problematic. Wikinews coverage and readership are scant. This would be just one tool, helping support news reporting. The tool doesn't write the articles, which of course should be fully compliant with all current policies. Rick ( talk) 19:07, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
Since the {{ notability}} template allows an Org parameter to be added, would it make sense to subdivide Category:All articles with topics of unclear notability by Org? At present the category has 60,000+ entries, making it unwieldy to peruse by interest. Even the monthly sub-category is fairly large. (Ex.: Category:Articles with topics of unclear notability from December 2015.) Praemonitus ( talk) 20:05, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
Suggesting we take a defined version of Wikipedia articles from WP:1.0 and format it into Freenet freesite html format, thus making quality articles available to internet users who require anonymity protection when browsing, or if the Wikipedia website is blocked in their particular region.
There are a few technical requirements that would need to be considered, such as an automated process for converting articles into freesite html format, bundling similar articles into 2 MB containers, browse/search functionality, and hash key considerations. -- Breno talk 22:42, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
I've been experimenting with a service that monitors edits and notifies readers and editors about unusual edit activity on articles. I've been experimenting privately with this for the past week and it has sent me notifications within minutes of the deaths of David Bowie, Glen Frey and Alan Rickman and alerted me about the 2016 Istanbul bombing and the start of the 2016 Australian Open. I've been playing around with its sensitivity and I'm keen to get feedback from users.
My goal right now is to explore a mechanism for pulling in new readers to Wikipedia as content gets created and hopefully inspire them to help with the editing and during my experimentations I have also seen potential in notifying interested parties in edit wars happening on certain articles (that's one for the future).
Here's how you can help! Right now you'll need the latest version of Chrome (mobile or desktop) or Firefox (developer version). This makes use of pretty new technology that hasn't yet made it into other browsers.
Questions I'm keen to have answered by you:
You can give me this feedback on my talk page. Thanks in advance for your help! Jdlrobson ( talk) 23:01, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
Along my travels, I have created many VR Photographs that would serve as excellent illustrations for Wikipedia articles. (If you don't know what I mean - think Google Street View). Would anybody else be interested in seeing interactive VR/720 degree photographs as Wikipedia illustrations? The tools to create these photographs are now easily commercially available, and can even be made using software for smartphones, so we are currently seeing an explosion of imagery of this type, and it would be great if some of that could be used to improve Wikipedia.
In fact, Wikimedia already has a ton of really cracking illustrations that we could use right from the get-go:
From a technical perspective, this should be quite easy, as Mozilla's AFrame project allows for cross-platform, responsive VR photograph viewing, and I think illustrations on Wikipedia would be an excellent application of the technology.
What do you think? Miserlou ( talk) 17:49, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm getting kind of tired of having to go through my watchlist, and clear it out after fighting vandalism. Now I'm not going to say that unchecking the watchlist option is a huge inconvenience, but it does become a pain when it's the middle of the day, and there are multiple school IP vandals blanking and disrupting Wikipedia. I'm, however, proposing the idea that we make the watchlist button on edit pages here because I'm not very good at these sort of things. Of course, by that I mean making templates for proposed ideas and such. I'm still fairly new here. I'm sure that this idea can be a foundation that can be build upon, so have at it. Cheers!
Boomer Vial (
talk)
19:51, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
An example such as {{GOCEreviewed|user=Dthomsen8|date=January 2016|issues=awaiting deletion decision}} should be made sortable by user, date, and especially issues. Some of the articles not copyedited some time ago because they were considered for deletion and then kept should be tagged for copyedit and the GOCEreviewed template should be removed.-- DThomsen8 ( talk) 20:21, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
There is a huge backlog in Merge requests on Wikipedia. I have personally not witnessed even a single merger since I have joined the editing community. I am not aware of the progress to resolve the same. However, there are few suggestions which I can propose, which might help. For example, split the list of articles proposed for merger into two separate categories - 1) Proposed 2) Consensus reached. AfD and Move are pretty efficient tags for any article due to prompt action by volunteers and a defined action plan. AfD tag never stays on an article for more than a week. Even move is closed within a month or so. So should be merge tags. Would like to open this discussion for experts here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Capankajsmilyo ( talk • contribs) 06:19, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
Some people when they're about to use a company's service want to read the Wikipedia article about that company to see if if that company has a tendency to rip people off so that they can decide whether to use its service. If there's no Wikipedia article about that company, they might decide that since they can't find out whether the company rips people off, they'll just use that service and suck up the risk that they'll be ripped off. Some companies are not well enough known for there to be a Wikipedia article about them. Maybe there should start being articles about them so that people will no longer have the good aspects of them revealed and the bad aspects hidden. In order for that to happen, research groups might first have to start publishing research about those companies. Blackbombchu ( talk) 05:19, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
I don't know how this would work technically but it would be cool if instead of bluelinking words that may be unfamiliar to readers, they could right click on the word and have and option to look up that word on wiktionary. Let me know what you think. Nemoanon ( talk) 01:12, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
About 3 years ago, the Wikimedia Foundation worked on a tool called Article feedback, which allowed readers to contribute "feedback" to articles in the form of community-moderated comments. A lot of time was spent building guidelines for managing the tool. The Foundation was very ambitious with the project, hoping to roll it out on all Wikipedia articles. Following an extensive request for comment in February 2013, the tool ended up becoming opt-in only, and it was eventually discontinued in March 2014, because:
Though some editors expressed interest in keeping the tool on an opt-in or limited basis, Article Feedback would need significant improvements to better serve its users, and the foundation doesn't have the resources to develop it further at this time. Besides being unpopular with many in our editor community, it is also slowing down site performance -- and may require more technical maintenance that we can adequately provide.
The WMF also stated in its decision to retire the tool that most team members involved with it agreed that Flow is better positioned to give our readers a voice -- and that we should clear the way to make it a success.
Now that Flow is no longer a viable solution, my question is whether the community has any interest in asking the WMF to bring Article feedback back. In my opinion, Wikipedia still lacks an effective means through which readers can communicate with editors, and the WMF has been struggling to develop solutions. I think that Article feedback would be useful for this purpose as long as it is limited to being completely opt-in for each article, and as long as past flaws are discussed and resolved. We still have entire behavioral guidelines that we can revive. I think part of the reason why tools developed by the WMF have failed in the past is because they lacked a grassroots approach to community integration. Perhaps this is a start to fix that. Mz7 ( talk) 06:09, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
Over a million comments were posted during this experiment: on average, 12% of posts were marked as usefulimplies that during the limited period of the trial, the poor saps monitoring the AFT-enabled articles had to wade through a minimum of 880,000 useless comments.)
Would it be possible to decorate articles with a list of required knowledge that are necessary to properly be introduced to concepts without having to go through all the detailled articles you can find along wikipedia pages. Like the outline of a course on a subject in college, what would be the steps taken by a teacher to introduce you the concept. Or the required course necessary to enroll you can sometime find for college courses.
This will save a lot of hours of research, and hopefully improve retention rate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.194.198.248 ( talk) 17:34, 8 February 2016 (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.
I imagine this has been discussed before, but it can't hurt to try again in that case.
This suggestion for a proposal could be extended to also cover accounts, but personally, I see account holders as having already taken responsibility for their actions, so would leave them out.
This suggestion for a proposal would almost certainly require changes to the MediaWiki software.
I propose:
Instead of outright blocking IPs found wanting, we (first) try limiting them to submitting edits for peer review (draft edits for [dis]approval). Any unhelpful work would be no hassle to ignore; poor quality attempts to be helpful could be a good place to start the healing process (i.e. education and encouragement); good quality edits can be approved and published. If the IP continues being unhelpful, they stay in limbo; if they make an effort, we can help them improve; if they prove worthy, they're released from limbo.
Clearly the prolific vandals are keen to edit ;-)
A particular benefit of this procedure would be in the case of dynamic IPs previously used by vandals (or just plain old idiots) being adopted by decent folk who are immediately blocked and have a terrible instant history for no personal fault. Another benefit would be a shared workload, with less administration required. Another would be simply having fewer ugly warnings and block notices around the place, which just don't shout "Welcome!".
For the community's consideration. fredgandt 11:09, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
Does anyone have an interest in a Perl application that would run on a PC and create a single EPUB file from a list of Wikipedia URLs? My idea:
I hear the old EPUB functionality for saving Wikipedia "books" was discontinued. Why was that?
Thank you. Chuckr30 ( talk) 12:07, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
So I was looking up some things for a trip to Denmark I'm taking later this year, and was looking at Frederiksborg Castle. I figured it wasn't in bad shape, and I saw the star next to to the Danish language version. I clicked on that and was shown an unusual icon next to the article header. So naturally I clicked on that out of curosity and then ran it through the auto translate to discover that the Danish Wiki has a "Promising article" level in addition to Good and Excellent (our Featured). The summary it gives is as follows [2]: "Promising articles is a project in which Wikipedia's users improve the existing articles, with a view to preparing them for nomination as good articles. For an article can be considered as a promising article, then it must be at a reasonable level. Assessed an article promising so is the lowest rating of three possible ratings on Danish language Wikipedia. Items which are rated as promising, has still some significant gaps that need to be improved before they can be assessed as good articles. See the requirements for a good article for an overview of what is expected of realistic possibilities for improvement of promising articles."
As far as I can see, this has never been discussed at the Village Pump for the English language Wiki, apart from back in 2010 when someone from the Finnish Wiki was looking to create inter-wiki links for them. So I presume this is on the Finnish Wiki and the other Scandinavian ones too.
There is some duplication between this and some WikiProjects B class assessments - but this allows for a cross-project accumulation of articles which are ready to be worked up to GA status. I would think it was appropriate to have a few differences in approach should this be implemented - I wouldn't add an icon onto the main article page itself, but keep it strictly to a talk page thing. Furthermore, I think that should it be implemented, then it must have the requirements for improvement to GA incorporated into the new template as well as the general index page as well. There isn't much point without that or else it simply becomes a new indexing system for B class articles, which we completely don't need. Thoughts? Miyagawa ( talk) 16:19, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
It would be nice to have a button somewhere that changes the colour of all the links in an article black, for readability's sake. Found this while searching for the subject:
/info/en/?search=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_AD#Changing_link_color
In Firefox there is the Read mode -button built into the browser that really helps with reading long articles, but afaIk no such thing in Chrome. I know Chrome has similar things as extensions, but it would be nice to provide the functionality to all users.
91.152.109.7 ( talk) 03:30, 24 January 2016 (UTC)J
importScript( "User:Fred_Gandt/subdueLinks.js" );
to
your common JavaScript page to have the basic functionality you require. The button will be just below the Wikipedia icon at the top of the left navigation panel. It might not be perfect; it was slapped together ;-)
fredgandt
11:46, 11 February 2016 (UTC)importScript( "User:Fred_Gandt/navigationUI.js" );
to affect the navigation UI in ways that amongst other things fixes the position of the left panel. It's pretty trivial to separate out the code to have that functionality without the rest (which is not trivial). See
my sandbox for several useful (IMO) scripts (documentation is sparse).I appreciate that IPs can't use these, but then they can always create accounts- Hmmm ... where have I heard that before? ― Mandruss ☎ 19:35, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
How about an add-on which can localize pages by default, for easier reading. A Wikipedian could set a locality, and articles would appear with the date/time format, and automatically convert units of measurement to the local standard. It could be taken to the logical extreme, and replace regional language variations (colour vs color), IPA vs US Customary phonetics, as well. Obviously, this functionality would be off by default, but it could ease barriers to understanding. Article or section tags could override the preferences (on scientific articles as an example). The function would also display a warning somewhere, that the page is being automatically localized, and block editing until the function is turned off.
This would help mitigate issues surrounding what version of English an article was started in. superβεεcat 21:17, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
There have been numerous debates about deleting stale drafts, including expanding G13 or just removing the idea altogether (see VPP's attempt). On the one hand, people argue that no one's old drafts should ever be deleted in favor of editor retention. On the other hand, people argue that they would like to go through and triage places like Category:Stale userspace drafts so removing things will help (currently at 38k or so down from a high of 46k). What do people think about a proposed draft deletion process? It's basically like PROD in mainspace but much more highly restrictive and lengthy. It would cover both draftspace and userspace drafts. I think it could even overrule the need for G13 and cover WP:AFC as well as well as keep MFD from the current flooding of undisputed deletions it currently has. There would be a couple of rules here.
I also tag draft with WikiProject so I imagine we can have WP:ALERTS for these draft prods similar to Prods so projects can see if there's anything of interest. Any thoughts? -- Ricky81682 ( talk) 05:40, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
Sounds like a somewhat complex plan to make deleting old drafts and problematic user pages easier. How can we make it happen? Legacypac ( talk) 06:47, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
The redirect pages " Sooglossus sechellensis" and " Tachycnemis seychellensis" both link to Seychelles treefrog. The problem is that they're two different species, belonging to different families of frog—Sooglossidae and Hyperoliidae respectively, where as the article only refers to one of these.
I've found 235 candidate "false synonyms", similar to this pair, listed here:
I generated the list based on data from the IUCN Red List.
Is there anyone interested in joining the project to either help go through these individual entries or to help coordinate the effort? — Pengo 13:37, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
An other issue (not with species, but with higher level taxons) is that some times, the species doesn't have its own article, so in stead tsomeone created a redirect to a higher level taxon. A perfect example of this would be Tuatara. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:21, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
By the way, if anyone's interested in learning more about the project this has come out of and lending it some support, I've added Beastie Bot to IdeaLab. I'd appreciate any participants or endorsements. — Pengo 01:30, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
Hi, I've created a bibliography of reliable sources for parapsychology, curated to aid other wiki editors who are editing articles in this controversial area. I am inviting comment on this bibliography, and would welcome your ideas on where to best place this resource within Wikipedia. It can be found at /info/en/?search=User:Annalisa_Ventola/Sources_for_parapsychology. Annalisa Ventola ( Talk | Contribs) 17:49, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
I have an idea for an offline tool that would help analyze the evolution of an article's contents. This could be helpful when trying to identify orphaned refs and other accidental damage to content. I am aware of WikiBlame but that really is not adequate for what I am considering. Among other things that tool requires separate online searches and is sometimes rather cryptic in its logic for selecting edits. One of the key items my idea would require is a way to download the full (sans admin deleted material) edit history log and files of a single page so that it could be searched rapidly offline for complex strings using regex routines. I believe this would actually reduce the WM server CPU load when working with older and larger articles. An important thing to note is that I am proposing an analysis-only tool, not an offline editor. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 20:37, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
<page> <title>Mölln, Schleswig-Holstein</title> <ns>0</ns> <id>102865</id> <revision> <id>379324</id> <timestamp>2002-10-12T19:26:02Z</timestamp> <contributor> <username>Baldhur</username> <id>28358</id> </contributor> <model>wikitext</model> <format>text/x-wiki</format> <text xml:space="preserve">Mölln is a town in .... .... there are several monuments to him in Mölln.</text> <sha1>omx4jn6qc49d5agkvseqpwzxc77t11a</sha1> </revision> <revision> <id>986158</id> <parentid>379324</parentid> <timestamp>2002-10-23T12:02:58Z</timestamp> <contributor> <username>Baldhur</username> <id>28358</id> </contributor> <comment>coat of arms</comment> <model>wikitext</model> <format>text/x-wiki</format> <text xml:space="preserve"><div style="float: left;"> .... ....
Hi. I've recently read an interesting pair of articles by a specialist marketing company named 'Fission Strategy' on how nonprofits can edit their Wikipedia page (or hire FS for their expertise in doing same). They're here and here.
