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hello im a ip editor and i want my own sandbox 58.9.138.7 ( talk) 03:25, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
Since you cannot directly delete your own subpages, how about we let a bot – who is Administrator – delete user subpages that have been requested to be (speedy) deleted by their user? Colonestarrice ( talk) 23:00, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
Greetings! The Project Grants program is accepting proposals until November 30 to fund both experimental and proven ideas such as research, offline outreach (including editathon series, workshops, etc), online organizing (including contests), or providing other support for community building for Wikimedia projects.
We offer the following resources to help you plan your project and complete a grant proposal:
Also accepting candidates to join the Project Grants Committee through November 15.
With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) 19:46, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
In an attempt to broaden my horizons, and better understand the unusual current political climate in the United States, I've been reviewing the always contentious sociology articles to determine what I should know about the current sociological literature.
I had wished that the pop sociology, like pop science was just shallow and poorly thought out, but this seems to be a pandemic in the sociology articles particularly Any article ending in the word Feminism, Sexism or Privilege. Of course we should expect edit wars in these sections, the topics are inflammatory, the debate is heated, and frankly the literature seems a little incoherent(I'm used to nice measureable empirical STEM topics).
There are so many issues in these article not least of which include:
In particular the current political polarization specifically in the United States seems to be negatively affecting the edit quality of these articles.
I recently had some anonymous user revert an edit in which I removed a paragraph which did not have a <ref> but did refer to an article by an author neither of which I could determine to have ever existed, despite the fact that it was apparently published only 4 years ago. The editor in question, left some barely coherent edit summary "found references, this is user opinion of ethanpet to counter published research to fit an anti perspective.", when indeed I am simply enforcing Wikipedia's policy of not putting huge unverifiable paragraphs in the middle of an article. The revision in question is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Social_privilege&oldid=prev&diff=865240125&diffmode=source
You'll see the paragraph looks like it was computer generated.
For this reason I recommend a temporary broad spectrum edit protection on such articles until they can be stabilized, or they are unlikely to reach a point where they are good articles. Sure once they're good articles we can revert sloppy uncited cor copypasta paragraphs, but at the moment this seems to make up the majority of the material.
To get an idea of what I mean, just start at Feminism or Sexism, and start looking through the see also section, and other linked items in the category or infobox
I know we can never prevent bad actors or just poor wikipedians from degrading the quality of articles. But I think some administrator review might be necessary to stem the tide, and I'm not sure it would be appropriate for me to just go protection request bombing the entire project.
Ethanpet113 ( talk) 10:40, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Hello, I would like to suggest setting a hard cap on page size. Perhaps 50 - 60 kB. I am noticing a lot of pages that deal with hot-button issues just explode with no common thread into a mishmash of sections that don't really relate to each other. Then, how can someone edit that? And, also, there doesn't seem to be a lot of people that are interested in bringing order to these pages.
Two examples would be Economic inequality and Affordable housing.
Now, on the other hand, there are excellent articles that are over the suggested 40 kB. For example Fourth Amendment. But, I could point to a lot of very important Fourth Amendment related pages that are truly neglected like Terry stop. So, maybe, clustering all that high-powered editing talent in those select, high-profile pages starves other pages of attention.
In addition, I would like to suggest a purge of all class C pages. Maybe issue a one month warning. Then, if the pages don't shape up, mask them and only allow editors to view until they at least make a grade B.
I like Wikipedia and have used it for a long time. But, I feel a bit sad that such important topics like "economic inequality" and "affordable housing", which are so important to our society, and are ranked #1 on Google, are such a mess. So, I think Wikipedia should really make an effort to provide valuable, well-thought-out articles on these issues.
Thanks Seahawk01 ( talk) 03:50, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
I've hived this off into a subpage since you suggestion "In addition ... least make a grade B" doesn't have much to do with over-long pages. There are a lot of class C and start class pages that are stubs and ought to remain as such. For instance consider Joseph Jones (trade unionist) which I would suggest is about the right length for someone who was notable but is hardly worth a GA or FA length article. Perhaps the existing crude classification needs some thought. Stub articles are valuable, calling one a stub should not be regarded as dismissive. Short articles will never climb the class scale, perhaps the criteria need to be adjusted so that a good stub or short article could be regarded as C = "complete" rather that C = "third rate". Martin of Sheffield ( talk) 23:07, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
I'm going to throw in another suggestion. Just like semi-locked pages have a warning, why not put a big, yellow "very long, please consider splitting, consolidating or placing info on more appropriate page" notice on top of the edit page for pages longer than 60-80 kB. That way, people will notice when they try to edit a page, that they are adding to something that is probably too big to begin with. Seahawk01 ( talk) 05:28, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
I would like to test the water for a potential proposal for a guideline change. What are the arguments for and against? How much support is there? Has the idea been given a thorough hearing before? If so, can anybody locate those discussion(s) without too much effort?
POTENTIALLY PROPOSED: Unless there is a local consensus to deviate, the names of neighborhoods, villages, towns, cities, etc. in infoboxes should be shown as per the title of the corresponding article. Honolulu, not Honolulu, Hawaii, not Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.. Prace, Czech Republic. Maidstone, but Egerton, Kent. Et cetera.
It goes without saying that such a guideline would save a ton of discussion. My question is whether that editor time is justified, or whether the article title would suffice in most cases. The guideline would also improve consistency and coherence in location references by providing a single way to refer to each location. ― Mandruss ☎ 13:36, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
I think it's a bad idea to create any sort of default rule for this. Certainly, sometimes disambiguation is overkill, London, Greater London, Home Counties, England, Great Britain, United Kingdom, Europe, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, Local Group, Universe is certainly unneeded, London would suffice. However, on the counter argument, sometimes additional context is needed for place names. Take a hypothetical Ontario politician who was born in London, UK but spent most of his life in Ontario politics; certainly if his infobox just said "London", it may confuse readers because London, Ontario is a different place, and so in that sort of case we may want to specify even though the article on the UK city doesn't have any disambiguator in the title; an article about an Ontario person may lead a reader to think of "London" as the Ontario city. There's many different reasons I can find to want to have the city name in the infobox be different from the article title, so much so that any policy to that effect would make a significant number of articles less useful for readers, rather than more. -- Jayron 32 13:30, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
The idea is of the approaching of topics by asking a question in the title and then dealing with that question in the article. It at first might seem unsettling, but its been done once or twice, and I'm asking here for opinions on the idea as a general approach to at least list the " big questions" out there, and then do the article. Your thoughts? - Inowen ( nlfte) 04:31, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
I have no problem with it and indeed Who is a Jew? is a good example. History is full of perennial questions that are the subject of books, papers. What caused the Roman Empire to Collapse? For professional historians asking good questions is an important part of the craft. But if the article is framed as a question seems besides the point, it might be framed as a theory such as great man theory, which might also be framed as a question ("Is history driven by individuals or society?"). Or it might be a commonly recognized phrase Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Depends on the historiographic tradition. -- Green C 23:06, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Is this about whether article titles should ask questions? I do not think that would be a very good idea - paper encyclopedias are not likely to have article titles which ask questions. Vorbee ( talk) 20:18, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
I would be more inclined to make such titles redirects to articles about the subject of the question, unless the question itself is the subject of the article. zchrykng ( talk) 02:28, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
How would you limit them? Vorbee ( talk) 16:53, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
Thank you, Vorbee ( talk) 09:12, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
I've noticed that quite a lot of Wikipedia pages for Us Congressional Districts are out of date missing 2016 results. Two examples that I updated earlier today include the Colorado's 1st congressional districtand Colorado's 4th congressional district. This strikes me as quite surprising as given the existence of election result API's. It would be fairly trivial to code a bot that automatically generates infoboxes containing such information and add them to the appropriate page. I'm myself a rather poor self-taught scripter with no experience creating wiki-bots but am willing to help code part of the bot if somebody is willing to perhaps help me with the wiki part of the bot. Zubin12 ( talk) 04:12, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Many of you are aware that the blocking system will get a major overhaul with the introduction of "partial blocks" (see Wikipedia:Community health initiative on English Wikipedia/Per-user page, namespace, and upload blocking). Partial blocks will fundamentally change how policies are enforced. Assuming that blocks remain preventative rather than punitive, I think partial blocks have the potential to make current enforcement policies obsolete.
For example, currently a topic-banned user is only blocked when they breach the ban. But with partial blocks, the user can simply be blocked from editing relevant pages upon the ban being enacted. This can potentially result in blocks and bans becoming practically synonymous.
I am not quite sure how our current procedures will change as a result of partial blocks. I personally feel that we could eventually merge blocks and bans together with this new system. But that's just what I think. funplussmart ( talk) 20:00, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Hello, I'd like to suggest a push to improve social issues pages. Maybe select 100 core issues and 100-500 recent events and try to get every page to WP:GOOD level. I am suggesting this because I am encountering so many pages I think really should present the public with solid, well thought out information that are a mishmash of ideas, are 4-6 times the recommended page size ( WP:SPLIT) and have no idea about summary style ( WP:SUMMARY).
Just to give a few examples of some class C social issue pages: Economic inequality, Affordable housing, Racial profiling, Police reform (US), Sexism, Public health, Education, Environmentalism, Police, Crime
Seahawk01 ( talk) 05:40, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
I'm generally a bit surprised/annoyed when what appears to be a normal internal link leads me to a Wiktionary entry. It would be a lot less surprising and more helpful if I could know ahead of time that a particular link leads there, say, by including a small Wiktionary logo next to the link as a visual cue. I'm focusing on Wiktionary here because those seem to be by far the most common offenders. Other projects could be included here, but those are usually done with templates that set the link off and make the destination clear.
I'm not sure about the technical feasibility of implementing this, or if it's been suggested before and rejected, so any feedback would be appreciated. – Deacon Vorbis ( carbon • videos) 16:17, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
.mw-parser-output a.extiw, .mw-parser-output a.extiw:active { color: #066; }
.mw-parser-output a.extiw:visited { color: #046; }
.extiw {
background: url(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/Wikimedia-logo.svg/12px-Wikimedia-logo.svg.png) center right no-repeat;
padding-right: 13px;
}
From what I understand, Checkuser is only performed when an admin requests it. But considering the wide prevalence of sock-puppets and the general dearth of administrators, can't this at least be semi-automated? If two editors from the same IP (appropriately extended to the same subnet) edit the same page or pages in the same domain within a specific time frame, they are very likely socks and their names/IPs should be added to a private list somewhere to be acted upon (perhaps by SPI clerks or similar). Editing the same talk page should throw up even redder flags somewhere. There are obviously legitimates cases like alternate accounts that need to be accounted for.
