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What about a supplemental set of redirects, which are questions, and which point to the answer in the encyclopedia? The question redirects could be prefixed with "Q:" or something. Such a system could be worked on by editors and bots. Thoughts, more ideas? The Transhumanist 21:06, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
Creating a set of redirects is a kludge. It would be better to improve the search engine, which is clearly possible: if I type the first three questions into a very popular search engine, an appropriate Wikipedia page is either the first answer or among the top three results. The last question doesn't seem to be suited to an encyclopedia, but the search engine answers it quite effectively. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 23:34, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
What's the search engine and extensions used for Wikipedia? The Transhumanist 00:59, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
Theoretically, Wikidata is just great for this. There is one tool ask (which probably isn't finished), which can answer to some questions. And with SPARQL queries you can query for many things, like distance between Kanzas City and Washington. -- Edgars2007 ( talk/ contribs) 12:57, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
If my Firefox can pass a search argument to Google Search, I don't see why Wikipedia couldn't do the same with site:en.wikipedia.org
appended. ―
Mandruss
☎ 19:26, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
Question redirects in general are a disservice to our readers because it conditions them to search in an unfeasible manner. Even one question redirect for every topic we cover (not just page titles, think existing redirects and sections as well) would be insurmountable and inadequate, and that's before we get in to the matter of different ways to phrase questions. — Godsy ( TALK CONT) 04:45, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
References
There are a lot of one line small pages, which do not add any value to wikipedia. I would like to propose to develop a mechanism to either merge them or delete them. They can be converted to redirects to relevant topics, till there is enough content to qualify a separate article. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo ( talk · contribs · count) 07:30, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
Hi all,
I'm a multi-language Wikipedia user (mainly English, Persian, Arabic, and German) and I do a lot of searches in Wikipedia. The thing is that I have to switch between different Wikis when I change language. This is redundant and tedious for me and I would like to have a functionality where I can "turn on" different languages and have results from those wikis when I search. I raised the issue here: /info/en/?search=Wikipedia:Teahouse#Searching_in_multiple_Wikipedias_simultaneously in Tea House and was told that it does not exist. I was also told that it wouldn't hurt to raise the subject with you guys other than being laughed at ;D.
Would love to have your feedback.
Cheers Alireza1357 ( talk) 08:09, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
Thanks @ Izno: and @ DTankersley (WMF): Looking at the material you provided, it seems to me that the project is heading in the direction where such or similar functionality will be included. But what I was looking for is (IMHO) simpler and a little bit different than what is there right now. Do you think it is worth further exploration? Has it a chance to be accepted and implemented? Do I need to further clarify what I had in mind? Thanks in advance Alireza1357 ( talk) 08:18, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
@ There'sNoTime and Samwalton9: There was a bit of delay, but as per the closing statement, the proposal for an LTA KnowledgeBase has been accepted by the community, and the closers have indicated a few things to resolve before we move forward. Now might be a good time to plan how we're going to set up the discussion that'll hammer those "finer details" out. The two questions (in summary) are: 1) what are we going to do with the existing LTA material, and 2) who should have access to the LTA KnowledgeBase?
The closers indicated that the first question may not require a formal, structured RfC to discuss, as most were in agreement that existing LTA reports were to remain on-wiki, and that "generic information" will continue to be provided on-wiki regarding reports in the KnowledgeBase. Just to throw an idea out, this information could perhaps be a list of usernames of sockmasters and their SPIs.
According to the closing statement, the second question likely requires a more thorough discussion. Here are a few ideas for the required experience level to have access to the KnowledgeBase that were thrown out in the first RfC, from most restrictive to least restrictive:
The goal is to reduce the problem with WP:BEANS while maintaining a degree of transparency. I believe there was also some talk of separating the ability to view LTA pages and to them. I'm thinking we could have an RfC where editors can vote on these options. What do you all think? Mz7 ( talk) 21:17, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
I recommend to Wikipedia to give to each article a format similar to the scientific articles. For each Wikipedia article should be provided an Editorial Information just like it is the case for scientific articles. For example, when Imake a citation to an Wikipedia Article, I want just to write in this way: Wikipedia- bird, Wikipedia Publishing, 004567-263 (article code), 2017-05-16 (the date of last update from Wiki), 2016 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tbaracu ( talk • contribs) 12:25, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
Wikipedia contributors, "Text messaging," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Text_messaging&oldid=780667303 (accessed May 16, 2017)
Regards, Martin of Sheffield ( talk) 14:57, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
For example, 13160-06-0 redirects to 3-Pyridylnicotinamide. A chemical compound may have different names. It's easy to find whether one chemical exists in Wikipedia or not by typing CAS numbers. Moreover, when the name of a compound is complicated, CAS number will be a good way to search the compound. -- Leiem ( talk) 09:30, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
Religions various time lines -Could i suggest
could i suggest and request a page that or pages that lists time lines for various religions , particularly say Judaism starting from say200BC or life of Abraham if he is indeed the starting point and progress gradually thorough to say year 1AD or 314 AD or even up to modern times. It sounds simple but i cannot find this information online . also a time line of the different religions that preceded Judaism would be nice also to help me and others understand what religions were actually practiced in the middle east prior to modern day monotheism , particularly say in the Saudi area and other middle eastern societies in times prior to Islam
hope this makes sense ,
yours gratefully simon from Australia — Preceding unsigned comment added by Simonsbd ( talk • contribs) 22:45, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
Would only allowing administrators to edit official policy pages help to solve the problem of instruction creep? Uncle dan is home ( talk) 06:29, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
This would be the last thing we want...many old timers like me belive thoses that enforce policy should not be writing said policies. Many old timers like me think it's best that writers of P/Gs stay above the frey. Never a good idea to have police write laws. ...pls see User talk:Moxy#About becoming an administrator for what I think is best. -- Moxy ( talk) 20:37, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
Absolutely not. This would itself be a dramatic bit of role-creep for admins; functionally, it would give them a special voice in setting, modifying, and wording policy that they don't currently have. More importantly, every current admin was selected without this in mind - they were evaluated based on their ability to adhere to policy, and their knowledge and understanding of it, rather than based on what policies they would prefer if they were among a select group empowered to make changes. Giving them any more voice than a normal user in setting policy would also have the practical effect of completely-politicizing RFA (more than it is already), and turning it into a constant referendum on what direction people want policy to go in. Finally, I would point out that as a practical matter this could easily accomplish the exact opposite of what you intend - yes, only admins could make changes, but that would also mean that only admins could revert changes, meaning that a dramatic expansion to a policy would require convincing fewer people. (Yes, I know, obviously the admins would consider the consensus on the page even among non-admins - but there's no avoiding the danger of it becoming a "supervote", since we wouldn't be able to rely on the hard limitations against modifying protected pages if we want policy to be something we can update at all. And, of course, if admins were flawless at evaluating consensus on the talk page and always perfectly reflected it, this suggestion would have no impact - you are implicitly assuming that they will put their "thumb on the scale", and even if we accepted that as desirable there is absolutely no reason to think they would always use that extra influence to oppose rather than promote instruction-creep.) -- Aquillion ( talk) 16:08, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
Dear All,
Lately an observation which was forming for some time now became too obvious to ignore: front page of wikipedia always shows me terror, murders, war etc. in the news section, with some sport news once in a while. I am an active reader and supporter (donor in Germany) of wikipedia. I owe much to it, and I think it is a great achievement of humanity.
Yet what kind of influence does it have to structure / filter world news like that? There is a lot happening in the world, which is both more positive and more relevant to people's lives. They can still find news about dangers in their regional newspapers. Every news site will bombard them with sad, violence-filled news for click-through rates. But why does wikipedia do it?
Regards, Ilya — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ikamenshchikov ( talk • contribs) 09:08, 29 May 2017 (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've started this thread, in part, to address a concern aired by
GoldenRing at the Administrator's Noticeboard. The comment is as follows, with the relevant parts highlighted:
G4 is often tricky because the people tagging it usually don't have access to the previous versionto assess whether or not the versions are substantially identical; when I'm working through CAT:CSD, I always find articles tagged G4 take more effort than many other criteria for this reason. I've also got a lot of sympathy for admins declining CSD in general; articles where CSD is declined can always be sent to AfD, whilespeedy-deleted articles are relatively difficult for ordinary editors to recover.TL;DR: If you think the reasons behind the previous consensus to delete still apply, nominate it at AfD. GoldenRing ( talk) 13:01, 29 May 2017 (UTC)
As an editor with minimal experience in deletions, this is something I've wondered about. Admins are barely able to keep ahead of the requested deletions and other backlogs. Mistakes can and will happen. There needs to be some way for non-admins to find and fix those mistakes.
Here's an idea: Could a bot be used to archive all pages tagged for deletion, other than those that shouldn't appear anywhere (attack pages, copyright violations, etc)? Ideally, such a bot would archive a page after it's tagged, but before the page is added to the categories that alert administrators of pages needing their attention, to avoid suspicious 'sniping' deletions before archiving, be they unintentional or otherwise. This would help to allow non-admins to check whether pages really qualified for deletion, and potentially recover useful content, without having to bother admins with restoring copies of the pages. This could also help stave off any more perennial proposals to unbundle the tools or make admin rights easier to get.
To be clear, I'm suggesting that pages about to be deleted should be archived off-wiki, something that I couldn't find in the perennial proposals. Much of what is deleted is inappropriate for Wikipedia, but acceptable elsewhere on the internet. Once again, this automated archiving would exclude select, legally-actionable categories, such as attack pages and blatant copyright violations.
There are a few independent Wikis already attempting something like this, including Deletionpedia and the Speedy Deletion Wiki. Neither of them seem to be archiving all deleted pages in most deletion categories, which is what I'm suggesting. Specifics such as which bot and archive website to use can be hammered out in future discussions, if there's any support for this idea. ʍ w 14:26, 29 May 2017 (UTC)
Clarifying statement: I'm suggesting nearly all pages about to be deleted be archived, not just G4. My apologies for any confusion. ʍ w 03:00, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Clarifying statement part II: I've struck the quote that's been misleading too many people. Please at least read everything above this point if you're going to respond. Thank you. ʍ w 12:42, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Discussion:
I came here to inform that the format of the pages in not very interesting. It is plain, with lines, and infested with words. Maybe a little color splash would work, eh? Or maybe a whole makeover would work, and you could make a Twin Version while rebuilding the site. The format is not attractive, and the site is not backed with media. I hope you change these things, it would surely help on such as great site! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2606:A000:43C2:4C00:4468:AE6D:C76A:F2C5 ( talk) 00:45, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
How about replacing the 'talk' tabs at the top of articles with one that says 'discuss' – ??
This thought came to me recently after a chat with a grocery store clerk who, noticing my Wikipedia T-shirt, told me what a great thing he thinks Wiki is and how much time he spends with us. In the ensuing conversation, I mentioned that the 'talk' tabs lead to 'talk' pages where, in the case of controversial topics or details that aren't fully documented, one can find arguments, questions, advice on sources, and so forth. This guy, who said he'd been reading Wiki for years, had never noticed the 'talk' tabs. (I've talked to others who've said the same.)
I suspect that many readers, if they do notice 'Talk,' just shrug their shoulders and move on. Perhaps if we changed the label to Discuss that would give them a better idea of what those pages are about, and more would be drawn in.
Comments?
Sca ( talk) 22:20, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
When Wikipedia previews your edit on mobile, there is a text box with your edit summary. It has "example: Fixed typo, added content". This leads to over 400,000 actions on the edit filter, and that's just "Fixed typo", "added content", or two word edit summaries. There is and will be much more, including "content", "added facts", etc. The majority of these canned edit summaries are unconstructive edits. This misleads people, which is what I hate. So instead of making this problem worse, can someone change "Example: Fixed typo, added content" to "Describe your changes" or something? That is what it reads on visual editor: "Describe your changes". That is why there is (almost) no canned edit summary issues on Visual editor. Someone please make the mobile edit look that way. Wikipedia will look significantly better because of less misleading edit summaries. Is there anywhere else I can put these comments, too? What I suggested here will help Wikipedia look so much better. Examples
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Thomas_M%C3%BCller&diff=783988446&oldid=783362248
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Captain_Underpants&diff=784001544&oldid=783954424
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=In_the_House_(TV_series)&diff=784067332&oldid=784029543
Wikipedia vandalism may still exist after these changes are made, but at least they don't have these edit summaries. No more "facts" "content" etc. 68.228.254.131 ( talk) 06:18, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
It would be helpful to be able to see whether an article was on your watchlist without having to click it. Would it be possible to add a similar star to the thumbnail of articles so that you can see if the article is on your watchlist (and maybe even add it to your watchlist)? For example, I wanted to add all of the MPs elected in the UK 2017 general election by using the list of MPs elected, but had to click on each article in order to see whether it was on my watchlist and then add it. Absolutelypuremilk ( talk) 22:22, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
I was using the Page Previews feature, but I have now discovered the NAVPOPs feature, which is very helpful! Absolutelypuremilk ( talk) 21:53, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
Provide a Wikipedia search service that indexes Wikipedia data semantically, based on sentence structure; subject, subject complement, or direct object, etc. versus just key words. Recognize information that is not directly communicated by the author, by relating acronyms, abbreviations, and compound nouns to appropriate subject matter within an article. Results will be ordered and prioritized by the strength of the correlation of search term to the sentences returned. Results will provide full sentences where possible, with deep links to those sentences, making it possible for users to jump directly to those sentences of interest. Such a tool will improve the search experience within Wikipedia and increase the value of the Wikipedia data. Any help or feedback would be greatly appreciated.
See a demo at www.wikisandy.org — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sandypondfarm ( talk • contribs) 14:30, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
Regards Thomas Cowley [ [5]] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sandypondfarm ( talk • contribs) 13:57, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
What’s unique about WikiSandy?
• WikiSandy is an en.wikipedia.org specific experimental search engine that indexes Wikipedia data semantically, based on sentence structure; subject, subject complement, or direct object, etc. versus just key words.
• It typically returns full sentences for the user to review.
• take Me there (tMt) links to sentences in the actual source articles allowing the user to jump directly to that sentence no matter where it is in the article!
• WikiSandy answers follow-up questions maintaining context. This means you can search for Abraham Lincoln, get results, and then ask, “What did he do?”, and get relevant results.
• Click aLike to view other documents with the same sentence discovered by WikiSandy. This shows you other articles on the same topic.
• Tell Me Something will bring you to random query results.
• Example Questions will give you some demo queries.
• View the User Guide for more details.
Please feel free to test drive http://www.wikisandy.org — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sandypondfarm ( talk • contribs) 13:19, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
These search results tend to be superior to the default Wikimedia search results (at least for wikipedia), compare ( inventor of radio vs these (note you'll need to type the search). It finds "Guglielmo Marconi" which wikipedia doesn't even return as a result. The context based approach is generally superior, except for technical searches. The first step is probably to create an Extension or a plugin to improve upon the default search engine ( Extension:Cirrussearch. Perhaps you're confusing a "Wikimedia project" (e.g. wiktionary:) and so forth with a tool (e.g. extension) to their default software.
Filing a phabricator task about adding context based search (with a link to your work) to Mediawiki / MediaWiki extension might be a good first step. You might want to read up on mw:Review_queue to deploy an extension, and maybe contact the Discovery team to get their feedback.
This is pretty novel and useful work ...
20:09, 7 June 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.83.111 ( talk)
Wow - this is pretty useful stuff! I entered a specific individual and it returned an Aladdin's cave of info, with references and further pointers. I have no doubt that I could have gotten to all the same info eventually, but it would have taken a lot of effort and a lot of time. This returned a result in seconds ...... 80.192.223.213 ( talk) 08:42, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
An issue that seems to crop up fairly often is that of the well-intentioned new editor who, in good faith, keeps repeating some action that causes increased work load for others. But at the same time, they are unaware of the concept of "talk page", and specifically of the fact that they have one themselves; that it might be bristling with slowly escalating comments; and that the little numbers next to the bell and the... thing... at the top of the screen are of any importance.
I am only aware of a single thing that currently can direct someone's attention forcefully to their talk page, and that is a block of the "attention-getter" variety. That often seems a rather harsh approach, and runs various risks: if it's too short, the editor might miss it entirely; if it's too long, it might put them off editing for good; it sticks in the block log (which they might care about somewhere down the road); and anyway being blocked is likely to give the message "We don't want you here", while in these cases there is generally a good chance that the editor would happily adjust their behaviour if they knew that there was a problem.