I find them a bit concerning, since they don't mention any of the guidelines for editing an organisation's own Wikipedia page (I think WP:COI, WP:NONPROFIT, WP:PROMO WP:USERNAME and WP:COPYVIO are the big ones in this area), and just suggest putting up a page as "necessary recognition of the credibility and work of your organization." Would anyone be up for sending them an email or reply of some kind mentioning this to them, if only so if they can't say they didn't know about it? Let me know if any thoughts. Blythwood ( talk) 17:41, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
A word about my POV or biases. I think it's fair to say that I've been among the most active Wikipedians working against abuse by paid editors. I also have worked with WP:GLAM with helping non-profit galleries, museums, etc. getting good coverage in mutually beneficial areas. I have had a bit of concern with GLAM focusing on very large museums, I prefer smaller organizations, and even prefer making the Wiki editor - the person who will make the best additions - the focus of the project rather than the sometimes big corporation-like GLAM institution. I do think WP:GLAM has moved a bit in my direction.
Maybe the proposed new project, say WP:Non-profit organizations, could coordinate with WP:GLAM? I'll ping a few folks. @ Blythwood, Wittylama, SLien (WMF), JSutherland (WMF), and Slim Virgin:
Smallbones( smalltalk) 18:20, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
Hi @ Smallbones:
Sorry for the delay. I spoke to a few of my colleagues at the Foundation, and it sounds like this might be more appropriate for my colleague on the legal team @ Jrogers (WMF):. Pinging him for his thoughts here. Thanks. SLien (WMF) 19:47, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
I don’t know where to else to put this but I’m looking for ideas so this seems like a good spot.
Multiple times every day someone writes to Wikimedia (fielded by OTRS agents) asking how they can add an article about their company to Wikipedia. We have a canned response, which takes a lot of words to send the message “don’t”. Many times that answer is sufficient and we do not hear back. In some cases, the person writes back and says we’d really like to have an article, and I see our competitors have articles so how can we have an article?
I know the official response is that there is a place to request an article. I can’t bear to tell them this is as it is my understanding that the request article list is a blackhole. I’ve never heard of an article being developed from that place but maybe someone can give me better news.
I also know that if their competitors have articles the odds are very high that those articles exist because someone ignored the COI policy. I could ask for names of the competitors track the article down search for proof that it’s the COI violation and remove that article, but that’s a lot of work and doesn’t accomplish the goal.
Our official answer is that if they are notable eventually someone will write about them. That answer may have been satisfying a decade ago, when there was a realistic chance a highly notable organization would get an article in short order. Most of the highly notable organizations all have articles, and we are left with marginally notable organizations. The likelihood is that it will be years if ever before someone chooses to write an article about this organization, even though it may be technically eligible.
I don’t like sending them to Wikipedia:Requested_articles because I believe it is a blackhole. I don’t like telling them to just wait, because I suspect the wait may be years. It is very hard to tell him that it is just too bad maybe they will have an article when they know there are articles about less notable competitors.
Anybody got some better ideas?-- S Philbrick (Talk) 14:12, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
Why not fulfill a Biography article request? |
Where do I go to propose a change to the NPOV welcome template? As currently worded, the template mentions NPOV but focuses on RS, and I'd like to propose a bit of re-wording there. Rklawton ( talk) 14:07, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
I'm seeking input on how to address a few related issues. I'll try to be brief and clear. My goal is to come up with a coherent proposal to post at WP:VPR, but I need some assistance.
Mental illness and learning disabilities are highly stigmatized and labeling people with them should be done with the utmost diligence. WP:BLPCAT specifies extra stipulations for categories for sexual orientation and religion in that people must self-identify as a specific identity to be categorized as such. However, there is no such specification for or even guidance for mental illnesses and learning disorders. Given the stigma involved, inappropriate categorization can be tantamount to libel. Unlike categorizing based on other stigmatized labels such as criminality, there's no easily accessible public record of definite rulings. These diagnoses, like most medical diagnoses, are private in nature.
BLPCAT states that "Category names do not carry disclaimers or modifiers, so the case for each content category must be made clear by the article text and its reliable sources. Categories regarding religious beliefs (or lack of such) or sexual orientation should not be used unless the subject has publicly self-identified with the belief or orientation in question, and the subject's beliefs or sexual orientation are relevant to their public life or notability, according to reliable published sources.
"
The WikiProject Autism page also states that "The explanation at WP:OCTrivial is worth noting: 'Avoid intersections of two traits that are unrelated, even if some person can be found that has both traits.' For example, celebrities are usually notable for reasons other than being gamers. So while Stephen Wiltshire really is notable for being an autistic artist, people in occupations like dentistry or aviation are not.'"
(
WP:AUTISM#Lists, categories and templates; thanks to
Permstrump for pointing this out).
This issue has arisen a few times the past couple days with people adding such categories to biography pages (e.g., edits by Discott, edits by Pol9, and this discussion on Doug Weller's talk page), as well as finding some stand-alone lists such as List of people diagnosed with dyslexia and List of people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Concerns over this issue have resulted in AfDs.
My first thought (as mentioned on Doug's page) was to suggest individuals must self-identify with a mental illness or learning disability for a category to be applied to their BLP. Doug Weller raised the reasonable point that (1) not all mentally ill and learning disabled people understand/comprehend their diagnosis and (2) many would reject such labeling. This got me thinking about how to deal with the issue. For example, if someone is diagnoses by a court as having a mental illness, would we be in the right to label that BLP with the category, even if the defense presents experts who disagree? Below are some questions I'd like input on and my thoughts on them.
To summarize, I think I'm learning toward suggesting that people should need to self-identify to be categorized as having a mental illness or learning disorder. I would propose editing BLPCAT to include them, but wish to hear input first. Thank you. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{ re}} 22:43, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
How do we deal with self-proclamations without evidence of an official diagnosis?
What sources should be trusted regarding reported diagnoses?
Should we label people who have been diagnosed (e.g., in court) even if they reject the diagnosis or label?
the person's next of kin/family want it to be known to fight stigma about the diagnosis/label then it should be allowed.. That is advocacy. It has no role to play in Wikipedia (except something we constantly have to keep pushing out of WP as advocates keep coming here grinding whatever ax they have to grind) . Yes of course if the diagnosis is described in reliable sources we can use it here. What matters is that the reliable source reported on it. Why they found it significant enough to investigate, we don't much care. Going down that road of "what the family wants" is going down the wrong alley. Jytdog ( talk) 13:42, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
Should we extend this to other contextless cases like infoboxes, navigation templates, and stand-alone lists?
What about other illnesses or disabilities?
How do we know if a mental illness or learning disability is notable enough to warrant categorization as mentioned in BLPCAT?
About Channing Tatum, I don't see the talking "at length" or the talking at all.At 2nd glance... hmmm, not so at length. I'd read a lot about Channing Tatum that morning. :) But you make good points about the exact wording in the NYT article. I didn't even pick up on it and I thought that's specifically what I was looking for.
Tatum said merely he "was put on" Ritalin, notably omitting any assertion that he did in fact have ADHD.I think it's a good example of why more explicit rules would be helpful. I don't think anyone is maliciously adding stuff about ADHD to Tatum's article. Those journalists are sneaky, even in RS. PermStrump (talk) 09:07, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
- People with these conditions should not be added to subcategories of Category:People with disabilities or Category:People by medical or psychological condition unless that condition is considered WP:DEFINING for that individual. For example, there may be people who have a speech impediment, but if reliable sources don't regularly describe the person as having that characteristic, they should not be added to the category.
- Categories which intersect a job, role, or activity with a disability or medical/psychological condition should only be created if the intersection of those characteristics is relevant to the topic and discussed as a group in reliable sources. Thus, we have Category:Deaf musicians and Category:Amputee sportspeople and Category:Actors with dwarfism since these intersections are relevant to the topic and discussed in reliable sources, but we should not create Category:Biologists with cerebral palsy, since the intersection of Category:Biologists + Category:People with cerebral palsy is not closely relevant to the job of biologist nor is it a grouping that reliable sources discuss in depth.
There are many social reasons why a person who has an invisible disability may wish to conceal their disability and pass as non-disabled. One who is successful at this is considered able-passing, while one who is unsuccessful is considered visibly disabled. Intellectual, sensory, mental or sleep disorder disabilities tend to be invisible and allow passing, while physical disabilities are more difficult or even impossible to conceal. Able-passing people have the option to later come out or disclose their disability, a process that is analogous to coming out as gay. Sometimes disabled people are outed without their permission. Such outing should never be done on Wikipedia - see WP:AVOIDVICTIM for further guidance.
1) What terminology should we use to label the diagnosis if the person self-identifies using colloquial, outdated, offensive or inconsistent terminology? 2) And at what point does the use of non-existent or conflicting terminology call into question the reliability of the claim? And which label should we defer to? Permstrump ( talk) 18:35, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Details of a three-hour exam that Adam Lanza had in 2006 with another Yale Child Study psychiatrist, Dr. Robert A. King, were released for the first time Friday…. According to the police files, King said that Adam Lanza "displayed a profound autism spectrum disorder with rigidity, isolation and a lack of comprehension of ordinary social interaction and communications." Lanza was also diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder.” A psychiatrist that actually evaluated Lanza is quoted as saying he diagnosed Lanza with profound autism, but there are tens of thousands more sources that quote his mom saying he had “asperger’s” with no mention of the changes. Google shows 57,300 hits for
”adam lanza” asperger’s -profound, but only 17,300 for
”adam lanza” intext:profound. In this case I think it’s appropriate to neutrally address the discrepancy b/c despite the disproportionate coverage, 17,300 mentions of “profound autism” is still notable. That might not always be the case though. I could imagine some child star with estranged parents who completely contradict each other when they talk to reporters, but only one side received wide coverage. That kind of scenario could present a legal issue if the parent with notable coverage actually had their parental rights revoked or something.
Anyone have a suggestion about the best format for responding? I think this thread could get really long, really fast and then it might be hard (for me) to follow the conversation as it branches out to EvergreenFir's different bullet points. From a writing perspective, it would be nice to make a separate comment below each point, but that might make it confusing from a reading perspective. Idk... maybe I'm overthinking this? I think what I'm trying to say is... will it irk people if I comment inline like I'm tempted to do (perhaps in a different color) or should I lump my response it all together at the end? :) Permstrump ( talk) 23:25, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Sorry, people. The last thing I meant to do was create a whole new quandary, but I wanted to expand on something Discott brought up in Quandary 1, so blame Discott. /s Permstrump ( talk) 18:40, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
@ EvergreenFir, Discott, Dodger67, Jytdog, WhatamIdoing, and Doncram: I just had a moment of clarity, so I pinged usernames that looked familiar out of the recent edit history just because this thread has gotten long and less active over time. (My apologies if I missed anyone or included anyone by accident.) Somewhere ITT Roger (Dodger67) brought up that WP:EGRS covers disabilities and psychological conditions, which is a good starting point, but its current wording is insufficient for a few reasons that I think discussion here can/should address. (FYI from now on, when I say “disabilities,” I’m also referring to psychological conditions)… Per WP:EGRS, there’s a different standard for including disabilities than for religion, sexual orientation, etc (explained below). EGRS is the only place where you can find that information. None of the other policies that summarize or link to EGRS mention if disabilities are an exception to the rule. In fact, they don’t even mention that disabilities are covered under EGRS at all, which isn’t intuitive considering EGRS only stands for “ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality.” This makes finding the policies regarding disabilities unnecessarily hard to find. It also means that we don’t get the same level of clarification on how different policies specifically apply to disabilities, the way we do for other EGRS attributes. For example, BLPCAT says (abbreviated):
Categories regarding religious beliefs or sexual orientation should not be used unless the subject has publicly self-identified with the belief or orientation in question, and the subject's beliefs or sexual orientation are relevant to their public life or notability, according to reliable published sources. Caution should be used with content categories that suggest a person has a poor reputation (see false light). For example, Category:Criminals… These principles apply equally to lists, navigation templates, and Infobox statements that are based on religious beliefs or sexual orientation or suggest that any living person has a poor reputation.
1) It does not specify if the same principles apply to disabilities or even mention that disabilities are addressed separately under WP:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality. It's not safe to assume that everything covered under EGRS follows the same rules because, according WP:EGRS, the inclusion criteria for categorizing people by disability is WP:DEFINING, which is a much higher standard than “relevant according to reliable published sources.”
2) On the other hand, while WP:EGRS does specifically address disabilities, it only talks about categorization of people with disabilities and doesn’t specify if
WP:DEFINING also applies equally to lists, navigation templates and infoboxes as BLPCAT does above for other EGRS attributes. Once again, this is not a safe assumption because according to
WP:NONDEFINING, “In cases where a particular attribute about a topic is verifiable and notable but not defining, creation of a list article is often the preferred alternative.
” (My emphasis.)
3) On top of that, EGRS and BLPCAT don’t apply to main articles, where the general rule of thumb is only that the content should be WP:VERIFIABLE and WP:NOTEWORTHY. For BLP’s it’s supposed to err on the side of privacy, but IMHO that's too subjective to be sufficient for private health information. Considering EGRS and disabilities are exceptions to the rules for categories, lists, etc., it makes sense that they should also receive special consideration within the main article, but as far as I know, there’s no clarification of how EGRS and disabilities should or shouldn’t be evaluated differently than other facts included in the body of an article.
TL;DR: It’s clear that per WP:EGRS, people should only be categorized by disability if the disability is DEFINING. It’s not clear which rules apply to naming people’s disabilities in lists, navigation templates, infoboxes, or within the body of main articles.
Proposals
1) Change the acronym to GERMHDS (gender, ethnicity, religion, mental health, disability, sexuality) or create 2 separate policies, one for EGRS and another for MHDs. Add links and summaries about how to treat disability and mental health conditions at least everywhere that EGRS is currently spelled out and add some example scenarios involving mental health diagnoses and learning disorders, etc. (P.S. I'm opting for MH instead of P for psychological, to avoid the awkwardness of the acronym DP.)
2) WP:DEFINING should be the inclusion criteria for people with MHDs in categories, lists, navigation templates and infoboxes and that should be clearly stated.
3) As far as the body of main articles, I’m not sure exactly how the inclusion criteria should differ for GERMHDS, but IMHO it should be held to a higher standard than even material that could suggest a poor reputation.
Why? Because in the US, an
Invasion of Privacy lawsuit can be brought under the publication of private facts. The release of personal medical information falls under the ‘publication of private facts’ category. Unlike lawsuits for defamation, the truthfulness of the facts disclosed is not a defense in an invasion of privacy case. And also unlike defamation, the plaintiff does not have to prove special damages, meaning no actual harm must be proven in order to prevail. Unlike defamation, where compensation is confined to actual injury, for invasion of privacy, damages are extended to presumed or punitive damages. Invasion of Privacy is a willful tort which constitutes a legal injury, and damages for mental suffering are recoverable without the necessity of showing actual physical injury.
Technically, the law protects you if you publish information already exposed to the public eye and especially material obtained from publicly available court records,
but personally, I wouldn’t want to have to hire a lawyer just to make that case.
PermStrump
(talk)
03:17, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
References
This section is defined as being about mental illness and learning disabilities. Points refer to autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. These are neither mental illness or learning disabilities.
If you want to include these two conditions in your discussion, then possibly an appropriate catch-all term would be "mental conditions."
By the way, it is disputed especially whether autism is a disability or even a disorder. I believe both conditions are deemed by the medical community to be disorders, but that whether any given condition is a disability depends on its effects on any given person. Maurreen ( talk) 03:20, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
Random brainwave: A big issue with cleanup tags is that they can be applied to newbies' articles, discouraging them, in particular because they feel that they can't remove the tags themselves (not knowing how Wikipedia works).
What if we added a parameter to cleanup tags allowing people to mark individual cleanup tags as (potentially) resolved, which could then be reviewed by experienced editors not afraid to remove them?