I'm assuming here that something like this doesn't already exist. If there are pages available that detail what goes on behind the scenes with SPIs, please link me to them. But, in this day and age where Machine learning has gone mainstream, there ought to be better technical solutions to handle the endless meat and sock-puppets on this site. Something needs to be done to allow editors to edit and collaborate in peace without having to deal this nonsense. Thanks.— Cpt.a.haddock ( talk) (please ping when replying) 12:33, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
I find many maps on Wikipedia that are supposed to reflect rankings very difficult to understand. This is because the coloring or shading is either arbitrary or unclear (sometimes because on a map the shades and differences do not seem to be the same as they are against a white background). The coloring or shading should be visually intuitive and distinguishable. This means that, for colors, it should not be arbitrary. Consider the map at Social Progress Index. Instead of progressing in color along a scale of intensity or a standard hue sequence such as ROYGBIV, it jumps all around, making a reader translate it rather than see the message. There should be some guidance (guidelines)in making these maps so that they are useful tools rather than puzzles. Kdammers ( talk) 06:10, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
Is there a place to list and draw attraction to poor articles, particularly articles which are of high-importance? - Inowen ( nlfte) 04:32, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
They can go for articles for deletion, and if they are not up to good merits, they can have a tag at the top warning that they may go to articles for deletion. Vorbee ( talk) 18:05, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
I'd like to discuss the idea of unbundling DYK queuing so that trusted editors could apply for the tool to move prep to queue. I think it might solve multiple problems to have maybe twelve editors working in teams of two with that tool, each team responsible for moving, say, Prep 1 to Queue 1 for every iteration. Being responsible always for Queue 1 might make these editors take real pains to provide a detailed final review to prevent errors from appearing on the main page, whereas overworked admins sometimes may be just trying to feed the beast. Having two people responsible for that exact definite job would mean that even in times when RL inteferes, like during a holiday weekend, we'd be less likely to end up with six empty queues two hours before DYK is due to go up. I believe there would be multiple experienced editors who would be interested in doing this one important job for WP, but wouldn't necessarily be interested in applying for admin. valereee ( talk) 04:45, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
Three days later, the newer Advanced Search feature, currently a Beta Feature, will become default feature in all wikis. However, I have issues with it mainly because its Namespace checklist vertical window is very narrow and inconvenient to browse/surf. Due to the one-vertical-column formatting, clicking one of desired namespaces becomes harder, especially for users who have enjoyed the older Advanced Search, which divides the namespace options into columns. I was given a suggestion to discuss this locally. I am thinking ideas about what to do with the newer feature, like proposal to create the "Hide the improved version of Advanced Search" option, asking developers to delay the move, create a Phab ticket about the Namespace list, etc. George Ho ( talk) 21:46, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
The Simple English version of Wikipedia is a very useful tool when reading something but you need it explained from a more basic or layman's viewpoint. I'd propose to add a dedicated tab, or link, at the top of each English page, only if there is an equivalent Simple English alternative, so that new readers to pages can instantly get a simplified version of the page. Similarly, on all Simple English pages, there should be a direct link back to the standard English page. One proposal is to have a tab along the other tabs like "Article, Talk", etc., another would be to have a sentence at the start of each article, in italics, saying "This article is also available in Simple English: <articlename>" and the <articlename> is linked. Byziden ( talk) 16:46, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
In 2013 there was a proposal for the Foundation to take over the running of WebCite (see Meta:WebCite). The idea was supported by WebCite themselves. Alternative suggestions were that the Foundation should support WebCite in some lesser way; with technical support or monetary grants for instance. The proposal was closed without saying what has actually happened, if anything.
Since then, the site has had frequent, lengthy, and unexplained outages (see Talk:WebCite). WebCite is very important for Wikipedia. It enables us to safely protect references against linkrot. Is it time to reopen this proposal? Spinning Spark 12:30, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
We still have many bios with political offices that are inconsistent with capitalizing & non-capitalizing. The best example is the bios of US governors & lieutenant governors. Can we enforce WP:JOBTITLES to settle the dispute? GoodDay ( talk) 02:27, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
A decade or more ago, various (entirely good-faith) Wikipedians added exlinks to omacl.org, which was at the time was the Online Medieval and Classical Library - which hosted a range of historical texts. But now, as an IP editor points out, omacl.org redirects to a payday lender. I expect that the domain has expired and has been bought by that loans company. We have nearly 200 links to omacl.org, which obviously we need to fix somehow. The IP fixed that particular link by changing the domain to mcllibrary.org, and that site appears to host the correct documents (and for a few of the other links we have, at least). I'm a touch skittish about that site, because it seems to be hosted by another individual person - and I fear that if we put work into changing all the links there, in a few years that person may abandon his project, and the same kind of domain-lapse problem will recur. It would be better if we could fix the links to a more stable location, like the Internet Archive, or a University department. So my questions are:
I'll prod a couple of the related wikiprojects for their input. -- Finlay McWalter··–· Talk 18:13, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
Just to comment that the idea that documents hosted by university departments are stable is misplaced confidence. They are just as suscepible to linkrot as anywhere else, possibly more so. The documents often only stay up as long as a particular course is being run or a particular professor needs them. I've fixed hundred of such links that have gone dead. Spinning Spark 14:50, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
The inclusion of lists of non-notable victims is becoming problematic. It seems that they are being added by editors to articles dealing with mass casualty WP:EVENTs which is causing frequent, often lengthy and sometimes acrimonious debates over whether such lists are appropriate and/or violate WP:NOTMEMORIAL and NOT:EVERYTHING with local consensus proving either elusive or dramatically varying from one article to another depending on shows up and how determined they are to bludgeon their way through. This is getting out of hand and we really need to establish some kind of guideline for the sake of consistency and putting a stop to these endless debates. I personally believe that in most cases they are unencyclopedic, add nothing of substance to the article and violate, at least in spirit, NOTMEMORIAL. But even if a decision is made to allow them, which I would strongly oppose, that would be better than the status quo. My personal preference would be to amend NOTMEMORIAL to expressly prohibit lists of non-notable victims. Obvious and commonsense exceptions would include otherwise nonnotable victims who were significantly involved in the EVENT. Which is to say they did more than just die. Generally these will simply be named in the article narrative. I also would be fine with including an WP:EL external link to a suitable memorial website or news site that lists the victims. I do realize that this has been discussed before, but the status quo is just not working. Thoughts? - Ad Orientem ( talk) 15:09, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
"why do we care about ethnicity"I don't know. But we do. And it is not just ethnicity. It is age too. And a minimal few other factors. Occupations and home towns have informative value. Bus stop ( talk) 18:32, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
"Whether an individual picks their nose has some degree of informative value."That is why we exercise judgement as to how extensive our coverage is of the lives of decedents. Bus stop ( talk) 18:40, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
"care about the names, ages, and home towns of the dead."I know I would. Bus stop ( talk) 16:22, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
"You've not established how these lists are distinct from others"Nor need I. Reality has established the distinction of these lists. We are not here primarily to educate people. Yes, most of the time we try to digest information in accordance with the views of sources. But identities of decedents do not require any special explanation. We are documenting by minimal means the identities of the fatalities that are of central importance to the incident being written about. Bus stop ( talk) 18:09, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
a 48-year-old bouncer; a 33-year-old Marine Corps veteran; and a 27-year-old Navy veteranover giving names (with references that have further info). power~enwiki ( π, ν) 18:26, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
"a name is meaningless"Doesn't a name sometimes suggest an ethnicity? Bus stop ( talk) 18:47, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
As unhappy as I am about lists of names of non-notable people in articles, I think that battle is lost: Passengers of the RMS Titanic. - Donald Albury 19:22, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
"they known every passenger and their background"And why do you think this is so? There may be reasons particular to the Titanic incident, but I don't think that explains all. No matter the incident the reader wants to know the identities of the people involved. Editors here are arguing that this information shouldn't be in the article. But who are we writing the article for? Oh, we know what is best for the reader? That is the height of hubris. We are not talking about extraneous or tangentially related facts. The identities of the deceased are clearly within the scope of the article. I don't think it is our role to deprive readers of relevant information just because we think they should not be interested in this information. And I will be the first to admit that I am interested in this information. The reason we are interested in knowing a little bit about the identities of the deceased is because we want specifics. When it comes to fatalities we want specifics on who died. It is unsatisfactory to simply be told "7 people died". The reader has an appetite for more information in the form of "which 7 people died?" Wikipedia is not here to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. It doesn't matter that some editors think the reader doesn't need to know this information. The ultimate question in this discussion is one of WP:WEIGHT. Obviously too much information on decedents is too much weight. But names and ages clearly are not too much weight. Bus stop ( talk) 22:44, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
So OK. Normally I'm of the mind to let the editors decide, but if it is true that "Victims lists are becoming a source of constant debate and argument", that wastes energy. So how about a compromise? Make a rule called WP:VICTIMS with something like this:
Articles on events in which two or more people were killed or injured -- airplane crashes for instance -- may usually give the names of the victims if there were ten or fewer. If there were eleven or more, articles should usually not include the names of the victims.
As always, common sense exceptions may be made. Bluelinked names are exempt from this rule, may always be given, and do not count against this "rule of ten" limit. There is no requirement to give victim's names; it is allowed if someone wants to (and there are ten or fewer).
The names and descriptions of victims should be in sentence or paragraph form, not list format. Normal sourcing rules apply, of course.
What's good about this is that it quashes arguments, pretty much. Why ten? I dunno -- got to have some number. Make it eight or twelve if you like. Ten is not really an imposition on the article. You can ten names and bit more into a short paragraph. It doesn't unbalance the article.
As to having the names in paragraph rather than list format: 1) it makes them a little less prominent; they don't take up half a screen, and 2) lists of victims just drive some people nuts, perhaps for that reason. Let's try to gruntle both sides a little.