So I'm wondering if there might be some mileage in creating an admin feature that allows placing of a splash screen, like the one you get on receiving a block, with the difference that a) it only triggers once, on the first login after placing; and b) it merely says "People are trying to talk to you, please go to your talk page located at foo and engage". (- If anything like this been discussed before, pray point me in that direction :) -- Elmidae ( talk · contribs) 13:28, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
As for why I'm bringing this up now: there's currently someone busily wikilinking every. single. country. name. in bird species articles, and I would dearly like them to stop... -- Elmidae ( talk · contribs) 13:28, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
That being said, I'm not opposed to the concept of some sort of "urgent message" functionality - though it would be good if it included logged actions "e.g. User:Admin set urgenttalk on User:Elmidae" and "User:Elmidae dismissed urgenttalk on User:Elmidae" being in a log; perhaps with some large on-screen banner that it was set. — xaosflux Talk 18:50, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
As the title suggests, this is as much a question as it is a suggestion. I'm enjoying the new feature that shows search results from sister projects alongside search results from the encyclopaedia. I'm wondering, however, why these results appear in the order they do, and whether that could be improved. (There doesn't seem to be any documentation of the new feature, which is unfortunate.) Look, for example, at the results for the word " vatic", which doesn't seem to be mentioned in any Wikipedia articles, but has a Wiktionary entry. The sister project results include that Wiktionary entry alongside a Wikiquote page that uses the word, and Wikibooks, Wikivoyage and Wikisource pages that do not. The Wiktionary result is second in the sidebar; at the top is a Wikisource page which uses "vater" multiple times but never "vatic". Clearly, in this situation and others like it – in which a user has searched for a term that is the title of a page at one project, and only used in the body, if at all, in other projects, that one project ought to take precedence over the others (and perhaps even over the Wikipedia search results). If we could do this I think it would potentially cut down the number of unnecessary WP:DICDEF articles mistakenly created on Wikipedia, and maybe render the {{ wi}} soft-redirect template redundant. – Arms & Hearts ( talk) 13:36, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
Hello community, i like to receive opinions from this proposal: create the eliminators user group. This user group exists in the lusophone Wikipedia and in some other wikis, and i think bringing it for here will be a good thing. Yes, i am perfectly aware that the reality from this Wikipedia to the lusophone is pretty diferent, and because of this, te reasons i made this proposal is diferent. Think in this situation: a user isn't good enough to be a administrator to be capable to eliminate a page, but know the deletion policy, and would know when to eliminate a page, when not to eliminate a page, etc. The user isn't ready to be administrator, but know the deletion policy, therefore the community will lose a good user to eliminate pages because this user can't be admin. Also exist the case of a user that is ready and confiable enough to eliminate pages and be a admin, but don´t want be a admin but want the ability to delete pages. I know this Wikipedia has 1,256 administrator and i note that this wiki don't suffer problems related to deletion, but i think it´s constructive that users prepared to delete pages but don´t ready to be or do not want be admin can delete pages by an other user group. Jasão (msg) 09:38, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
@ Anomie and There'sNoTime: Thanks for the opinions, i see that the proposal would not have support to move forward. Jasão (msg) 13:25, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Hello community, i have the proposal to change the autopatrol right. The workload for a recent changes patroller is pretty big, don´t exist a system to show the edit was verified as a good edit, what complicates the RC patrol. My proposal is to adopt this system: when a user whithout the autopatrol right makes an edit, the edit will get a red exclamation indicating that the edit was not patrolled. Any user can patrol a edit, and i propose create the Special:Log/patrol to register who patrol a edit. So, if the proposal be approved, as well as creating pages that comply with the rules an user who wants the autopatrol right must make good edits, what will probably ocurr, a user who make good pages make good edits. Jasão (msg) 10:41, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
@ Xaosflux: Thank you for the information. I see that allow everyone to patrol pages doesn't work in this community. So check this proposal: administrators, bureaucrats, rollbackers, new page reviewers, autopatrolled editors and pending changes reviewers have the permission to patrol editions, in order to ensure that the edits will be patrolled correctly. What do you think? Jasão (msg) 12:03, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
Given the Unified log in, it would seem to be easy to have links under languages for the main user page and main user talk page for a user to any page which exists. So for example, since es:Usuario discusión:Naraht exists, it should have a link on the left to en:User talk:Naraht and vice versa. However since nn:Brukardiskusjon:Naraht does not exist, there would be no link to there from either page. Not sure it makes sense to do this all the time (gadget preference or tool would be fine, I guess) Naraht ( talk) 16:46, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
I like the idea, in these days i was even thinking in make this proposal in the lusophone Wikipedia. Jasão (msg) 08:59, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Hello folks
I've been unsatisfied with Wikipedia user interface for years. When modern websites showing texts such as Medium, the main newspapers websites, Gitbook, etc display text on a narrow column with a high font size and space between lines, Wikipedia has still a very old fashioned way of displaying full width text with a very small font-size. This makes it very hard to read since your eye have to follow very long lines.
I'm not a web developper but I had just the idea to write a few lines of CSS to make wikipedia readable again. My idea was just to get inspired by Firefox reader's mode. So with a few lines of CSS, I was able to really improve my user interface.
I've edited my vector.css file.
max-width: 800px;.
padding-right: 40%;
font: Helvetica;
font-size: 1.0em;and line-height 1.6
line-height: 1.6em;
color: #333;
Therefore adding this text to vector.css make Wikipedia really really nice :
#firstHeading {
width: 100%;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
padding-right: 40%;
max-width: 800px;
}
#bodyContent {
width: 100%;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
padding-right: 40%;
background-color: #FFFFFF;
color: #333;
max-width: 800px;
font: Helvetica;
font-size: 1.0em;
line-height: 1.6em;
}
I think that this can be useful for many people.
Any CSS specialist wanting to help me improve this CSS is welcome.
-- PAC2 ( talk) 19:26, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
Hi. This will not really useful to everybody. But IMO, it'll be handy to have an option (gadget) to display a citation count next to each source in the sources section of an article. For example,
This would count,
not as 1 citation of Sarkar but 3.
Such a feature would allow editors/readers to evaluate (across reflists, notelists, etc.) which sources the article largely relies on. It might also be useful to sort the sources list by citation count.-- Cpt.a.haddock ( talk) (please ping when replying) 09:25, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
As someone who has spent years correcting typos on Wikipedia, I have found many errors that could have been avoided by the original author proofreading his creation. Can we not do something more to encourage contributors to proofread? Or even automatically suggest corrections as WP:AWB or Grammarly do? Even a pop-up window upon submission of a new article or a notice to a talk page would likely be helpful. -- LilHelpa ( talk) 11:32, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
Hello. You are invited to comment on this RfC, which seeks to reform certain aspects of Wikipedia's dispute resolution processes. Biblio ( talk) 15:47, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
I'm looking for feedback on my initial draft of a proposal for a new section added to the policy What Wikipedia is not. It distills the long established practice of not taking sides in disputes, and giving due weight to significant dissent. I've noticed that sometimes IPs and SPAs are on a mission to change an article to take unresolved questions and resolve them. Marketers often want articles to say definitively that their company's product is the leader in its category. Quite a few want ownership of inventions assigned unequivocally to one nation, and no other. Many are partisans, many are just using Wikipedia for its most popular purpose: answering questions. When it's for a trivia quiz or to settle a bet, many readers won't accept anything but an either/or answer, when the sources are telling us is "it depends".
- Wikipedia is not the final arbiter of truth
Wikipedia is not written to settle bar bets.
The policies requiring a neutral point of view and verifiability, and prohibiting publishing original thought, mean that Wikipedia editors, and the articles they write, cannot judge who is right in an entrenched disagreement. Articles focus mainly on facts that are most widely accepted and established, giving little space to on fringe ideas, but nonetheless, significant dissent from mainstream views is given proportionate attention. When views are divided, Wikipedia struggles to accurately portray that division, not oversimplify it.
Wikipedia cannot resolve questions that established experts have not themselves fully resolved. The ambiguities and contradictions of real life cannot be artificially made simple and tidy by Wikipedia. Articles can strive to give simple explanations for complicated concepts, but they cannot do away with complexity itself, nor make a roundabout series of events into a straightforward narrative. This does not mean Wikipedia should present facts as if they were opinions, only that Wikipedia does not add weight to the judgement of reliable sources.
An encyclopedia article is not the place to find the definitive answer to the question of whether the motorcycle is a German, French, or American invention. Wikipedia can verify that for a long time, most mainstream authorities agreed it was the Daimler Reitwagen, but the muddy and complicated picture made by reputable dissenters who bring up earlier steam motorcycles cannot be neatly cleaned up by Wikipedia editors. The International Astronomical Union's mission may include announcing, once and for all, that Pluto is not a planet, but Wikipedia's mission is only to describe the IAU's statements, and the significance and influence the IAU represents, but not to give or withhold a Wikipedia seal of approval. An encyclopedia of unlimited size can give a plot summary and production details of the Friends episode that featured the practice of going commando, but Wikipedia cannot change from opinion to fact the assertion that Friends is almost solely responsible for popularizing the slang term for not wearing underwear.
Changing an article, or requesting that it be changed, to give answers unambiguous enough to settle your bar bet is contrary to Wikipedia's core principles.
I threw in a few colorful illustrations from my own editing experience. I'm sure there are some issues of this type that I'm not familiar with. I'd like to draft a proposal that doesn't get bogged down in choosing the perfect wording, and can simply gauge consensus for or against the basic idea of this kind of addition to WP:NOT. Thanks in advance! -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 06:27, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
Just like people turn to Snopes to debunk internet memes. Or PolitiFact or FactCheck.org to adjudicate public statements. Perhaps I should adjust it to include "Wikipedia is not your Snopes, or PoliticFact or FactCheck.org." It's not that we don't dabble in that, for example at List of common misconceptions. The central point is that we don't feel obligated to issue a ruling on every question. Many of these "lie checkers" have a bias toward giving some kind of answer, even if the data doesn't fully support a definitive conclusion. So the driving force behind my proposal is the No original research policy. Fudging, or erring, or ignoring contrary evidence, ignoring dissenting points of view, because we want articles to offer clear solutions or conclusions or judgements not fully supported by the sources.
Or because we want to define or categorize things. I guess you could call me one of the editors who thinks Wikipedia:Categorization is broken. It is mostly wonderful, but there is pressure to pigeonhole things into one category or another, but not both, not neither. "A place for everything". What if nature doesn't give us things that have a place? What if our taxonomy is flawed? Often, the taxonomist isn't a reliable source, it's a Wikipedia editor. Creating a taxonomy out of whole cloth violates WP:NOR. What if the sources don't tell us what category something belongs in? The intent of this WP:NOT addition is to offer support for editors who resist forcing an article into a category for the sake of sticking it somewhere rather than nowhere. I don't have a proposal that would fix the categorization policy, but I think this small addition to WP:NOT could help editors resolve some disputes, and help educate the general public about what we really do.
-- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 01:23, 27 July 2017 (UTC)The difference is that soapboxing or promotion means one supports one point of view, and opposes others. Editors seeking clarity and simplicity, or answers that can let them score trivia night, don't necessarily care which side 'wins'. They aren't even that concerned with 'truth'; as long as they are given one and only one answer to their question, giving that answer the Wikipedia seal of approval. Similarly, editors who definitively categorize a topic when the sources don't support such certainty aren't using Wikipedia as a soapbox or means of promotion. They just want things to be neat and tidy, and perhaps they think Wikipedia's policies encourage neat and tidy versions of facts, and discourage uncertainty.
There are are often overlong, and redundant, discussions that usually reach the same conclusion, since the NOR, RS, and V policies don't support pat answers unless sources to justify it. These redundant discussions might be avoided if WP:NOT said explicitly that Wikipedia is not here to give easy answers, and policy doesn't favor either certainty or uncertainty, only faithfulness to sources.
-- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 19:26, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
Is anyhow familiar with the Kim Jong-un non-free image thing?
The community has now wasted hundreds of hours on reads and keystrokes over this matter.
Do you remember Wikipedia:Donated artwork?
Bottom line:
It listed BLP articles with huge hits needing any image. Artists make a one-hour drawing to get credit and half a million views a year. No money offered. No takers. Artists are poor. Asked at WMF and it was all hoops to jump through to loosen the purse strings.
What if Wikipedia:Donated artwork tendered? An off-wiki crowd-funding/donation thing? Would-be WMF donators sick of the pile of unused loot instead put their cash into something direct. Thoughts? Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 00:28, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
Hi Nil Einne. I think you're probably right. It just pains me to see all those keystrokes landing there instead of in the mainspace. I do say "probably" because the current artworks are really lousy. If a great pic of the man were to be added, I do think it would at least reduce the amount of wasted resources. And a decent drawing wouldn't take long. We're not talking oil paint here, just a good sketch by someone who could really capture him. Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 00:59, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
Hi Ntsimp and Martin of Sheffield. Tender, yes, okay, I think I got the wrong word. I've seen ads in newspapers headed "Tender" with the text reading '"...100 park benches required...place your lowest bid...", that sort of thing. The idea was to put a price on an image to be created, or maybe to see what people would bid, or maybe for people to link to their creation, and financial donators would offer money for the one they prefer. You know, 'tender'. Something like that. Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 00:59, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
Request for tender, that sort of thing. Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 01:00, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
First I must say that also from a technical perspective, is Wikipedia a really great invention. But we have text and we have images (and also moving images). But if it's possible from a technical aspect, would I propose a third such option. In which one or a few images can be "tied" to a certain text, for explaining reasons. I imagine some kind of "block of image(s) and text", which could be included inside articles, at any location in the text. Just as an example (nothing else). A four stroke piston engine. One picture of each of the four strokes (and how the valves opens and closes), with a specific text tied to each of the images. (I know this nowadays can be done even better with a moving illustration, but this isn't about the example, but in general) This "block" of one or more images with one joint text or one text per image, should still be able to edit and can be moved. But if the common text either before or after "the block" becomes shorter or longer, will the "block" still remains as one unit. Another point here, is to be able to have several images on the same line (and from left to right, normally). The "block" becomes a "stand alone" object. Sometimes doesn't illustrative images quite fit horizontally with the explaining text. And common image texts are to be brief. The so called "block" can be edited by any contributor, but when other texts (located above or below a "block") changes size, should the "blocks" be intact. I hope this idea is understood. Usage can be for any type of processes (within history, math, physics etc) or for exemplification, that is best presented all across the screen horizontally. They also ought to be removed if their purposes are not obvious, and are not intended for, for instance picture galleries etc. An overflow of such "blocks" isn't what I hope for. There must be either "a line of explanation" or (in cases with a single image) an explanation which really needs to be tied to a specific image. Boeing720 ( talk) 00:50, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
Since the citing system (references) has become quite complex over the years and can vary a lot throughout the Wikipedias and other sister projects, I started to think about special project that would deal just with references.
The main idea is to collect data of publications (similar to library identifiers) that are used as sources in articles. Every "unit" would be given it's own number (U9748 for example or something else, similar to Wikidata's "Q") that would be cited in the code of the article (Some statement.<ref>U9748, pages 123–127.</ref>
). Every Wikipedia should then create it's own module with definition of style of citing.
The project could probably be offering automated categorisation of publications by authors, years, languages ... Every unit would have the list with global usage, similar to Commons. One of the advantages of this feature is also a simple tracking of fake sources. User identifying one can easily see wherever the unreliable publication is cited. Besides, codes of articles would become much lighter, since all citing templates are minimized. -- Janezdrilc ( talk) 19:48, 30 July 2017 (UTC)
Background: Over the past few years, I've been working on the Leo Frank article, receiving a peer review at the end of 2014, nominating it for GA in 2015 (the first time was quickfailed due to an edit war from a sock, and the second passed after an extensive review from SilkTork). I nominated it in FAC in the fall of 2016, but came up just short after another arduous review.
Recently I've considered reviewing the first FAC, making any appropriate changes, and renominating at FAC. But I realized after considering the process so far that I don't have confidence that a second FAC would actually improve the article. This is because of the time invested by one reviewer at GAN versus the comparatively ad-hoc nature of FAC.
To illustrate this, have a look at the article I worked on and mentioned above, Leo Frank. To a casual observer who's not familiar with him or his murder trial, it may seem long-winded for a Wikipedia article. Indeed, the GAN process significantly elongated the article, going from 78K characters in August 2015, peaking at over 125K in the review process, and back down to 108K in October after a considerable amount of trimming at the end by the reviewer. The article still grew by 30K, and this was a point of contention in the FAC. Brian Boulton recalled from the 2014 peer review that the article had grown considerably between that review and the FAC, and he and Sarastro encouraged me to further remove some of the content. I was reluctant to do so, and this became a point of contention between myself and Sarastro during the review. He felt that I was ignoring his comments, when I simply didn't want the work I had done in GAN to largely be reverted.
I realized that the reason for this difference in opinion for article length between reviewers who are all highly experienced and skilled, namely SilkTork versus Brian and Sarastro, is a matter of the review format. GAN allows one reviewer to dive deep into a subject, as SilkTork did with this article. He learned about Frank, his trial, and the source material extensively as to give a high-quality and thorough review. FAC reviewers, on the other hand, have a higher number of articles they are concerned with at any one time and generally just go through the bullet points, doing basic copyedits, source reviews, image licensing checks, etc.
I feel like the GAN process was a better system despite the lower standards. I also think there should be something that goes beyond GAN that includes a more stringent criteria for passing and solicits feedback from more than one person. A-class does this, using three reviewers with expertise in the area (military history and tropical cyclones being the two prominent examples currently) and a higher bar than GA while slightly short of FA.
My proposal is to make the FAC process more like A-class, while retaining the FA criteria and gold star. We could keep A-class for the WikiProjects that choose to use it, but have a pool of FA reviewers and have any three (or whichever number we decide by consensus here) review a particular article. The reviewers could decide which articles they want to review based on their interests and expertise, while not needing to be a part of any WikiProject. That way, you don't have the ad-hoc issues in FAC of reviewers coming and going to a particular article, and the A-class problem of not enough skilled reviewers in all but two projects to make it happen, in addition to the other issues outlined above. This will make FACs more thorough and completed in a shorter time frame. I'm open to any feedback below and will condense this into an official Pump proposal if there is enough interest. Tonystewart14 ( talk) 19:08, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
I really like the Thank user for edit feature of wikipedia, and I think we should also be allowed to thank IP editors for good edits. I think this would help spread wikilove and positivity! -- HighFlyingFish ( talk) 19:52, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
We discourage people leaving messages on IP talkpages for the same reason.- that the community consciously acknowledges that (most) IPs cannot be full partners in the collaborative process. As I said, that's only one of the many serious problems with unregistered editing, but there are still plenty of experienced editors who defend WMF's unyielding position on unregistered editing. In my opinion that is one of the few most pressing problems with the project today, and it's getting no attention aside from occasional scattered, off-topic comments like mine above. ― Mandruss ☎ 20:52, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
there is no good way to communicate with an IP except to drop a message in some other talk space (article talk, noticeboard, etc.) and hope they happen to see it, in other words? ‑ Iridescent 21:04, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
I often find myself stumbling upon Wikipedia articles that I would like to read, even though I don't have time to. To resolve this issue I would suggest the implementation of a basic "read list" feature. This would just be a simple (ordered by priority or date added) list that is tied to ones account. It would be added to and then removed from once the user has finished with each respective page. When the user then views a page again, they can see whether they've marked it as read. This kind of idea could then also be extended in a variety of ways. I also fail to see any technical constraints that may be involved. -- Sherbet-head ( talk) 14:54, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
Such a thing already exists (at least in the android app), with the same name as the heading here. See:
It did exist on the desktop as mw:Extension:Gather but was killed due to wikidrama. It will probably go next to the mobile web. 11:19, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
Do you mean having a summary or abstract at the top of each article? It is a good idea and I rather like it. Vorbee ( talk) 17:52, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
Hi, I'm the product lead for the "reading team" at the foundation. Just a heads up that we are looking to enable folks to synch reading lists across devices (apps, desktop, and mobile web). This is briefly alluded to in our portion of the Wikimedia Foundation's annual plan: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2017-2018/Final/Programs/Product#Program_2:_Better_Encyclopedia (Objective #4). We are starting with the apps, which are simpler, but will bring it to the web at some point. A complicating factor on the web is that we tend to get more friction (rightly so) in rolling things out and by the presence of the Wikipedia " book creator" tool on desktop, which serves a similar purpose but creates a list that is public and anyone can edit. One of the mistakes we made with mw:Extension:Gather was making the reading-lists public. I would expect that Android app lists will synch across devices in the next quarter, but it might be more than 6 months before the iOS has it. It is unfortunately not part of our web plans for this fiscal (ending July 2018). Let me know if you have any questions or thoughts about this Jkatz (WMF) ( talk) 00:07, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
Hello. You are invited to comment on this ANI reform RfC. Please do not comment in this thread; post all comments on the RfC pages. Thanks, Biblio ( talk) 19:29, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
I've come across situations where looking through a public noticeboard fails to find an item of interest because it has been renamed since the discussion was archived. Examples:
Is there a technical solution to this, such as searching the archive for a certain code like the WP database page ID for users, or a Wikidata Q-code ID for an article? Could certain things be annotated automatically to make future searching more tenable, like the {{ la}} and {{ userlinks}} templates for instance? ☆ Bri ( talk) 20:35, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
ooh yeah. it looks like great feature. wow. I'm going to want it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NostalgicColorBird ( talk • contribs) 13:20, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
Currently the searching templates {{look from|xxxxx}} and {{intitle|xxxxx}} seem to look only for letters and numbers and ignore punctuation etc. This can be a nuisance, because, currently there is a policy to remove the comma when a page name ends in ", Sr." or ", Jr.", and to help to do this work, there is no easy way to search for these two character sequences, but someone must look at every page name by eye, and requests to remove these "senior and junior commas" come in endlessly in dribs and drabs instead of someone being able to quickly call search for ", Sr." and ", Jr." and get the job complete and done and over. Please provide an option for Template:look from and Template:intitle to search for all characters, not only for letters and numbers. Anthony Appleyard ( talk) 05:34, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
Many Wikipedia articles have no image despite the associated Wikidata image having a P18 (image) property.