Go ahead, tear the idea to shreds; I haven't critiqued it internally myself. {{ Nihiltres | talk | edits}} 16:59, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
See this proposal where I outline my idea for a way to resolve this problem. I hope editors will contribute there, as well-received ideas at that location may make it onto the developers list of projects.-- S Philbrick (Talk) 16:42, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
I'm sure this has been floated before, but it would be helpful for active editors who patrol tons of pages to be able to set up watchlist groups or at the very least, to be able to flag certain pages as high priority. A practical application for this, would be in the monitoring of pages that have seen recurring vandalism recently. Or if you have open talk page discussions you need to monitor, you could flag those pages with priority, and they would be displayed more prominently on your watchlist, either being colored differently, or being placed at the top. Cyphoidbomb ( talk) 17:05, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
I have an idea that any time that a new account is registered, a welcome banner should be automatically posted to the new user's talk page. Currently welcoming new users is voluntary by other editors. The reason that I am making this suggestion is that this seems like the most friendly way to address a problem (or related set of problems) which is the lack of knowledge by new editors of Wikipedia's complex rules, or specific actions by new editors that are against the rules of Wikipedia, but where those rules are not obvious and the new editors are acting in good faith. I haven't reviewed the multiple existing welcome banners recently, and so am not recommending that a specific one be used. However, the policies and guidelines that need to be mentioned clearly include neutral point of view, reliable sources, verifiability, conflict of interest. the rule against edit-warring, no personal attacks, and civility. There should also be an explanation of the difference between article space, draft space, talk space, user space, and Wikipedia space. Many new editors don't know the difference, and make mistakes, such as submitting user page drafts as articles (or even thinking that their user name has to be that of the other article which they are here to create). There should perhaps also be a mention that the creation of new articles is difficult and that new editors are invited to edit existing articles, and that, if they do want to contribute to new articles, they should use Articles for Creation. (That is the consensus among the regular editors at the Teahouse.) There may be other policies and guidelines that should be mentioned. The key to the idea is that any new registered account should get a welcoming message that is also informative, and, if read, may reduce some of the good-faith violations of the rules. Robert McClenon ( talk) 17:43, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
I hope I am writing this in an appropriate place and, as a lot of my work has been relatively idea based, I guess I am. As I am also relatively new to creating text on Wikipedia it is important to me that I understand what I'm doing and where I am writing it. In an arts environment I was asked if art was important and replied "no but everything is interesting" and have been somewhat shy of the word "important" ever since as I was happy with what felt like a balanced answer. What I think is important is personal choice and Wikipedia has existed for me to simply check some facts that I was relatively unsure of and, though I don't know everything, I have not seen anything that I thought was clearly wrong, though with some ambiguous / disambiguation it may be easy to arrive on a page of different interest or meaning. To me this just the nature of language, mine being mostly non American English with various European phrases and double or even opposing meanings are part of a learning process as all languages have influenced others. I think I may be deviating from my idea though and one contributer suggested it may be unlikely to work but on first being presented with the option to edit / contribute I looked, almost at random, at what subjects I could work with and found some to locked, either for fear of vandalism or perhaps the content was considered complete. As a creative person I often think that nothing is ever truly complete and as artists are often noted for mischievous behaviour where graffiti, once considered mindless vandalism, is now viewed differently and perhaps legitimately capitalising on an aesthetic has undermined it's original intent. I was also advised a while ago that certain aspects of celebrity lives where often open to misinformation and, though I've worked in that area myself in terms of day to day documentation of various artists, I have not noticed any that where not related to obvious conspiracies amongst theatrical fantasy and the effects of fame. I'm not sure my idea is complete today as page to collect and discuss vandalism giving rise to some fictional fame may already exist. I made a comment several days ago about the future being of as much interest as the accurate documentation of the past and am equally interested in what is happening now. I am possibly being a bit too vague before lunch now but hope this is of some interest and look forward to substantial proposals. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Markostri ( talk • contribs) 12:25, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
I just received a message saying that someone had no idea what I was trying to tell you. I'm not specifically trying to tell anybody anything today but am simply trying to work out the best way to add content with some understanding of what is considered notable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Markostri ( talk • contribs) 15:45, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
I contributed to this page earlier and my idea was a little incomplete as I am still introducing myself to the process whilst consuming modest amounts of tea somewhere near the pump. There seem to be some administrative issues that I'm still relatively unfamiliar with and assume they may be related to decisions on the relevance of the subject to the words provided. If anyone has noted my comments and suggestions on the constructive rather than destructive effects of visual and audible arts amongst languages I would be interested in contributing to an ideas based forum that may be of some evolving value. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Markostri ( talk • contribs) 14:27, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
I think this has been very productive over the last few days as I've found a place where I can expand upon some ideas. Beyond simply enjoying writing as an activity it is helpful to receive feedback of any sort, even if the person that provides it appears to have no idea of what I am expressing because I'm not always sure either when the proposal is still only collaboratively experimental. Some writing within a fine art context can become so conceptual that it almost renders itself meaningless, whether deliberate or intentional to gain some affected intellectual effect. Either way the purpose of my decision to accept the option to contribute to Wikipedia was to start with some introduction to myself, which I am doing by sharing a writing style that was sometimes critisised for a lack of punctuation. My response to that was to exhibit large blocks of text without any punctuationat all as it had the potential for a pleasant aesthetic and was obviously mildly reactionary and slightly pretentious, as is often the function of art, a comment and necessarily a criticism. The purpose of an encyclopedia is obviously to tell people about things in an informative way with some notable accuracy and I notice some rules of expected conduct regarding self publicity and promotion. Obviously we may all have user names on many Internet sites and my birth name is not uncommon. If I choose to look up others with my name, some of them appear to be more notable than me for doing similar things. Rather than wonder why this has occurred I know why it has occurred and have no particular issue with it, beyond considering Wikipedia to be more interesting than Facebook for example, both of which auto capitalise on my keyboard today. Facebook has probably become the most popular place for self publicity and I may be stating the obvious whilst showing some bias in electronic media. I personally would not be bothered if Facebook, Twitter or many other social networking providers decided they'd have enough and disappeared tomorrow but I would miss Wikipedia more, though I don't often use it either as I try to work with what I already know. If I was trying to tell anybody anything with my recent words it is an introduction to myself and look forward to more suggestion. The issue of vandalism arose when I looked to see what was accessible for me to edit. Obviously if I write total nonsense about anything it will probably get noticed quite quickly and it is not my intention to test the system unless it is of value to humans or robots. I'm not always familiar with computer shorthand, programming or slang but I guess a bot is a robot. This has been writen by me and I presently classify myself as human.
Moved from WP:VPR to here in WP:VPI since this is the place to incubate new ideas apparently. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 06:33, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
I noticed an AN/I topic today where a user is making all sorts of claims of other users making-up fictional rules but ultimately says "[show] where these consensus talks happened. Show them and this all goes away. But you can't. Because they don't exist."
. Now I do not have a dog in that fight so I am not going to offer any opinions on the user's claims in that specific case, I raise it here as an example only. I myself have in the past been involved in debates where someone says "consensus exists" but cannot point to any discussion(s) that created that consensus -- OR -- they point to the entire history of an article (or a topic) with thousands of edits going back a decade and say "go find it yourself". I have also seen many newbie users ask why? only to be sent to the
WP:massive-alphabet-soup-library and told to "go read this".
When the US Supreme Court wants to understand a specific law often they look back to the Congressional archives in order to understand what the lawmakers were thinking when they enacted a given law. I am quite sure they have an index to find those relevant discussions.
What I propose is an area of WP where consensus talks can be easily documented and searched through. Structured similar to any number of multi-subject areas of the encyclopedia's back rooms, I envision wikilinks like WP:ConsensusTalkIndex/Infobox soap character#marriage details which would go to a page with one or more simple lists of links pointing to the various talkpage discussions that supported (and an optional section for talks that opposed) the rules. Descriptive summaries could optionally be included below such links to help the reader find exactly what they are looking for.
I think this part of the encyclopedia should NOT have talk pages (other than one for the rules/design of the area as a whole) since it is not for debate but for indexing only. Debates should stay on their own relevant policy pages and never be intermingled in the index.
I realize that such a set of pages will be huge in number and will take years to backfill, but in the end I think it is well worth the time to help users both to understand the WP consensus process in general and also to understand the specific concerns that led to various specific rules. Ultimately such a set of pages could be incorporated as wikilinks into any policy or guideline pages, essentially becoming reliable sources for our own policies.
Comments? Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 01:29, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
Mandruss above said; " I don't think we need a new "thing" to solve the problem; it already exists. We call it guidelines."
I must profoundly disagree with that comment for two reasons:
Rather than take my word for it I have an {{ sarcasm mode on}} "easy" {{ sarcasm mode off}} challenge for anyone reading this idea discussion. Let's call this a test-case for why we need an index to simplify the frequent "show me where this was decided" debates.
Please find the "already exists" guideline OR any clear & definitive consensus discussion on the following:
There is a blanket topic-centric rule that is ironclad
(see def#2) to the point of being a quasi-policy. That rule is "Anything from the British Raj era is not reliable"
for use as a source in articles under the
WP:WikiProject India umbrella. Period. End-of-discussion. Game-over. Any article content using references of sources written during the British Raj era are summarily removed from such articles. Why? Because consensus says so. Maybe this is a good guideline, I do not know, but it caused me a lot of pain trying to discover the source of such a blanket rule to the point that about a year ago I self-imposed a topic ban and refuse to edit any India related articles ever.
Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's
Articulations &
Invigilations)
14:49, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
Just saw a user (who I've commented on WP:AIV about) who moved the user page and user talk page of the user who reported him on AIV. Obviously a sockpuppet, his first 10 edits were garbage on a sandbox page. Should an autoconfirmed user be able to do this sort of thing? Naraht ( talk) 18:15, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
Going through the works of famous people I noticed that most of them (who are alive)don't seem to contribute to their own pages. (eg.: date of birth, portraits,etc.). So I propose a banner invite. For example: banner: "The following purpose is only for encyclopaedic purposes and is subject to it as such. We request 'famous' (link: WP: noteworthy) people to donate the portraits of famous people or themselves, and pictures, recordings, etc. of their works to wikimedia, and also to help editors edit their page. They may even give a vocal reading of their own names or perhaps the whole article (if they wish to). The invitation extends to the people who helped them get there to help contribute to their pages and articles related to them." 117.216.27.218 ( talk) 05:08, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
I have been thinking about a possible gadget for blacklisting certain words and, once rendered, replacing them with {...} until one clicks on them. This would be great so that we, unprepared and therefore not expecting for the worst, would have to read text such as bad words but only be shown click-to-show {...}s. When the gadget is activated, users can type in which words to be blacklisted during the process of rendering source of articles' "Edit" pages into readable texts on their main pages. Has anyone ever unwillingly, possibly non-willfully stumbled upon offensive text? Then, that would be why my idea is here, but it is just an idea, so, perhaps, thoughts would be welcome here; I want to see how many people would actually be interested in it and whether there are flaws in my idea.
Gamingforfun365
(talk)
04:58, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
There should be a uniform, simple way for voters anywhere in the US to get their info and for helpers to help others to get their info would be a powerful thing. This way could be a Wikipedia US voting info page, which leads a person to voter registration and polling place info for their zipcode.
We need this yesterday, so if someone or some group wants to do this, please cover the upcoming states first.
A 2016 Elections page for the US
– which links to pages for zipcode ranges
– which link to pages for individual zipcodes
– which link to pages for polling places by 9-digit zipcode
Each polling place page has
Encyclopedant ( talk) 06:01, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
How feasible would it be to see up a Wikimedia speech synthesis tool that will provide an audio rendition of an IPA encoding? I.e. provide, say, an inline (small) speaker icon that can activate a speech synthesis app to speak the IPA string. If that isn't feasible, then an alternative would be to have a bot generate a .wav file using a good speech synthesis package. Praemonitus ( talk) 15:57, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
{{
rfc|lang|tech}}
at the top of this section).
Ersaloz (
talk)
13:51, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
I propose that "donate resources not money" and "moneyless Wikipedia" should be among the main principles that govern how Wikipedia works.
All that Wikipedia should ask for, and ALL THAT IT SHOULD NEED (!) are resources: contributors' time, knowledge and computing/storage resources of their computers. Computers of regular users could be utilized, too. This way, the main operating cost (being, to my understanding: maintaining servers and assuring bandwidth) could be nulled out. Perhaps not quite trivial, yet - I'm fully convinced - fully possible and feasible it is to restructure the workings of Wikipedia so that it will never need any actual money to support its functioning.
There are already several Proposals on "Distributed Wikipedia" ( https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Distributed_Wikipedia), "Distributed Infrastructure", "P2P Storage" etc. which mention technologies such as Git (distributed version control) or BitTorrent, so there is no point for me to write more on that.
The very point that I only want to make is: both technological solutions (Git/torrent/ ...numerous others) and physical infrastructure (all our computers, tablets, etc. connected to the Internet) already exist and may be made available for free, starting today. And each new Wikipedia user, tomorrow and the day after, will bring new (computing) resources with him/her -- so any increase in demand for content will immediately be outbalanced by the supply of storage and hosting services that comes with it.
Converting to such moneyless "Distributed Wikipedia" will require some serious work, but this work can (AND SHOULD!) also be carried out under the principle of "donate resources, not money" -- e.g. as an open source, community driven IT project.
Btw. holding that belief was recently my very reason not to contribute any money to Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TarniPL ( talk • contribs)
I'm working on an admin hopeful version of WP:42. I could use a bit of a hand with the name etc. Cheers. Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 08:36, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
So, what do you think? Would it be MfD fodder or would it be acceptable to the community:
Extended content
|
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Please say at User talk:Anna Frodesiak/43
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A game created like me to promote counter-vandalism. It's like the Wikipedia RPG thing that was created a few years back, but different. It's a lot more like an RPG than a leaderboard. I've already got a few people who've signed up, and have 23 chapters to the full thing so far. If anyone wants to check it out, it's here! TF { Contribs } { Edit Quest! } 20:35, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
I often read the Simple English page instead of the Regular one. There are different reasons:
Now, you guys might want to figure out, if these five points should become official targets for the Simple English pages, instead of just being for the challenged and those new to English.
While I think this is perfectly doable and would ultimately also sharpen and "kind of legitimize" the Simple pages, if you don't agree, then an English Light version could be created. You could even automate the priorities by monitoring how people behave on long or hard to read pages. That should not be too hard, given how much code even Google's main search page contains. (See xkcd 1605 )
Thank you for the second most important web site, after Google!!!!!!! 91.155.195.65 ( talk) 14:38, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
Hey guys,
I was wondering whether wikipedia could have a more uniform approach for certain recurring sections when dealing with writers, as it happens with musicians and other artists? When a page deals with a writer, I think it should have one fixed section dealing with that writer's bibliography. As it is now, one writer has a list of his books under the header "Bibliography", another under the header "List of works", yet another under the header "Writings", etc. Having one section called "Bibliography" looks less messy and much more clear. When a page deals with musicians, this is much more uniform; virtually all of the pages I have seen have a section called "Discography". Why can't this be uniform with writers? I hope I made my suggestion clear with this. If you have any questions, just let me know here.
Thanks!
J. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:8084:D02:3C80:59B9:CC87:344D:1467 ( talk) 21:14, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
Over at WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles there have been extensive attempts to improve Wikipedia's coverage by comparing it to other encyclopedias, dictionaries, lists of authors, etc. Have there been attempts to simply find articles that are already written on other language Wikipedias and to translate them to English? It seems like a no-brainer to me, but I can't find any "missing article" lists generated this way.
For example, Helia Bravo Hollis, a botanist from Mexico, has articles in five languages including German and Spanish, but not English. Has someone already made lists of such missing articles? And otherwise, would there be interest if I attempted to create some such lists. For example, a list of missing botanists, sorted by number of non-English Wikipedia articles over 500 words? I imagine there would be interest across a broad range of topics for such lists.
I discovered the missing Helia Bravo Hollis entry while editing Wiktionary, when researching the etymology of " hollisae", which is used as part of the scientific name of many plants. It seems odd that there aren't lists of similar missing-in-English topics. — Pengo 03:14, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
Did you know
Have a look! -- Atlasowa ( talk) 20:18, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
@ Magnus Manske: any way you can help out with the above request, either in the context of the not-in tool or otherwise? -- Izno ( talk) 15:31, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
Hello community members,
I've been thinking for a few days now about the need to combat bullying and related abusive kinds of behaviors in Wikipedia editing. I've seen and been subjected to a lot of it myself.