Sure this is arbitrary but arbitrary works. Like for baseball players, there's an arbitrary rule: if you had even one at bat in the major leagues, you get an article, even it it was in 1887 and we don't even know your first name. If you had a fifteen year career in the minor leagues, you're not in. (Unless you meet WP:BIO and someone can successfully argue for you.) Fair or not I don't know, but there are virtually no arguments about ballplayers. We have lots of rules like that -- state legislators, etc. Works a charm. Herostratus ( talk) 22:34, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
"It is better not have to have the lists in the first place."The same can be said for anything—"It is best not to include the names of alleged assailants", "It is best not to include the make and model of the gun used", "It is best not to include the street address of the venue of the incident", "It is best not to include the name of the venue". In your wisdom you feel the reader should not satiate their appetite for information pertaining to the identities of the deceased at our article; they will have to go elsewhere if they want that despicable information. You are making an arbitrary value judgement. Bus stop ( talk) 23:28, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
"he's very likely discussed at length in reliable sources". Reliable sources also happen to discuss the victims of the "Thousand Oaks shooting". In my opinion we should not be splitting hairs and making distinctions that editors think are significant. You are distinguishing between non-passive roles and passive roles. But those are your criteria. How do you know that the reader has no interest in knowing the identities of those people that editor Mandruss considers "passive"? Bus stop ( talk) 22:01, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
"No thanks"to what? Bus stop ( talk) 22:23, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
Enh, what I'm seeing here is a couple-few guys who who don't want to compromise. Whether my idea is good or not, whether it could be adopted or not... who knows? When the most clearly expressed positions are "No, we must never list victims names, and no, no compromise from that position is possible" versus "Yes, we must always allow all names of all victims, and no, no compromise from that position is possible"... We're not going to solve the problem and you're going to have these discussions forever. You will; I won't, because I will have forgotten about it, because I don't much care, because it doesn't matter, really. The best-for-the-Wikipedia thing to do is to fix this problem. Holding fast to an entrenched position -- any position -- is not the best-for-the-Wikipedia thing to do. There's no core policies at stake here, and there's no "right" or "wrong" position. Give a little. Herostratus ( talk) 02:24, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
As a different suggestion, I would argue that fully sourced victim lists can be listed over at Wikisource and linked back to the en.wiki article, eliminating any victim lists within en.wiki. Articles in prose can still discuss notable victims and talk about specific victims that had a role in the event, but the tables should be omitted in favor of the Wikisource version. (This also makes those lists available for other Wikiprojects). -- Masem ( t) 00:30, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
I strongly suggest going to the WP:NOT archives and searching for NOTMEMORIAL and similar terms. Review the perennial debates over this policy. NOTMEMORIAL was added in 2004, and in the 14 years since, it has been tweaked slightly here and there, and a lot of effort has gone into what belongs in the non-article namespaces. But the part about the article namespace has not really changed meaningfully, and the meaning has remained controversial throughout.
This isnt like COI or BLP or RS, where new editors have trouble understanding policy, but after some time and experience, we all converge on a general agreement on why these policies exist and what they mean. Wikpedia's best, most experienced editors split into two entrenched camps on whether or not 'not memorial' applies only to article creation/retention, or if it also restrictes consents within articles. No revision of the text in 14 years has touched that simple question because there is no consensus on that question.
It would be great if a proposal could pass that said in plain terms whether or not, like WP:NNC (Notability guidelines do not apply to content within an article), it does or does not limit content of articles. If anyone thinks they can win global consensus for a clear decision one way or the other, more power to them. Please do so, and put this debate to rest.
From what I can tell, it won't pass because Wikipedia is deeply divided. If we can't agree on that, then we have to admit that NOTMEMORIAL isn't much of a policy, since it doesn't represent a global consensus. There is probably global consensus that content with no purpose other than to honor the dead doesn't belong. But the obvious question "does this content in this article serve no purpose except to honor the dead?" has to be answered on a case by case basis. Decided by local consensus. No easy appeal to the top-down dictates of policy, like some simplistic 10-victim rule. No way is there global support for assigning an arbitrary numeric limit like 10 casualties, and no way is there consensus to shift all of it over to some other wikiproject.
The best, most realistic outcome would be a frank admission that this isn't something that Wikipedia has a firm position on, and it will vary from article to article. There are beautiful FAs and FLs with no casualty names mentioned, and beautiful ones with non-notable casualties included. It depends, and that's fine. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 04:02, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
"Some of these pages now have these needless lists, and they are being used to bolster an WP:OSE argument in support of even more such lists."Yet I also find you saying "OK Dennis, you go make a case for having a list of everyone killed in World War II (would want to leave any WWII article readers "hanging" now, would we?)" Aren't you making an Other stuff exists argument right there? Isn't your reasoning that we don't have a list of all the casualties at our World War II article (50 to 85 million fatalities) therefore we should not list the casualties at the "USS Fitzgerald and MV ACX Crystal collision" (7 fatalities) as seen in this version of the article in the "Casualties" section? Bus stop ( talk) 23:29, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Again, I will ask you; how are these names pertinent to the article? How do they lend to the reader's understanding of how the collision occurred, and what transpired after? Yes, seven people died, and that is noted. But we no more need their names to complete this article than we need a list of the names of all ≈80 million people that died in World War II to complete, or understand, any of the articles here about that subject." Unfortunately, Dennis jumped in there right after and I never did a response from you. So how about answering those questions now? (It's somewhat overdue). Thanks - wolf•
thewolfchild—you want me to now respond here to a post you made on an article Talk page 5 days ago? OK. You ask "How do they lend to the reader's understanding of how the collision occurred"? We are not only concerned with "how the collision occurred". That is an area of inquiry that you are putting before us. But it is hardly the only area a reader might inquire about. What you are studiously avoiding is the version of the article containing the so-called victim list. It is a section called "Casualties". It tells us the positions aboard the vessel of each of the deceased, their names, their ages, and their home towns. We are not only concerned with "how the collision occurred". We are also concerned with the identities of the deceased. The names are proper nouns and they don't really shed light on the particular question you pose.
But proper nouns of this sort are not unusual at all. Why are we told at the Thousand Oaks shooting article that it takes place at the "Borderline Bar and Grill"? Please tell me why we are giving the reader that proper name. And the name of the perpetrator—why do we need to know it was "Ian David Long"? Please explain to me why we are giving the reader that proper name. Now that the reader knows it occurred at the "Borderline Bar and Grill" and that the assailant's name is "Ian David Long"—do they now understand the event? I'm obviously not arguing against providing this information. Quite the opposite. A reader wants to know these specifics. There are specifics that can be dispensed with. But brief, rudimentary identification of key components is best included in an article. This gets us back to "who died"? Omitting that is truncating the article. I would contend the "Thousand Oaks shooting" article is a truncated article. The names and ages of the deceased should be included and unfortunately they are not. That is a defect in the article and it should be corrected by adding rudimentary information related to their identities.
Finally, we have articles such as The Perfect Storm (film) and The Perfect Storm (book). Didn't Sebastian Junger have to know information about the deceased such as their home towns? Don't writers consult Wikipedia articles? To the article's credit, the crew of the "Andrea Gail", upon which Sebastian Junger's book is based, though the 6 crew members are "non-notable", are noted in our article by name, age, and hometown. Bus stop ( talk) 20:57, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
This gets us back to "who died"?" - Who cares? Except those few who might actually know these people, and as has already been made abundantly clear to you, Wikipedia is not an obituary.
I don't really have an opinion on the name of the bar, but if it's just a random, average bar, with no bearing on the event, I don't see a reason to name it.Bus stop ( talk) 09:03, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
It would be much more productive to 1) stop re-fighting the Fitzgerald ship collision debate. You won, in case you forgot. Never seen anybody complain so much after getting a majority of editors to support them. Hate to see how bitter you can be when you don't get your way. Let it go now. 2) Seriously read the old discussions on 'not memorial'. The ones from 2006, the ones year after year after that. The thing to notice is how many editors (names you recognize as admins, from writing FAs, as leaders with years of contributions) confidently see a place for lists or prose mentions of people who were casualties but not main actors in events. Your point of view has many adherents. Many fine, experienced, important editors. But there are just as many fine editors who don't feel obligated to list thousands or millions of dead for every event, just because they do list some names for other events. You say "You can't justify one without the other" and that's fine. Many editors think a consistent standard applies to every event of any kind, and many say, no, it depends. For 14 years, nobody has formed a strong consensus on it.
Maybe now you can change that and get a policy change that settles it. But history suggests you won't, in which case you ought to try to make peace with the reality. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 16:58, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Riiight, I've been just awful, haven't I, Dennis? Look at how deeply I obviously hurt you with my scathing comment about kittens. As for the topic at hand; I simply cited the Talk:USS Fitzgerald and MV ACX Crystal collision discussion as an example of the issue being debated, and the reason that Ad Orientem wisely brought this here for a wider audience and hopefully some kind of solution. I didn't even mention the consensus there. Aside from the topic, I only mentioned that you and BS are arguing for the inclusion of non-notable names of victims. And while I just used the word "vehemently", I could've said 'page-dominating, persistent bludgeoning'... but I didn't. And don't need to either. People can just look at that page for themselves, or here, or here, or here or... here. These are all current talk page debates involving this topic, and a helluva lota' posts by you. Now, I tried this once before, and you blew it, but I'll try it again; I've said what I've needed to say here, (unless there's another proposal, or someone replies to me), so I will now step back and allow others to discuss. You've said enough, haven't you? How about you do the same? I think you can do it... this time. G'nite - wolf 00:13, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
Bare lists of victims, which only compile names and basic information (age, birthplace, occupation, etc.) are to be deprecated. Victims of crimes and disasters and other tragic events may be named as a normal part of a quality prose narrative, but lists of names with no context are not useful to most readers anymore than lists of names are in other Wikipedia articles, and advice for creating lists of names of otherwise non-notable people are as applicable to victim's lists as anywhere else in Wikipedia, and victims lists are not accorded any special exemptions from the normal practices of creating lists of otherwise non-notable people.
The goal here, is not to scrub the names of victims from articles, but to avoid the bad writing of slapping in "contextless" lists just because, or to afford "special status" to people because they died during a notable tragic event. The role of Wikipedia is not to create a remembrance of people who died in such ways, though we should also not be afraid to include names where the actions of those people during events would have come up anyways in the course of writing a prose narrative about the event. Simply put: if you think a person's role in an event in which they died bears coverage, it should be covered in the prose narrative. Simply creating a contextless list of non-notable people is not good writing, in this type of article or in any other. -- Jayron 32 12:07, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
"Simply creating a contextless list of non-notable people is not good writing, in this type of article or in any other."