For instance, the article Thug Behram has no image, despite the Wikidata item having a perfectly usable image. Wikidata has more images because in non-English speaking countries (ie most of the world) the local language article is usually the best illustrated, and images make it to Wikidata via infobox harvesting or WDFIST.
Idea: How about having a tool that would suggest images for articles?
Use case: I am presented with an English Wikipedia article on the left, and an image (together with its title/description/categories/discussion) on the right. If I find the image fitting, I press a button and the image is automagically added to the article. Ideally the image is added to the article infobox if there is one with a recognized image property.
Images make Wikipedia articles much more attractive and informative, so I believe that would help a lot. Such a tool could then be ported to other Wikipedias too. Is there maybe such a tool, and I have not managed finding it? Cheers! Syced ( talk) 03:28, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
Interesting idea. Building a naive tool do to this is trivial. The problem is dealing with all the drama that comes with it and the mangling that may happen in complicated cases.
There also aren't that many apparently. A bot could probably add all images within a day or two, less than a week for sure. The problem of course is that it has false positives because it relies on mw:Extension:PageImages, and some images may come with all the drama that naturally follows any automated task of that nature. Any semi-automated tool doing this on a continuous basis would fail miserably without a lot of work because of the unstructured nature of wikitext, the inconsistent way in which templates add images to pages, and a lot of edge cases.
It might be easier to make a bot that suggests such images on the talk page, and then editors can easily add (or not) them as needed. This would also reduce the need to randomly come across an article that needs file. Currently though, it might be better to create a bot that suggests images that are used in linked interwiki pages, maybe if 3 wikis or more are using the same image it then adds it to the talk page (and / or wikidata).
See also: https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/wp_no_image/enwiki.html , https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T54464, https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T53031 . 197.218.80.151 ( talk) 21:14, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
Templates in first section but without images:
Images in another section
With no provenance suggesting that it might have been drawn from life, the Thug Behram image linked from Wikidata blatantly fails WP:PORTRAIT. It should not be used as is. My fear is that making bots or automatic tools suggest the addition of such images means making the rest of us spend too much more of our time policing the articles they're added to and undoing the damage. — David Eppstein ( talk) 07:40, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
There's an image adding section at Wikidata:The Game. -- 167.58.55.39 ( talk) 15:05, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
Currently members have to be added to Wikiproject directory manually. Is there a way to auto-populate the list based on certain criteria like User pages with Userbox WikiProject, etc.? Also to know more about the level of user, his permissions and contribution history links can be shown. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo ( talk · contribs · count) 08:09, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
A list of articles by size and quality comparison would be good, just as we have importance and quality comparison. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo ( talk · contribs · count) 07:14, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
Rather nice idea, I like it. Vorbee ( talk) 07:59, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
Article Merger procedure is pretty slow and cumbersome, and most editors choose to stay away from the same. Category merger and template merger procedures have improved over time, but article Merger hasn't progressed as much as it was required to. Few of the major factors include lack of standardisation, non-effective templates, complex process and no bots involved for any of the tasks. I would like to invite suggestion to improve upon the same. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo ( talk · contribs · count) 02:54, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
Or, Capankajsmilyo, you can use the RfC process instead. But, like WhatamIdoing said, merging is a lot of work with needed skills. -- George Ho ( talk) 20:27, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
Would it be a good idea to involve bots in the process of removing unsourced info from Wikipedia? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo ( talk · contribs · count) 02:56, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
How abo(u)t we have a bot add the "No references" template to articles with no references?-- NostalgicColorBird ( talk) 21:20, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
First of all, does every conceivable type of office really need its very own Infobox? For example, Template:Infobox Political post, Template:Infobox Bishopric, and Template:Infobox Monarchy are all arguably merge-able into Template:Infobox official post. Political posts, bishoprics, and even monarchies are all examples of offices, right?
Also, the Article Acting president is less than a stub and could easily be a Section of another Article, or maybe 2 other Articles. I could see a sort of fork-merge where it is "merged" into both Acting (law) and--hear me out on this-- Regent. There are countries that don't fit neatly into a single category. The United Arab Emirates, although it consists of monarchies at the local level, actually has a President and not a King at the national level. (Although the Presidency is customarily held by the Emir of Abu Dhabi, strictly speaking the Council could elect someone else as President if it saw fit.) North Korea behaves exactly like a hereditary monarchy where the actual means of succession is concerned, but all 3 of its rulers have still insisted on calling themselves "President" and not "King." Here on Wikipedia we insist on calling Vatican City a "monarchy," but that is not what the Roman Catholic Church teaches! The Church's teachings are very clear that the Pope is not a King, but rather, a servant of Jesus Christ the King. (And this is coming from a Catholic.)
It is, however, quite cut-and-dry as to when an office is technically vacant and has a placeholder or substitute to tie things over. My point is this: The concept of a placeholder or substitute for a vacant office is much clearer than the exact borderline between a monarchy and a presidential republic. The qualifier "acting" and the title "regent" are 2 names for the same concept, albeit usually the application of that concept in different forms of government.
I know not which one of these 2 office- and officeholder-related issues to bring up first, which is why (for now) I brought them both up in the Idea Lab area of the Village Pump. The Mysterious El Willstro ( talk) 03:08, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
While reviewing new pages, I am often seeing articles of the pattern "List of programs broadcast by <TV channel>". I have even nominated an article for deletion before. Even though wikipedia has list articles, I am not sure about encyclopaedic nature of the lists of TV shows, as such a list is ever on-going, most of the lists are but this list would be increasing a lot as there are obviously many shows in a given month on a TV channel. Even though such a list would be "harmless", I believe it would not be an encyclopaedic one. (I cant think of any reason that would make such lists encyclopaedic.)
I am not sure what's going on with me. Maybe, with time, my expectations for standards of the term "encyclopaedic" have gone very high. But talking about these lists, I am not sure if a person checks such lists to find a show. If a particular show is notable enough for enwiki, the article obviously explains on which TV channel(s) it was/is broadcast. If a show doesnt have an article but is mentioned somewhere in another article, it can be mentioned where the show ran. Not exactly, but it is sort of "existence is not notability" here.
Do we have to create lists of everything that exists? These lists of TV shows are exactly same to "List of United States Armed Forces employees". A common argument to defend that list is "it is list of shows broadcast by a notable TV channel, it should be kept". A same argument can be made: "it is a list of employees of a notable armed force". Do we include only the subjects in the list who have their own article (TV shows, and employees of armed forces)?
What I am trying to say here is, I think the lists are not encyclopaedic, and we should come up with a guideline regarding the lists. Kindly let me know what you think. —usernamekiran (talk) 13:06, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
I noticed that quite a few articles contain biblequotes that have external links. Why don't we replace them with a link to Wikibooks-hosted version of the bible? I assume its public domain by now. ((( The Quixotic Potato))) ( talk) 21:01, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
Would it be a good idea to add talk headers to all article talk pages? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo ( talk · contribs · count) 09:34, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
"In accordance with Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines, this template should not be added to otherwise empty talk pages"; I myself for a short while was adding it to talk pages as part of routine citation cleanup but have stopped when an editor pointed me to this. Some (like the recent deletion nominator) have suggested to replace the talk header by automatic messages which would be another possibility... — Paleo Neonate – 17:14, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
It is not uncommon for someone to write into Wikimedia (OTRS) expressing concern that a search engine search of their name produces some hits in Wikipedia. We have well-established procedures in the case of two situations:
I'm currently looking at a real live request ( ticket:2017080410013898) where a person's name is mentioned in the page I linked and they have requested that we remove it. How does the community think we should respond?-- S Philbrick (Talk) 19:05, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
I had forgotten that AfD was no-indexed. I can think of one plausible possibility. Many people right into complain that an article about them is deleted, and and we commonly point them to the AFD page. Even though it is no index, obviously they can reach it if they have the actual URL. I thought we were getting requests for removal of information as a result of a Google search but it is possible they are seeing the page because we told them about it; I'll have to watch these careful in the future to find out if they are true search engine hits.
However, whether it is indexed or not or whether there are clever or alternative ways to get around it, misses the main point of the request — given our interest in protecting the privacy of people at some level, should we accede to requests that a mention of a name in the list of deleted pages should qualify for removal. Our interest in protecting the privacy of individuals is in support of removal while our interest in monitoring our own workflows is in opposition to the request. Is there a way to accomplish both?-- S Philbrick (Talk) 01:04, 22 August 2017 (UTC)
I suggest a slight modification to user watchlist pages. Instead of just showing pages updated since the last view with a green dot, the modification proposed is to show the number of edits since the last view - say, a number following the dot or a number within a larger dot. The utility of the proposed would facilitate whether the user chooses the dif option (to see just one change) or the hist option (to track all changes since the last view). Regards Cinderella157 ( talk) 08:17, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
Recently a proposal came up on a wikiproject talk page, and it turned out this was something that editors recalled having seen proposed on the Village Pump before, but no-one was able to locate it. This situation I think highlights a general problem with accessing past discussions. Currently, all we can do is search for the words or phrases that we reckon a relevant thread might have contained, but this doesn't always work as there is a huge number of ways that the idea could have been worded and it's not possible to anticipate them all. The other option is browsing through the titles of all previous discussions, but that's not humanely possible as there are thousands of them.
The solution I can think of is the introduction of a system of tagging Village Pump discussions. If a new thread is started, then an editor will tag it for relevant topics using a controlled vocabulary of a few dozen terms, and then a bot will add a link to this thread to a master index, which will be arranged and browsable by these tags. Would this be workable? It takes an initial effort to program the bot, and then a small amount of tagging work each time a new thread is started, but in the long run it will probably be the only way to make past discussions actually findable. Any thoughts? – Uanfala 19:01, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
I guess the time has come to upgrade {{
authority control}}
to a core component of wikipedia. As it already uses wikidata, it would be a good step to show authority control bar above categories on pages by default, if it has values and get rid of the manually added templates in all the articles. -- Pankaj Jain
Capankajsmilyo (
talk ·
contribs ·
count) 07:24, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
I've never done this before, so hopefully if I am off-target about the right way to do it somebody can assist.
I have recently read a few articles here on movies just aiming to get an idea whether or not I wanted to see them. I noticed that there is usually a plot summary and of course there should be. However I don't want to read that when I haven't seen the movie and I am deciding whether or not to buy it on disk or go and see it at a cinema. The same may apply to people seeking more information about a novel. Wouldn't it make sense to have a policy of making this item collapsible so it is easier to avoid reading that part of the article? Perhaps even a policy that reviews of any work of fiction could be written with the plot summary collapsible and possibly already collapsed by default. This would leave the plot summary freely available to those who want it but easily avoided for those reading such articles for reasons similar to mine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Portobello Prince ( talk • contribs) 00:27, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
I want to develop another proposal to modify cross-wiki search results from sister projects. The only option we have in user preferences to modify the search results is opting the results out, i.e. hiding them while logged-in. Maybe we can add more options in the user preferences to modify the results. Indeed, I realize that modifying the results can be done via user preferences or user scripts.
Personally, I am no fan of user scripts as I can see them as special treatments for individual users or something like that. Well, I used to have one user script, but then I had it deleted and am not planning to re-create one at this time. Nevertheless, I can request one if having another proposal discussion is too soon.
Per RfC discussion, the results from Wikimedia Commons, Wikiversity, and Wikinews are disabled. I thought about having individual options to opt-in the results from either Wikiversity, Wikimedia Commons, and/or Wikinews (without enabling the results for logged-out users). I don't mind opting-in the multimedia results from Commons (especially by typing at least one word) as long as the multimedia results are hidden from logged-out users (i.e. IP addresses) per discussion. As for Wikinews, well... I know that Wikinews has... issues. I have no opinion on Wikiversity results. Personally, I would like to include them while logged in my account. We wouldn't show those results to general audience, would we? Instead, we can have the results from those projects restricted to logged-in users via user preferences.
I also thought about proposing individual options to opt-out either Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikivoyage, Wikisource, and/or Wikibooks. Personally, I want to opt-out either Wikivoyage and/or Wikibooks. However, I don't travel a lot, so I would opt-out just Wikivoyage.
People have questioned how cross-wiki search results can improve English Wikipedia. To me, the results can reduce likelihood of problematic articles that do not belong in Wikipedia. Also, I don't have to create redirects to Wiktionary entries, do I? Of course, experiences can be different individually. Still, I wonder whether I can start another proposal discussion or request a user script. -- George Ho ( talk) 19:19, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
Howdy all. I'm looking for some people who might be interested in helping me do some template work. What I'm looking at doing is converting the many, MANY olympic event sidebar templates ( Template:GymnasticsAt2012SummerOlympics or Template:SwimmingAt2000SummerOlympics for example). Ideally I'd like to make use of {{ sidebar}} but they may require a custom template from the ground up. Right now I'm just brainstorming but wanted to see if there is anyone that would be interested in being involved? -- Zackmann08 ( Talk to me/ What I been doing) 18:19, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
Navboxes at the bottoms of articles are a useful part of any article: they help to seat the article in a wider theme or setting, and link the wiki together. However, some articles are linked to by a navbox, but then do not have the navbox itself in the article. This presents a number of issues:
I think these issues are worth resolving, as my contributions reflect, but the edits involved strike me as something that could be automated easily. I have some thoughts on how a bot that performs these tasks could work, but details like that aren't worth discussing unless there is a potential use case for a bot, and there is also the chance that a bot or something like AWB can do (or is doing) this already. Any thoughts? -- EnronEvolved My Talk Page 18:13, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
# at the starts of lines makes a numbered list, as is well known. But how can I make the sequence of numbers start with 0 rather than 1? Anthony Appleyard ( talk) 16:14, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
I recently noticed on another editable website site that when you try to save your edit there is a prompt like "Ask another editor to review this edit?". I thought this was a marvelous idea. I was a new editor there and the editing was quite complex so I could really relate to the feeling of uncertainty that a new editor feels. When the site asked me to ask another user to review my edit, it felt nice and it was a great way for me to signal that I was uncertain if I'd done something right and I needed help until I get more familiar with the editing on the site. It also tells other users that even if I screwed up an edit that I was participating in good faith. I think such an idea might really work well at Wikipedia too. Perhaps a proposal might be to have by default all edits by IPs and new accounts asking if the editor would like such a review. We'd also have to think about how we'll handle these requests; so ultimately we'd have to upstream a proposal to Mediawiki as a feature request, but what are your general thoughts on the impact on users? Would it help them? Help reader retention? New editor uptake? Etc. Jason Quinn ( talk) 15:15, 14 September 2017 (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.
Problem:
"attacks by violent non-state actors for political, religious, or ideological motive".
Proposed solution: Address this issue by amending WP:OR (or similar policy?) to require:
Comments: We understand that carving out a specific topic for special attention in policy pages is undesirable to some editors. However, we believe this deserves special attention because of (1) the seriousness of the label "terrorist", (2) the persistence of the problem across multiple articles, and (3) the contentiousness of the topic vis-a-vis politics and religion. We already have discretionary and general sanctions related to this area ( WP:ARB911, WP:ARBAP2, WP:TROUBLES, WP:ARBPIA, WP:GS/ISIL), demonstrating it is a perennial topic for disputes. As such we believe that this broad topic warrants specific attention by Wikipedia policy. The goal of this proposal is to provide clarity to editors and to establish a community norm regarding the application of the label "terrorism".
Signed, EvergreenFir and Doug Weller; Posted by EvergreenFir (talk) 18:40, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
Anyone have any suggestions? EvergreenFir (talk) 20:10, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
The below is transposed from Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not: it got a fair amount of support there (and do please read that conversation), but I'd like to take it a 'level up' and transform it into a concrete proposition, so any input and help would be appreciated.
Since Wikipedia is (one of) the world's most consulted website-references that 'anyone can edit', that makes it a prime target for anyone seeking to WP:SOAPBOX-'broadcast' it. I've seen this a lot in my ~13 years here, but have seen little done to counter it.
It takes a contributor/admin with a lot of patience and experience to see a widespread, organised 'slow attack' pattern any given conflict (because where there's soapboxing, there's most always conflict), but most are too busy/'here and now'-focused to see any larger pattern, and any admin intervening towards the end of such a conflict will find an unreadable talk-page mess almost impossible to unravel, which makes one tend to take claims at face value and only deal with the behavioural aspects of the situation, and this too works to the soapboxers' advantage.