I discovered that there is an essay about bullying at WP:BULLY which is a great starting place, but seems like it could be more fleshed out. And then there is implementing actions to curb bullying.
I've seen too much of it around here, and it often is in regard to content of articles. There is a big difference between reasonable and civil dialogue when there is a difference of opinions. Everyone has a different point of view. We are here to reconcile various points of view, and to decide on content in service of the reader. We want to get articles right and this comes out of such good dialogue.
But far too often, dialogue devolves into name-calling, pushy ways of speaking, condescension, insults, Wikilawyering, taking advantage of the naivete of new editors, and all this sort of thing. It tends to allow some people to swing false power around and to dominate articles, where there more subtle and nuanced voices who may be more polite and less aggressive then get drowned out by the dominators.
I know we have some mechanisms to work out issues about civility, and about people who are pushing content into articles against consensus or against good community judgment.
Often what happens is a long-term pattern where one or more editors will harass or hound another editor or group of editors. Often it works out along some ideological lines, as many topics in Wikipedia have some controversy around them. Some of the more experienced people know just how far they can push their behaviors without being too flagrantly in violation of a guideline and therefore able to be sanctioned. Some know how to insinuate insults, how to ignore another editor's fair points without it being so noticeable, how to change topics constantly or to use strawman arguments to try to make the other person seem wrong and foolish, and many other sorts of things. Some people cite guidelines like WP:IDHT and WP:DEADHORSE to try to get people to back off, especially newbies who can be intimidated by the alphabet soup. Sometimes there is a long-term pattern of one editor giving another editor so-called "friendly warnings" like "when people act like you are, they are often banned..." or "If you continue to act this way, you will go off a cliff" and these are not actually "friendly warnings" but more like understated threats intended to have a chilling effect on another editor. They even lead to a gaslighting effect where the victim can think "i must be wrong here" and clams up and backs off, not continuing to argue a point even though they may be right.
All these sorts of things are forms of intimidation that add up to bullying. I've been seeing it around in my year or so of editing, and now that i have some more experience, i recognize it as a major problem in Wikipedia. I don't think the system as it is, is good at dealing with this dynamic. I think the system as it stands sometimes even has the opposite effect -- it shoots the messenger. If someone does have the guts to stand up to a bully and bring it to a noticeboard, sometimes people come and gang up on that person and try to make them think they're wrong, and the bullying continues even in the forum where it's supposed to be addressed.
Is anyone with me on this? Do you see this going on? Do you have ideas for how to address it better?
Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SageRad ( talk • contribs) 11:08, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
One aspect of why i think this is needed, is that
WP:CIVILITY is not just about "bad words" or one-time interactions. Many times it's a pattern, and a lot of bullying is done with no bad words at all. I seems innocuous enough to the casual observer, because they may not know the deeper meaning, or the history involved between two editors. That's part of how manipulative people work, and how they abuse people without other people noticing.
I would like to quote some good words from user Dennis Brown (who i hope will not mind being pinged) who said here:
We would all love a more civil Wikipedia, but blocking people for using bad words will only mean that the more passive aggressive types who hide their bullying and insults in saccharine laced words will be running the place. Some of the nicest people cuss sometimes. Personally, if I'm going to be insulted, I prefer the honesty of someone who just says it bluntly, not someone who hides it in clever language designed to intimidate and diminish me.
This is the same thing i have found. Repeated behaviors by a few people who have taken to hounding me and trying to grind down my self-esteem, using various turns of phrase and conceptual tricks to make it seem like i should just crawl under a rock and hide because obviously i'm too stupid to be editing at Wikipedia, and my point of view is just worthless, etc.... but using relatively innocuous-sounding words. It's tricky, and that's why i think we could use a volunteer corps of people focused on this. I'd volunteer. SageRad ( talk) 13:22, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
Another aspect is that the person who is being bullied may sometimes react due to
counterwill -- not wanting to be controlled for very good reason, feeling the sliminess of the interaction, and they might cuss in anger, justifiably, but then the bully will use that response to try to further characterize the victim as being unfit for Wikipedia ... and the cycle goes on and on, and the bullies get entrenched and develop gangs of mutual supporting "good old boys" who help each other out.
SageRad (
talk)
13:24, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
The above three statements are definitely good thoughts, in my opinion, but these are not reasons why it couldn't work. Of course there is a relativity among people of different viewpoints. People with more similar viewpoints tend to have better edit histories and to forgive each other more often, and also don't butt heads as often. And of course, if someone is trying to push content into an article that is not supported by reliable sources, then they are probably at fault for contention. Bullying, when it happens, is in the behavior, not in the point of view of an editor. For the content it comes back to sources and having good dialogue. Those who don't have good dialogue and continue to push (either to block content they don't like or to push content that they want) and in the process hurt other users and make the editing climate contentious, especially if they continue to target or to go after or harass a specific editor(s) who they tend to disagree with, then they could be given a kind of notice. "Here's what we see going on... we see you misrepresenting the other editors even after they've explained themselves quite well, and calling them names and being condescending to them, and posting templates on their talk pages that don't appear justified," for instance.
I'm also wary of formalizing this, but it could be an advocacy group of volunteer editors who know enough to advise someone who comes to them if they feel bullied. Then they could use their experience to help work it out, if possible, or advise where and how it could be brought to a noticeboard for the best and speediest resolution. It could use the already existing noticeboards, and simply be a group of advocates (sort of like public defenders in the court system) who volunteer to help out because they've been there before and know what it's like.
I assure you that my intention in suggesting this is not to enable POV pushing of any kind. In fact, quite the opposite. I advocate for integrity to the sources and articles that reflect reality as best known according to reliable sources. SageRad ( talk) 20:42, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
Here is an example of what happened when i asked what remedies are available for bullying behaviors, at the Administrators Noticeboard -- not good response -- continued bullying in fact. That to me is an argument in favor of needing people to advocate for those who are being attacked or ganged up on. SageRad ( talk) 06:40, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
"editors who are actually bullied are likely simply to leave Wikipedia. Therefore, I think that there is relatively little overlap between claims of bullying and actual cases of bullying."reminds me somewhat of Cucking stool#Use in identifying witches; if she sank, she was innocent, if she survived, she was a witch. I know exactly how it feels to be subjected to that treatment having asked for help, and it isn't at all pleasant. Burninthruthesky ( talk) 08:01, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
For the benefit of those editors at this idea lab who are not familiar with the background, the original poster, User:SageRad, has been editing in the area of genetically modified organisms, a contentious subject, and is, in my opinion, a combative editor who does not accept advice. In June 2015, multiple editors, myself included, advised SageRad to be less combative and more collaborative. The advice was discounted as "punches in the face", "threats", and "bullying". So SageRad has been seeing bullying for months. A case is now pending at ArbCom concerning genetically modified organisms. SageRad is named as a party to the case. ArbCom would have been and is an appropriate venue to discuss bullying and similar conduct issues. SageRad did not present any evidence, which could have included evidence of bullying, and did not present a workshop proposal. Now, as ArbCom is about to finalize the case, SageRad is facing a topic-ban from genetically modified organisms. A few days ago, SageRad, as noted, came to WP:AN to discuss bullying, after never having addressed it to ArbCom. SageRad again claims to have been a victim of bullying, but has not presented any diffs or other evidence to the community either. After SageRad opened this thread here, the AN thread, which wasn’t in the right venue because it wasn’t asking for admin action, was closed. At this point, it isn’t clear whether SageRad is in particular saying that they have been bullied, and that new measures are needed to deal with bullying, or just that Wikipedia has too much bullying, and that new measures are needed to deal with bullying. In any case, the original poster has not presented and has not made an effective effort to present a case either that they have been bullied, or that bullying is such a pervasive problem in Wikipedia that it needs new measures. Robert McClenon ( talk) 18:30, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
My own observations are that many claims of bullying are not justified, and are made by editors who persist in editing against consensus, and are sometimes associated with claims that articles are controlled by cabals. Most of the cases that I have been where there really has been bullying have been cases of article ownership, where one or two editors enforce their article ownership by bullying. I don’t see bullying as the pervasive toxic problem that the original poster sees, but the original poster is, in my opinion, an editor who sees disagreement as bullying. Robert McClenon ( talk) 18:30, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
Although I disagree with almost everything that User;SageRad says, I agree that WP:ANI is not an effective forum for dealing with bullying. "The community" at the noticeboards does not deal effectively with issues that divide or polarize the community. Bullies divide and polarize the community, because any bully always has a few followers as well as a few victims. ArbCom and Arbitration Enforcement are the only forums that are able to deal with issues that divide or polarize the community. Perhaps the English Wikipedia needs sanctions reform, such as some sort of jury system below the ArbCom for dealing with conduct issues. This idea lab is an appropriate place to discuss sanctions reform. I don’t see evidence that bullying is such a pervasive problem that it requires a task force. (The gender gap is identified as a pervasive problem that requires a task force.) It isn’t clear whether a task force would try to mediate, when mediation usually does not work with conduct issues, or whether the task force would impose sanctions on the bullies. If the latter, then the proposal should be for sanctions reform. While I don’t see bullying as the pervasive problem that SageRad does, I do see bullying as a problem that isn’t dealt with effectively at WP:ANI (or WP:AN). Robert McClenon ( talk) 18:30, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
One possible step, short of sanctions reform, not involving a task force, would be to ask admins to identify themselves as admins willing to look into bullying. Maybe the current group of administrators who are willing to make difficult blocks are already the appropriate people to deal with bullying. Robert McClenon ( talk) 18:30, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
I don’t see bullying as a pervasive problem, or Wikipedia as a toxic environment due to bullying. However, bullying is a problem that is not being dealt with effectively below ArbCom and AE. Maybe sanctions reform is needed; I think that it is, because the English Wikipedia is too large and fractious to be self-governing by direct democracy, but others may disagree. Maybe editors who view themselves as being bullied need to know what admins to turn to. Robert McClenon ( talk) 18:30, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
I don't think you are getting the spirit of what i'm suggesting. It's not therapy sessions. It's to address a problem by being in solidarity of sorts with the person who is being beaten down wrongly by another, in Wikispace. Often there is ganging up. The help of a single other person who sees and affirms the reality of what the victim of bullying techniques is saying, can make all the difference. To affirm that something is wrong when it feels wrong can negate the gaslighting aspects of bullying techniques.
From what i have seen lately, when one person is being railroaded by another editor or a group of editors, when someone comes along and sees the situation, witnesses it, and calls it what it is, the person who is being railroaded gets a desperately-needed breath of fresh air. It's the solidarity of being seen -- affirming their own gut feeling that they're being railroaded or bullied, that they're not crazy, that they actually have dignity and as much claim to knowing as the others who are trying to make them feel stupid, wrong, or otherwise bad for speaking their mind. Gaslighting is serious stuff and it happens here on Wikipedia. There are all sorts of rhetorical tropes that effectively are forms of gaslighting -- undercutting the other's sense of even having a worthy voice. Making them start to think they're crazy or stupid or something, when in fact it's a power dynamic of domination.
Of course there will always be some wrong accusations, and there are false accusations of bullying, but that's the rarity, not the norm. As i would say in a cautious analogy to the subject of rape. Few accusations of rape are made up. Are some? Sure, some percent are, but not many, and the fact that a few accusations are made ingenuinely in no way means that people should not listen very intently when someone says that they have been raped. Or otherwise abused. These things are about power dynamics, and abusive behavior also tries to shut down the victim from speaking out. There is a silencing that occurs that it would be good to provide some assistance, a friendly and trustworthy person to listen and advocate on behalf of the person so they're not so alone. SageRad ( talk) 09:08, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
I will comment that, in my experience, editors who complain of being bullied fall into at least four classes. First, there are aggressive editors who edit against consensus, because they know that they are right. They then complain of being bullied. These editors may or may not themselves be engaged in attempted bullying, but have been pushed back because they are against consensus. Second, there are passive-aggressive editors who edit against consensus, because they know that they are right. They then complain of being bullied. When their own behavior is discussed, they typically say that they need to take a Wikibreak of a few months to recover from their hurts from the personal attacks and bullying. They do not themselves engage in bullying, but are disruptive in a different way. Third, there are editors who run into article ownership, and complain about it, and about the bullying by the article owners. Fourth, there are editors who run into article ownership, and complain about it, but are otherwise disruptive, by flaming or soapboxing. Only the third class of editors who complain of bullying deserve real assistance. The original poster falls into the first class, in my own opinion. However, I would like the original poster to explain what sort of care should be given to bullied editors. I don't think that editors who are actually bullied need care. I think that they need administrative action, to block the bullies, but only if they really are innocent victims of bullying, and most editors who complain of being bullied are not innocent, although some are. Robert McClenon ( talk) 04:09, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
I think it may be useful to recast the issue in different terms, with regards to the feeling of being outnumbered. There is a certain degree of cliquish behaviour that arises in all communities, and Wikipedia is not immune. It's only human nature to feel a greater connection with those whom you've collaborated with before, and to harbour some doubt about newcomers. This can lead to a new editor feeling ignored by an inner circle, which I think underlies some of the emotions described above.
To combat this, experienced editors need to be more self-aware of how their responses may be perceived and make persistent efforts to be inclusive. Conversely, new editors need to be more understanding that other editors may not always craft the perfect response to them. It is, though, a very hard problem. In schools, students can be required to participate in sessions outlining the problems with cliques and techniques to minimize their impact, but in a volunteer environment like Wikipedia, it's hard to target the appropriate persons.
To anyone interested in forming a task force: I suggest you go ahead and just do it. Create a page in Wikipedia project space, and start brainstorming on its talk page about how you can put something into effect that is achievable with your current membership, bearing in mind that people tend to drift away from Wikipedia groups after a few days or weeks. If you are able to make some procedures work, then you can build upon that. If your first attempts fail, it's not a big deal; try something else, instead. In the spirit of wikis, be willing to boldly start a new initiative, evaluate it, and then try again! isaacl ( talk) 04:10, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
Tossing this in at the tail end, maybe all that's needed to resolve a lot of real and perceived bullying, lone editors being swarmed, and various ownership issues - not every one, but some, maybe even the majority - is an informal but defined volunteer role of Guide, to step in with a few words of orientation and context for individual editors (usually new editors, or editors new to more intense editing environments) who may be getting in over their heads in a particular discussion.
We are continually encouraged to focus on content, however, when editing gets intense, comments of one sort or another on behavior are always in the mix, so why not cut to the bottom line and have someone say plainly what needs to be said about a discussion reality, before it turns into a capital case? -- Tsavage ( talk) 01:03, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
It's been suggested that i start a project page for this. How do i do that? Thank you for any help.