(Jayron32 12:07, 20 Nov) I precisely disagree. I prefer contextless lists in many instances. The crux of this discussion happens to be contextless lists of non-notable people. Can anyone point to an article in stable condition that is negatively impacted by a contactless contextless list? User:Thewolfchild above attempted to do that above but did not link to
the past version which contained a section called "Casualties". It is worth examining that past version because I would contend it is constructive to the article. "Contextless" is not the negative quality it is purported to be. I'll admit that I was surprised that one of the most starkly contextless lists made it into the
2016 Oakland warehouse fire but even there I would defend it as entirely constructive to the article. I argue we do not have to digest all information for the reader. We are not producing articles that tie up all loose ends. It doesn't matter if some things do not make sense. We are discussing articles in which "senselessness" is a key quality. The argument some of you are making is to take away all crumbs of clues as to the nature of what transpired in the addressed event. Everything is a clue even if an incomplete clue. We should step back and let competent and seasoned editors that are familiar with our already-existing policies and guidelines do what they do pretty well—create articles on the unfortunately proliferating series of tragedies—especially lone gunmen shooting up establishments. No one would disagree that the senselessness of these events defy description. Consider
2017 Las Vegas shooting. Whether there is a victim list or not almost doesn't matter. We should let editors write articles. I think that in every instance that there is a victim list it is constructive to the article. What I find unproductive is the attempt to control other editors. It is not the end of the world or the doom of Wikipedia if "contextless list of non-notable people" are included in articles.
Bus stop (
talk)
15:24, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Can anyone point to an article in stable condition that is negatively impacted by a contactless [contextless] list?That's the second time you've asked that question in this discussion. It was ignored the first time I suspect because it's such a vacuous question (that's certainly the reason I ignored it). List opponents feel that any article containing a list is "negatively impacted" by it—for the reasons we have thoroughly articulated in discussion after discussion, of which you are fully aware. That you disagree with those arguments goes without saying. ― Mandruss ☎ 15:31, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
"the list bloats the article"The article is not overly long. Bus stop ( talk) 16:43, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Why would you prefer a range of ages when a particular person, identified as male or female, can be associated with a particular age?For the reasons I've given in discussion after discussion, including several where you've been present and I know you've seen them. You have a particular talent for not hearing opponents' arguments, repeatedly demanding that they give reasons that they have already given countless times, and I'm beginning to fantasize about a topic ban from victims' lists. I'm not aware of a single other editor that does this in this topic area. ― Mandruss ☎ 16:37, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
"For the reasons I've given in discussion after discussion, including several where you've been present"I must have been out to lunch. Bus stop ( talk) 17:02, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
"You have a particular talent for not hearing opponents' arguments, repeatedly demanding that they give reasons that they have already given countless times, and I'm beginning to fantasize about a topic ban from victims' lists."Perhaps you should learn to repeat yourself. Just because you've said something once, especially in another thread, is not a reason you cannot say it again. You are shying away from debate. Bus stop ( talk) 17:19, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
"I promise to consistently 'shy away from' repetitive debate."When a person asks you a question you should answer it. It is as simple as that. You don't know where they are going with their line of reasoning. You are stymying debate by constant grandstanding. Bus stop ( talk) 17:33, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
"win the debate by sheer force of will". This is a debate between allowing editors of adequate competence to construct articles as they see fit, with Talk page discussion as need be, versus creating many more rules to supplement the already existing rules. WP:MEMORIAL actually does not apply to anything. That is because WP:BIO already serves the purpose of preventing the creation of articles on non-notable people. The question of whether there should be a list of victims is a simple decision best left to editorial discretion. My argument is simple. Bulleted lists have their value. I don't understand why a fuss is made over such lists. But if editors want to argue over them, let them argue over them on article Talk pages. In short I don't think Ad Orientem should have started this discussion. I'm sure Ad Orientem meant well but this is a can of worms. Bus stop ( talk) 18:21, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
This seems like a good proposal. If there's some information about particular victims that would be valuable to the encyclopedia and is well-sourced, then the names can be included as part of that. For example, if there were a disaster or shooting and many sources discussed the actions of one of the dead victims during the event, then that might be worth including in the description of what happened. If there are many sources about what a survivor did in relation to the event afterwards (activism, writing a book about it, whatever), then that might be included in the article as related. Basically, if a survivor's name cannot be included into prose containing some significant thing they did related to the event, then it probably shouldn't be included at all. Even if that's the case, inclusion should of course be subject to the normal BLP and NPOV restraints. I just don't know if lists of unlinked names should be included except maybe on list articles. Red Rock Canyon ( talk) 15:54, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
What about this embedded list of patents for things that are mostly not very significant in of themselves, but taken as a whole, tell a story. It brings us back to why we endorse redundant categories and lists and navigation templates and portals and prose containing the same information. A prose description of an inventor who has a long series of patents for inventions great and minor is fine, but the same information can also be given in bulleted list form, and for some readers, convey meaning better.
We can't prescribe what to do in every case in a top-down directive. Perhaps the real problems is treating names of the dead as a special case. Articles are full of things, in prose and in lists, and some of those things are highly notable, of great significance, and some of those things, names, patents, inventions, filmography or discography, that are worth mentions but not otherwise of great importance. It depends. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 17:30, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Anyways: anyone who thinks not-memorial applies to both article topics and to content should propose plain English words to that effect. Lacking strong consensus for that, admit that there isn't strong consensus that it applies that way. Everyone agrees you can't create a new article about someone for no reason except as a memorial memorial; they have to be notable. Only some editors think this means mentioning a non-notable dead person carries any special burden that wouldn't apply to whether or not we can mention any other fact. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 00:34, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
Or end the 14 years of debate over 'not memorial' by changing it match the de facto state of affairs: there is no global support for applying 'not memorial' to article content, only article creation/retention. For the sake of proving a point, we could start with a proposal to make it say the opposite, that it does limit article content. Succeed or fail, those proposals would shift the debate away from not memorial towards other content guidance like the list guidelines, as well as WP:WEIGHT and other guidance on content triviality vs importance. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 20:06, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
"But as a Wikipedia reader, I would be truly annoyed to come across these victims' lists"Bus stop ( talk) 15:30, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
In the edit record of edits on the watchlist, there are indicators next to every edit detailing the "page size change in bytes". This is obviously a very useful tool for the most part, determining when someone has removed or added a large amount of information to the article and so can be used to detect major changes. However, there are occasions where pages are edited in very large fashions, such as a restructuring or cleanup, that add a lot in some places but delete a lot in other places. Because of this, substantial edits are made to seem smaller because the net gain or loss is small.
My proposal is to add a second indicator that details the gross change in bytes. This way, large restructurings that have net byte change of zero are still shown as more significant than other, more minor edits. After thinking of different ways to do this, I have come up with two ideas: First, a second parenthesis could be added that details gross and is bolded if the gross change is more than 500 bytes, or the current parenthesis bracket could be expanded in a way that shows something like (gross change, +/- net change), where if the net change is high, the whole thing is bolded that color, while if the net change is low but the gross change is high, the indicator is bolded blue (for small nets and gross, the gross could stay blue and the net could be whatever color?). Thank you for your time, IntegralPython ( talk) 03:33, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
I think CC-BY-NC-ND, CC-BY-NC-SA, CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-ND (all creative commons) Flicker images should be allowed here on the English Wikipedia. I found this discussion on the commons about the same issue ( c:Commons_talk:Flickr_files#Why_are_NoDerivatives_&_NonCommercial_not_allowed?) and it got a reply saying some Wikipedias allow these types of Flickr images to be uploaded locally but not globally (as the commons does not allow them as the commons does more the just illustrate Wikipedia). Using the images locally wouldn't be a commercial use as Wikipedia is not an commercial entity, so these images should be allow to be uploaded to Wikipedia. – BrandonXLF (t@lk) 02:58, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
Hi,
I wish to read for hours articles as any user, but it occurs that the reading (on PC) of these articles is not enough comfortable as the white color background tires my eyes. I have to stop reading for a moment.
I wish to see a button called 'Reading-Mode' located before the title of article (Eye icon). By pressing this button, it will allow me to change the white color background of the article to a gray or yellow color (see example below). The purpose will be to let me choose as user what make my reading more comfortable.
example: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7RYcp.jpg — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexmio ( talk • contribs) 14:32, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
.mw-body {background-color: #F1ECE8;}
var readingBG = "#F1ECE8";
mw.loader.load( '//en.wikipedia.org/?title=User:Ahecht/Scripts/ReadingMode.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript' ); //[[User:Ahecht/Scripts/ReadingMode.js]]
#mw-head-base, #content, #mw-navigation {
background-color: #f3f3f1; /* 6S 95L */
}
#toc {
background-color: #e7e6e4;
}
Hello, I'm a pretty new editor here...maybe one month. At first, I kept encountering lots of "class C - high importance" pages. So, I just assumed they were bad. But, then I started leaving messages on various WikiProject Talk pages and never get a reply. I assume they are dead? Even though they seem to have many members. Finally, I decided to get a "start class" article reassessed. I go look at one WikiProject assessment page and they have a queue of 11 articles and the oldest one is from 2013...five years waiting for reassessment!
So, my question to Idea Lab is whether Wikipedia needs to do something about article assessment by the WikiProjects. Perhaps a better messaging system is in order? Well, that was my one idea. Thanks for the consideration! Seahawk01 ( talk) 04:56, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
|importance=
(sometimes called |priority=
ratings, unless I'm very familiar with the group.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
07:03, 3 December 2018 (UTC)Just want to put this here in case anybody wants it, I have developed a hack which allows a editor to undo an edit while on the mobile interface
here. Comments, criticism, bugs, requests welcomed.
—
f
r
+
09:03, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
Go to Bohol Sea.
Look top right.
See "coords" and a globe?
Click the globe.
Did you know it makes a map appear?
I was thinking about consistent maps for bodies of water, and that was pointed out to me. I never knew about that. Should that be made more prominent or the link put elsewhere or something? Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 01:05, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
Thank you Anna - I did not know that clicking on the globe made a map appear, until you had pointed it out. Vorbee ( talk) 16:23, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
Hey guys, when you look up the KKK, go to the dates where the 1st generation began and ended. The real exact date the 1st generation ended was in 1872. Just to let you know. Thanks!
Slenderman4962 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Slenderman4962 ( talk • contribs) 16:12, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
I'm concerned about the limited number of experienced editors / administrators who are taking a large step back from Brexit-related articles / debates (on the basis of lack of knowledge of the subject) and leaving the same small pool of editors to reiterate their positions with ever-decreasing politeness.
Crunch time for Brexit is coming up. There is a crucial vote in the UK's parliament on Tuesday 11 December 2018.
and prior to it a head-to-head TV deabate between the Prime Minister, Theresa May and the Leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, on Sunday 9 December 2018.
In July 2018 the BBC printed the following four Brexit outcomes:
There's a lot of POV-pushing between possible outcomes going on.