Most of the tactics used to impose and 'enforce' non- WP:V is a 'slow attack' that often passes under the radar (and over the head) of beleaguered admins and Wiki in general. Namely:
While soapboxers learn from their successes and failures, Wikipedia does, too, but soapboxing seems to be still both above and below Wikipedia's mostly 'here and now' radar. But if some patience-laden people conscious of this trend were to populate a task force or notice board dedicated to countering it, it might focus and streamline efforts in that direction, as well as raising vigilance against future occurrences. TP ✎ ✓ 20:10, 17 September 2017 (UTC)
Wikipedia has Wikipedia: Articles for deletion, and it is not all uncommon for an article to go through a second nomination for deletion there. Wikipedia also has Wikipedia: Requested articles, and some requests - such as the request I made some time ago for an article called "Parametric data" - have been there a long time. Would it be possible to have a box in the requested articles box called "Second requests?" I do not know how long articles can remain at Wikipedia: Requested articles without been removed, but if articles cannot remain there indefinitely, this idea might help Wikipedia. Vorbee ( talk) 15:47, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
I did type in a couple of names in the category "People in Medicine" which subsequently got articles created on them, so my guess to the answers to your questions is yes, the space in Wikipedia for article requests does have some merits. Vorbee ( talk) 15:38, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
I want to propose a new feature. We can add a new button "concise" on every article to display a shorter version of the article which contain only most important or necessary information.
This can be achieved on client side only without increasing any extra load on server.
We have to add an extra tag < n> something like this
Wikipedia article
information1
information2
<n> information3 <\n>
information 4
<n> information 5 <\n>
end of article
where n denotes necessary.
By default the user will be given the full article. But when user will press the "concise" button given at top of article the article will change to shorter version like this
Wikipedia article
<n> information 3 <\n>
<n> information 5 <\n>
end of article
Here the <n> tag will help in filtering of most necessary information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kuldeep ra1 ( talk • contribs)
A lot of articles move tables into templates to be able to use these tables in more than one article. See Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive 2017 1#Is it possible to enable the VisualEditor for some templates?
Problem is that for templates, the VisualEditor isn't enabled and probably never will be.
There is a work-around, but it's cumbersome:
Using sub pages in the article namespace just for tables (to be transcluded in the main article) apparently isn't allowed.
Presumably the Draft namespace can't be used either, as it is strictly separated from the article namespace.
Technically I could create an article in a new namespace myself, though again this probably isn't allowed (yet).
So I propose to add (allow) a new VE enabled namespace to be used for templates which are awkward to edit without the VisualEditor.
Again, the usage I have in mind are tables, so if generally allowing all sorts of templates is a problem, maybe limit it to just tables and name it "Table:" for example.
-- Pizzahut2 ( talk) 01:30, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
I'd like to be notified when an article has an unusual spike in page views/traffic. This usually means there has been a news story or event, typically signaling the article needs updating with new information/sources. -- Green C 03:58, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
Is there any way that a Wikipedia user can create a list of favorite pages and entries, i.e. a favorites/bookmarks list just like one would find in any Internet browser?
if this function does not currently exist, then is there a way that we could please create this? if so, could we also create a feature that would allow the user to see the number of edits that have occurred since their last visit there? I appreciate any help. thanks!! -- Sm8900 ( talk) 02:18, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
My Favorites | |
---|---|
TRAPPIST-1 | A star with seven earth-sized planets so close they probably share the same exosphere |
Grover's algorithm | An explanation of how much quantum computing can speed up computation, and its limits |
Hello
I am a Farsi (Persian) Wikipedia user. So forgive my language flaws!
I've designed some designs for Wikipedia. To promote wikipedia and its users. I raised this issue here, and my question is: Is there an internal page for similar designs? And can anyone help me with delivering these designs to their audience? I printed them on t-shirt and it was very cool.
thanks, Seyyedalith ( talk) 16:22, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
Wikimedia received a suggestion from a reader who thought that all tables ought to be made automatically sortable. While I like sortable tables, I think the literal suggestion is a nonstarter as I suspect there are some tables which wouldn't work well if they were simply transformed to be sortable.
However, it occurs to me that we might make sortable the default. Obviously, if you decide to create a table from scratch using WMediawiki markup or some of the tools designed to create tables you have to make that decision on your own, but if you use VE to make a table it does so fairly nicely, except that the table is not sortable by default.
(As an aside, if you do work with tables and haven't tried the VE table creation, you should. You can simply grab a rectangle of information from a spreadsheet and paste it in. You then may need to specify a header row, but it's quite easy.)
When you create table this way the table starts with certain default properties of which one:
Styled (wikitable) - Has the default setting "on"
While another:
Sortable - Has the default setting "off"
What would happen if the initial default were changed to "on"? It's probably not quite that simple, but what are the downsides?
On occasion, someone will create a table and want it not to be sortable and have to turn it off but that's not very hard to do. I suspect that many people creating tables aren't even aware that sortability is an option and this would help them understand that it is available and easy.-- S Philbrick (Talk) 16:10, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
I have a tendency to forget to write </small> after parenthetical comments and have to go back. I've also noticed that the cite template puts a big red text about not having a closing /ref but can't really do anything about it. I'm sure there are other tags which, when added without a closing tag, tend usually to be problems. Is there a practical, not too intrusive way to warn editors on saving an edit that there's a problem, without actually stopping them just in case it's something that actually needs to be done? Wnt ( talk) 21:19, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
Currently, Extension:Linter makes this trivial to do (with its API), see Special:LintErrors/missing-end-tag. But doing it for everyone would make saving slow for everybody, because it needs to expand all templates to detect whether the content generates unclosed html tags. If there are no templates or extension tags on a page then it is even easier to detect without even clicking the save button. On simple pages, this should be easily detectable with something like Extension:Codemirror or really any html validating tool.
Due to performance reasons this would probably work best as an opt-in userscript or alternatively the linter extension could do it ( https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T163072) during preview as people already expect that to be slow. 16:53, 23 October 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.92.26 ( talk)
It seems a nonsense to me that we require attribution to IP addresses - if you want your work attributed to you create an account under your name or a pen name. Attributing edits to an IP address when that address may represent many different people is not really attribution. Changing the IP editing screen so that future IP edits are licensed CC-SA as opposed to CC-BY-SA for edits made by registered editors would be a sensible clarification of the difference between the two types of editing. Ϣere SpielChequers 08:28, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
Has anyone ever proposed redesigning the main page, but first having an RfC (or reader survey) to gauge if people actually want the main page to be redesigned? I don't want to dig much into the archives but I haven't found any attempts to obtain a real, solid consensus of "the main page should be redone". Jc86035 ( talk) 15:57, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
The ideal starting point would be a series of questions on the current main page and then see what improvements might be made. Example questions might be:
and so on with all the elements currently on the main page, as well as a list of potential elements to include.
Then open up voting for a month and see what happens. With "no consensus" on any item defaulting to status quo. Cas Liber ( talk · contribs) 02:27, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
...that a very long list of "distinguished" Wikipedia editors/administrators is on the "block list" for SOCKPUPPETING and that even though every one of them has blocked or has supported the blocking of "IP editors" and "sockpuppet editors" for days to months to "indefinitely", their blocks only seem to be for 24 hours according to the "countdown clock". Even more strange is that where a BLOCK NOTICE can be found for the FEW of them that aren't being PROTECTED by having their blocked "status" made "public" on their user/talk pages, the notices seem to claim they've been blocked for 72 hours. And why are their "distinguished" user names not showing up on the "sockpuppet" list? Obviously the actual word SOCKPUPPET isn't being used to DESCRIBE those exalted Gods of Wikipedia, but there are links to the "sockpuppet" list here and there depending on what links one follows from the block list page and clearly they weren't blocked for the "acceptable" use of "alternate accounts. Its interesting that their block notices also state that they will be WELCOME to edit Wikipedia again. No "community discussion" to determine if "sanctions" should have been applied to begin with or what they should be. No kangaroo court of holier-than-thou blowhards holding for from on high about anything and everything BUT "creating an encyclopedia". But then again, given that list of blocked editors/administrators is comprised OF most of the "judges" that SIT on those kangaroo courts or at least arbitrarily take various punitive action against "IP editors" and "sockpuppets" that lead TO kangaroo courts, its not surprising there's no one left to convene one. Kinda gotta wonder just how "thorough" whatever investigation of their sockpuppets actually was and who it was conducted by.
Sure seems like a heck of a good opportunity to make an example out of a bunch of editors/administrators who certainly never hesitated to make an example of others. But there really aren't any CLEAN HANDS around here the way it seems. Who knows HOW LONG the "innocent" editors/administrators who finally were forced to "out" longtime sockpuppeteers have actually known about it but were silent only because of what is in their OWN closets. I do have to say that I'm amazed ANYTHING happened to them. I've "known" or rather have "suspected" For a LONG time that just like MOST "holier-than-thou" power-tripping "authority figures" tend to be excessively judgmental because they're overcompensating for their own "guilty conscience" in part and as bluster to LOOK beyond reproach to scare anyone who might peak in their closets away, not only were that many "judge/jury/executioner" types highly unlikely to ALL be pure as the driven snow OR as "friendly" to so many others JUST LIKE THEM. And when such DEDICATED and COMMITTED WP editors/administrators seem to have nothing but time to spend playing KGB agent investigating OTHERS and time ONLY for their own self-appointed "duties" and "tasks" because anytime they're ASKED to comment on something or contribute to some other way or contact someone on their talk pages they're "busy" or "ill" or on a "Wikibreak" etc, but yet they seem to MAGICALLY SHOW UP on OTHER USERS' talk pages to answer questions asked of others when those others are "busy" or "ill" or on a "Wikibreak", only somebody who lives in a fantasy world of computers and bits and bytes and "academia" with little or no social interaction with "common folk" in the "real world" where people learn to "read" other people while they learn nothing but "code" could believe that's a COINCIDENCE over and over and over.
I could get into how many OTHER Wikipedia "policies" that they've "violated", which honestly is MOST Wikipedia "policies" when you get right down to it and how every one of them has in the past and will in the future block anybody for MANUFACTURED "violations" of "Wikipedia policy" once they "apologize" for their "mistakes", but there's really no point. Anybody "accomplished" and "experienced" long-time editor will have accumulated enough "dirt" on the remaining "legit" Wikipedia power elites to make their lives uncomfortable, and current/former admins/bureaucrats will no doubt have used the "tools" to build their OWN dirt databases probably sufficient to maybe destroy WP as a WHOLE, so they'll come back after about another 23 hours of their "72 hour" blocks, jump through the hoops necessary to get new user names, it'll be in the best interests of the "community" to pretend it never happened and all the "evidence" of their behavior will get flushed down the memory hole. They'll be more careful about how they build their NEW sock farms and they'll continue to do nothing but destroy content for whatever third party is paying them to DELETE CERTAIN INFORMATION just like OTHER "distinguished" editors who righteously block "COI" editors are getting paid or otherwise compensated for doing THAT. It just goes to show that they're all human and fallible after all. And that's the last thing they ever wanted exposed on Wikipedia. Otherwise they wouldn't have been using "alternate accounts" to begin with. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.234.100.169 ( talk) 17:59, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
Sometimes these IPs and IP ranges need to be blocked, but the problem is sometimes these blocks happen over a couple of edits, as if the sysops seriously expect school/college students or employees of large corporations to be perfect angels who never vandalize.Uh... yeah, people shouldn't vandalize. That's not a hard concept. When they do, we block them. -- Izno ( talk) 12:30, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
Recently, there's been some extremely substantial forms of abuse when it comes to file uploads. First, the WP0 abuse from Commons has been drifting our way. These are editors who game their way to autoconfirmed status then immediately use Wikipedia as a warez service, uploading blatantly copyrighted files en masse (music files, entire episodes of TV shows, movies, etc). Second, it is very common for undisclosed paid editors to game their way to autoconfirmed and upload copyrighted company logos. Both of these abuses can be hard to spot, and they sometimes take substantial amounts of time before editors identify and remove the copyrighted material.
I'd like to test the waters on raising the bar for uploading files on enwiki. Right now, the bar is autoconfirmed - 10 edits, 4 days on site. Uploading files is a rather "niche" activity, and newer editors often misunderstand what they can and can't upload. I would say most files that new editors upload that I've encountered are either promotional, copyrighted, or useless. Further, newer editors often upload free images on enwiki, which really should be going to Commons. If we were to raise the bar on uploading files to extended confirmed, we would eliminate this abuse, new editors could still upload free files on Commons, and we could more thoroughly vet non-free files at WP:Files for upload before they're accepted.
Alternatively, if 500/30 is too high a bar, we could use an edit filter to raise the bar to some intermediate level. 100/15 or something like that. What are the community's thoughts on this possibility? ~ Rob13 Talk 13:58, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
I would like to have better access to the rev history page from a diff, with the particular revision I am interested in vertically centered on the page (i.e., displayed at #25 on a 50-count page).
I envision a slight modification to the diff page to add two new links called "Revision in Context" (RIC). Clicking a RIC link would bring up a standard rev history page with 50 revisions (or whatever the default is) but with the selected revision in the center of the page, so that one can more easily see its historical context.
Often, I want to see what happened just before and just after—did they revert something? has there been an edit war? did it go on?—centering the selected rev would provide this. Currently, it's quite awkward to go back half a page worth, and I have to play around with the back 100, forward 50 trick, or use the year-month drop-downs when that happens to place the rev in question at the desired spot (not very often).
For the choice of name, I was inspired by KWIC.
If that is too difficult implementation-wise, then as a next best, I'd like to see a link at the bottom of history pages "+/- half-page" which would move the view portal half the current &limit=
value. A better version of this would be to hyperlink the bullet indicator of each rev (is that even possible?) so a click on the bullet centers that rev vertically.
Mathglot (
talk) 21:39, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
After making a contribution and getting to the "confirmation/here's what else you can do" page, it would be nice if there was an obvious option to return to the previous WIki page. OR the whole payment process should have opened up a new tab so when it's closed I still have my previous page available. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Misscking ( talk • contribs) 16:52, 7 November 2017 (UTC)
Is there already a list of pretty much abandoned and isolated articles in Wikipedia? If not, I highly recommend it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by OfficialNeon ( talk • contribs) 20:41, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
With the upcoming ArbCom election, my proposal is a newsletter delivered to talk pages of subscribers every week or month. This will help people interested in the cases of the ArbCom. The newsletter will describe cases currently at ArbCom, and other happenings. A sample is included below:
What's up with ArbCom? (This line will be titled)
New Requests: Example 1 (Link), Example 2 (Link)
Opened Cases: Example 3 (Link), Example 4 (Link)
Closed Cases: Example 5 (Link), Example 6 (Link)
I have done a diff on a talk page- there was a change at line 273- I clicked on the link and just like the autolinks for reference- was taken to that pont in the text, but double-clicking by mistake, the text editor opened and the cursor was on line 272. I don't know how I ever managed without it! Dreaming again- but what a pleasant dream.-- ClemRutter ( talk) 19:38, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
Okay, I know what you're thinking. Hear me out.
This RfC proposes to reduce the enforcement of WP:NOTNEWS to increase news coverage on Wikipedia.
The rationale is "Wikinews is dead". You know, sure. It's not the most popular WMF project - not by a long shot. However, the problem is mainly that:
Whether or not it's a good or bad idea to put news in Wikipedia is not a discussion for here. However, why does wikipedia not try to increase awareness of sister WMF projects? enwiki is in a good place to do this, it's one of the most popular websites in the world, and is renowned for its impartiality and stunning dedication to consensus. WN is much the same, but without participation. If we could increase participation and awareness (the two go hand in hand, just look at the growth of the number of editors on enwiki), then it could be a quality news source that people rely on.
Isn't it already on the front page? Yes, technically. By the links for Wikibooks and the other pet projects of the WMF. However, if we could link to it more prominently (eventually link to WN articles in the In the News section, perhaps), it would grow a lot more.
Haven't we given it up for dead? They're still publishing articles over there, although admittedly few. We could do a lot better!
I'd just like thoughts at this point. Thanks. ProgrammingGeek talktome 15:56, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
To raise awareness of other Wikimedia foundation projects, could we not put information about them on Wikipedia: Main Page? The main page is one of the most viewed articles on Wikipedia, if not the most viewed, and putting information about Wikipedia's sister projects on the main page would seem a good way to raise awareness of them. Vorbee ( talk) 18:23, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
The Main Page of Wikipedia has a section in its top right-hand corner called "In the news..." ... it should not prove too difficult to put in a note that there is such a website as Wikinews there. Vorbee ( talk) 20:14, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
Perhaps we could have a note at the bottom of the Main Page's "In the news" box saying "For more information on news stories, see Wikinews". Vorbee ( talk) 16:31, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
Useful discussion. I'm a newby and I browsed through the different projects (including Wikinews) to find out what they were. I can't remember ever finding Wikinews items via Google though they do turn up). I'm aware that I (based in the Netherlands) have free access to a wide range of News sites from which I can form my own opinion. There are many countries where this is not the case. Good comments have already been been made by others. A couple of additional comments from a newby perspective:
Coming back (after this long rant) to WikiNews revival, I think the bigger picture of "News" (added value, accessibility, sourcing, presentation, standards, curation, etc.) needs to be clarified first. Maybe this is already part of the 'Strategic Direction 2030'. But the first step I think is for the folks at WikiNews and the current events portal to decide - together with the folks that maintain the Design of the main page - which news items are going to be presented via which channels and which ones are going to be sourced/curated by WikiNews. It would be an interesting exercise to compare some of the past WikiNews items with the equivalents sourced by the current events portal. Mikemorrell49 ( talk) 14:19, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
I think it will be better if users will able to highlight their text(only at their device,also for as much time as they want). This is an issue of your technical team but it will definitely make your organization(software) better and user friendly. By this change , researchers will feel much comfortable in their work and also a great amount of users - "students" will feel more friendly and its really become helpful for them to making notes and many more aspects. Thanks . Will Feel great if I see these changes in my wikipedia.