I feel this idea may shape up to be a group of volunteers who discuss bullying behaviors, keep an eye out for them, discuss and try out some basic ways to help people who are subject to bullying behaviors, and to have a place where people can go to ask for help. Not really a task force in the sense of having authority, but rather a hub of volunteers who can advocate for people being bullied or railroaded or ganged up on, and try to untangle conflicts more productively. SageRad ( talk) 16:14, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
I do not agree with NeilN. I agree with his list of actions that "are bullying" on Wikipedia, and for that, he is obviously expert. On his page you can see that he regularly puts notches, for each his edit/delete action and he is obviously boasts with that. Of course he has a good excuse for his actions, and that is "Wikipedia's policies and guidelines". Now we can see, which's actually causing the problem. We can just imagine the number of people which the NeilN deprive the right to information, which is the number of people he is deprive the right to freedom of opinion and expression in the media, which is advertised as "free". Wikipedia policy: that this is not a forum, it is not important truth, and that is important verifiability is complete nonsense. Wikipedia, ruled by self-appointed, editors and administrators, who have their own purpose, and which are hidden behind their hooligan nicknames = bullying. So who is this "Big Brother" or "Great Leader" or "The great administrator" ever brought the benefit to mankind? Wikipedia has to change policy! Wikipedia has to be a serious forum! On the Wikipedia in the first place, must be the truth, and the right to creative freedom of opinion and expression! Hopefully, that Wikipedia, as soon as possible, change its policy and that the work of the administrator like NeilN, will no longer be needed, in fact it will be banned. Otherwise, we should forget the Wikipedia! Your initiative SageRad is a praiseworthy and I congratulate you on it. I am a few days ago at the same place, raised the question: "What is with the truth on Wikipedia?" and look where it is now this question? Vjekoslav Brkić, Osijek. 213.202.80.195 ( talk) 09:34, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
I fully agree, as a result of painful experience, that bullying is a problem in Wikipedia, specifically the form of bullying known as Mobbing. But it is difficult to see how it can be fixed from within Wikipedia (as opposed to outsiders bringing a multi-million dollar lawsuit against both individual editors and Wikipedia demanding punitive damages if and when, for example, somebody kills themselves leaving a suicide note saying it was due to Wikipedia's failure to adequately protect them from bullying). The trouble is that Mobbing is all too often an integral part of the way 'consensus' is reached, though it is called 'piling on' by those editors who think it's a good thing precisely because it can achieve 'consensus' (and who say so - see some comments above). And since 'piling on' is not seen as bullying, Arbcom couldn't protect its victims even if they wanted to (and many of its members probably don't want to). Within Wikipedia, this requirement for 'consensus' can only be got rid of by 'consensus', which won't be forthcoming given that many Wikipedians support it - indeed there'll presumably be no consensus for banning 'piling on' either, given how many Wikipedians use it - indeed anybody proposing such a ban risks being mobbed by the supporters of 'piling on'. I've been 'piled on' myself when I made what I thought (and still think) was a perfectly sensible suggestion (arguably unrelated to mobbing, a term unknown to me at the time) to reduce what I saw as a bullying risk, but I was far too traumatized by that experience to have any wish to risk pointlessly going through it again. But I wish you, SageRad, the best of luck with your proposed task force, even if I suspect it can't succeed without the sort of outside lawsuits I mentioned above, but hopefully I'll turn out to be wrong about that - indeed if you do ever succeed in getting your task force started, please let me know, as I just might then want to think about joining it. Tlhslobus ( talk) 01:35, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
Of course one approach might be for somebody (possibly but not necessarily your proposed task force, SageRad) to try to persuade the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) that they are at serious risk of being successfully sued (with punitive damages) for psychological trauma caused by their lack of an adequate anti-mobbing policy. (Note: I'm NOT suggesting you or anybody else threaten to sue them, which our rules don't allow, but that you or some expert warns them that currently unknown others might successfully sue them.) But persuading them would require a legal expert from a jurisdiction that allows punitive damages for such things (I'm no legal expert, and my country doesn't allow any punitive damages, without which WMF almost certainly have no need to worry except in the seemingly unlikely event that there's an actual suicide, and one that can be convincingly blamed on WMF failures), and I'd expect their own legal experts have made sure that WMF (but perhaps not mobbing editors and/or mob-tolerating admins and/or mob-tolerating arbcom members) have nothing to worry about. My own experience was that WMF (unlike Arbcom, who were rude and 100% dismissive, telling me I was simply wrong without saying why, and warning me not to waste their time like that again) responded in a polite but non-committal way to my above-mentioned anti-bullying suggestion, saying their lawyers would look into the matter and might get back to me but probably wouldn't. They never did get back to me, but a few months later my most serious complaint got fixed, though not as a result of any public action by WMF (private action by them may have played some part, but I don't know whether there was any). Please let me know if you'd like more details and copies of related documents (some of which might be helpful to your cause), which I could then supply to you, perhaps by private message. Tlhslobus ( talk) 04:27, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
MOS:CT and WP:NCCAPS say lowercase "like" if it is used as a preposition. However, consensus at Talk:People Like Us (film), Talk:Hurts Like Heaven, and Talk:Love You like a Love Song contradict each other. This matter has been discussed elsewhere, like Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters and WT:AT. However, every time a discussion led to nowhere. Shall I do another discussion or the proposal? If the latter, what kind? -- George Ho ( talk) 16:14, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
{{
cn}}
is not used outside mainspace, because it categorizes things into article maintenance categories; the template for smart-aleck "citation needed" one-liners on discussion pages is {{
talkfact}}
. —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
04:30, 28 December 2015 (UTC)which is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources). Weight for
the usage of major international organizations, major English-language media outlets, quality encyclopedias, geographic name servers, major scientific bodies, and notable scientific journals. I would suggest "academic" in preference to "scientific", to better cover the arts. I do realise that this approach has its own drawbacks when compared to a fixed, firm standard; but seeing as we're brainstorming. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 02:14, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia generally prefers the name that is most commonly used..." It does not say case as a name might not require uppercasing per WP:NCCAPS unless the name is a proper noun. As for sources, it discusses "
which of several alternative names is most frequently used[.]" We can't twist and misinterpret the words and the principle. -- George Ho ( talk) 03:35, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
Short version: Do what MoS says. When a conflict arises despite what MoS says, do what the majority of the most respected off-WP works on English-language usage do. Ignore biased (music magazines, etc.) and other low-quality (blogs, e-commerce sites, etc.) source material. Allow exceptions (iPod, Deadmau5, "A Boy was Born") only when virtually all actually independent reliable sources on the topic, writing about it as a notable topic, consistently use the non-standard stylization. Basically, every RfC and other debate on this kind of question ends up reinforcing that decision-making flowchart. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 04:47, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
I know this sounds crystal-ballish, but one day Her Majesty the Queen of the UK of GB and I is going to be succeeded by, well, a successor. Now, the first in line to succession is Charles, Prince of Wales then Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, then Prince George of Cambridge. In short, the British succession to the throne is topped by males. The obvious problem arises. There are loads and loads of articles using words like Her Majesty's Government. Once the Queen dies, she will likely be succeeded by a King. The problem is that most mentions of the words "Her Majesty" and "the Queen's _____" would have to be replaced by the masculine versions of these phrases. I'm not sure if there's a protocol to handle this, but the job will be spectacularly difficult. Any thoughts? The Average Wikipedian ( talk) 00:56, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
We recently went through such a change in the Netherlands when Willem-Alexander succeeded his mother in 2013. I guess this was solved by "grinding thru it". I have neither noticed problems, nor heard any editor complaining about the workload. After all, it is a fairly minor edit (albeit at many articles). So let's not put a lot of effort in solving a problem that is probably fairly minor. Arnoutf ( talk) 11:24, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
Just the other day I stub-sorted
Papua New Guinea–United Kingdom relations, noticed the phrase Papua New Guinea and the United Kingdom share
Queen Elizabeth as their head of state.
, and wondered whether that's her personally or rather the
Head of the Commonwealth, which is not precisely the same (in theory) as the Monarch of the UK. One of these days there'll be a lot of editing needed.
Pam
D
13:37, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
I agree with the comments above: this isn't a big deal. We'll sort it out when the need arises. The UK has done this before, and so has the Netherlands. Note however that not all occurrences of "Her Majesty['s]" throughout Wikipedia will necessarily become "His Majesty['s]" – it'll depend on the context – so it'll need intelligent reading of each article, not 10-seconds-per-article AWB-bashing. Similarly, not all occurrences of QC will automatically become KC, and so on. Stanning ( talk) 15:00, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
I'm a little puzzled: Why have we written any articles to be time-dependent? Most such instances can be rewritten now to be independent of "who's" government it is, no? -- Izno ( talk) 15:37, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for the above comments. Although we might not need a thoroughly planned procedure for dealing with the situation, I think there should be some sort of guideline to specify what has to be changed and what doesn't. Not everything is exactly that straightforward. The Average Wikipedian ( talk) 01:46, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
A lot of times I have seen articles where e.g. the infobox is broken because of some good faith edits. I think some of the editors knew they messed up the article (how could they not see it), but didnt knew how to fix it (they have to figure out that they should press the "history" button). Therefore, I suggest to add some kind of a "panic button" (revert button) for IP users. (I know its a MediaWiki feature request, but I want to hear if anybody support the idea). Christian75 ( talk) 14:47, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
For background, please see Wikipedia talk:Village pump (policy)#The page is impossible to load or edit
I'd like to get ideas on ways that we could better manage the size of the village pump pages. For reference, the current sizes (as of/not including this edit) of the village pumps are:
For reference, WP:TOOBIG suggests that pages larger than 100kb are likely to be difficult to load to the point of being unusable, especially for users on slower connections. It seems at the moment that this is only a problem for the policy and idea lab pages, but it means that the pages meant for centralized discussion can't be easily loaded by a number of users, so conversations meant for broad community input are exposed to a systemic bias for users with faster connections and/or faster computers. This doesn't seem like a lot at the moment, but the policy page is routinely over half a megabyte when there is a busy discussion ( here it's 608,591), and that means that some users probably can't load the page at all nor participate in those important discussions.
One idea I have is to suggest that large threads be moved to subpages, with a link left on the pump page to the subpage, so that the page size is kept manageable. Or a derivative of this: have every thread on a subpage and transclude them onto the pump page, like we do with WP:AFD and some others. That way users (especially those with slow connections) could watch and/or load only the threads that interest them, and very large discussions would not clutter the page. Ivanvector 🍁 ( talk) 16:41, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
When closing some AfDs today, I observed that many AfDs become disorderly and confusing because of their disorderly format. Controversial AfDs, in particular, become sprawling messes of text that are almost impossible to follow. (For examples, just look at any day's AfD page.) I think it would be a good idea to reformat AfDs so that there are sections for different opinions. We could have the basic "Delete" and "Keep" sections, and an "Other" section for opinions such as merge, redirect, userfy, etc. There could also be a "Comments" section for those who wish to comment without !voting. Biblio worm 20:29, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
"Do not reorder comments on the deletion page to group them by keep/delete/other. Such reordering can disrupt the flow of discussion, polarize an issue, and emphasize vote count or word count."-- samtar whisper 13:15, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
This matter has been discussed at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content and Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). Somehow, no one there agreed to downgrade non-free SVG files to PNG. Where else can I discuss it? -- George Ho ( talk) 06:27, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
Then how do we else limit the use of SVG files without downgrading to PNG besides reducing details? George Ho ( talk) 05:07, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
I've heard nothing but bad things when it comes to ArbCom, and admins have all told me to stay away from it. So the question is: Do we need arbcom? If we do need it, does it need to be reformed? Also who is in control of Arbcom and how does one join Arbcom? This is important for a lot of reasons. I think right now, just based on how others have spoken about ARbcom, its the almighty word, and yet not the word people want to go for. Lucia Black ( talk) 08:25, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
Yes we need someone to make unpopular decisions when the community is deadlocked. It is only natural that people will grumble about such a group. HighInBC 21:59, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
dear wikipedia organisation,
as a regular user of your webpage I have a suggetsion to add to the articles.
I, and im sure many other reader as well, would be thankful if there was a automatic readers voice that could read the article to the user.
>this would help ppl who want to learn the language (I myself regularly use wikipeda to practise languages im not fluent in by reading the articles in both the foreighn and my native language) and are struggling with pronouncing certain words.
>it would help blind or old people who cant read (well)
>it would help ppl with a low concentration capacity to not always get lost in the articles and get distracted.
i hope you take my suggestion into concideration and i hope ii send this to the right department. I simply couldnt find another place to submit it — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.189.196.12 ( talk) 11:07, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
Thinking out loud: do we have a tool which can list the instances where a user has converted a redirect to an article? My thought process here is that one common way that new articles are created is from overwriting previously existing redirects, and the tool that counts articles created doesn't count these. A side effect is we've had a few editors who "sit on" redirects: they create a redirect for a topic that might possibly become notable in the future, expecting that when another editor creates the article, they'll get credit for it (and they do, according to the tool). As a side effect of that, we occasionally have redirects brought to WP:RFD by newbie-ish editors insisting that we must delete the redirect first before they create the article, because they want the credit. Which becomes a burden on RFD watchers and on deleting admins. Of course, this is all WP:EDITCOUNTITIS, and it doesn't happen often, but it does happen.
Plus it would just be nice to see a list of redirects that I've turned into articles, without having to do it manually. Ivanvector 🍁 ( talk) 21:49, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
Looking at the Featured content section of recent Signpost issues, it seems that the rate of featured article and featured list promotions is roughly equivalent. Yet, we still only have today's featured list twice a week. Category:Featured lists that have not appeared on the main page has 3,209 pages, while Category:Featured articles that have not appeared on the main page has only 707 pages. At the current rate of two featured lists per week, it would take 25+ years to burn through all current featured lists even if no more featured lists get promoted, compared to less than 4 years for featured articles. It may be a good idea to increase TFL to daily, or at least more times a week, so that editors are rewarded for their efforts and to make sure that most featured lists get a chance to appear on the main page. Thoughts? sst✈ 11:07, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
I like the idea of shortened footnotes in the case of quoting different pages of a single source, but it has some drawbacks:
How about being able to produce something like
The brontosaurus [1] is big [1] and thin at one end. [1a] Then it becomes much thicker in the middle. [1b] But at the end it is really thin. [1a] The Norwegian Blue Parrot will not move if its feet are nailed to the perch. [2] Its metabolic processes are a matter of interest only to historians. [2] References
|
by markup
The brontosaurus<ref name=Elk>Elk, Anne. [[Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses]].</ref> is big<ref name=Elk/> and thin at one end.<ref parent=Elk name=thin>p. 5: "Lorem ipsum"</ref> Then it becomes much thicker in the middle.<ref parent=Elk>p. 6: "sit amet"</ref> But at the end it is really thin.<ref name=thin/> The Norwegian Blue Parrot will not move if its feet are nailed to the perch.<ref name=Praline>Praline, Eric. [[Dead Parrot sketch]].</ref> Its metabolic processes are a matter of interest only to historians.<ref name=Praline/> == References == {{reflist}}
Petr Matas 12:03, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
(I hope I'm in the right place.)
From time to time a newbie posts at the Reference Desk, "An obscure article has an error. Please fix it." And one of the RD regulars (today it was me) may grumble, "If raising the issue on the article's Talk page didn't help, right at the top of the Talk page is a notice about where to find editors likely to be willing and able to do something."
But, it now strikes me, the wording of the Project Box doesn't say that; it's addressed to editors with a broad and deep interest in $FIELD, not to those wishing to call attention to a concern with a specific article. How can it be worded to invite such questions more explicitly?
I've been around a long time but I don't pay much attention to such issues; my involvement in WikiProjects (as such) has been slight. Maybe this has been debated to death in the past, and the Projects prefer not to risk inviting a flood of such comments. — Tamfang ( talk) 22:59, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
Here the real solution:
It's crazy to expect our new editors to know to post at the wikiprojects. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 06:34, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
My apologies if this has already been proposed, I was unable to find it
I know that many, many, many forms of flagged revisions have been proposed and subsequently rejected by the community, but I was curious what people would think about changing the current template protection to a system where high-risk templates were editable by everyone or autocomfirmed users, and then approved by template editors or admins in a similar way to pending changes works now? I'm just curious what the reaction to something like this would be... thanks for feedback! Kharkiv07 ( T) 00:39, 8 January 2016 (UTC)
At search, could we have clicky buttons to dump "intitle:", "prefix:", "insource:" into the search box so we don't have to type them again and again? Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 22:54, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
importScript( "User:Fred Gandt/searchSpecifics.js" );
to
your common JavaScript page for an interpretation of the requested functionality. I'm not suggesting this is an end to the proposal, just trying to be helpful. Is this kind of what you had in mind?
fredgandt
01:39, 12 February 2016 (UTC)I just created a new essay, Wikipedia:Revert notification opt-out, with an accompanying userbox. It came from an idea that I got, about how to maybe make editing more peaceful. It seems to me that getting notifications that "Your edit has been reverted by..." can create needless drama. I don't think opting out will work for everyone, but maybe it will be helpful for some editors, as it seems to be for me. So I figured I would point it out here. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 23:23, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
Been pondering this idea for a while, just wanted to express it at an early stage, and perhaps get some thought on preliminary system design.