Elaborated on in November 2018 by Bloomberg News.
Is there some way of widening the pool? There is a Brexit Task Force WP:BREXITTF and I did think about issuing invites on talk pages but who to? It could do more harm than good. I also wrote an essay in my namespace WP:BREXIT101 trying to give a rough guide to Brexit for editors if anyone wants to read it. -- The Vintage Feminist ( talk) 05:06, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
It strikes me that those who oppose the use of the current description of the article's subject essentially do not accept that this article should exist at all!A few more voices saying "wait, this has nothing to do with the complexities of Brexit or working out what may happen in the future, it's just re-numbering" that would really have helped. -- The Vintage Feminist ( talk) 16:18, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
For us, occasional editors who do not get it perfect the 1st time, allow us to eliminate missteps from & clean up the history by adding to the "View history" tab - "Compare selection revisions" button, a function to consolidate the intermediate revisions by the same user into just 1 resulting edit with description. This should reduce storage and clutter in revision searching. — Preceding unsigned comment added by N8HSU ( talk • contribs) 23:11, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
Any comments on this idea - A course on Wikipedia similar to ones on Coursera or EdX:
@ GreenMeansGo: Yes, only a voice over solves the issue of language. As for writing the cost part, So I do have limited experience as a professional video editor (8 months), but it's been over two years and I am out of touch with the financial part of it all. So I will not rush to write down figures just now. And since I live in India, I guess figures will be a little (a lot) different as compared to say UK, US etc but that is besides the point for now. There are other aspects of the proposal that can be worked upon first, see, i quickly copied a sample proposal and pasted it in my userspace as an example - Video (Grant) Proposal Example. This can be developed accordingly. After the initial proposal has be drawn up, (i want to call this an IDEA PROPOSAL rather than a GRANT PROPOSAL just now), then maybe an admin or someone can mass message Wikipedia users seeing if anyone here can help with the production part (outlining the finances first...). DiplomatTesterMan ( talk) 16:58, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
There are frequently statements such as "The new season at Actor's Theatre will open on October 12, 2017 with a production of Hamlet". I question whether such statements are ever justified (they may be just promotional), but if they are included, they should be flagged with and automatic mechanism that alerts somebody to the necessity of updating once the predicted event occurs. Here is my proposed logic for such a flag:
{{the verb tense used in this statement must be updated on October 12, 2017}}-- Toploftical ( talk) 19:50, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
I come across a hypothetical Wikipedia UI revamp mockup with a clean interface and a night mode toggle button. See mockup here: phab:M270 -- Agusbou2015 ( talk) 17:59, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
What is the best way to deal with spoken audio files on English Wikipedia?
Currently you can put a pronunciation in the lead and a complete article recording can be linked via {{ Spoken Wikipedia}} (a little box at the bottom of articles, in the external links section).
But how to work with multiple audio files? For example Channel Tunnel could include "Channel Tunnel" in an English accent, "Chunnel" in an English accent, "Le tunnel sous la Manche" in French. Then there may be an Australian accent for the lead (using metric) and an American version (using Imperial). Finally a recording of the whole article.
What about creating a subpage, eg Channel Tunnel/spoken? It would have several advantages:
Before I complete a load of article subject pronunciations I am looking for suggestions on how to link to spoken audio files.-- Commander Keane ( talk) 05:16, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
I'm working on detecting paid revisions with a framework that requires weak heuristics for their detection. But I've no experience as an editor, so heuristics that I come up with probably aren't going to be very effective. Does this sound interesting to any experienced editors out here?
The framework that I'm working with. Paper supporting the framework. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Apiarant ( talk • contribs) 20:25, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
WP:DRAFTIFY seems to be causing a bump in recent irritation, as regards improper usage, clashing with other guidelines etc etc.
Currently it is stated to be an explanatory supplement. I am not sure this is the case - WP:NPPDRAFT includes only the bare minimum, and I believe the rules of usage in DRAFTIFY are beyond a mere supplement.
In any case, I am aware there are various issues - so I thought I would create a discussion point for people to hopefully comment on and moot solutions (if applicable). Nosebagbear ( talk)
Please feel free to start sub-headers for different issues
Dear all
I've submitted a grant application to the Wikimedia Foundation to continue to work at UNESCO in 2019 and would really appreciate it if you would consider endorsing it (the blue button at the bottom of the infobox). In 2019 we want to focus on:
This will be the last time we ask WMF for funding, we have a grant proposal outlined for a large external grant for 2020 but without this year's funding we won’t get to where we need to be.
Thanks very much
John Cummings ( talk) 10:11, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
Historically, there have been only two ways to fix an edit. Either revert it in its entirety or allow it to stay. This has led to a certain mentality among patrollers to revert even when the edit could have been improved. I personally have come across edits which could have been fixed by adding a citation needed tag or a spelling correction. Often a portion of the edit is incorrect, the rest is okay, however there is only one way to fix it, revert. Suppose we had a extension/script which allowed you to correct these edits, add a citation tag, fix spelling mistakes, remove problematic portions or copy-edit a edit while in diff mode. That would make life a lot more easier and prevent biting of newbies.
Is there such a script/extension ? Would a lot of editors benefit from such a tool ? Or is it just me who think such a tool is necessary ? — f r + 17:37, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
I believe we should get a Google API key, for the purpose of using their API to keep up to date numbers and improve accuracy. For instance, the key would allow for pages relating to youtube to keep current video statistics, and thereby remove the menial task of having to get them manually. The issue is that the account monitoring the key (as an account is needed for the key) would have to be created officially (Maybe by staff?), because otherwise the key would be under the name of an individual and probably break some rule. Thoughts? WelpThatWorked ( talk) 18:57, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
What does the Google API terms of service say about licensing and usage restrictions? -- Green C 22:03, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
archive-things
on Toolforge – all of the video pages linked from those articles are saved
once an hour); if you make a list of YouTube videos somewhere on-wiki I could also use that list. Wikidata also tends to avoid discarding old but correct data, so adding this data there would start to become unwieldy after a short time.
Jc86035 (
talk)
06:59, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
@
GreenC and
WelpThatWorked: Clarification: the archive-things
script is archiving the YouTube video HTML pages themselves, not making calls to Google's API. I don't believe this would be against Google's TOS, since it doesn't involve the API and IA has been archiving videos based on tweet mentions (i.e. a lot of videos). We don't have to worry about copyright for IA because IA assumes fair use by default, and small amounts of data – e.g. for the YouTube Rewind dislikes graph – wouldn't qualify as violating any sort of database copyright.
Maybe what could be done is that the script could edit the articles every few hours to add some of the data that it's downloaded (since it's downloading the pages anyway so that it can also archive the images), although I'm not really sure how to do that. Jc86035 ( talk) 11:13, 25 December 2018 (UTC)
Hello, I have 1,000+ edits over about six weeks. Things were going along lovely. I found everyone friendly. The Teahouse was working great and same with the Help Desk, Idea Lab (here) was a place to offer suggestions. Couldn't complain at all about my Wikipedia experience. That is, until last week when I went through Wikipedia:Questions to the #wikipedia-en-help IRC chat room...that was a big mistake and after that everything turned dark.
I had a simple question about stubs and ended up having someone put the article I was working on into draft space. Then I had two other people jump all over me. It was quite a shock.
Doing further research I found: Wikipedia:IRC and discover that this is a freenode channel, run by volunteers, but not affiliated with Wikipedia. To quote from that page:
When the channels are used to attack Wikipedians, or when IRC discussions are cited as justification for an on-wiki action, the resulting atmosphere is very damaging to the project's collaborative relationships.
Looking further for policy about IRC, I found this: Wikipedia:IRC/wikipedia-en-help. It is the first Wikipedia help page I ever found which says in big bold letters that the #1 channel guideline is "don't be a jerk", so I am assuming there are a lot of people who like to act like jerks there.
Lastly, I reference this: Wikipedia:Dispute resolution which says:
Resolve disputes as soon as they arise. When two editors disagree over what to do with an article, they must talk things through politely and rationally.
So, in the chat room, people took unilateral actions and made on-wiki changes without any discussions. I repeatedly asked for them to post on my Talk page, but this was ignored. Placing the article in question into draft space was a major hassle. Other people were also working on the page and now they won't be able to find it. This has drained my enthusiasm for Wikipedia and made me really question why I should even volunteer my time.
To sum up, I really think Wikipedia should not endorse the IRC chatroom at all, take all links down and especially take down the link at
Wikipedia:Questions. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Seahawk01 (
talk •
contribs)
02:49, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
New York City is suffering a crisis in housing affordability. Although the city's skyline has been filled with construction cranes for a long time, net affordable units continue to be lost. New York City is one of the most expensive places to live in America. There is a crushing rent burden on the poor, working poor and elderly. Homelessness in the city is currently at an historic high.had some obvious NPOV issues. Second, this seems like a mis-use of page-mover permissions, and moving to draft-space in general. Moving an article to draft-space shouldn't allow non-admins to unilaterally delete articles. power~enwiki ( π, ν) 03:17, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
Duplicate proposal See
Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Wikipedia interaction redesign — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Anomie (
talk •
contribs)
03:18, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
I've noticed that our "you are blocked" templates, such as {{ Uw-block}}, can confuse new editors. Some edit the template's instructions instead of making a proper unblock request. For example: 1, 2, 3. I was thinking that maybe we should edit the templates to warn people not to edit the example unblock request. Then I thought, "Why not use an edit filter?" So, then I wasn't sure which way to go, or if maybe the problem is rare enough that it doesn't even matter all that much. Any thoughts? NinjaRobotPirate ( talk) 09:40, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
Does the "you are blocked" template {Uw-block} distinguish between people who are temporarily blocked and people who are permanently blocked? Vorbee ( talk) 18:49, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
|indef=yes
will change "temporarily" to "indefinitely". --
AntiCompositeNumber (
talk)
19:02, 27 December 2018 (UTC)Discussion was left in 2008 regarding trying to find software (or volunteers) to put pronunciations into the entries in Wikipedia. While I don't usually have a problem with regular words, I do have a problem with foreign words or locations, such as places in the Middle East. Have we gotten anywhere on this discussion / suggestion? ErinBS — Preceding unsigned comment added by ErinBS ( talk • contribs) 11:55, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
I have been wondering how were consensuses (or lack thereof) determined for extended discussions (those that are very long, with multiple layers of replies). Did every participant read the arguments and comments that have already been put forward (so that arguments do not become repetitive) before they start putting forth their own argument? I would if I were to participate in these discussions, but I doubt that every participant has done it or would do it.