Sangharsh Vyas ( talk) 18:01, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
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What about a supplemental set of redirects, which are questions, and which point to the answer in the encyclopedia? The question redirects could be prefixed with "Q:" or something. Such a system could be worked on by editors and bots. Thoughts, more ideas? The Transhumanist 21:06, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
Creating a set of redirects is a kludge. It would be better to improve the search engine, which is clearly possible: if I type the first three questions into a very popular search engine, an appropriate Wikipedia page is either the first answer or among the top three results. The last question doesn't seem to be suited to an encyclopedia, but the search engine answers it quite effectively. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 23:34, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
What's the search engine and extensions used for Wikipedia? The Transhumanist 00:59, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
Theoretically, Wikidata is just great for this. There is one tool ask (which probably isn't finished), which can answer to some questions. And with SPARQL queries you can query for many things, like distance between Kanzas City and Washington. -- Edgars2007 ( talk/ contribs) 12:57, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
If my Firefox can pass a search argument to Google Search, I don't see why Wikipedia couldn't do the same with site:en.wikipedia.org
appended. ―
Mandruss
☎ 19:26, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
Question redirects in general are a disservice to our readers because it conditions them to search in an unfeasible manner. Even one question redirect for every topic we cover (not just page titles, think existing redirects and sections as well) would be insurmountable and inadequate, and that's before we get in to the matter of different ways to phrase questions. — Godsy ( TALK CONT) 04:45, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
References
There are a lot of one line small pages, which do not add any value to wikipedia. I would like to propose to develop a mechanism to either merge them or delete them. They can be converted to redirects to relevant topics, till there is enough content to qualify a separate article. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo ( talk · contribs · count) 07:30, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
Hi all,
I'm a multi-language Wikipedia user (mainly English, Persian, Arabic, and German) and I do a lot of searches in Wikipedia. The thing is that I have to switch between different Wikis when I change language. This is redundant and tedious for me and I would like to have a functionality where I can "turn on" different languages and have results from those wikis when I search. I raised the issue here: /info/en/?search=Wikipedia:Teahouse#Searching_in_multiple_Wikipedias_simultaneously in Tea House and was told that it does not exist. I was also told that it wouldn't hurt to raise the subject with you guys other than being laughed at ;D.
Would love to have your feedback.
Cheers Alireza1357 ( talk) 08:09, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
Thanks @ Izno: and @ DTankersley (WMF): Looking at the material you provided, it seems to me that the project is heading in the direction where such or similar functionality will be included. But what I was looking for is (IMHO) simpler and a little bit different than what is there right now. Do you think it is worth further exploration? Has it a chance to be accepted and implemented? Do I need to further clarify what I had in mind? Thanks in advance Alireza1357 ( talk) 08:18, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
@ There'sNoTime and Samwalton9: There was a bit of delay, but as per the closing statement, the proposal for an LTA KnowledgeBase has been accepted by the community, and the closers have indicated a few things to resolve before we move forward. Now might be a good time to plan how we're going to set up the discussion that'll hammer those "finer details" out. The two questions (in summary) are: 1) what are we going to do with the existing LTA material, and 2) who should have access to the LTA KnowledgeBase?
The closers indicated that the first question may not require a formal, structured RfC to discuss, as most were in agreement that existing LTA reports were to remain on-wiki, and that "generic information" will continue to be provided on-wiki regarding reports in the KnowledgeBase. Just to throw an idea out, this information could perhaps be a list of usernames of sockmasters and their SPIs.
According to the closing statement, the second question likely requires a more thorough discussion. Here are a few ideas for the required experience level to have access to the KnowledgeBase that were thrown out in the first RfC, from most restrictive to least restrictive:
The goal is to reduce the problem with WP:BEANS while maintaining a degree of transparency. I believe there was also some talk of separating the ability to view LTA pages and to them. I'm thinking we could have an RfC where editors can vote on these options. What do you all think? Mz7 ( talk) 21:17, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
I recommend to Wikipedia to give to each article a format similar to the scientific articles. For each Wikipedia article should be provided an Editorial Information just like it is the case for scientific articles. For example, when Imake a citation to an Wikipedia Article, I want just to write in this way: Wikipedia- bird, Wikipedia Publishing, 004567-263 (article code), 2017-05-16 (the date of last update from Wiki), 2016 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tbaracu ( talk • contribs) 12:25, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
Wikipedia contributors, "Text messaging," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Text_messaging&oldid=780667303 (accessed May 16, 2017)
Regards, Martin of Sheffield ( talk) 14:57, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
For example, 13160-06-0 redirects to 3-Pyridylnicotinamide. A chemical compound may have different names. It's easy to find whether one chemical exists in Wikipedia or not by typing CAS numbers. Moreover, when the name of a compound is complicated, CAS number will be a good way to search the compound. -- Leiem ( talk) 09:30, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
Religions various time lines -Could i suggest
could i suggest and request a page that or pages that lists time lines for various religions , particularly say Judaism starting from say200BC or life of Abraham if he is indeed the starting point and progress gradually thorough to say year 1AD or 314 AD or even up to modern times. It sounds simple but i cannot find this information online . also a time line of the different religions that preceded Judaism would be nice also to help me and others understand what religions were actually practiced in the middle east prior to modern day monotheism , particularly say in the Saudi area and other middle eastern societies in times prior to Islam
hope this makes sense ,
yours gratefully simon from Australia — Preceding unsigned comment added by Simonsbd ( talk • contribs) 22:45, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
Would only allowing administrators to edit official policy pages help to solve the problem of instruction creep? Uncle dan is home ( talk) 06:29, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
This would be the last thing we want...many old timers like me belive thoses that enforce policy should not be writing said policies. Many old timers like me think it's best that writers of P/Gs stay above the frey. Never a good idea to have police write laws. ...pls see User talk:Moxy#About becoming an administrator for what I think is best. -- Moxy ( talk) 20:37, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
Absolutely not. This would itself be a dramatic bit of role-creep for admins; functionally, it would give them a special voice in setting, modifying, and wording policy that they don't currently have. More importantly, every current admin was selected without this in mind - they were evaluated based on their ability to adhere to policy, and their knowledge and understanding of it, rather than based on what policies they would prefer if they were among a select group empowered to make changes. Giving them any more voice than a normal user in setting policy would also have the practical effect of completely-politicizing RFA (more than it is already), and turning it into a constant referendum on what direction people want policy to go in. Finally, I would point out that as a practical matter this could easily accomplish the exact opposite of what you intend - yes, only admins could make changes, but that would also mean that only admins could revert changes, meaning that a dramatic expansion to a policy would require convincing fewer people. (Yes, I know, obviously the admins would consider the consensus on the page even among non-admins - but there's no avoiding the danger of it becoming a "supervote", since we wouldn't be able to rely on the hard limitations against modifying protected pages if we want policy to be something we can update at all. And, of course, if admins were flawless at evaluating consensus on the talk page and always perfectly reflected it, this suggestion would have no impact - you are implicitly assuming that they will put their "thumb on the scale", and even if we accepted that as desirable there is absolutely no reason to think they would always use that extra influence to oppose rather than promote instruction-creep.) -- Aquillion ( talk) 16:08, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
Dear All,
Lately an observation which was forming for some time now became too obvious to ignore: front page of wikipedia always shows me terror, murders, war etc. in the news section, with some sport news once in a while. I am an active reader and supporter (donor in Germany) of wikipedia. I owe much to it, and I think it is a great achievement of humanity.
Yet what kind of influence does it have to structure / filter world news like that? There is a lot happening in the world, which is both more positive and more relevant to people's lives. They can still find news about dangers in their regional newspapers. Every news site will bombard them with sad, violence-filled news for click-through rates. But why does wikipedia do it?
Regards, Ilya — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ikamenshchikov ( talk • contribs) 09:08, 29 May 2017 (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've started this thread, in part, to address a concern aired by
GoldenRing at the Administrator's Noticeboard. The comment is as follows, with the relevant parts highlighted:
G4 is often tricky because the people tagging it usually don't have access to the previous versionto assess whether or not the versions are substantially identical; when I'm working through CAT:CSD, I always find articles tagged G4 take more effort than many other criteria for this reason. I've also got a lot of sympathy for admins declining CSD in general; articles where CSD is declined can always be sent to AfD, whilespeedy-deleted articles are relatively difficult for ordinary editors to recover.TL;DR: If you think the reasons behind the previous consensus to delete still apply, nominate it at AfD. GoldenRing ( talk) 13:01, 29 May 2017 (UTC)
As an editor with minimal experience in deletions, this is something I've wondered about. Admins are barely able to keep ahead of the requested deletions and other backlogs. Mistakes can and will happen. There needs to be some way for non-admins to find and fix those mistakes.
Here's an idea: Could a bot be used to archive all pages tagged for deletion, other than those that shouldn't appear anywhere (attack pages, copyright violations, etc)? Ideally, such a bot would archive a page after it's tagged, but before the page is added to the categories that alert administrators of pages needing their attention, to avoid suspicious 'sniping' deletions before archiving, be they unintentional or otherwise. This would help to allow non-admins to check whether pages really qualified for deletion, and potentially recover useful content, without having to bother admins with restoring copies of the pages. This could also help stave off any more perennial proposals to unbundle the tools or make admin rights easier to get.
To be clear, I'm suggesting that pages about to be deleted should be archived off-wiki, something that I couldn't find in the perennial proposals. Much of what is deleted is inappropriate for Wikipedia, but acceptable elsewhere on the internet. Once again, this automated archiving would exclude select, legally-actionable categories, such as attack pages and blatant copyright violations.
There are a few independent Wikis already attempting something like this, including Deletionpedia and the Speedy Deletion Wiki. Neither of them seem to be archiving all deleted pages in most deletion categories, which is what I'm suggesting. Specifics such as which bot and archive website to use can be hammered out in future discussions, if there's any support for this idea. ʍ w 14:26, 29 May 2017 (UTC)
Clarifying statement: I'm suggesting nearly all pages about to be deleted be archived, not just G4. My apologies for any confusion. ʍ w 03:00, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Clarifying statement part II: I've struck the quote that's been misleading too many people. Please at least read everything above this point if you're going to respond. Thank you. ʍ w 12:42, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Discussion:
I came here to inform that the format of the pages in not very interesting. It is plain, with lines, and infested with words. Maybe a little color splash would work, eh? Or maybe a whole makeover would work, and you could make a Twin Version while rebuilding the site. The format is not attractive, and the site is not backed with media. I hope you change these things, it would surely help on such as great site! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2606:A000:43C2:4C00:4468:AE6D:C76A:F2C5 ( talk) 00:45, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
How about replacing the 'talk' tabs at the top of articles with one that says 'discuss' – ??
This thought came to me recently after a chat with a grocery store clerk who, noticing my Wikipedia T-shirt, told me what a great thing he thinks Wiki is and how much time he spends with us. In the ensuing conversation, I mentioned that the 'talk' tabs lead to 'talk' pages where, in the case of controversial topics or details that aren't fully documented, one can find arguments, questions, advice on sources, and so forth. This guy, who said he'd been reading Wiki for years, had never noticed the 'talk' tabs. (I've talked to others who've said the same.)
I suspect that many readers, if they do notice 'Talk,' just shrug their shoulders and move on. Perhaps if we changed the label to Discuss that would give them a better idea of what those pages are about, and more would be drawn in.
Comments?
Sca ( talk) 22:20, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
When Wikipedia previews your edit on mobile, there is a text box with your edit summary. It has "example: Fixed typo, added content". This leads to over 400,000 actions on the edit filter, and that's just "Fixed typo", "added content", or two word edit summaries. There is and will be much more, including "content", "added facts", etc. The majority of these canned edit summaries are unconstructive edits. This misleads people, which is what I hate. So instead of making this problem worse, can someone change "Example: Fixed typo, added content" to "Describe your changes" or something? That is what it reads on visual editor: "Describe your changes". That is why there is (almost) no canned edit summary issues on Visual editor. Someone please make the mobile edit look that way. Wikipedia will look significantly better because of less misleading edit summaries. Is there anywhere else I can put these comments, too? What I suggested here will help Wikipedia look so much better. Examples
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Thomas_M%C3%BCller&diff=783988446&oldid=783362248
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Captain_Underpants&diff=784001544&oldid=783954424
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=In_the_House_(TV_series)&diff=784067332&oldid=784029543
Wikipedia vandalism may still exist after these changes are made, but at least they don't have these edit summaries. No more "facts" "content" etc. 68.228.254.131 ( talk) 06:18, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
It would be helpful to be able to see whether an article was on your watchlist without having to click it. Would it be possible to add a similar star to the thumbnail of articles so that you can see if the article is on your watchlist (and maybe even add it to your watchlist)? For example, I wanted to add all of the MPs elected in the UK 2017 general election by using the list of MPs elected, but had to click on each article in order to see whether it was on my watchlist and then add it. Absolutelypuremilk ( talk) 22:22, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
I was using the Page Previews feature, but I have now discovered the NAVPOPs feature, which is very helpful! Absolutelypuremilk ( talk) 21:53, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
Provide a Wikipedia search service that indexes Wikipedia data semantically, based on sentence structure; subject, subject complement, or direct object, etc. versus just key words. Recognize information that is not directly communicated by the author, by relating acronyms, abbreviations, and compound nouns to appropriate subject matter within an article. Results will be ordered and prioritized by the strength of the correlation of search term to the sentences returned. Results will provide full sentences where possible, with deep links to those sentences, making it possible for users to jump directly to those sentences of interest. Such a tool will improve the search experience within Wikipedia and increase the value of the Wikipedia data. Any help or feedback would be greatly appreciated.
See a demo at www.wikisandy.org — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sandypondfarm ( talk • contribs) 14:30, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
Regards Thomas Cowley [ [5]] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sandypondfarm ( talk • contribs) 13:57, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
What’s unique about WikiSandy?
• WikiSandy is an en.wikipedia.org specific experimental search engine that indexes Wikipedia data semantically, based on sentence structure; subject, subject complement, or direct object, etc. versus just key words.
• It typically returns full sentences for the user to review.
• take Me there (tMt) links to sentences in the actual source articles allowing the user to jump directly to that sentence no matter where it is in the article!
• WikiSandy answers follow-up questions maintaining context. This means you can search for Abraham Lincoln, get results, and then ask, “What did he do?”, and get relevant results.
• Click aLike to view other documents with the same sentence discovered by WikiSandy. This shows you other articles on the same topic.
• Tell Me Something will bring you to random query results.
• Example Questions will give you some demo queries.
• View the User Guide for more details.
Please feel free to test drive http://www.wikisandy.org — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sandypondfarm ( talk • contribs) 13:19, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
These search results tend to be superior to the default Wikimedia search results (at least for wikipedia), compare ( inventor of radio vs these (note you'll need to type the search). It finds "Guglielmo Marconi" which wikipedia doesn't even return as a result. The context based approach is generally superior, except for technical searches. The first step is probably to create an Extension or a plugin to improve upon the default search engine ( Extension:Cirrussearch. Perhaps you're confusing a "Wikimedia project" (e.g. wiktionary:) and so forth with a tool (e.g. extension) to their default software.
Filing a phabricator task about adding context based search (with a link to your work) to Mediawiki / MediaWiki extension might be a good first step. You might want to read up on mw:Review_queue to deploy an extension, and maybe contact the Discovery team to get their feedback.
This is pretty novel and useful work ...
20:09, 7 June 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.83.111 ( talk)
Wow - this is pretty useful stuff! I entered a specific individual and it returned an Aladdin's cave of info, with references and further pointers. I have no doubt that I could have gotten to all the same info eventually, but it would have taken a lot of effort and a lot of time. This returned a result in seconds ...... 80.192.223.213 ( talk) 08:42, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
An issue that seems to crop up fairly often is that of the well-intentioned new editor who, in good faith, keeps repeating some action that causes increased work load for others. But at the same time, they are unaware of the concept of "talk page", and specifically of the fact that they have one themselves; that it might be bristling with slowly escalating comments; and that the little numbers next to the bell and the... thing... at the top of the screen are of any importance.
I am only aware of a single thing that currently can direct someone's attention forcefully to their talk page, and that is a block of the "attention-getter" variety. That often seems a rather harsh approach, and runs various risks: if it's too short, the editor might miss it entirely; if it's too long, it might put them off editing for good; it sticks in the block log (which they might care about somewhere down the road); and anyway being blocked is likely to give the message "We don't want you here", while in these cases there is generally a good chance that the editor would happily adjust their behaviour if they knew that there was a problem.