Imagine a really good investigative journalist's personal notebook of facts related to a breaking story. This project (early design phase ONLY at this point) would be to "generalize" that single user notebook into a multi-user tool that would permit collaborative fact reporting, in near-real-time, for news stories large enough to be potentially included in WikiNews and/or WikiPedia.
More preliminary design concepts in bullet form, in no particular order.
Again, this is so far from any proposal, just a fuzzy concept floating around at this point. Only looking for thoughts around preliminary system design concepts. No rush. If it ever moved forward we would want to deep engage with news professionals (especially associated with investigative journalism) on a world wide basis to really to elicit all system requirements, engage academics in journalism, pay close attention to news values, media bias, reporting bias, publication bias, etc. Would want the design to be global friendly and up to date at the outset to encourage potential broad scale use.
Might be fun to engage even the professional news censors in heavily censored States to find out what their precise requirements are? Perhaps the need for censorship might "expire" after a certain embargo? Even censored news States need a flow of reports to pick and choose what to broadcast. A system that also accommodated those needs might bring the benefit of potentially increased future collaboration?
All feedback more than welcome :) Rick ( talk) 17:29, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
Iridescent - thanks for the valuable feedback. Quality negative feedback is just as valuable as positive. I may have picked the wrong spot to discuss this very preliminary concept/idea only (and its far from "I'm proposing"). Reporter's Notebook as conceived would be a support tool, not at all under the Wikipeida or Wikinews "brands/service marks/etc." Its a behind the scene tool (#1 above) designed from the ground up to aid authors and editors. No, its not at all something turning Wikipedia into a hybrid of Twitter and the Google News Lab, its not about Wikipedia in general, only about Wikipedia news articles. Its a time/date stamped reporters notebook tool for news events that are likely to reach the Wikinews/Wikipedia WP:Notability standard and result in an article. I wholeheartedly agree Wikinews is an utter failure, didn't know it was expensive. Perhaps more preliminary design thought up front and more disciplined failure analysis would have put that on a better track. As of right now I'm not sure Wikipedia or Wikinews is hitting the ball out of the park with quality news reporting. Wikipedia articles sometimes "mature" gradually over time but the preliminary reporting, when it gets the very most viewership is highly problematic. Wikinews coverage and readership are scant. This would be just one tool, helping support news reporting. The tool doesn't write the articles, which of course should be fully compliant with all current policies. Rick ( talk) 19:07, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
Since the {{ notability}} template allows an Org parameter to be added, would it make sense to subdivide Category:All articles with topics of unclear notability by Org? At present the category has 60,000+ entries, making it unwieldy to peruse by interest. Even the monthly sub-category is fairly large. (Ex.: Category:Articles with topics of unclear notability from December 2015.) Praemonitus ( talk) 20:05, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
Suggesting we take a defined version of Wikipedia articles from WP:1.0 and format it into Freenet freesite html format, thus making quality articles available to internet users who require anonymity protection when browsing, or if the Wikipedia website is blocked in their particular region.
There are a few technical requirements that would need to be considered, such as an automated process for converting articles into freesite html format, bundling similar articles into 2 MB containers, browse/search functionality, and hash key considerations. -- Breno talk 22:42, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
I've been experimenting with a service that monitors edits and notifies readers and editors about unusual edit activity on articles. I've been experimenting privately with this for the past week and it has sent me notifications within minutes of the deaths of David Bowie, Glen Frey and Alan Rickman and alerted me about the 2016 Istanbul bombing and the start of the 2016 Australian Open. I've been playing around with its sensitivity and I'm keen to get feedback from users.
My goal right now is to explore a mechanism for pulling in new readers to Wikipedia as content gets created and hopefully inspire them to help with the editing and during my experimentations I have also seen potential in notifying interested parties in edit wars happening on certain articles (that's one for the future).
Here's how you can help! Right now you'll need the latest version of Chrome (mobile or desktop) or Firefox (developer version). This makes use of pretty new technology that hasn't yet made it into other browsers.
Questions I'm keen to have answered by you:
You can give me this feedback on my talk page. Thanks in advance for your help! Jdlrobson ( talk) 23:01, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
Along my travels, I have created many VR Photographs that would serve as excellent illustrations for Wikipedia articles. (If you don't know what I mean - think Google Street View). Would anybody else be interested in seeing interactive VR/720 degree photographs as Wikipedia illustrations? The tools to create these photographs are now easily commercially available, and can even be made using software for smartphones, so we are currently seeing an explosion of imagery of this type, and it would be great if some of that could be used to improve Wikipedia.
In fact, Wikimedia already has a ton of really cracking illustrations that we could use right from the get-go:
From a technical perspective, this should be quite easy, as Mozilla's AFrame project allows for cross-platform, responsive VR photograph viewing, and I think illustrations on Wikipedia would be an excellent application of the technology.
What do you think? Miserlou ( talk) 17:49, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm getting kind of tired of having to go through my watchlist, and clear it out after fighting vandalism. Now I'm not going to say that unchecking the watchlist option is a huge inconvenience, but it does become a pain when it's the middle of the day, and there are multiple school IP vandals blanking and disrupting Wikipedia. I'm, however, proposing the idea that we make the watchlist button on edit pages here because I'm not very good at these sort of things. Of course, by that I mean making templates for proposed ideas and such. I'm still fairly new here. I'm sure that this idea can be a foundation that can be build upon, so have at it. Cheers!
Boomer Vial (
talk)
19:51, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
An example such as {{GOCEreviewed|user=Dthomsen8|date=January 2016|issues=awaiting deletion decision}} should be made sortable by user, date, and especially issues. Some of the articles not copyedited some time ago because they were considered for deletion and then kept should be tagged for copyedit and the GOCEreviewed template should be removed.-- DThomsen8 ( talk) 20:21, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
There is a huge backlog in Merge requests on Wikipedia. I have personally not witnessed even a single merger since I have joined the editing community. I am not aware of the progress to resolve the same. However, there are few suggestions which I can propose, which might help. For example, split the list of articles proposed for merger into two separate categories - 1) Proposed 2) Consensus reached. AfD and Move are pretty efficient tags for any article due to prompt action by volunteers and a defined action plan. AfD tag never stays on an article for more than a week. Even move is closed within a month or so. So should be merge tags. Would like to open this discussion for experts here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Capankajsmilyo ( talk • contribs) 06:19, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
Some people when they're about to use a company's service want to read the Wikipedia article about that company to see if if that company has a tendency to rip people off so that they can decide whether to use its service. If there's no Wikipedia article about that company, they might decide that since they can't find out whether the company rips people off, they'll just use that service and suck up the risk that they'll be ripped off. Some companies are not well enough known for there to be a Wikipedia article about them. Maybe there should start being articles about them so that people will no longer have the good aspects of them revealed and the bad aspects hidden. In order for that to happen, research groups might first have to start publishing research about those companies. Blackbombchu ( talk) 05:19, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
I don't know how this would work technically but it would be cool if instead of bluelinking words that may be unfamiliar to readers, they could right click on the word and have and option to look up that word on wiktionary. Let me know what you think. Nemoanon ( talk) 01:12, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
About 3 years ago, the Wikimedia Foundation worked on a tool called Article feedback, which allowed readers to contribute "feedback" to articles in the form of community-moderated comments. A lot of time was spent building guidelines for managing the tool. The Foundation was very ambitious with the project, hoping to roll it out on all Wikipedia articles. Following an extensive request for comment in February 2013, the tool ended up becoming opt-in only, and it was eventually discontinued in March 2014, because:
Though some editors expressed interest in keeping the tool on an opt-in or limited basis, Article Feedback would need significant improvements to better serve its users, and the foundation doesn't have the resources to develop it further at this time. Besides being unpopular with many in our editor community, it is also slowing down site performance -- and may require more technical maintenance that we can adequately provide.
The WMF also stated in its decision to retire the tool that most team members involved with it agreed that Flow is better positioned to give our readers a voice -- and that we should clear the way to make it a success.
Now that Flow is no longer a viable solution, my question is whether the community has any interest in asking the WMF to bring Article feedback back. In my opinion, Wikipedia still lacks an effective means through which readers can communicate with editors, and the WMF has been struggling to develop solutions. I think that Article feedback would be useful for this purpose as long as it is limited to being completely opt-in for each article, and as long as past flaws are discussed and resolved. We still have entire behavioral guidelines that we can revive. I think part of the reason why tools developed by the WMF have failed in the past is because they lacked a grassroots approach to community integration. Perhaps this is a start to fix that. Mz7 ( talk) 06:09, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
Over a million comments were posted during this experiment: on average, 12% of posts were marked as usefulimplies that during the limited period of the trial, the poor saps monitoring the AFT-enabled articles had to wade through a minimum of 880,000 useless comments.)
Would it be possible to decorate articles with a list of required knowledge that are necessary to properly be introduced to concepts without having to go through all the detailled articles you can find along wikipedia pages. Like the outline of a course on a subject in college, what would be the steps taken by a teacher to introduce you the concept. Or the required course necessary to enroll you can sometime find for college courses.
This will save a lot of hours of research, and hopefully improve retention rate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.194.198.248 ( talk) 17:34, 8 February 2016 (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.
I imagine this has been discussed before, but it can't hurt to try again in that case.
This suggestion for a proposal could be extended to also cover accounts, but personally, I see account holders as having already taken responsibility for their actions, so would leave them out.
This suggestion for a proposal would almost certainly require changes to the MediaWiki software.
I propose:
Instead of outright blocking IPs found wanting, we (first) try limiting them to submitting edits for peer review (draft edits for [dis]approval). Any unhelpful work would be no hassle to ignore; poor quality attempts to be helpful could be a good place to start the healing process (i.e. education and encouragement); good quality edits can be approved and published. If the IP continues being unhelpful, they stay in limbo; if they make an effort, we can help them improve; if they prove worthy, they're released from limbo.
Clearly the prolific vandals are keen to edit ;-)
A particular benefit of this procedure would be in the case of dynamic IPs previously used by vandals (or just plain old idiots) being adopted by decent folk who are immediately blocked and have a terrible instant history for no personal fault. Another benefit would be a shared workload, with less administration required. Another would be simply having fewer ugly warnings and block notices around the place, which just don't shout "Welcome!".
For the community's consideration. fredgandt 11:09, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
Does anyone have an interest in a Perl application that would run on a PC and create a single EPUB file from a list of Wikipedia URLs? My idea:
I hear the old EPUB functionality for saving Wikipedia "books" was discontinued. Why was that?
Thank you. Chuckr30 ( talk) 12:07, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
So I was looking up some things for a trip to Denmark I'm taking later this year, and was looking at Frederiksborg Castle. I figured it wasn't in bad shape, and I saw the star next to to the Danish language version. I clicked on that and was shown an unusual icon next to the article header. So naturally I clicked on that out of curosity and then ran it through the auto translate to discover that the Danish Wiki has a "Promising article" level in addition to Good and Excellent (our Featured). The summary it gives is as follows [2]: "Promising articles is a project in which Wikipedia's users improve the existing articles, with a view to preparing them for nomination as good articles. For an article can be considered as a promising article, then it must be at a reasonable level. Assessed an article promising so is the lowest rating of three possible ratings on Danish language Wikipedia. Items which are rated as promising, has still some significant gaps that need to be improved before they can be assessed as good articles. See the requirements for a good article for an overview of what is expected of realistic possibilities for improvement of promising articles."
As far as I can see, this has never been discussed at the Village Pump for the English language Wiki, apart from back in 2010 when someone from the Finnish Wiki was looking to create inter-wiki links for them. So I presume this is on the Finnish Wiki and the other Scandinavian ones too.
There is some duplication between this and some WikiProjects B class assessments - but this allows for a cross-project accumulation of articles which are ready to be worked up to GA status. I would think it was appropriate to have a few differences in approach should this be implemented - I wouldn't add an icon onto the main article page itself, but keep it strictly to a talk page thing. Furthermore, I think that should it be implemented, then it must have the requirements for improvement to GA incorporated into the new template as well as the general index page as well. There isn't much point without that or else it simply becomes a new indexing system for B class articles, which we completely don't need. Thoughts? Miyagawa ( talk) 16:19, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
It would be nice to have a button somewhere that changes the colour of all the links in an article black, for readability's sake. Found this while searching for the subject:
/info/en/?search=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_AD#Changing_link_color
In Firefox there is the Read mode -button built into the browser that really helps with reading long articles, but afaIk no such thing in Chrome. I know Chrome has similar things as extensions, but it would be nice to provide the functionality to all users.
91.152.109.7 ( talk) 03:30, 24 January 2016 (UTC)J
importScript( "User:Fred_Gandt/subdueLinks.js" );
to
your common JavaScript page to have the basic functionality you require. The button will be just below the Wikipedia icon at the top of the left navigation panel. It might not be perfect; it was slapped together ;-)
fredgandt
11:46, 11 February 2016 (UTC)importScript( "User:Fred_Gandt/navigationUI.js" );
to affect the navigation UI in ways that amongst other things fixes the position of the left panel. It's pretty trivial to separate out the code to have that functionality without the rest (which is not trivial). See
my sandbox for several useful (IMO) scripts (documentation is sparse).I appreciate that IPs can't use these, but then they can always create accounts- Hmmm ... where have I heard that before? ― Mandruss ☎ 19:35, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
How about an add-on which can localize pages by default, for easier reading. A Wikipedian could set a locality, and articles would appear with the date/time format, and automatically convert units of measurement to the local standard. It could be taken to the logical extreme, and replace regional language variations (colour vs color), IPA vs US Customary phonetics, as well. Obviously, this functionality would be off by default, but it could ease barriers to understanding. Article or section tags could override the preferences (on scientific articles as an example). The function would also display a warning somewhere, that the page is being automatically localized, and block editing until the function is turned off.
This would help mitigate issues surrounding what version of English an article was started in. superβεεcat 21:17, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
There have been numerous debates about deleting stale drafts, including expanding G13 or just removing the idea altogether (see VPP's attempt). On the one hand, people argue that no one's old drafts should ever be deleted in favor of editor retention. On the other hand, people argue that they would like to go through and triage places like Category:Stale userspace drafts so removing things will help (currently at 38k or so down from a high of 46k). What do people think about a proposed draft deletion process? It's basically like PROD in mainspace but much more highly restrictive and lengthy. It would cover both draftspace and userspace drafts. I think it could even overrule the need for G13 and cover WP:AFC as well as well as keep MFD from the current flooding of undisputed deletions it currently has. There would be a couple of rules here.
I also tag draft with WikiProject so I imagine we can have WP:ALERTS for these draft prods similar to Prods so projects can see if there's anything of interest. Any thoughts? -- Ricky81682 ( talk) 05:40, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
Sounds like a somewhat complex plan to make deleting old drafts and problematic user pages easier. How can we make it happen? Legacypac ( talk) 06:47, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
The redirect pages " Sooglossus sechellensis" and " Tachycnemis seychellensis" both link to Seychelles treefrog. The problem is that they're two different species, belonging to different families of frog—Sooglossidae and Hyperoliidae respectively, where as the article only refers to one of these.
I've found 235 candidate "false synonyms", similar to this pair, listed here:
I generated the list based on data from the IUCN Red List.