I think it would be beneficial to have, at the top, a list of logically valid arguments that have been put forward thus far in the discussion in order to aid those who join later in knowing the state of the debate. It should have two sections: ‘arguments for‘ and ‘arguments against.‘ Each argument on the can have an objection or a counterargument from the other side written right under it. Some arguments can be put into a syllogistic form (premises and conclusion) for clarity and for aiding their evaluation. The list would also help the closer of the discussion in determining whether consensus has been reached and what exactly is the consensus. VarunSoon ( talk) 23:51, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
Arguments for deleting categories of Wikipedians by his/her philosophy (Side 1)
Arguments against deleting categories of Wikipedians by his/her philosophy (Side 2)
VarunSoon ( talk) 08:02, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
For preventing development hell: User:Nosebagbear, User:Donald Albury, User:Phil Bridger VarunSoon ( talk) 07:09, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
"Her Majesty" occurs on the wiki 17,469 times. Scrolling thorough the results, it seems that about half of them refer to the current monarch of England. When the queen dies, we'll have a lot of work to do to fix all of those. I wonder if it would be a good idea to create a "their majesty" template and start changing things over now, so that when we actually have to change it over we can do it in one place. As a bonus, if we're still around in 20-80 years when we have a queen again, it would make our lives much easier. Gaelan 💬 ✏️ 07:24, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
When the queen diesQuite the assumption that the Queen isn't an immortal robot-alien sent to rule us for all eternity. Assuming however, that she will die, I'm not finding too many instances where this would have to change in the search results and in most cases we'd probably have to do more changes than changing "her majesty" to "his majesty" to the pages and thus a template could confuse things by having some things up to date and some not. Galobtter ( pingó mió) 15:50, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
Most articles have fields in the info-box for both ideology and political position. While there is usually agreement about ideology, there are often differences over political position. See for example Talk:Liberal Party of Canada#Drop "Center-Left", Talk:Democratic Party (United States)#Political position discussion, Talk:Labour Party (UK)#Centre-left to left wing for current arguments.
Essentially these arguments boil down to where the ideologies belong on the political spectrum.
Reliable sources are in disagreement over how to characterize various ideologies. For example, Robert M. MacIver said conservatives are right, liberals are center and socialists are left. Seymour Martin Lipset said that in the U.S. the Republicans are the Right and the Democrats are the Left. Some scholars define center left to include social liberals and socialists. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. defined the center as anything between fascism on the right and communism on the left. All of these definitions and more are routinely cited in reliable sources, but there is no agreement on which to use.
I think that instead of arguing the issue over dozens if not hundreds of article talk pages, with no consistency in decisions, we either have a consist policy or determine that the field should not be used.
TFD ( talk) 19:35, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
The current commonly used one-dimensional left-right political spectrum is inadequate for sorting political ideologies. That is because it is not clear what is the necessary characteristic(s) for an ideology or a political party to be categorized as left-wing or left-leaning, or to be categorized as right-wing or right-leaning. Is the left defined by social liberalism or by anti-capitalism? Is the right defined by conservatism or by pro-capitalism?
There are several reasons for this inadequacy:
Because the reliable sources disagree with one another (for the reasons described above), I recommend that the use of a term with the word 'left,' 'right,' or 'center' in it be avoided entirely and that we let the terms such as 'progressive liberalism' or 'libertarianism' do the informing. VarunSoon ( talk) 04:35, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
When I "examine" an attempted edit that was disallowed, it takes me a while to see what changes were attempted. Can we get a few colors there to show what is different? Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 14:11, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
This was probably discussed before but I couldn't find anything in the archives. In the last six months a number of US websites have stopped showing content to EU users (e.g. NY Daily News, LA Times) or show a limited selection of the content (e.g. USA Today), and this doesn't seem to be going away any time soon. There's a number of workarounds that allow those of us in the EU to easily view those pages (Google Cache, Internet Archive, Archive.fo), however these are probably not known/used by the average Wikipedia reader who just wants to follow a reference. Hence I propose to automatically link pages from the GPDR-affected websites to the Internet Archive (easily possible via e.g. https://web.archive.org/*/https://...
) for visitors who geolocate to the European Union.
I don't believe there are GDPR impediments to us doing so, since we'd be only linking to the Archive website which we do anyways and the restricted websites wouldn't be gathering EU users' data, and as for other legal issues we regularly link to archived versions of dead webpages from those sites anyway. I suppose this will require programming work, but the payoff will be big as there are many links to these websites on Wikipedia. Thoughts? Daß Wölf 18:06, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
|url=
at web.archive.org and note the archive address in |archive-url=
& the date in |archive-date=
.
Cabayi (
talk)
19:41, 22 December 2018 (UTC)I don't think this is a good idea for a number of reasons. Legislative blocks are happening all over the world, there's no way we can constantly try to fix them. Blocks are at the mercy of human decree, they come and go constantly. Wikipedia is not so technically flexible to edit 100s of thousands (millions) of pages every time there is change in a block so that someone somewhere isn't blocked at that particular time and place. What about the blocks in China, much worse. The dead link system is meant to fix permanent dead links ie. link rot. It doesn't do well as a tool to fix political problems. -- Green C 20:44, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
I personally always preemptively add archive links. Not every one favors that solution, but I think any potential for link rot is worse categorically. What could be done, besides such activity, would be to hack up a script making all links to certain websites go through archive.org. I would guess that this script would not have consensus as either a) for everyone or b) even just opt-out for logged in users, but it would at least be an opt-in for logged-in editors. -- Izno ( talk) 22:17, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
I'm having trouble understanding how this is materially different from the problems we've been dealing with for years, e.g., that some Google Books or YouTube videos are only available to users who geolocate to particular countries. Why should we accept "This website won't show this content to people in Germany because of German copyright laws" but try to build a workaround for "This website won't show this content to people in Germany because of German privacy laws"?
(I wonder whether the decision to block content is primarily a business decision about expenses vs revenue, or if it might not be a deliberate act of civil resistance. Submitting to regulation by a foreign power – even if it weren't one that has somewhat weaker views on the freedom of the press – is not something that I really expect serious American newspapers to do unthinkingly.) WhatamIdoing ( talk) 20:36, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
Many of you might not know, Wikipedia has already been using Artificial Intelligence to manage work. For instance, a team led by Aaron Halfaker designed the Objective Revision Evaluation Service, an open-source machine learning-based service designed to generate real-time predictions on edit quality and article quality. ORES has already been incorporated in over 20 Wikipedia applications to support a variety of critical tasks such as counter-vandalism, task routing and the Wikipedia education program.
We want to know your thoughts on how we should use AI in Wikipedia. Please reach out to me by bowen-yu@umn.edu or my talk page! We are working with Aaron Halfaker and his team to make ORES better. You can find more details on our project here. Look forward to hearing from you! Bobo.03 ( talk) 01:51, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
Thank you for this. A question which arises is how does one define Artificial Intelligence - for example, are bots A.I. ? Vorbee ( talk) 09:13, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
Yes, that makes sense - I have had a brief look at the Wikipedia article on Artificial Intelligence. Vorbee ( talk) 21:03, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
|language=
can be filled in automatically. Actually I have no hats as I keep throwing them away. --
Green
C
21:22, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
Hi. Is there the possibility for switching to a text-only mode, without images?
At the end of the page users visualize a link "mobile view" or "desktop", enabling them to switch from a mode of visualizazion (mobile or desktop view) to the other.
It may be hopefully added a third text-only mode of visualizationthat is useful for users with visual impairments or with speed-up a slow Internet Connection, so as not to have to block images in their browser option settings, or to install a text-based web browser on their Internet devices.
A text-only mode can benefit the server workload, moving also to an even more improved [ Web Traffic performance for those specific but non extraordinary operating scenarios. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.14.139.111 ( talk) 23:23, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
Accounts created which be limited to 5 users per IP on one year, to prevent sock puppets, vandalism and disruptive edits. Also, IP and user blocks should be extented. (Don't forget to ping me) ImmortalWizard (chat) 14:41, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
I'd like to develop a proposal for deprecating the use of indefinite blocks. If the idea survives the scrutiny of this lab, I will. I am prepared to discard the idea, without animosity, if it does not. As a preventive measure, nothing appreciable is lost by using blocks with a prescribed duration instead; a duration capped at a maximum of perhaps 10 or 15 years. I realize that there are, and will continue to be, cases where the restriction is meant to never expire and suggest that in these eventualities, the respective accounts should be locked indefinitely, not blocked.
Since this is not a proposal, there's no "survey" section, and nothing to support or oppose, so: please don't. Please do: ask questions if things are not clear, mention concerns that you may have, and measures that could mitigate your concerns (if such mitigation is possible), speak with candor if you believe there is no realistic means to achieve the desired end, or if you feel the idea is lacking in merit or somehow in need, and most of all, be a colleague and expect the same from others as well. Thank you.-- John Cline ( talk) 09:57, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
I have a new idea for a WikiProject.
feel free to provide any comments. thanks!! -- Sm8900 ( talk) 15:24, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (idea lab). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.
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hello im a ip editor and i want my own sandbox 58.9.138.7 ( talk) 03:25, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
Since you cannot directly delete your own subpages, how about we let a bot – who is Administrator – delete user subpages that have been requested to be (speedy) deleted by their user? Colonestarrice ( talk) 23:00, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
Greetings! The Project Grants program is accepting proposals until November 30 to fund both experimental and proven ideas such as research, offline outreach (including editathon series, workshops, etc), online organizing (including contests), or providing other support for community building for Wikimedia projects.
We offer the following resources to help you plan your project and complete a grant proposal:
Also accepting candidates to join the Project Grants Committee through November 15.
With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) 19:46, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
In an attempt to broaden my horizons, and better understand the unusual current political climate in the United States, I've been reviewing the always contentious sociology articles to determine what I should know about the current sociological literature.
I had wished that the pop sociology, like pop science was just shallow and poorly thought out, but this seems to be a pandemic in the sociology articles particularly Any article ending in the word Feminism, Sexism or Privilege. Of course we should expect edit wars in these sections, the topics are inflammatory, the debate is heated, and frankly the literature seems a little incoherent(I'm used to nice measureable empirical STEM topics).
There are so many issues in these article not least of which include:
In particular the current political polarization specifically in the United States seems to be negatively affecting the edit quality of these articles.