So I'm wondering if there might be some mileage in creating an admin feature that allows placing of a splash screen, like the one you get on receiving a block, with the difference that a) it only triggers once, on the first login after placing; and b) it merely says "People are trying to talk to you, please go to your talk page located at foo and engage". (- If anything like this been discussed before, pray point me in that direction :) -- Elmidae ( talk · contribs) 13:28, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
As for why I'm bringing this up now: there's currently someone busily wikilinking every. single. country. name. in bird species articles, and I would dearly like them to stop... -- Elmidae ( talk · contribs) 13:28, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
That being said, I'm not opposed to the concept of some sort of "urgent message" functionality - though it would be good if it included logged actions "e.g. User:Admin set urgenttalk on User:Elmidae" and "User:Elmidae dismissed urgenttalk on User:Elmidae" being in a log; perhaps with some large on-screen banner that it was set. — xaosflux Talk 18:50, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
As the title suggests, this is as much a question as it is a suggestion. I'm enjoying the new feature that shows search results from sister projects alongside search results from the encyclopaedia. I'm wondering, however, why these results appear in the order they do, and whether that could be improved. (There doesn't seem to be any documentation of the new feature, which is unfortunate.) Look, for example, at the results for the word " vatic", which doesn't seem to be mentioned in any Wikipedia articles, but has a Wiktionary entry. The sister project results include that Wiktionary entry alongside a Wikiquote page that uses the word, and Wikibooks, Wikivoyage and Wikisource pages that do not. The Wiktionary result is second in the sidebar; at the top is a Wikisource page which uses "vater" multiple times but never "vatic". Clearly, in this situation and others like it – in which a user has searched for a term that is the title of a page at one project, and only used in the body, if at all, in other projects, that one project ought to take precedence over the others (and perhaps even over the Wikipedia search results). If we could do this I think it would potentially cut down the number of unnecessary WP:DICDEF articles mistakenly created on Wikipedia, and maybe render the {{ wi}} soft-redirect template redundant. – Arms & Hearts ( talk) 13:36, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
Hello community, i like to receive opinions from this proposal: create the eliminators user group. This user group exists in the lusophone Wikipedia and in some other wikis, and i think bringing it for here will be a good thing. Yes, i am perfectly aware that the reality from this Wikipedia to the lusophone is pretty diferent, and because of this, te reasons i made this proposal is diferent. Think in this situation: a user isn't good enough to be a administrator to be capable to eliminate a page, but know the deletion policy, and would know when to eliminate a page, when not to eliminate a page, etc. The user isn't ready to be administrator, but know the deletion policy, therefore the community will lose a good user to eliminate pages because this user can't be admin. Also exist the case of a user that is ready and confiable enough to eliminate pages and be a admin, but don´t want be a admin but want the ability to delete pages. I know this Wikipedia has 1,256 administrator and i note that this wiki don't suffer problems related to deletion, but i think it´s constructive that users prepared to delete pages but don´t ready to be or do not want be admin can delete pages by an other user group. Jasão (msg) 09:38, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
@ Anomie and There'sNoTime: Thanks for the opinions, i see that the proposal would not have support to move forward. Jasão (msg) 13:25, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Hello community, i have the proposal to change the autopatrol right. The workload for a recent changes patroller is pretty big, don´t exist a system to show the edit was verified as a good edit, what complicates the RC patrol. My proposal is to adopt this system: when a user whithout the autopatrol right makes an edit, the edit will get a red exclamation indicating that the edit was not patrolled. Any user can patrol a edit, and i propose create the Special:Log/patrol to register who patrol a edit. So, if the proposal be approved, as well as creating pages that comply with the rules an user who wants the autopatrol right must make good edits, what will probably ocurr, a user who make good pages make good edits. Jasão (msg) 10:41, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
@ Xaosflux: Thank you for the information. I see that allow everyone to patrol pages doesn't work in this community. So check this proposal: administrators, bureaucrats, rollbackers, new page reviewers, autopatrolled editors and pending changes reviewers have the permission to patrol editions, in order to ensure that the edits will be patrolled correctly. What do you think? Jasão (msg) 12:03, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
Given the Unified log in, it would seem to be easy to have links under languages for the main user page and main user talk page for a user to any page which exists. So for example, since es:Usuario discusión:Naraht exists, it should have a link on the left to en:User talk:Naraht and vice versa. However since nn:Brukardiskusjon:Naraht does not exist, there would be no link to there from either page. Not sure it makes sense to do this all the time (gadget preference or tool would be fine, I guess) Naraht ( talk) 16:46, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
I like the idea, in these days i was even thinking in make this proposal in the lusophone Wikipedia. Jasão (msg) 08:59, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Hello folks
I've been unsatisfied with Wikipedia user interface for years. When modern websites showing texts such as Medium, the main newspapers websites, Gitbook, etc display text on a narrow column with a high font size and space between lines, Wikipedia has still a very old fashioned way of displaying full width text with a very small font-size. This makes it very hard to read since your eye have to follow very long lines.
I'm not a web developper but I had just the idea to write a few lines of CSS to make wikipedia readable again. My idea was just to get inspired by Firefox reader's mode. So with a few lines of CSS, I was able to really improve my user interface.
I've edited my vector.css file.
max-width: 800px;.
padding-right: 40%;
font: Helvetica;
font-size: 1.0em;and line-height 1.6
line-height: 1.6em;
color: #333;
Therefore adding this text to vector.css make Wikipedia really really nice :
#firstHeading {
width: 100%;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
padding-right: 40%;
max-width: 800px;
}
#bodyContent {
width: 100%;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
padding-right: 40%;
background-color: #FFFFFF;
color: #333;
max-width: 800px;
font: Helvetica;
font-size: 1.0em;
line-height: 1.6em;
}
I think that this can be useful for many people.
Any CSS specialist wanting to help me improve this CSS is welcome.
-- PAC2 ( talk) 19:26, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
Hi. This will not really useful to everybody. But IMO, it'll be handy to have an option (gadget) to display a citation count next to each source in the sources section of an article. For example,
This would count,
not as 1 citation of Sarkar but 3.
Such a feature would allow editors/readers to evaluate (across reflists, notelists, etc.) which sources the article largely relies on. It might also be useful to sort the sources list by citation count.-- Cpt.a.haddock ( talk) (please ping when replying) 09:25, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
As someone who has spent years correcting typos on Wikipedia, I have found many errors that could have been avoided by the original author proofreading his creation. Can we not do something more to encourage contributors to proofread? Or even automatically suggest corrections as WP:AWB or Grammarly do? Even a pop-up window upon submission of a new article or a notice to a talk page would likely be helpful. -- LilHelpa ( talk) 11:32, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
Hello. You are invited to comment on this RfC, which seeks to reform certain aspects of Wikipedia's dispute resolution processes. Biblio ( talk) 15:47, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
I'm looking for feedback on my initial draft of a proposal for a new section added to the policy What Wikipedia is not. It distills the long established practice of not taking sides in disputes, and giving due weight to significant dissent. I've noticed that sometimes IPs and SPAs are on a mission to change an article to take unresolved questions and resolve them. Marketers often want articles to say definitively that their company's product is the leader in its category. Quite a few want ownership of inventions assigned unequivocally to one nation, and no other. Many are partisans, many are just using Wikipedia for its most popular purpose: answering questions. When it's for a trivia quiz or to settle a bet, many readers won't accept anything but an either/or answer, when the sources are telling us is "it depends".
- Wikipedia is not the final arbiter of truth
Wikipedia is not written to settle bar bets.
The policies requiring a neutral point of view and verifiability, and prohibiting publishing original thought, mean that Wikipedia editors, and the articles they write, cannot judge who is right in an entrenched disagreement. Articles focus mainly on facts that are most widely accepted and established, giving little space to on fringe ideas, but nonetheless, significant dissent from mainstream views is given proportionate attention. When views are divided, Wikipedia struggles to accurately portray that division, not oversimplify it.
Wikipedia cannot resolve questions that established experts have not themselves fully resolved. The ambiguities and contradictions of real life cannot be artificially made simple and tidy by Wikipedia. Articles can strive to give simple explanations for complicated concepts, but they cannot do away with complexity itself, nor make a roundabout series of events into a straightforward narrative. This does not mean Wikipedia should present facts as if they were opinions, only that Wikipedia does not add weight to the judgement of reliable sources.
An encyclopedia article is not the place to find the definitive answer to the question of whether the motorcycle is a German, French, or American invention. Wikipedia can verify that for a long time, most mainstream authorities agreed it was the Daimler Reitwagen, but the muddy and complicated picture made by reputable dissenters who bring up earlier steam motorcycles cannot be neatly cleaned up by Wikipedia editors. The International Astronomical Union's mission may include announcing, once and for all, that Pluto is not a planet, but Wikipedia's mission is only to describe the IAU's statements, and the significance and influence the IAU represents, but not to give or withhold a Wikipedia seal of approval. An encyclopedia of unlimited size can give a plot summary and production details of the Friends episode that featured the practice of going commando, but Wikipedia cannot change from opinion to fact the assertion that Friends is almost solely responsible for popularizing the slang term for not wearing underwear.
Changing an article, or requesting that it be changed, to give answers unambiguous enough to settle your bar bet is contrary to Wikipedia's core principles.
I threw in a few colorful illustrations from my own editing experience. I'm sure there are some issues of this type that I'm not familiar with. I'd like to draft a proposal that doesn't get bogged down in choosing the perfect wording, and can simply gauge consensus for or against the basic idea of this kind of addition to WP:NOT. Thanks in advance! -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 06:27, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
Just like people turn to Snopes to debunk internet memes. Or PolitiFact or FactCheck.org to adjudicate public statements. Perhaps I should adjust it to include "Wikipedia is not your Snopes, or PoliticFact or FactCheck.org." It's not that we don't dabble in that, for example at List of common misconceptions. The central point is that we don't feel obligated to issue a ruling on every question. Many of these "lie checkers" have a bias toward giving some kind of answer, even if the data doesn't fully support a definitive conclusion. So the driving force behind my proposal is the No original research policy. Fudging, or erring, or ignoring contrary evidence, ignoring dissenting points of view, because we want articles to offer clear solutions or conclusions or judgements not fully supported by the sources.
Or because we want to define or categorize things. I guess you could call me one of the editors who thinks Wikipedia:Categorization is broken. It is mostly wonderful, but there is pressure to pigeonhole things into one category or another, but not both, not neither. "A place for everything". What if nature doesn't give us things that have a place? What if our taxonomy is flawed? Often, the taxonomist isn't a reliable source, it's a Wikipedia editor. Creating a taxonomy out of whole cloth violates WP:NOR. What if the sources don't tell us what category something belongs in? The intent of this WP:NOT addition is to offer support for editors who resist forcing an article into a category for the sake of sticking it somewhere rather than nowhere. I don't have a proposal that would fix the categorization policy, but I think this small addition to WP:NOT could help editors resolve some disputes, and help educate the general public about what we really do.
-- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 01:23, 27 July 2017 (UTC)The difference is that soapboxing or promotion means one supports one point of view, and opposes others. Editors seeking clarity and simplicity, or answers that can let them score trivia night, don't necessarily care which side 'wins'. They aren't even that concerned with 'truth'; as long as they are given one and only one answer to their question, giving that answer the Wikipedia seal of approval. Similarly, editors who definitively categorize a topic when the sources don't support such certainty aren't using Wikipedia as a soapbox or means of promotion. They just want things to be neat and tidy, and perhaps they think Wikipedia's policies encourage neat and tidy versions of facts, and discourage uncertainty.
There are are often overlong, and redundant, discussions that usually reach the same conclusion, since the NOR, RS, and V policies don't support pat answers unless sources to justify it. These redundant discussions might be avoided if WP:NOT said explicitly that Wikipedia is not here to give easy answers, and policy doesn't favor either certainty or uncertainty, only faithfulness to sources.
-- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 19:26, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
Is anyhow familiar with the Kim Jong-un non-free image thing?
The community has now wasted hundreds of hours on reads and keystrokes over this matter.
Do you remember Wikipedia:Donated artwork?
Bottom line:
It listed BLP articles with huge hits needing any image. Artists make a one-hour drawing to get credit and half a million views a year. No money offered. No takers. Artists are poor. Asked at WMF and it was all hoops to jump through to loosen the purse strings.
What if Wikipedia:Donated artwork tendered? An off-wiki crowd-funding/donation thing? Would-be WMF donators sick of the pile of unused loot instead put their cash into something direct. Thoughts? Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 00:28, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
Hi Nil Einne. I think you're probably right. It just pains me to see all those keystrokes landing there instead of in the mainspace. I do say "probably" because the current artworks are really lousy. If a great pic of the man were to be added, I do think it would at least reduce the amount of wasted resources. And a decent drawing wouldn't take long. We're not talking oil paint here, just a good sketch by someone who could really capture him. Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 00:59, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
Hi Ntsimp and Martin of Sheffield. Tender, yes, okay, I think I got the wrong word. I've seen ads in newspapers headed "Tender" with the text reading '"...100 park benches required...place your lowest bid...", that sort of thing. The idea was to put a price on an image to be created, or maybe to see what people would bid, or maybe for people to link to their creation, and financial donators would offer money for the one they prefer. You know, 'tender'. Something like that. Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 00:59, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
Request for tender, that sort of thing. Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 01:00, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
First I must say that also from a technical perspective, is Wikipedia a really great invention. But we have text and we have images (and also moving images). But if it's possible from a technical aspect, would I propose a third such option. In which one or a few images can be "tied" to a certain text, for explaining reasons. I imagine some kind of "block of image(s) and text", which could be included inside articles, at any location in the text. Just as an example (nothing else). A four stroke piston engine. One picture of each of the four strokes (and how the valves opens and closes), with a specific text tied to each of the images. (I know this nowadays can be done even better with a moving illustration, but this isn't about the example, but in general) This "block" of one or more images with one joint text or one text per image, should still be able to edit and can be moved. But if the common text either before or after "the block" becomes shorter or longer, will the "block" still remains as one unit. Another point here, is to be able to have several images on the same line (and from left to right, normally). The "block" becomes a "stand alone" object. Sometimes doesn't illustrative images quite fit horizontally with the explaining text. And common image texts are to be brief. The so called "block" can be edited by any contributor, but when other texts (located above or below a "block") changes size, should the "blocks" be intact. I hope this idea is understood. Usage can be for any type of processes (within history, math, physics etc) or for exemplification, that is best presented all across the screen horizontally. They also ought to be removed if their purposes are not obvious, and are not intended for, for instance picture galleries etc. An overflow of such "blocks" isn't what I hope for. There must be either "a line of explanation" or (in cases with a single image) an explanation which really needs to be tied to a specific image. Boeing720 ( talk) 00:50, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
Since the citing system (references) has become quite complex over the years and can vary a lot throughout the Wikipedias and other sister projects, I started to think about special project that would deal just with references.
The main idea is to collect data of publications (similar to library identifiers) that are used as sources in articles. Every "unit" would be given it's own number (U9748 for example or something else, similar to Wikidata's "Q") that would be cited in the code of the article (Some statement.<ref>U9748, pages 123–127.</ref>
). Every Wikipedia should then create it's own module with definition of style of citing.
The project could probably be offering automated categorisation of publications by authors, years, languages ... Every unit would have the list with global usage, similar to Commons. One of the advantages of this feature is also a simple tracking of fake sources. User identifying one can easily see wherever the unreliable publication is cited. Besides, codes of articles would become much lighter, since all citing templates are minimized. -- Janezdrilc ( talk) 19:48, 30 July 2017 (UTC)
Background: Over the past few years, I've been working on the Leo Frank article, receiving a peer review at the end of 2014, nominating it for GA in 2015 (the first time was quickfailed due to an edit war from a sock, and the second passed after an extensive review from SilkTork). I nominated it in FAC in the fall of 2016, but came up just short after another arduous review.
Recently I've considered reviewing the first FAC, making any appropriate changes, and renominating at FAC. But I realized after considering the process so far that I don't have confidence that a second FAC would actually improve the article. This is because of the time invested by one reviewer at GAN versus the comparatively ad-hoc nature of FAC.
To illustrate this, have a look at the article I worked on and mentioned above, Leo Frank. To a casual observer who's not familiar with him or his murder trial, it may seem long-winded for a Wikipedia article. Indeed, the GAN process significantly elongated the article, going from 78K characters in August 2015, peaking at over 125K in the review process, and back down to 108K in October after a considerable amount of trimming at the end by the reviewer. The article still grew by 30K, and this was a point of contention in the FAC. Brian Boulton recalled from the 2014 peer review that the article had grown considerably between that review and the FAC, and he and Sarastro encouraged me to further remove some of the content. I was reluctant to do so, and this became a point of contention between myself and Sarastro during the review. He felt that I was ignoring his comments, when I simply didn't want the work I had done in GAN to largely be reverted.
I realized that the reason for this difference in opinion for article length between reviewers who are all highly experienced and skilled, namely SilkTork versus Brian and Sarastro, is a matter of the review format. GAN allows one reviewer to dive deep into a subject, as SilkTork did with this article. He learned about Frank, his trial, and the source material extensively as to give a high-quality and thorough review. FAC reviewers, on the other hand, have a higher number of articles they are concerned with at any one time and generally just go through the bullet points, doing basic copyedits, source reviews, image licensing checks, etc.
I feel like the GAN process was a better system despite the lower standards. I also think there should be something that goes beyond GAN that includes a more stringent criteria for passing and solicits feedback from more than one person. A-class does this, using three reviewers with expertise in the area (military history and tropical cyclones being the two prominent examples currently) and a higher bar than GA while slightly short of FA.
My proposal is to make the FAC process more like A-class, while retaining the FA criteria and gold star. We could keep A-class for the WikiProjects that choose to use it, but have a pool of FA reviewers and have any three (or whichever number we decide by consensus here) review a particular article. The reviewers could decide which articles they want to review based on their interests and expertise, while not needing to be a part of any WikiProject. That way, you don't have the ad-hoc issues in FAC of reviewers coming and going to a particular article, and the A-class problem of not enough skilled reviewers in all but two projects to make it happen, in addition to the other issues outlined above. This will make FACs more thorough and completed in a shorter time frame. I'm open to any feedback below and will condense this into an official Pump proposal if there is enough interest. Tonystewart14 ( talk) 19:08, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
I really like the Thank user for edit feature of wikipedia, and I think we should also be allowed to thank IP editors for good edits. I think this would help spread wikilove and positivity! -- HighFlyingFish ( talk) 19:52, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
We discourage people leaving messages on IP talkpages for the same reason.- that the community consciously acknowledges that (most) IPs cannot be full partners in the collaborative process. As I said, that's only one of the many serious problems with unregistered editing, but there are still plenty of experienced editors who defend WMF's unyielding position on unregistered editing. In my opinion that is one of the few most pressing problems with the project today, and it's getting no attention aside from occasional scattered, off-topic comments like mine above. ― Mandruss ☎ 20:52, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
there is no good way to communicate with an IP except to drop a message in some other talk space (article talk, noticeboard, etc.) and hope they happen to see it, in other words? ‑ Iridescent 21:04, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
I often find myself stumbling upon Wikipedia articles that I would like to read, even though I don't have time to. To resolve this issue I would suggest the implementation of a basic "read list" feature. This would just be a simple (ordered by priority or date added) list that is tied to ones account. It would be added to and then removed from once the user has finished with each respective page. When the user then views a page again, they can see whether they've marked it as read. This kind of idea could then also be extended in a variety of ways. I also fail to see any technical constraints that may be involved. -- Sherbet-head ( talk) 14:54, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
Such a thing already exists (at least in the android app), with the same name as the heading here. See:
It did exist on the desktop as mw:Extension:Gather but was killed due to wikidrama. It will probably go next to the mobile web. 11:19, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
Do you mean having a summary or abstract at the top of each article? It is a good idea and I rather like it. Vorbee ( talk) 17:52, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
Hi, I'm the product lead for the "reading team" at the foundation. Just a heads up that we are looking to enable folks to synch reading lists across devices (apps, desktop, and mobile web). This is briefly alluded to in our portion of the Wikimedia Foundation's annual plan: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2017-2018/Final/Programs/Product#Program_2:_Better_Encyclopedia (Objective #4). We are starting with the apps, which are simpler, but will bring it to the web at some point. A complicating factor on the web is that we tend to get more friction (rightly so) in rolling things out and by the presence of the Wikipedia " book creator" tool on desktop, which serves a similar purpose but creates a list that is public and anyone can edit. One of the mistakes we made with mw:Extension:Gather was making the reading-lists public. I would expect that Android app lists will synch across devices in the next quarter, but it might be more than 6 months before the iOS has it. It is unfortunately not part of our web plans for this fiscal (ending July 2018). Let me know if you have any questions or thoughts about this Jkatz (WMF) ( talk) 00:07, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
Hello. You are invited to comment on this ANI reform RfC. Please do not comment in this thread; post all comments on the RfC pages. Thanks, Biblio ( talk) 19:29, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
I've come across situations where looking through a public noticeboard fails to find an item of interest because it has been renamed since the discussion was archived. Examples:
Is there a technical solution to this, such as searching the archive for a certain code like the WP database page ID for users, or a Wikidata Q-code ID for an article? Could certain things be annotated automatically to make future searching more tenable, like the {{ la}} and {{ userlinks}} templates for instance? ☆ Bri ( talk) 20:35, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
ooh yeah. it looks like great feature. wow. I'm going to want it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NostalgicColorBird ( talk • contribs) 13:20, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
Currently the searching templates {{look from|xxxxx}} and {{intitle|xxxxx}} seem to look only for letters and numbers and ignore punctuation etc. This can be a nuisance, because, currently there is a policy to remove the comma when a page name ends in ", Sr." or ", Jr.", and to help to do this work, there is no easy way to search for these two character sequences, but someone must look at every page name by eye, and requests to remove these "senior and junior commas" come in endlessly in dribs and drabs instead of someone being able to quickly call search for ", Sr." and ", Jr." and get the job complete and done and over. Please provide an option for Template:look from and Template:intitle to search for all characters, not only for letters and numbers. Anthony Appleyard ( talk) 05:34, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
Many Wikipedia articles have no image despite the associated Wikidata image having a P18 (image) property.