Is there anyone interested in joining the project to either help go through these individual entries or to help coordinate the effort? — Pengo 13:37, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
An other issue (not with species, but with higher level taxons) is that some times, the species doesn't have its own article, so in stead tsomeone created a redirect to a higher level taxon. A perfect example of this would be Tuatara. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:21, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
By the way, if anyone's interested in learning more about the project this has come out of and lending it some support, I've added Beastie Bot to IdeaLab. I'd appreciate any participants or endorsements. — Pengo 01:30, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
Hi, I've created a bibliography of reliable sources for parapsychology, curated to aid other wiki editors who are editing articles in this controversial area. I am inviting comment on this bibliography, and would welcome your ideas on where to best place this resource within Wikipedia. It can be found at /info/en/?search=User:Annalisa_Ventola/Sources_for_parapsychology. Annalisa Ventola ( Talk | Contribs) 17:49, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
I have an idea for an offline tool that would help analyze the evolution of an article's contents. This could be helpful when trying to identify orphaned refs and other accidental damage to content. I am aware of WikiBlame but that really is not adequate for what I am considering. Among other things that tool requires separate online searches and is sometimes rather cryptic in its logic for selecting edits. One of the key items my idea would require is a way to download the full (sans admin deleted material) edit history log and files of a single page so that it could be searched rapidly offline for complex strings using regex routines. I believe this would actually reduce the WM server CPU load when working with older and larger articles. An important thing to note is that I am proposing an analysis-only tool, not an offline editor. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 20:37, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
<page> <title>Mölln, Schleswig-Holstein</title> <ns>0</ns> <id>102865</id> <revision> <id>379324</id> <timestamp>2002-10-12T19:26:02Z</timestamp> <contributor> <username>Baldhur</username> <id>28358</id> </contributor> <model>wikitext</model> <format>text/x-wiki</format> <text xml:space="preserve">Mölln is a town in .... .... there are several monuments to him in Mölln.</text> <sha1>omx4jn6qc49d5agkvseqpwzxc77t11a</sha1> </revision> <revision> <id>986158</id> <parentid>379324</parentid> <timestamp>2002-10-23T12:02:58Z</timestamp> <contributor> <username>Baldhur</username> <id>28358</id> </contributor> <comment>coat of arms</comment> <model>wikitext</model> <format>text/x-wiki</format> <text xml:space="preserve"><div style="float: left;"> .... ....
Hi. I've recently read an interesting pair of articles by a specialist marketing company named 'Fission Strategy' on how nonprofits can edit their Wikipedia page (or hire FS for their expertise in doing same). They're here and here.
I find them a bit concerning, since they don't mention any of the guidelines for editing an organisation's own Wikipedia page (I think WP:COI, WP:NONPROFIT, WP:PROMO WP:USERNAME and WP:COPYVIO are the big ones in this area), and just suggest putting up a page as "necessary recognition of the credibility and work of your organization." Would anyone be up for sending them an email or reply of some kind mentioning this to them, if only so if they can't say they didn't know about it? Let me know if any thoughts. Blythwood ( talk) 17:41, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
A word about my POV or biases. I think it's fair to say that I've been among the most active Wikipedians working against abuse by paid editors. I also have worked with WP:GLAM with helping non-profit galleries, museums, etc. getting good coverage in mutually beneficial areas. I have had a bit of concern with GLAM focusing on very large museums, I prefer smaller organizations, and even prefer making the Wiki editor - the person who will make the best additions - the focus of the project rather than the sometimes big corporation-like GLAM institution. I do think WP:GLAM has moved a bit in my direction.
Maybe the proposed new project, say WP:Non-profit organizations, could coordinate with WP:GLAM? I'll ping a few folks. @ Blythwood, Wittylama, SLien (WMF), JSutherland (WMF), and Slim Virgin:
Smallbones( smalltalk) 18:20, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
Hi @ Smallbones:
Sorry for the delay. I spoke to a few of my colleagues at the Foundation, and it sounds like this might be more appropriate for my colleague on the legal team @ Jrogers (WMF):. Pinging him for his thoughts here. Thanks. SLien (WMF) 19:47, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
I don’t know where to else to put this but I’m looking for ideas so this seems like a good spot.
Multiple times every day someone writes to Wikimedia (fielded by OTRS agents) asking how they can add an article about their company to Wikipedia. We have a canned response, which takes a lot of words to send the message “don’t”. Many times that answer is sufficient and we do not hear back. In some cases, the person writes back and says we’d really like to have an article, and I see our competitors have articles so how can we have an article?
I know the official response is that there is a place to request an article. I can’t bear to tell them this is as it is my understanding that the request article list is a blackhole. I’ve never heard of an article being developed from that place but maybe someone can give me better news.
I also know that if their competitors have articles the odds are very high that those articles exist because someone ignored the COI policy. I could ask for names of the competitors track the article down search for proof that it’s the COI violation and remove that article, but that’s a lot of work and doesn’t accomplish the goal.
Our official answer is that if they are notable eventually someone will write about them. That answer may have been satisfying a decade ago, when there was a realistic chance a highly notable organization would get an article in short order. Most of the highly notable organizations all have articles, and we are left with marginally notable organizations. The likelihood is that it will be years if ever before someone chooses to write an article about this organization, even though it may be technically eligible.
I don’t like sending them to Wikipedia:Requested_articles because I believe it is a blackhole. I don’t like telling them to just wait, because I suspect the wait may be years. It is very hard to tell him that it is just too bad maybe they will have an article when they know there are articles about less notable competitors.
Anybody got some better ideas?-- S Philbrick (Talk) 14:12, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
Why not fulfill a Biography article request? |
Where do I go to propose a change to the NPOV welcome template? As currently worded, the template mentions NPOV but focuses on RS, and I'd like to propose a bit of re-wording there. Rklawton ( talk) 14:07, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
I'm seeking input on how to address a few related issues. I'll try to be brief and clear. My goal is to come up with a coherent proposal to post at WP:VPR, but I need some assistance.
Mental illness and learning disabilities are highly stigmatized and labeling people with them should be done with the utmost diligence. WP:BLPCAT specifies extra stipulations for categories for sexual orientation and religion in that people must self-identify as a specific identity to be categorized as such. However, there is no such specification for or even guidance for mental illnesses and learning disorders. Given the stigma involved, inappropriate categorization can be tantamount to libel. Unlike categorizing based on other stigmatized labels such as criminality, there's no easily accessible public record of definite rulings. These diagnoses, like most medical diagnoses, are private in nature.
BLPCAT states that "Category names do not carry disclaimers or modifiers, so the case for each content category must be made clear by the article text and its reliable sources. Categories regarding religious beliefs (or lack of such) or sexual orientation should not be used unless the subject has publicly self-identified with the belief or orientation in question, and the subject's beliefs or sexual orientation are relevant to their public life or notability, according to reliable published sources.
"
The WikiProject Autism page also states that "The explanation at WP:OCTrivial is worth noting: 'Avoid intersections of two traits that are unrelated, even if some person can be found that has both traits.' For example, celebrities are usually notable for reasons other than being gamers. So while Stephen Wiltshire really is notable for being an autistic artist, people in occupations like dentistry or aviation are not.'"
(
WP:AUTISM#Lists, categories and templates; thanks to
Permstrump for pointing this out).
This issue has arisen a few times the past couple days with people adding such categories to biography pages (e.g., edits by Discott, edits by Pol9, and this discussion on Doug Weller's talk page), as well as finding some stand-alone lists such as List of people diagnosed with dyslexia and List of people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Concerns over this issue have resulted in AfDs.
My first thought (as mentioned on Doug's page) was to suggest individuals must self-identify with a mental illness or learning disability for a category to be applied to their BLP. Doug Weller raised the reasonable point that (1) not all mentally ill and learning disabled people understand/comprehend their diagnosis and (2) many would reject such labeling. This got me thinking about how to deal with the issue. For example, if someone is diagnoses by a court as having a mental illness, would we be in the right to label that BLP with the category, even if the defense presents experts who disagree? Below are some questions I'd like input on and my thoughts on them.
To summarize, I think I'm learning toward suggesting that people should need to self-identify to be categorized as having a mental illness or learning disorder. I would propose editing BLPCAT to include them, but wish to hear input first. Thank you. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{ re}} 22:43, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
How do we deal with self-proclamations without evidence of an official diagnosis?
What sources should be trusted regarding reported diagnoses?
Should we label people who have been diagnosed (e.g., in court) even if they reject the diagnosis or label?
the person's next of kin/family want it to be known to fight stigma about the diagnosis/label then it should be allowed.. That is advocacy. It has no role to play in Wikipedia (except something we constantly have to keep pushing out of WP as advocates keep coming here grinding whatever ax they have to grind) . Yes of course if the diagnosis is described in reliable sources we can use it here. What matters is that the reliable source reported on it. Why they found it significant enough to investigate, we don't much care. Going down that road of "what the family wants" is going down the wrong alley. Jytdog ( talk) 13:42, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
Should we extend this to other contextless cases like infoboxes, navigation templates, and stand-alone lists?
What about other illnesses or disabilities?
How do we know if a mental illness or learning disability is notable enough to warrant categorization as mentioned in BLPCAT?
About Channing Tatum, I don't see the talking "at length" or the talking at all.At 2nd glance... hmmm, not so at length. I'd read a lot about Channing Tatum that morning. :) But you make good points about the exact wording in the NYT article. I didn't even pick up on it and I thought that's specifically what I was looking for.
Tatum said merely he "was put on" Ritalin, notably omitting any assertion that he did in fact have ADHD.I think it's a good example of why more explicit rules would be helpful. I don't think anyone is maliciously adding stuff about ADHD to Tatum's article. Those journalists are sneaky, even in RS. PermStrump (talk) 09:07, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
- People with these conditions should not be added to subcategories of Category:People with disabilities or Category:People by medical or psychological condition unless that condition is considered WP:DEFINING for that individual. For example, there may be people who have a speech impediment, but if reliable sources don't regularly describe the person as having that characteristic, they should not be added to the category.
- Categories which intersect a job, role, or activity with a disability or medical/psychological condition should only be created if the intersection of those characteristics is relevant to the topic and discussed as a group in reliable sources. Thus, we have Category:Deaf musicians and Category:Amputee sportspeople and Category:Actors with dwarfism since these intersections are relevant to the topic and discussed in reliable sources, but we should not create Category:Biologists with cerebral palsy, since the intersection of Category:Biologists + Category:People with cerebral palsy is not closely relevant to the job of biologist nor is it a grouping that reliable sources discuss in depth.
There are many social reasons why a person who has an invisible disability may wish to conceal their disability and pass as non-disabled. One who is successful at this is considered able-passing, while one who is unsuccessful is considered visibly disabled. Intellectual, sensory, mental or sleep disorder disabilities tend to be invisible and allow passing, while physical disabilities are more difficult or even impossible to conceal. Able-passing people have the option to later come out or disclose their disability, a process that is analogous to coming out as gay. Sometimes disabled people are outed without their permission. Such outing should never be done on Wikipedia - see WP:AVOIDVICTIM for further guidance.
1) What terminology should we use to label the diagnosis if the person self-identifies using colloquial, outdated, offensive or inconsistent terminology? 2) And at what point does the use of non-existent or conflicting terminology call into question the reliability of the claim? And which label should we defer to? Permstrump ( talk) 18:35, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Details of a three-hour exam that Adam Lanza had in 2006 with another Yale Child Study psychiatrist, Dr. Robert A. King, were released for the first time Friday…. According to the police files, King said that Adam Lanza "displayed a profound autism spectrum disorder with rigidity, isolation and a lack of comprehension of ordinary social interaction and communications." Lanza was also diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder.” A psychiatrist that actually evaluated Lanza is quoted as saying he diagnosed Lanza with profound autism, but there are tens of thousands more sources that quote his mom saying he had “asperger’s” with no mention of the changes. Google shows 57,300 hits for
”adam lanza” asperger’s -profound, but only 17,300 for
”adam lanza” intext:profound. In this case I think it’s appropriate to neutrally address the discrepancy b/c despite the disproportionate coverage, 17,300 mentions of “profound autism” is still notable. That might not always be the case though. I could imagine some child star with estranged parents who completely contradict each other when they talk to reporters, but only one side received wide coverage. That kind of scenario could present a legal issue if the parent with notable coverage actually had their parental rights revoked or something.
Anyone have a suggestion about the best format for responding? I think this thread could get really long, really fast and then it might be hard (for me) to follow the conversation as it branches out to EvergreenFir's different bullet points. From a writing perspective, it would be nice to make a separate comment below each point, but that might make it confusing from a reading perspective. Idk... maybe I'm overthinking this? I think what I'm trying to say is... will it irk people if I comment inline like I'm tempted to do (perhaps in a different color) or should I lump my response it all together at the end? :) Permstrump ( talk) 23:25, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Sorry, people. The last thing I meant to do was create a whole new quandary, but I wanted to expand on something Discott brought up in Quandary 1, so blame Discott. /s Permstrump ( talk) 18:40, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
@ EvergreenFir, Discott, Dodger67, Jytdog, WhatamIdoing, and Doncram: I just had a moment of clarity, so I pinged usernames that looked familiar out of the recent edit history just because this thread has gotten long and less active over time. (My apologies if I missed anyone or included anyone by accident.) Somewhere ITT Roger (Dodger67) brought up that WP:EGRS covers disabilities and psychological conditions, which is a good starting point, but its current wording is insufficient for a few reasons that I think discussion here can/should address. (FYI from now on, when I say “disabilities,” I’m also referring to psychological conditions)… Per WP:EGRS, there’s a different standard for including disabilities than for religion, sexual orientation, etc (explained below). EGRS is the only place where you can find that information. None of the other policies that summarize or link to EGRS mention if disabilities are an exception to the rule. In fact, they don’t even mention that disabilities are covered under EGRS at all, which isn’t intuitive considering EGRS only stands for “ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality.” This makes finding the policies regarding disabilities unnecessarily hard to find. It also means that we don’t get the same level of clarification on how different policies specifically apply to disabilities, the way we do for other EGRS attributes. For example, BLPCAT says (abbreviated):
Categories regarding religious beliefs or sexual orientation should not be used unless the subject has publicly self-identified with the belief or orientation in question, and the subject's beliefs or sexual orientation are relevant to their public life or notability, according to reliable published sources. Caution should be used with content categories that suggest a person has a poor reputation (see false light). For example, Category:Criminals… These principles apply equally to lists, navigation templates, and Infobox statements that are based on religious beliefs or sexual orientation or suggest that any living person has a poor reputation.
1) It does not specify if the same principles apply to disabilities or even mention that disabilities are addressed separately under WP:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality. It's not safe to assume that everything covered under EGRS follows the same rules because, according WP:EGRS, the inclusion criteria for categorizing people by disability is WP:DEFINING, which is a much higher standard than “relevant according to reliable published sources.”
2) On the other hand, while WP:EGRS does specifically address disabilities, it only talks about categorization of people with disabilities and doesn’t specify if
WP:DEFINING also applies equally to lists, navigation templates and infoboxes as BLPCAT does above for other EGRS attributes. Once again, this is not a safe assumption because according to
WP:NONDEFINING, “In cases where a particular attribute about a topic is verifiable and notable but not defining, creation of a list article is often the preferred alternative.
” (My emphasis.)
3) On top of that, EGRS and BLPCAT don’t apply to main articles, where the general rule of thumb is only that the content should be WP:VERIFIABLE and WP:NOTEWORTHY. For BLP’s it’s supposed to err on the side of privacy, but IMHO that's too subjective to be sufficient for private health information. Considering EGRS and disabilities are exceptions to the rules for categories, lists, etc., it makes sense that they should also receive special consideration within the main article, but as far as I know, there’s no clarification of how EGRS and disabilities should or shouldn’t be evaluated differently than other facts included in the body of an article.
TL;DR: It’s clear that per WP:EGRS, people should only be categorized by disability if the disability is DEFINING. It’s not clear which rules apply to naming people’s disabilities in lists, navigation templates, infoboxes, or within the body of main articles.