I recently had some anonymous user revert an edit in which I removed a paragraph which did not have a <ref> but did refer to an article by an author neither of which I could determine to have ever existed, despite the fact that it was apparently published only 4 years ago. The editor in question, left some barely coherent edit summary "found references, this is user opinion of ethanpet to counter published research to fit an anti perspective.", when indeed I am simply enforcing Wikipedia's policy of not putting huge unverifiable paragraphs in the middle of an article. The revision in question is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Social_privilege&oldid=prev&diff=865240125&diffmode=source
You'll see the paragraph looks like it was computer generated.
For this reason I recommend a temporary broad spectrum edit protection on such articles until they can be stabilized, or they are unlikely to reach a point where they are good articles. Sure once they're good articles we can revert sloppy uncited cor copypasta paragraphs, but at the moment this seems to make up the majority of the material.
To get an idea of what I mean, just start at Feminism or Sexism, and start looking through the see also section, and other linked items in the category or infobox
I know we can never prevent bad actors or just poor wikipedians from degrading the quality of articles. But I think some administrator review might be necessary to stem the tide, and I'm not sure it would be appropriate for me to just go protection request bombing the entire project.
Ethanpet113 ( talk) 10:40, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Hello, I would like to suggest setting a hard cap on page size. Perhaps 50 - 60 kB. I am noticing a lot of pages that deal with hot-button issues just explode with no common thread into a mishmash of sections that don't really relate to each other. Then, how can someone edit that? And, also, there doesn't seem to be a lot of people that are interested in bringing order to these pages.
Two examples would be Economic inequality and Affordable housing.
Now, on the other hand, there are excellent articles that are over the suggested 40 kB. For example Fourth Amendment. But, I could point to a lot of very important Fourth Amendment related pages that are truly neglected like Terry stop. So, maybe, clustering all that high-powered editing talent in those select, high-profile pages starves other pages of attention.
In addition, I would like to suggest a purge of all class C pages. Maybe issue a one month warning. Then, if the pages don't shape up, mask them and only allow editors to view until they at least make a grade B.
I like Wikipedia and have used it for a long time. But, I feel a bit sad that such important topics like "economic inequality" and "affordable housing", which are so important to our society, and are ranked #1 on Google, are such a mess. So, I think Wikipedia should really make an effort to provide valuable, well-thought-out articles on these issues.
Thanks Seahawk01 ( talk) 03:50, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
I've hived this off into a subpage since you suggestion "In addition ... least make a grade B" doesn't have much to do with over-long pages. There are a lot of class C and start class pages that are stubs and ought to remain as such. For instance consider Joseph Jones (trade unionist) which I would suggest is about the right length for someone who was notable but is hardly worth a GA or FA length article. Perhaps the existing crude classification needs some thought. Stub articles are valuable, calling one a stub should not be regarded as dismissive. Short articles will never climb the class scale, perhaps the criteria need to be adjusted so that a good stub or short article could be regarded as C = "complete" rather that C = "third rate". Martin of Sheffield ( talk) 23:07, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
I'm going to throw in another suggestion. Just like semi-locked pages have a warning, why not put a big, yellow "very long, please consider splitting, consolidating or placing info on more appropriate page" notice on top of the edit page for pages longer than 60-80 kB. That way, people will notice when they try to edit a page, that they are adding to something that is probably too big to begin with. Seahawk01 ( talk) 05:28, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
I would like to test the water for a potential proposal for a guideline change. What are the arguments for and against? How much support is there? Has the idea been given a thorough hearing before? If so, can anybody locate those discussion(s) without too much effort?
POTENTIALLY PROPOSED: Unless there is a local consensus to deviate, the names of neighborhoods, villages, towns, cities, etc. in infoboxes should be shown as per the title of the corresponding article. Honolulu, not Honolulu, Hawaii, not Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.. Prace, Czech Republic. Maidstone, but Egerton, Kent. Et cetera.
It goes without saying that such a guideline would save a ton of discussion. My question is whether that editor time is justified, or whether the article title would suffice in most cases. The guideline would also improve consistency and coherence in location references by providing a single way to refer to each location. ― Mandruss ☎ 13:36, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
I think it's a bad idea to create any sort of default rule for this. Certainly, sometimes disambiguation is overkill, London, Greater London, Home Counties, England, Great Britain, United Kingdom, Europe, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, Local Group, Universe is certainly unneeded, London would suffice. However, on the counter argument, sometimes additional context is needed for place names. Take a hypothetical Ontario politician who was born in London, UK but spent most of his life in Ontario politics; certainly if his infobox just said "London", it may confuse readers because London, Ontario is a different place, and so in that sort of case we may want to specify even though the article on the UK city doesn't have any disambiguator in the title; an article about an Ontario person may lead a reader to think of "London" as the Ontario city. There's many different reasons I can find to want to have the city name in the infobox be different from the article title, so much so that any policy to that effect would make a significant number of articles less useful for readers, rather than more. -- Jayron 32 13:30, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
The idea is of the approaching of topics by asking a question in the title and then dealing with that question in the article. It at first might seem unsettling, but its been done once or twice, and I'm asking here for opinions on the idea as a general approach to at least list the " big questions" out there, and then do the article. Your thoughts? - Inowen ( nlfte) 04:31, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
I have no problem with it and indeed Who is a Jew? is a good example. History is full of perennial questions that are the subject of books, papers. What caused the Roman Empire to Collapse? For professional historians asking good questions is an important part of the craft. But if the article is framed as a question seems besides the point, it might be framed as a theory such as great man theory, which might also be framed as a question ("Is history driven by individuals or society?"). Or it might be a commonly recognized phrase Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Depends on the historiographic tradition. -- Green C 23:06, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Is this about whether article titles should ask questions? I do not think that would be a very good idea - paper encyclopedias are not likely to have article titles which ask questions. Vorbee ( talk) 20:18, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
I would be more inclined to make such titles redirects to articles about the subject of the question, unless the question itself is the subject of the article. zchrykng ( talk) 02:28, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
How would you limit them? Vorbee ( talk) 16:53, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
Thank you, Vorbee ( talk) 09:12, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
I've noticed that quite a lot of Wikipedia pages for Us Congressional Districts are out of date missing 2016 results. Two examples that I updated earlier today include the Colorado's 1st congressional districtand Colorado's 4th congressional district. This strikes me as quite surprising as given the existence of election result API's. It would be fairly trivial to code a bot that automatically generates infoboxes containing such information and add them to the appropriate page. I'm myself a rather poor self-taught scripter with no experience creating wiki-bots but am willing to help code part of the bot if somebody is willing to perhaps help me with the wiki part of the bot. Zubin12 ( talk) 04:12, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Many of you are aware that the blocking system will get a major overhaul with the introduction of "partial blocks" (see Wikipedia:Community health initiative on English Wikipedia/Per-user page, namespace, and upload blocking). Partial blocks will fundamentally change how policies are enforced. Assuming that blocks remain preventative rather than punitive, I think partial blocks have the potential to make current enforcement policies obsolete.
For example, currently a topic-banned user is only blocked when they breach the ban. But with partial blocks, the user can simply be blocked from editing relevant pages upon the ban being enacted. This can potentially result in blocks and bans becoming practically synonymous.
I am not quite sure how our current procedures will change as a result of partial blocks. I personally feel that we could eventually merge blocks and bans together with this new system. But that's just what I think. funplussmart ( talk) 20:00, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Hello, I'd like to suggest a push to improve social issues pages. Maybe select 100 core issues and 100-500 recent events and try to get every page to WP:GOOD level. I am suggesting this because I am encountering so many pages I think really should present the public with solid, well thought out information that are a mishmash of ideas, are 4-6 times the recommended page size ( WP:SPLIT) and have no idea about summary style ( WP:SUMMARY).
Just to give a few examples of some class C social issue pages: Economic inequality, Affordable housing, Racial profiling, Police reform (US), Sexism, Public health, Education, Environmentalism, Police, Crime
Seahawk01 ( talk) 05:40, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
I'm generally a bit surprised/annoyed when what appears to be a normal internal link leads me to a Wiktionary entry. It would be a lot less surprising and more helpful if I could know ahead of time that a particular link leads there, say, by including a small Wiktionary logo next to the link as a visual cue. I'm focusing on Wiktionary here because those seem to be by far the most common offenders. Other projects could be included here, but those are usually done with templates that set the link off and make the destination clear.
I'm not sure about the technical feasibility of implementing this, or if it's been suggested before and rejected, so any feedback would be appreciated. – Deacon Vorbis ( carbon • videos) 16:17, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
.mw-parser-output a.extiw, .mw-parser-output a.extiw:active { color: #066; }
.mw-parser-output a.extiw:visited { color: #046; }
.extiw {
background: url(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/Wikimedia-logo.svg/12px-Wikimedia-logo.svg.png) center right no-repeat;
padding-right: 13px;
}
From what I understand, Checkuser is only performed when an admin requests it. But considering the wide prevalence of sock-puppets and the general dearth of administrators, can't this at least be semi-automated? If two editors from the same IP (appropriately extended to the same subnet) edit the same page or pages in the same domain within a specific time frame, they are very likely socks and their names/IPs should be added to a private list somewhere to be acted upon (perhaps by SPI clerks or similar). Editing the same talk page should throw up even redder flags somewhere. There are obviously legitimates cases like alternate accounts that need to be accounted for.