For instance, the article Thug Behram has no image, despite the Wikidata item having a perfectly usable image. Wikidata has more images because in non-English speaking countries (ie most of the world) the local language article is usually the best illustrated, and images make it to Wikidata via infobox harvesting or WDFIST.
Idea: How about having a tool that would suggest images for articles?
Use case: I am presented with an English Wikipedia article on the left, and an image (together with its title/description/categories/discussion) on the right. If I find the image fitting, I press a button and the image is automagically added to the article. Ideally the image is added to the article infobox if there is one with a recognized image property.
Images make Wikipedia articles much more attractive and informative, so I believe that would help a lot. Such a tool could then be ported to other Wikipedias too. Is there maybe such a tool, and I have not managed finding it? Cheers! Syced ( talk) 03:28, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
Interesting idea. Building a naive tool do to this is trivial. The problem is dealing with all the drama that comes with it and the mangling that may happen in complicated cases.
There also aren't that many apparently. A bot could probably add all images within a day or two, less than a week for sure. The problem of course is that it has false positives because it relies on mw:Extension:PageImages, and some images may come with all the drama that naturally follows any automated task of that nature. Any semi-automated tool doing this on a continuous basis would fail miserably without a lot of work because of the unstructured nature of wikitext, the inconsistent way in which templates add images to pages, and a lot of edge cases.
It might be easier to make a bot that suggests such images on the talk page, and then editors can easily add (or not) them as needed. This would also reduce the need to randomly come across an article that needs file. Currently though, it might be better to create a bot that suggests images that are used in linked interwiki pages, maybe if 3 wikis or more are using the same image it then adds it to the talk page (and / or wikidata).
See also: https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/wp_no_image/enwiki.html , https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T54464, https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T53031 . 197.218.80.151 ( talk) 21:14, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
Templates in first section but without images:
Images in another section
With no provenance suggesting that it might have been drawn from life, the Thug Behram image linked from Wikidata blatantly fails WP:PORTRAIT. It should not be used as is. My fear is that making bots or automatic tools suggest the addition of such images means making the rest of us spend too much more of our time policing the articles they're added to and undoing the damage. — David Eppstein ( talk) 07:40, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
There's an image adding section at Wikidata:The Game. -- 167.58.55.39 ( talk) 15:05, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
Currently members have to be added to Wikiproject directory manually. Is there a way to auto-populate the list based on certain criteria like User pages with Userbox WikiProject, etc.? Also to know more about the level of user, his permissions and contribution history links can be shown. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo ( talk · contribs · count) 08:09, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
A list of articles by size and quality comparison would be good, just as we have importance and quality comparison. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo ( talk · contribs · count) 07:14, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
Rather nice idea, I like it. Vorbee ( talk) 07:59, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
Article Merger procedure is pretty slow and cumbersome, and most editors choose to stay away from the same. Category merger and template merger procedures have improved over time, but article Merger hasn't progressed as much as it was required to. Few of the major factors include lack of standardisation, non-effective templates, complex process and no bots involved for any of the tasks. I would like to invite suggestion to improve upon the same. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo ( talk · contribs · count) 02:54, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
Or, Capankajsmilyo, you can use the RfC process instead. But, like WhatamIdoing said, merging is a lot of work with needed skills. -- George Ho ( talk) 20:27, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
Would it be a good idea to involve bots in the process of removing unsourced info from Wikipedia? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo ( talk · contribs · count) 02:56, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
How abo(u)t we have a bot add the "No references" template to articles with no references?-- NostalgicColorBird ( talk) 21:20, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
First of all, does every conceivable type of office really need its very own Infobox? For example, Template:Infobox Political post, Template:Infobox Bishopric, and Template:Infobox Monarchy are all arguably merge-able into Template:Infobox official post. Political posts, bishoprics, and even monarchies are all examples of offices, right?
Also, the Article Acting president is less than a stub and could easily be a Section of another Article, or maybe 2 other Articles. I could see a sort of fork-merge where it is "merged" into both Acting (law) and--hear me out on this-- Regent. There are countries that don't fit neatly into a single category. The United Arab Emirates, although it consists of monarchies at the local level, actually has a President and not a King at the national level. (Although the Presidency is customarily held by the Emir of Abu Dhabi, strictly speaking the Council could elect someone else as President if it saw fit.) North Korea behaves exactly like a hereditary monarchy where the actual means of succession is concerned, but all 3 of its rulers have still insisted on calling themselves "President" and not "King." Here on Wikipedia we insist on calling Vatican City a "monarchy," but that is not what the Roman Catholic Church teaches! The Church's teachings are very clear that the Pope is not a King, but rather, a servant of Jesus Christ the King. (And this is coming from a Catholic.)
It is, however, quite cut-and-dry as to when an office is technically vacant and has a placeholder or substitute to tie things over. My point is this: The concept of a placeholder or substitute for a vacant office is much clearer than the exact borderline between a monarchy and a presidential republic. The qualifier "acting" and the title "regent" are 2 names for the same concept, albeit usually the application of that concept in different forms of government.
I know not which one of these 2 office- and officeholder-related issues to bring up first, which is why (for now) I brought them both up in the Idea Lab area of the Village Pump. The Mysterious El Willstro ( talk) 03:08, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
While reviewing new pages, I am often seeing articles of the pattern "List of programs broadcast by <TV channel>". I have even nominated an article for deletion before. Even though wikipedia has list articles, I am not sure about encyclopaedic nature of the lists of TV shows, as such a list is ever on-going, most of the lists are but this list would be increasing a lot as there are obviously many shows in a given month on a TV channel. Even though such a list would be "harmless", I believe it would not be an encyclopaedic one. (I cant think of any reason that would make such lists encyclopaedic.)
I am not sure what's going on with me. Maybe, with time, my expectations for standards of the term "encyclopaedic" have gone very high. But talking about these lists, I am not sure if a person checks such lists to find a show. If a particular show is notable enough for enwiki, the article obviously explains on which TV channel(s) it was/is broadcast. If a show doesnt have an article but is mentioned somewhere in another article, it can be mentioned where the show ran. Not exactly, but it is sort of "existence is not notability" here.
Do we have to create lists of everything that exists? These lists of TV shows are exactly same to "List of United States Armed Forces employees". A common argument to defend that list is "it is list of shows broadcast by a notable TV channel, it should be kept". A same argument can be made: "it is a list of employees of a notable armed force". Do we include only the subjects in the list who have their own article (TV shows, and employees of armed forces)?
What I am trying to say here is, I think the lists are not encyclopaedic, and we should come up with a guideline regarding the lists. Kindly let me know what you think. —usernamekiran (talk) 13:06, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
I noticed that quite a few articles contain biblequotes that have external links. Why don't we replace them with a link to Wikibooks-hosted version of the bible? I assume its public domain by now. ((( The Quixotic Potato))) ( talk) 21:01, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
Would it be a good idea to add talk headers to all article talk pages? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo ( talk · contribs · count) 09:34, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
"In accordance with Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines, this template should not be added to otherwise empty talk pages"; I myself for a short while was adding it to talk pages as part of routine citation cleanup but have stopped when an editor pointed me to this. Some (like the recent deletion nominator) have suggested to replace the talk header by automatic messages which would be another possibility... — Paleo Neonate – 17:14, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
It is not uncommon for someone to write into Wikimedia (OTRS) expressing concern that a search engine search of their name produces some hits in Wikipedia. We have well-established procedures in the case of two situations:
I'm currently looking at a real live request ( ticket:2017080410013898) where a person's name is mentioned in the page I linked and they have requested that we remove it. How does the community think we should respond?-- S Philbrick (Talk) 19:05, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
I had forgotten that AfD was no-indexed. I can think of one plausible possibility. Many people right into complain that an article about them is deleted, and and we commonly point them to the AFD page. Even though it is no index, obviously they can reach it if they have the actual URL. I thought we were getting requests for removal of information as a result of a Google search but it is possible they are seeing the page because we told them about it; I'll have to watch these careful in the future to find out if they are true search engine hits.
However, whether it is indexed or not or whether there are clever or alternative ways to get around it, misses the main point of the request — given our interest in protecting the privacy of people at some level, should we accede to requests that a mention of a name in the list of deleted pages should qualify for removal. Our interest in protecting the privacy of individuals is in support of removal while our interest in monitoring our own workflows is in opposition to the request. Is there a way to accomplish both?-- S Philbrick (Talk) 01:04, 22 August 2017 (UTC)
I suggest a slight modification to user watchlist pages. Instead of just showing pages updated since the last view with a green dot, the modification proposed is to show the number of edits since the last view - say, a number following the dot or a number within a larger dot. The utility of the proposed would facilitate whether the user chooses the dif option (to see just one change) or the hist option (to track all changes since the last view). Regards Cinderella157 ( talk) 08:17, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
Recently a proposal came up on a wikiproject talk page, and it turned out this was something that editors recalled having seen proposed on the Village Pump before, but no-one was able to locate it. This situation I think highlights a general problem with accessing past discussions. Currently, all we can do is search for the words or phrases that we reckon a relevant thread might have contained, but this doesn't always work as there is a huge number of ways that the idea could have been worded and it's not possible to anticipate them all. The other option is browsing through the titles of all previous discussions, but that's not humanely possible as there are thousands of them.
The solution I can think of is the introduction of a system of tagging Village Pump discussions. If a new thread is started, then an editor will tag it for relevant topics using a controlled vocabulary of a few dozen terms, and then a bot will add a link to this thread to a master index, which will be arranged and browsable by these tags. Would this be workable? It takes an initial effort to program the bot, and then a small amount of tagging work each time a new thread is started, but in the long run it will probably be the only way to make past discussions actually findable. Any thoughts? – Uanfala 19:01, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
I guess the time has come to upgrade {{
authority control}}
to a core component of wikipedia. As it already uses wikidata, it would be a good step to show authority control bar above categories on pages by default, if it has values and get rid of the manually added templates in all the articles. -- Pankaj Jain
Capankajsmilyo (
talk ·
contribs ·
count) 07:24, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
I've never done this before, so hopefully if I am off-target about the right way to do it somebody can assist.
I have recently read a few articles here on movies just aiming to get an idea whether or not I wanted to see them. I noticed that there is usually a plot summary and of course there should be. However I don't want to read that when I haven't seen the movie and I am deciding whether or not to buy it on disk or go and see it at a cinema. The same may apply to people seeking more information about a novel. Wouldn't it make sense to have a policy of making this item collapsible so it is easier to avoid reading that part of the article? Perhaps even a policy that reviews of any work of fiction could be written with the plot summary collapsible and possibly already collapsed by default. This would leave the plot summary freely available to those who want it but easily avoided for those reading such articles for reasons similar to mine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Portobello Prince ( talk • contribs) 00:27, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
I want to develop another proposal to modify cross-wiki search results from sister projects. The only option we have in user preferences to modify the search results is opting the results out, i.e. hiding them while logged-in. Maybe we can add more options in the user preferences to modify the results. Indeed, I realize that modifying the results can be done via user preferences or user scripts.
Personally, I am no fan of user scripts as I can see them as special treatments for individual users or something like that. Well, I used to have one user script, but then I had it deleted and am not planning to re-create one at this time. Nevertheless, I can request one if having another proposal discussion is too soon.
Per RfC discussion, the results from Wikimedia Commons, Wikiversity, and Wikinews are disabled. I thought about having individual options to opt-in the results from either Wikiversity, Wikimedia Commons, and/or Wikinews (without enabling the results for logged-out users). I don't mind opting-in the multimedia results from Commons (especially by typing at least one word) as long as the multimedia results are hidden from logged-out users (i.e. IP addresses) per discussion. As for Wikinews, well... I know that Wikinews has... issues. I have no opinion on Wikiversity results. Personally, I would like to include them while logged in my account. We wouldn't show those results to general audience, would we? Instead, we can have the results from those projects restricted to logged-in users via user preferences.
I also thought about proposing individual options to opt-out either Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikivoyage, Wikisource, and/or Wikibooks. Personally, I want to opt-out either Wikivoyage and/or Wikibooks. However, I don't travel a lot, so I would opt-out just Wikivoyage.
People have questioned how cross-wiki search results can improve English Wikipedia. To me, the results can reduce likelihood of problematic articles that do not belong in Wikipedia. Also, I don't have to create redirects to Wiktionary entries, do I? Of course, experiences can be different individually. Still, I wonder whether I can start another proposal discussion or request a user script. -- George Ho ( talk) 19:19, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
Howdy all. I'm looking for some people who might be interested in helping me do some template work. What I'm looking at doing is converting the many, MANY olympic event sidebar templates ( Template:GymnasticsAt2012SummerOlympics or Template:SwimmingAt2000SummerOlympics for example). Ideally I'd like to make use of {{ sidebar}} but they may require a custom template from the ground up. Right now I'm just brainstorming but wanted to see if there is anyone that would be interested in being involved? -- Zackmann08 ( Talk to me/ What I been doing) 18:19, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
Navboxes at the bottoms of articles are a useful part of any article: they help to seat the article in a wider theme or setting, and link the wiki together. However, some articles are linked to by a navbox, but then do not have the navbox itself in the article. This presents a number of issues:
I think these issues are worth resolving, as my contributions reflect, but the edits involved strike me as something that could be automated easily. I have some thoughts on how a bot that performs these tasks could work, but details like that aren't worth discussing unless there is a potential use case for a bot, and there is also the chance that a bot or something like AWB can do (or is doing) this already. Any thoughts? -- EnronEvolved My Talk Page 18:13, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
# at the starts of lines makes a numbered list, as is well known. But how can I make the sequence of numbers start with 0 rather than 1? Anthony Appleyard ( talk) 16:14, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
I recently noticed on another editable website site that when you try to save your edit there is a prompt like "Ask another editor to review this edit?". I thought this was a marvelous idea. I was a new editor there and the editing was quite complex so I could really relate to the feeling of uncertainty that a new editor feels. When the site asked me to ask another user to review my edit, it felt nice and it was a great way for me to signal that I was uncertain if I'd done something right and I needed help until I get more familiar with the editing on the site. It also tells other users that even if I screwed up an edit that I was participating in good faith. I think such an idea might really work well at Wikipedia too. Perhaps a proposal might be to have by default all edits by IPs and new accounts asking if the editor would like such a review. We'd also have to think about how we'll handle these requests; so ultimately we'd have to upstream a proposal to Mediawiki as a feature request, but what are your general thoughts on the impact on users? Would it help them? Help reader retention? New editor uptake? Etc. Jason Quinn ( talk) 15:15, 14 September 2017 (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.
Problem:
"attacks by violent non-state actors for political, religious, or ideological motive".
Proposed solution: Address this issue by amending WP:OR (or similar policy?) to require:
Comments: We understand that carving out a specific topic for special attention in policy pages is undesirable to some editors. However, we believe this deserves special attention because of (1) the seriousness of the label "terrorist", (2) the persistence of the problem across multiple articles, and (3) the contentiousness of the topic vis-a-vis politics and religion. We already have discretionary and general sanctions related to this area ( WP:ARB911, WP:ARBAP2, WP:TROUBLES, WP:ARBPIA, WP:GS/ISIL), demonstrating it is a perennial topic for disputes. As such we believe that this broad topic warrants specific attention by Wikipedia policy. The goal of this proposal is to provide clarity to editors and to establish a community norm regarding the application of the label "terrorism".
Signed, EvergreenFir and Doug Weller; Posted by EvergreenFir (talk) 18:40, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
Anyone have any suggestions? EvergreenFir (talk) 20:10, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
The below is transposed from Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not: it got a fair amount of support there (and do please read that conversation), but I'd like to take it a 'level up' and transform it into a concrete proposition, so any input and help would be appreciated.
Since Wikipedia is (one of) the world's most consulted website-references that 'anyone can edit', that makes it a prime target for anyone seeking to WP:SOAPBOX-'broadcast' it. I've seen this a lot in my ~13 years here, but have seen little done to counter it.
It takes a contributor/admin with a lot of patience and experience to see a widespread, organised 'slow attack' pattern any given conflict (because where there's soapboxing, there's most always conflict), but most are too busy/'here and now'-focused to see any larger pattern, and any admin intervening towards the end of such a conflict will find an unreadable talk-page mess almost impossible to unravel, which makes one tend to take claims at face value and only deal with the behavioural aspects of the situation, and this too works to the soapboxers' advantage.