Proposals
1) Change the acronym to GERMHDS (gender, ethnicity, religion, mental health, disability, sexuality) or create 2 separate policies, one for EGRS and another for MHDs. Add links and summaries about how to treat disability and mental health conditions at least everywhere that EGRS is currently spelled out and add some example scenarios involving mental health diagnoses and learning disorders, etc. (P.S. I'm opting for MH instead of P for psychological, to avoid the awkwardness of the acronym DP.)
2) WP:DEFINING should be the inclusion criteria for people with MHDs in categories, lists, navigation templates and infoboxes and that should be clearly stated.
3) As far as the body of main articles, I’m not sure exactly how the inclusion criteria should differ for GERMHDS, but IMHO it should be held to a higher standard than even material that could suggest a poor reputation.
Why? Because in the US, an
Invasion of Privacy lawsuit can be brought under the publication of private facts. The release of personal medical information falls under the ‘publication of private facts’ category. Unlike lawsuits for defamation, the truthfulness of the facts disclosed is not a defense in an invasion of privacy case. And also unlike defamation, the plaintiff does not have to prove special damages, meaning no actual harm must be proven in order to prevail. Unlike defamation, where compensation is confined to actual injury, for invasion of privacy, damages are extended to presumed or punitive damages. Invasion of Privacy is a willful tort which constitutes a legal injury, and damages for mental suffering are recoverable without the necessity of showing actual physical injury.
Technically, the law protects you if you publish information already exposed to the public eye and especially material obtained from publicly available court records,
but personally, I wouldn’t want to have to hire a lawyer just to make that case.
PermStrump
(talk)
03:17, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
References
This section is defined as being about mental illness and learning disabilities. Points refer to autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. These are neither mental illness or learning disabilities.
If you want to include these two conditions in your discussion, then possibly an appropriate catch-all term would be "mental conditions."
By the way, it is disputed especially whether autism is a disability or even a disorder. I believe both conditions are deemed by the medical community to be disorders, but that whether any given condition is a disability depends on its effects on any given person. Maurreen ( talk) 03:20, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
Random brainwave: A big issue with cleanup tags is that they can be applied to newbies' articles, discouraging them, in particular because they feel that they can't remove the tags themselves (not knowing how Wikipedia works).
What if we added a parameter to cleanup tags allowing people to mark individual cleanup tags as (potentially) resolved, which could then be reviewed by experienced editors not afraid to remove them?
Go ahead, tear the idea to shreds; I haven't critiqued it internally myself. {{ Nihiltres | talk | edits}} 16:59, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
See this proposal where I outline my idea for a way to resolve this problem. I hope editors will contribute there, as well-received ideas at that location may make it onto the developers list of projects.-- S Philbrick (Talk) 16:42, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
I'm sure this has been floated before, but it would be helpful for active editors who patrol tons of pages to be able to set up watchlist groups or at the very least, to be able to flag certain pages as high priority. A practical application for this, would be in the monitoring of pages that have seen recurring vandalism recently. Or if you have open talk page discussions you need to monitor, you could flag those pages with priority, and they would be displayed more prominently on your watchlist, either being colored differently, or being placed at the top. Cyphoidbomb ( talk) 17:05, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
I have an idea that any time that a new account is registered, a welcome banner should be automatically posted to the new user's talk page. Currently welcoming new users is voluntary by other editors. The reason that I am making this suggestion is that this seems like the most friendly way to address a problem (or related set of problems) which is the lack of knowledge by new editors of Wikipedia's complex rules, or specific actions by new editors that are against the rules of Wikipedia, but where those rules are not obvious and the new editors are acting in good faith. I haven't reviewed the multiple existing welcome banners recently, and so am not recommending that a specific one be used. However, the policies and guidelines that need to be mentioned clearly include neutral point of view, reliable sources, verifiability, conflict of interest. the rule against edit-warring, no personal attacks, and civility. There should also be an explanation of the difference between article space, draft space, talk space, user space, and Wikipedia space. Many new editors don't know the difference, and make mistakes, such as submitting user page drafts as articles (or even thinking that their user name has to be that of the other article which they are here to create). There should perhaps also be a mention that the creation of new articles is difficult and that new editors are invited to edit existing articles, and that, if they do want to contribute to new articles, they should use Articles for Creation. (That is the consensus among the regular editors at the Teahouse.) There may be other policies and guidelines that should be mentioned. The key to the idea is that any new registered account should get a welcoming message that is also informative, and, if read, may reduce some of the good-faith violations of the rules. Robert McClenon ( talk) 17:43, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
I hope I am writing this in an appropriate place and, as a lot of my work has been relatively idea based, I guess I am. As I am also relatively new to creating text on Wikipedia it is important to me that I understand what I'm doing and where I am writing it. In an arts environment I was asked if art was important and replied "no but everything is interesting" and have been somewhat shy of the word "important" ever since as I was happy with what felt like a balanced answer. What I think is important is personal choice and Wikipedia has existed for me to simply check some facts that I was relatively unsure of and, though I don't know everything, I have not seen anything that I thought was clearly wrong, though with some ambiguous / disambiguation it may be easy to arrive on a page of different interest or meaning. To me this just the nature of language, mine being mostly non American English with various European phrases and double or even opposing meanings are part of a learning process as all languages have influenced others. I think I may be deviating from my idea though and one contributer suggested it may be unlikely to work but on first being presented with the option to edit / contribute I looked, almost at random, at what subjects I could work with and found some to locked, either for fear of vandalism or perhaps the content was considered complete. As a creative person I often think that nothing is ever truly complete and as artists are often noted for mischievous behaviour where graffiti, once considered mindless vandalism, is now viewed differently and perhaps legitimately capitalising on an aesthetic has undermined it's original intent. I was also advised a while ago that certain aspects of celebrity lives where often open to misinformation and, though I've worked in that area myself in terms of day to day documentation of various artists, I have not noticed any that where not related to obvious conspiracies amongst theatrical fantasy and the effects of fame. I'm not sure my idea is complete today as page to collect and discuss vandalism giving rise to some fictional fame may already exist. I made a comment several days ago about the future being of as much interest as the accurate documentation of the past and am equally interested in what is happening now. I am possibly being a bit too vague before lunch now but hope this is of some interest and look forward to substantial proposals. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Markostri ( talk • contribs) 12:25, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
I just received a message saying that someone had no idea what I was trying to tell you. I'm not specifically trying to tell anybody anything today but am simply trying to work out the best way to add content with some understanding of what is considered notable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Markostri ( talk • contribs) 15:45, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
I contributed to this page earlier and my idea was a little incomplete as I am still introducing myself to the process whilst consuming modest amounts of tea somewhere near the pump. There seem to be some administrative issues that I'm still relatively unfamiliar with and assume they may be related to decisions on the relevance of the subject to the words provided. If anyone has noted my comments and suggestions on the constructive rather than destructive effects of visual and audible arts amongst languages I would be interested in contributing to an ideas based forum that may be of some evolving value. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Markostri ( talk • contribs) 14:27, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
I think this has been very productive over the last few days as I've found a place where I can expand upon some ideas. Beyond simply enjoying writing as an activity it is helpful to receive feedback of any sort, even if the person that provides it appears to have no idea of what I am expressing because I'm not always sure either when the proposal is still only collaboratively experimental. Some writing within a fine art context can become so conceptual that it almost renders itself meaningless, whether deliberate or intentional to gain some affected intellectual effect. Either way the purpose of my decision to accept the option to contribute to Wikipedia was to start with some introduction to myself, which I am doing by sharing a writing style that was sometimes critisised for a lack of punctuation. My response to that was to exhibit large blocks of text without any punctuationat all as it had the potential for a pleasant aesthetic and was obviously mildly reactionary and slightly pretentious, as is often the function of art, a comment and necessarily a criticism. The purpose of an encyclopedia is obviously to tell people about things in an informative way with some notable accuracy and I notice some rules of expected conduct regarding self publicity and promotion. Obviously we may all have user names on many Internet sites and my birth name is not uncommon. If I choose to look up others with my name, some of them appear to be more notable than me for doing similar things. Rather than wonder why this has occurred I know why it has occurred and have no particular issue with it, beyond considering Wikipedia to be more interesting than Facebook for example, both of which auto capitalise on my keyboard today. Facebook has probably become the most popular place for self publicity and I may be stating the obvious whilst showing some bias in electronic media. I personally would not be bothered if Facebook, Twitter or many other social networking providers decided they'd have enough and disappeared tomorrow but I would miss Wikipedia more, though I don't often use it either as I try to work with what I already know. If I was trying to tell anybody anything with my recent words it is an introduction to myself and look forward to more suggestion. The issue of vandalism arose when I looked to see what was accessible for me to edit. Obviously if I write total nonsense about anything it will probably get noticed quite quickly and it is not my intention to test the system unless it is of value to humans or robots. I'm not always familiar with computer shorthand, programming or slang but I guess a bot is a robot. This has been writen by me and I presently classify myself as human.
Moved from WP:VPR to here in WP:VPI since this is the place to incubate new ideas apparently. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 06:33, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
I noticed an AN/I topic today where a user is making all sorts of claims of other users making-up fictional rules but ultimately says "[show] where these consensus talks happened. Show them and this all goes away. But you can't. Because they don't exist."
. Now I do not have a dog in that fight so I am not going to offer any opinions on the user's claims in that specific case, I raise it here as an example only. I myself have in the past been involved in debates where someone says "consensus exists" but cannot point to any discussion(s) that created that consensus -- OR -- they point to the entire history of an article (or a topic) with thousands of edits going back a decade and say "go find it yourself". I have also seen many newbie users ask why? only to be sent to the
WP:massive-alphabet-soup-library and told to "go read this".
When the US Supreme Court wants to understand a specific law often they look back to the Congressional archives in order to understand what the lawmakers were thinking when they enacted a given law. I am quite sure they have an index to find those relevant discussions.
What I propose is an area of WP where consensus talks can be easily documented and searched through. Structured similar to any number of multi-subject areas of the encyclopedia's back rooms, I envision wikilinks like WP:ConsensusTalkIndex/Infobox soap character#marriage details which would go to a page with one or more simple lists of links pointing to the various talkpage discussions that supported (and an optional section for talks that opposed) the rules. Descriptive summaries could optionally be included below such links to help the reader find exactly what they are looking for.
I think this part of the encyclopedia should NOT have talk pages (other than one for the rules/design of the area as a whole) since it is not for debate but for indexing only. Debates should stay on their own relevant policy pages and never be intermingled in the index.
I realize that such a set of pages will be huge in number and will take years to backfill, but in the end I think it is well worth the time to help users both to understand the WP consensus process in general and also to understand the specific concerns that led to various specific rules. Ultimately such a set of pages could be incorporated as wikilinks into any policy or guideline pages, essentially becoming reliable sources for our own policies.
Comments? Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 01:29, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
Mandruss above said; " I don't think we need a new "thing" to solve the problem; it already exists. We call it guidelines."
I must profoundly disagree with that comment for two reasons:
Rather than take my word for it I have an {{ sarcasm mode on}} "easy" {{ sarcasm mode off}} challenge for anyone reading this idea discussion. Let's call this a test-case for why we need an index to simplify the frequent "show me where this was decided" debates.
Please find the "already exists" guideline OR any clear & definitive consensus discussion on the following:
There is a blanket topic-centric rule that is ironclad
(see def#2) to the point of being a quasi-policy. That rule is "Anything from the British Raj era is not reliable"
for use as a source in articles under the
WP:WikiProject India umbrella. Period. End-of-discussion. Game-over. Any article content using references of sources written during the British Raj era are summarily removed from such articles. Why? Because consensus says so. Maybe this is a good guideline, I do not know, but it caused me a lot of pain trying to discover the source of such a blanket rule to the point that about a year ago I self-imposed a topic ban and refuse to edit any India related articles ever.
Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's
Articulations &
Invigilations)
14:49, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
Just saw a user (who I've commented on WP:AIV about) who moved the user page and user talk page of the user who reported him on AIV. Obviously a sockpuppet, his first 10 edits were garbage on a sandbox page. Should an autoconfirmed user be able to do this sort of thing? Naraht ( talk) 18:15, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
Going through the works of famous people I noticed that most of them (who are alive)don't seem to contribute to their own pages. (eg.: date of birth, portraits,etc.). So I propose a banner invite. For example: banner: "The following purpose is only for encyclopaedic purposes and is subject to it as such. We request 'famous' (link: WP: noteworthy) people to donate the portraits of famous people or themselves, and pictures, recordings, etc. of their works to wikimedia, and also to help editors edit their page. They may even give a vocal reading of their own names or perhaps the whole article (if they wish to). The invitation extends to the people who helped them get there to help contribute to their pages and articles related to them." 117.216.27.218 ( talk) 05:08, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
I have been thinking about a possible gadget for blacklisting certain words and, once rendered, replacing them with {...} until one clicks on them. This would be great so that we, unprepared and therefore not expecting for the worst, would have to read text such as bad words but only be shown click-to-show {...}s. When the gadget is activated, users can type in which words to be blacklisted during the process of rendering source of articles' "Edit" pages into readable texts on their main pages. Has anyone ever unwillingly, possibly non-willfully stumbled upon offensive text? Then, that would be why my idea is here, but it is just an idea, so, perhaps, thoughts would be welcome here; I want to see how many people would actually be interested in it and whether there are flaws in my idea.
Gamingforfun365
(talk)
04:58, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
There should be a uniform, simple way for voters anywhere in the US to get their info and for helpers to help others to get their info would be a powerful thing. This way could be a Wikipedia US voting info page, which leads a person to voter registration and polling place info for their zipcode.
We need this yesterday, so if someone or some group wants to do this, please cover the upcoming states first.
A 2016 Elections page for the US
– which links to pages for zipcode ranges
– which link to pages for individual zipcodes
– which link to pages for polling places by 9-digit zipcode
Each polling place page has
Encyclopedant ( talk) 06:01, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
How feasible would it be to see up a Wikimedia speech synthesis tool that will provide an audio rendition of an IPA encoding? I.e. provide, say, an inline (small) speaker icon that can activate a speech synthesis app to speak the IPA string. If that isn't feasible, then an alternative would be to have a bot generate a .wav file using a good speech synthesis package. Praemonitus ( talk) 15:57, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
{{
rfc|lang|tech}}
at the top of this section).
Ersaloz (
talk)
13:51, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
I propose that "donate resources not money" and "moneyless Wikipedia" should be among the main principles that govern how Wikipedia works.
All that Wikipedia should ask for, and ALL THAT IT SHOULD NEED (!) are resources: contributors' time, knowledge and computing/storage resources of their computers. Computers of regular users could be utilized, too. This way, the main operating cost (being, to my understanding: maintaining servers and assuring bandwidth) could be nulled out. Perhaps not quite trivial, yet - I'm fully convinced - fully possible and feasible it is to restructure the workings of Wikipedia so that it will never need any actual money to support its functioning.
There are already several Proposals on "Distributed Wikipedia" ( https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Distributed_Wikipedia), "Distributed Infrastructure", "P2P Storage" etc. which mention technologies such as Git (distributed version control) or BitTorrent, so there is no point for me to write more on that.
The very point that I only want to make is: both technological solutions (Git/torrent/ ...numerous others) and physical infrastructure (all our computers, tablets, etc. connected to the Internet) already exist and may be made available for free, starting today. And each new Wikipedia user, tomorrow and the day after, will bring new (computing) resources with him/her -- so any increase in demand for content will immediately be outbalanced by the supply of storage and hosting services that comes with it.
Converting to such moneyless "Distributed Wikipedia" will require some serious work, but this work can (AND SHOULD!) also be carried out under the principle of "donate resources, not money" -- e.g. as an open source, community driven IT project.
Btw. holding that belief was recently my very reason not to contribute any money to Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TarniPL ( talk • contribs)
I'm working on an admin hopeful version of WP:42. I could use a bit of a hand with the name etc. Cheers. Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 08:36, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
So, what do you think? Would it be MfD fodder or would it be acceptable to the community:
Extended content
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Please say at User talk:Anna Frodesiak/43