Most of the tactics used to impose and 'enforce' non- WP:V is a 'slow attack' that often passes under the radar (and over the head) of beleaguered admins and Wiki in general. Namely:
While soapboxers learn from their successes and failures, Wikipedia does, too, but soapboxing seems to be still both above and below Wikipedia's mostly 'here and now' radar. But if some patience-laden people conscious of this trend were to populate a task force or notice board dedicated to countering it, it might focus and streamline efforts in that direction, as well as raising vigilance against future occurrences. TP ✎ ✓ 20:10, 17 September 2017 (UTC)
Wikipedia has Wikipedia: Articles for deletion, and it is not all uncommon for an article to go through a second nomination for deletion there. Wikipedia also has Wikipedia: Requested articles, and some requests - such as the request I made some time ago for an article called "Parametric data" - have been there a long time. Would it be possible to have a box in the requested articles box called "Second requests?" I do not know how long articles can remain at Wikipedia: Requested articles without been removed, but if articles cannot remain there indefinitely, this idea might help Wikipedia. Vorbee ( talk) 15:47, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
I did type in a couple of names in the category "People in Medicine" which subsequently got articles created on them, so my guess to the answers to your questions is yes, the space in Wikipedia for article requests does have some merits. Vorbee ( talk) 15:38, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
I want to propose a new feature. We can add a new button "concise" on every article to display a shorter version of the article which contain only most important or necessary information.
This can be achieved on client side only without increasing any extra load on server.
We have to add an extra tag < n> something like this
Wikipedia article
information1
information2
<n> information3 <\n>
information 4
<n> information 5 <\n>
end of article
where n denotes necessary.
By default the user will be given the full article. But when user will press the "concise" button given at top of article the article will change to shorter version like this
Wikipedia article
<n> information 3 <\n>
<n> information 5 <\n>
end of article
Here the <n> tag will help in filtering of most necessary information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kuldeep ra1 ( talk • contribs)
A lot of articles move tables into templates to be able to use these tables in more than one article. See Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive 2017 1#Is it possible to enable the VisualEditor for some templates?
Problem is that for templates, the VisualEditor isn't enabled and probably never will be.
There is a work-around, but it's cumbersome:
Using sub pages in the article namespace just for tables (to be transcluded in the main article) apparently isn't allowed.
Presumably the Draft namespace can't be used either, as it is strictly separated from the article namespace.
Technically I could create an article in a new namespace myself, though again this probably isn't allowed (yet).
So I propose to add (allow) a new VE enabled namespace to be used for templates which are awkward to edit without the VisualEditor.
Again, the usage I have in mind are tables, so if generally allowing all sorts of templates is a problem, maybe limit it to just tables and name it "Table:" for example.
-- Pizzahut2 ( talk) 01:30, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
I'd like to be notified when an article has an unusual spike in page views/traffic. This usually means there has been a news story or event, typically signaling the article needs updating with new information/sources. -- Green C 03:58, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
Is there any way that a Wikipedia user can create a list of favorite pages and entries, i.e. a favorites/bookmarks list just like one would find in any Internet browser?
if this function does not currently exist, then is there a way that we could please create this? if so, could we also create a feature that would allow the user to see the number of edits that have occurred since their last visit there? I appreciate any help. thanks!! -- Sm8900 ( talk) 02:18, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
My Favorites | |
---|---|
TRAPPIST-1 | A star with seven earth-sized planets so close they probably share the same exosphere |
Grover's algorithm | An explanation of how much quantum computing can speed up computation, and its limits |
Hello
I am a Farsi (Persian) Wikipedia user. So forgive my language flaws!
I've designed some designs for Wikipedia. To promote wikipedia and its users. I raised this issue here, and my question is: Is there an internal page for similar designs? And can anyone help me with delivering these designs to their audience? I printed them on t-shirt and it was very cool.
thanks, Seyyedalith ( talk) 16:22, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
Wikimedia received a suggestion from a reader who thought that all tables ought to be made automatically sortable. While I like sortable tables, I think the literal suggestion is a nonstarter as I suspect there are some tables which wouldn't work well if they were simply transformed to be sortable.
However, it occurs to me that we might make sortable the default. Obviously, if you decide to create a table from scratch using WMediawiki markup or some of the tools designed to create tables you have to make that decision on your own, but if you use VE to make a table it does so fairly nicely, except that the table is not sortable by default.
(As an aside, if you do work with tables and haven't tried the VE table creation, you should. You can simply grab a rectangle of information from a spreadsheet and paste it in. You then may need to specify a header row, but it's quite easy.)
When you create table this way the table starts with certain default properties of which one:
Styled (wikitable) - Has the default setting "on"
While another:
Sortable - Has the default setting "off"
What would happen if the initial default were changed to "on"? It's probably not quite that simple, but what are the downsides?
On occasion, someone will create a table and want it not to be sortable and have to turn it off but that's not very hard to do. I suspect that many people creating tables aren't even aware that sortability is an option and this would help them understand that it is available and easy.-- S Philbrick (Talk) 16:10, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
I have a tendency to forget to write </small> after parenthetical comments and have to go back. I've also noticed that the cite template puts a big red text about not having a closing /ref but can't really do anything about it. I'm sure there are other tags which, when added without a closing tag, tend usually to be problems. Is there a practical, not too intrusive way to warn editors on saving an edit that there's a problem, without actually stopping them just in case it's something that actually needs to be done? Wnt ( talk) 21:19, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
Currently, Extension:Linter makes this trivial to do (with its API), see Special:LintErrors/missing-end-tag. But doing it for everyone would make saving slow for everybody, because it needs to expand all templates to detect whether the content generates unclosed html tags. If there are no templates or extension tags on a page then it is even easier to detect without even clicking the save button. On simple pages, this should be easily detectable with something like Extension:Codemirror or really any html validating tool.
Due to performance reasons this would probably work best as an opt-in userscript or alternatively the linter extension could do it ( https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T163072) during preview as people already expect that to be slow. 16:53, 23 October 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.92.26 ( talk)
It seems a nonsense to me that we require attribution to IP addresses - if you want your work attributed to you create an account under your name or a pen name. Attributing edits to an IP address when that address may represent many different people is not really attribution. Changing the IP editing screen so that future IP edits are licensed CC-SA as opposed to CC-BY-SA for edits made by registered editors would be a sensible clarification of the difference between the two types of editing. Ϣere SpielChequers 08:28, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
Has anyone ever proposed redesigning the main page, but first having an RfC (or reader survey) to gauge if people actually want the main page to be redesigned? I don't want to dig much into the archives but I haven't found any attempts to obtain a real, solid consensus of "the main page should be redone". Jc86035 ( talk) 15:57, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
The ideal starting point would be a series of questions on the current main page and then see what improvements might be made. Example questions might be:
and so on with all the elements currently on the main page, as well as a list of potential elements to include.
Then open up voting for a month and see what happens. With "no consensus" on any item defaulting to status quo. Cas Liber ( talk · contribs) 02:27, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
...that a very long list of "distinguished" Wikipedia editors/administrators is on the "block list" for SOCKPUPPETING and that even though every one of them has blocked or has supported the blocking of "IP editors" and "sockpuppet editors" for days to months to "indefinitely", their blocks only seem to be for 24 hours according to the "countdown clock". Even more strange is that where a BLOCK NOTICE can be found for the FEW of them that aren't being PROTECTED by having their blocked "status" made "public" on their user/talk pages, the notices seem to claim they've been blocked for 72 hours. And why are their "distinguished" user names not showing up on the "sockpuppet" list? Obviously the actual word SOCKPUPPET isn't being used to DESCRIBE those exalted Gods of Wikipedia, but there are links to the "sockpuppet" list here and there depending on what links one follows from the block list page and clearly they weren't blocked for the "acceptable" use of "alternate accounts. Its interesting that their block notices also state that they will be WELCOME to edit Wikipedia again. No "community discussion" to determine if "sanctions" should have been applied to begin with or what they should be. No kangaroo court of holier-than-thou blowhards holding for from on high about anything and everything BUT "creating an encyclopedia". But then again, given that list of blocked editors/administrators is comprised OF most of the "judges" that SIT on those kangaroo courts or at least arbitrarily take various punitive action against "IP editors" and "sockpuppets" that lead TO kangaroo courts, its not surprising there's no one left to convene one. Kinda gotta wonder just how "thorough" whatever investigation of their sockpuppets actually was and who it was conducted by.
Sure seems like a heck of a good opportunity to make an example out of a bunch of editors/administrators who certainly never hesitated to make an example of others. But there really aren't any CLEAN HANDS around here the way it seems. Who knows HOW LONG the "innocent" editors/administrators who finally were forced to "out" longtime sockpuppeteers have actually known about it but were silent only because of what is in their OWN closets. I do have to say that I'm amazed ANYTHING happened to them. I've "known" or rather have "suspected" For a LONG time that just like MOST "holier-than-thou" power-tripping "authority figures" tend to be excessively judgmental because they're overcompensating for their own "guilty conscience" in part and as bluster to LOOK beyond reproach to scare anyone who might peak in their closets away, not only were that many "judge/jury/executioner" types highly unlikely to ALL be pure as the driven snow OR as "friendly" to so many others JUST LIKE THEM. And when such DEDICATED and COMMITTED WP editors/administrators seem to have nothing but time to spend playing KGB agent investigating OTHERS and time ONLY for their own self-appointed "duties" and "tasks" because anytime they're ASKED to comment on something or contribute to some other way or contact someone on their talk pages they're "busy" or "ill" or on a "Wikibreak" etc, but yet they seem to MAGICALLY SHOW UP on OTHER USERS' talk pages to answer questions asked of others when those others are "busy" or "ill" or on a "Wikibreak", only somebody who lives in a fantasy world of computers and bits and bytes and "academia" with little or no social interaction with "common folk" in the "real world" where people learn to "read" other people while they learn nothing but "code" could believe that's a COINCIDENCE over and over and over.
I could get into how many OTHER Wikipedia "policies" that they've "violated", which honestly is MOST Wikipedia "policies" when you get right down to it and how every one of them has in the past and will in the future block anybody for MANUFACTURED "violations" of "Wikipedia policy" once they "apologize" for their "mistakes", but there's really no point. Anybody "accomplished" and "experienced" long-time editor will have accumulated enough "dirt" on the remaining "legit" Wikipedia power elites to make their lives uncomfortable, and current/former admins/bureaucrats will no doubt have used the "tools" to build their OWN dirt databases probably sufficient to maybe destroy WP as a WHOLE, so they'll come back after about another 23 hours of their "72 hour" blocks, jump through the hoops necessary to get new user names, it'll be in the best interests of the "community" to pretend it never happened and all the "evidence" of their behavior will get flushed down the memory hole. They'll be more careful about how they build their NEW sock farms and they'll continue to do nothing but destroy content for whatever third party is paying them to DELETE CERTAIN INFORMATION just like OTHER "distinguished" editors who righteously block "COI" editors are getting paid or otherwise compensated for doing THAT. It just goes to show that they're all human and fallible after all. And that's the last thing they ever wanted exposed on Wikipedia. Otherwise they wouldn't have been using "alternate accounts" to begin with. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.234.100.169 ( talk) 17:59, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
Sometimes these IPs and IP ranges need to be blocked, but the problem is sometimes these blocks happen over a couple of edits, as if the sysops seriously expect school/college students or employees of large corporations to be perfect angels who never vandalize.Uh... yeah, people shouldn't vandalize. That's not a hard concept. When they do, we block them. -- Izno ( talk) 12:30, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
Recently, there's been some extremely substantial forms of abuse when it comes to file uploads. First, the WP0 abuse from Commons has been drifting our way. These are editors who game their way to autoconfirmed status then immediately use Wikipedia as a warez service, uploading blatantly copyrighted files en masse (music files, entire episodes of TV shows, movies, etc). Second, it is very common for undisclosed paid editors to game their way to autoconfirmed and upload copyrighted company logos. Both of these abuses can be hard to spot, and they sometimes take substantial amounts of time before editors identify and remove the copyrighted material.
I'd like to test the waters on raising the bar for uploading files on enwiki. Right now, the bar is autoconfirmed - 10 edits, 4 days on site. Uploading files is a rather "niche" activity, and newer editors often misunderstand what they can and can't upload. I would say most files that new editors upload that I've encountered are either promotional, copyrighted, or useless. Further, newer editors often upload free images on enwiki, which really should be going to Commons. If we were to raise the bar on uploading files to extended confirmed, we would eliminate this abuse, new editors could still upload free files on Commons, and we could more thoroughly vet non-free files at WP:Files for upload before they're accepted.
Alternatively, if 500/30 is too high a bar, we could use an edit filter to raise the bar to some intermediate level. 100/15 or something like that. What are the community's thoughts on this possibility? ~ Rob13 Talk 13:58, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
I would like to have better access to the rev history page from a diff, with the particular revision I am interested in vertically centered on the page (i.e., displayed at #25 on a 50-count page).
I envision a slight modification to the diff page to add two new links called "Revision in Context" (RIC). Clicking a RIC link would bring up a standard rev history page with 50 revisions (or whatever the default is) but with the selected revision in the center of the page, so that one can more easily see its historical context.
Often, I want to see what happened just before and just after—did they revert something? has there been an edit war? did it go on?—centering the selected rev would provide this. Currently, it's quite awkward to go back half a page worth, and I have to play around with the back 100, forward 50 trick, or use the year-month drop-downs when that happens to place the rev in question at the desired spot (not very often).
For the choice of name, I was inspired by KWIC.
If that is too difficult implementation-wise, then as a next best, I'd like to see a link at the bottom of history pages "+/- half-page" which would move the view portal half the current &limit=
value. A better version of this would be to hyperlink the bullet indicator of each rev (is that even possible?) so a click on the bullet centers that rev vertically.
Mathglot (
talk) 21:39, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
After making a contribution and getting to the "confirmation/here's what else you can do" page, it would be nice if there was an obvious option to return to the previous WIki page. OR the whole payment process should have opened up a new tab so when it's closed I still have my previous page available. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Misscking ( talk • contribs) 16:52, 7 November 2017 (UTC)
Is there already a list of pretty much abandoned and isolated articles in Wikipedia? If not, I highly recommend it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by OfficialNeon ( talk • contribs) 20:41, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
With the upcoming ArbCom election, my proposal is a newsletter delivered to talk pages of subscribers every week or month. This will help people interested in the cases of the ArbCom. The newsletter will describe cases currently at ArbCom, and other happenings. A sample is included below:
What's up with ArbCom? (This line will be titled)
New Requests: Example 1 (Link), Example 2 (Link)
Opened Cases: Example 3 (Link), Example 4 (Link)
Closed Cases: Example 5 (Link), Example 6 (Link)
I have done a diff on a talk page- there was a change at line 273- I clicked on the link and just like the autolinks for reference- was taken to that pont in the text, but double-clicking by mistake, the text editor opened and the cursor was on line 272. I don't know how I ever managed without it! Dreaming again- but what a pleasant dream.-- ClemRutter ( talk) 19:38, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
Okay, I know what you're thinking. Hear me out.
This RfC proposes to reduce the enforcement of WP:NOTNEWS to increase news coverage on Wikipedia.
The rationale is "Wikinews is dead". You know, sure. It's not the most popular WMF project - not by a long shot. However, the problem is mainly that:
Whether or not it's a good or bad idea to put news in Wikipedia is not a discussion for here. However, why does wikipedia not try to increase awareness of sister WMF projects? enwiki is in a good place to do this, it's one of the most popular websites in the world, and is renowned for its impartiality and stunning dedication to consensus. WN is much the same, but without participation. If we could increase participation and awareness (the two go hand in hand, just look at the growth of the number of editors on enwiki), then it could be a quality news source that people rely on.
Isn't it already on the front page? Yes, technically. By the links for Wikibooks and the other pet projects of the WMF. However, if we could link to it more prominently (eventually link to WN articles in the In the News section, perhaps), it would grow a lot more.
Haven't we given it up for dead? They're still publishing articles over there, although admittedly few. We could do a lot better!
I'd just like thoughts at this point. Thanks. ProgrammingGeek talktome 15:56, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
To raise awareness of other Wikimedia foundation projects, could we not put information about them on Wikipedia: Main Page? The main page is one of the most viewed articles on Wikipedia, if not the most viewed, and putting information about Wikipedia's sister projects on the main page would seem a good way to raise awareness of them. Vorbee ( talk) 18:23, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
The Main Page of Wikipedia has a section in its top right-hand corner called "In the news..." ... it should not prove too difficult to put in a note that there is such a website as Wikinews there. Vorbee ( talk) 20:14, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
Perhaps we could have a note at the bottom of the Main Page's "In the news" box saying "For more information on news stories, see Wikinews". Vorbee ( talk) 16:31, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
Useful discussion. I'm a newby and I browsed through the different projects (including Wikinews) to find out what they were. I can't remember ever finding Wikinews items via Google though they do turn up). I'm aware that I (based in the Netherlands) have free access to a wide range of News sites from which I can form my own opinion. There are many countries where this is not the case. Good comments have already been been made by others. A couple of additional comments from a newby perspective:
Coming back (after this long rant) to WikiNews revival, I think the bigger picture of "News" (added value, accessibility, sourcing, presentation, standards, curation, etc.) needs to be clarified first. Maybe this is already part of the 'Strategic Direction 2030'. But the first step I think is for the folks at WikiNews and the current events portal to decide - together with the folks that maintain the Design of the main page - which news items are going to be presented via which channels and which ones are going to be sourced/curated by WikiNews. It would be an interesting exercise to compare some of the past WikiNews items with the equivalents sourced by the current events portal. Mikemorrell49 ( talk) 14:19, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
I think it will be better if users will able to highlight their text(only at their device,also for as much time as they want). This is an issue of your technical team but it will definitely make your organization(software) better and user friendly. By this change , researchers will feel much comfortable in their work and also a great amount of users - "students" will feel more friendly and its really become helpful for them to making notes and many more aspects. Thanks . Will Feel great if I see these changes in my wikipedia.
Sangharsh Vyas ( talk) 18:01, 27 November 2017 (UTC)