I'm assuming here that something like this doesn't already exist. If there are pages available that detail what goes on behind the scenes with SPIs, please link me to them. But, in this day and age where Machine learning has gone mainstream, there ought to be better technical solutions to handle the endless meat and sock-puppets on this site. Something needs to be done to allow editors to edit and collaborate in peace without having to deal this nonsense. Thanks.— Cpt.a.haddock ( talk) (please ping when replying) 12:33, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
I find many maps on Wikipedia that are supposed to reflect rankings very difficult to understand. This is because the coloring or shading is either arbitrary or unclear (sometimes because on a map the shades and differences do not seem to be the same as they are against a white background). The coloring or shading should be visually intuitive and distinguishable. This means that, for colors, it should not be arbitrary. Consider the map at Social Progress Index. Instead of progressing in color along a scale of intensity or a standard hue sequence such as ROYGBIV, it jumps all around, making a reader translate it rather than see the message. There should be some guidance (guidelines)in making these maps so that they are useful tools rather than puzzles. Kdammers ( talk) 06:10, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
Is there a place to list and draw attraction to poor articles, particularly articles which are of high-importance? - Inowen ( nlfte) 04:32, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
They can go for articles for deletion, and if they are not up to good merits, they can have a tag at the top warning that they may go to articles for deletion. Vorbee ( talk) 18:05, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
I'd like to discuss the idea of unbundling DYK queuing so that trusted editors could apply for the tool to move prep to queue. I think it might solve multiple problems to have maybe twelve editors working in teams of two with that tool, each team responsible for moving, say, Prep 1 to Queue 1 for every iteration. Being responsible always for Queue 1 might make these editors take real pains to provide a detailed final review to prevent errors from appearing on the main page, whereas overworked admins sometimes may be just trying to feed the beast. Having two people responsible for that exact definite job would mean that even in times when RL inteferes, like during a holiday weekend, we'd be less likely to end up with six empty queues two hours before DYK is due to go up. I believe there would be multiple experienced editors who would be interested in doing this one important job for WP, but wouldn't necessarily be interested in applying for admin. valereee ( talk) 04:45, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
Three days later, the newer Advanced Search feature, currently a Beta Feature, will become default feature in all wikis. However, I have issues with it mainly because its Namespace checklist vertical window is very narrow and inconvenient to browse/surf. Due to the one-vertical-column formatting, clicking one of desired namespaces becomes harder, especially for users who have enjoyed the older Advanced Search, which divides the namespace options into columns. I was given a suggestion to discuss this locally. I am thinking ideas about what to do with the newer feature, like proposal to create the "Hide the improved version of Advanced Search" option, asking developers to delay the move, create a Phab ticket about the Namespace list, etc. George Ho ( talk) 21:46, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
The Simple English version of Wikipedia is a very useful tool when reading something but you need it explained from a more basic or layman's viewpoint. I'd propose to add a dedicated tab, or link, at the top of each English page, only if there is an equivalent Simple English alternative, so that new readers to pages can instantly get a simplified version of the page. Similarly, on all Simple English pages, there should be a direct link back to the standard English page. One proposal is to have a tab along the other tabs like "Article, Talk", etc., another would be to have a sentence at the start of each article, in italics, saying "This article is also available in Simple English: <articlename>" and the <articlename> is linked. Byziden ( talk) 16:46, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
In 2013 there was a proposal for the Foundation to take over the running of WebCite (see Meta:WebCite). The idea was supported by WebCite themselves. Alternative suggestions were that the Foundation should support WebCite in some lesser way; with technical support or monetary grants for instance. The proposal was closed without saying what has actually happened, if anything.
Since then, the site has had frequent, lengthy, and unexplained outages (see Talk:WebCite). WebCite is very important for Wikipedia. It enables us to safely protect references against linkrot. Is it time to reopen this proposal? Spinning Spark 12:30, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
We still have many bios with political offices that are inconsistent with capitalizing & non-capitalizing. The best example is the bios of US governors & lieutenant governors. Can we enforce WP:JOBTITLES to settle the dispute? GoodDay ( talk) 02:27, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
A decade or more ago, various (entirely good-faith) Wikipedians added exlinks to omacl.org, which was at the time was the Online Medieval and Classical Library - which hosted a range of historical texts. But now, as an IP editor points out, omacl.org redirects to a payday lender. I expect that the domain has expired and has been bought by that loans company. We have nearly 200 links to omacl.org, which obviously we need to fix somehow. The IP fixed that particular link by changing the domain to mcllibrary.org, and that site appears to host the correct documents (and for a few of the other links we have, at least). I'm a touch skittish about that site, because it seems to be hosted by another individual person - and I fear that if we put work into changing all the links there, in a few years that person may abandon his project, and the same kind of domain-lapse problem will recur. It would be better if we could fix the links to a more stable location, like the Internet Archive, or a University department. So my questions are:
I'll prod a couple of the related wikiprojects for their input. -- Finlay McWalter··–· Talk 18:13, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
Just to comment that the idea that documents hosted by university departments are stable is misplaced confidence. They are just as suscepible to linkrot as anywhere else, possibly more so. The documents often only stay up as long as a particular course is being run or a particular professor needs them. I've fixed hundred of such links that have gone dead. Spinning Spark 14:50, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
The inclusion of lists of non-notable victims is becoming problematic. It seems that they are being added by editors to articles dealing with mass casualty WP:EVENTs which is causing frequent, often lengthy and sometimes acrimonious debates over whether such lists are appropriate and/or violate WP:NOTMEMORIAL and NOT:EVERYTHING with local consensus proving either elusive or dramatically varying from one article to another depending on shows up and how determined they are to bludgeon their way through. This is getting out of hand and we really need to establish some kind of guideline for the sake of consistency and putting a stop to these endless debates. I personally believe that in most cases they are unencyclopedic, add nothing of substance to the article and violate, at least in spirit, NOTMEMORIAL. But even if a decision is made to allow them, which I would strongly oppose, that would be better than the status quo. My personal preference would be to amend NOTMEMORIAL to expressly prohibit lists of non-notable victims. Obvious and commonsense exceptions would include otherwise nonnotable victims who were significantly involved in the EVENT. Which is to say they did more than just die. Generally these will simply be named in the article narrative. I also would be fine with including an WP:EL external link to a suitable memorial website or news site that lists the victims. I do realize that this has been discussed before, but the status quo is just not working. Thoughts? - Ad Orientem ( talk) 15:09, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
"why do we care about ethnicity"I don't know. But we do. And it is not just ethnicity. It is age too. And a minimal few other factors. Occupations and home towns have informative value. Bus stop ( talk) 18:32, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
"Whether an individual picks their nose has some degree of informative value."That is why we exercise judgement as to how extensive our coverage is of the lives of decedents. Bus stop ( talk) 18:40, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
"care about the names, ages, and home towns of the dead."I know I would. Bus stop ( talk) 16:22, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
"You've not established how these lists are distinct from others"Nor need I. Reality has established the distinction of these lists. We are not here primarily to educate people. Yes, most of the time we try to digest information in accordance with the views of sources. But identities of decedents do not require any special explanation. We are documenting by minimal means the identities of the fatalities that are of central importance to the incident being written about. Bus stop ( talk) 18:09, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
a 48-year-old bouncer; a 33-year-old Marine Corps veteran; and a 27-year-old Navy veteranover giving names (with references that have further info). power~enwiki ( π, ν) 18:26, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
"a name is meaningless"Doesn't a name sometimes suggest an ethnicity? Bus stop ( talk) 18:47, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
As unhappy as I am about lists of names of non-notable people in articles, I think that battle is lost: Passengers of the RMS Titanic. - Donald Albury 19:22, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
"they known every passenger and their background"And why do you think this is so? There may be reasons particular to the Titanic incident, but I don't think that explains all. No matter the incident the reader wants to know the identities of the people involved. Editors here are arguing that this information shouldn't be in the article. But who are we writing the article for? Oh, we know what is best for the reader? That is the height of hubris. We are not talking about extraneous or tangentially related facts. The identities of the deceased are clearly within the scope of the article. I don't think it is our role to deprive readers of relevant information just because we think they should not be interested in this information. And I will be the first to admit that I am interested in this information. The reason we are interested in knowing a little bit about the identities of the deceased is because we want specifics. When it comes to fatalities we want specifics on who died. It is unsatisfactory to simply be told "7 people died". The reader has an appetite for more information in the form of "which 7 people died?" Wikipedia is not here to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. It doesn't matter that some editors think the reader doesn't need to know this information. The ultimate question in this discussion is one of WP:WEIGHT. Obviously too much information on decedents is too much weight. But names and ages clearly are not too much weight. Bus stop ( talk) 22:44, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
So OK. Normally I'm of the mind to let the editors decide, but if it is true that "Victims lists are becoming a source of constant debate and argument", that wastes energy. So how about a compromise? Make a rule called WP:VICTIMS with something like this:
Articles on events in which two or more people were killed or injured -- airplane crashes for instance -- may usually give the names of the victims if there were ten or fewer. If there were eleven or more, articles should usually not include the names of the victims.
As always, common sense exceptions may be made. Bluelinked names are exempt from this rule, may always be given, and do not count against this "rule of ten" limit. There is no requirement to give victim's names; it is allowed if someone wants to (and there are ten or fewer).
The names and descriptions of victims should be in sentence or paragraph form, not list format. Normal sourcing rules apply, of course.
What's good about this is that it quashes arguments, pretty much. Why ten? I dunno -- got to have some number. Make it eight or twelve if you like. Ten is not really an imposition on the article. You can ten names and bit more into a short paragraph. It doesn't unbalance the article.
As to having the names in paragraph rather than list format: 1) it makes them a little less prominent; they don't take up half a screen, and 2) lists of victims just drive some people nuts, perhaps for that reason. Let's try to gruntle both sides a little.
Sure this is arbitrary but arbitrary works. Like for baseball players, there's an arbitrary rule: if you had even one at bat in the major leagues, you get an article, even it it was in 1887 and we don't even know your first name. If you had a fifteen year career in the minor leagues, you're not in. (Unless you meet WP:BIO and someone can successfully argue for you.) Fair or not I don't know, but there are virtually no arguments about ballplayers. We have lots of rules like that -- state legislators, etc. Works a charm. Herostratus ( talk) 22:34, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
"It is better not have to have the lists in the first place."The same can be said for anything—"It is best not to include the names of alleged assailants", "It is best not to include the make and model of the gun used", "It is best not to include the street address of the venue of the incident", "It is best not to include the name of the venue". In your wisdom you feel the reader should not satiate their appetite for information pertaining to the identities of the deceased at our article; they will have to go elsewhere if they want that despicable information. You are making an arbitrary value judgement. Bus stop ( talk) 23:28, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
"he's very likely discussed at length in reliable sources". Reliable sources also happen to discuss the victims of the "Thousand Oaks shooting". In my opinion we should not be splitting hairs and making distinctions that editors think are significant. You are distinguishing between non-passive roles and passive roles. But those are your criteria. How do you know that the reader has no interest in knowing the identities of those people that editor Mandruss considers "passive"? Bus stop ( talk) 22:01, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
"No thanks"to what? Bus stop ( talk) 22:23, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
Enh, what I'm seeing here is a couple-few guys who who don't want to compromise. Whether my idea is good or not, whether it could be adopted or not... who knows? When the most clearly expressed positions are "No, we must never list victims names, and no, no compromise from that position is possible" versus "Yes, we must always allow all names of all victims, and no, no compromise from that position is possible"... We're not going to solve the problem and you're going to have these discussions forever. You will; I won't, because I will have forgotten about it, because I don't much care, because it doesn't matter, really. The best-for-the-Wikipedia thing to do is to fix this problem. Holding fast to an entrenched position -- any position -- is not the best-for-the-Wikipedia thing to do. There's no core policies at stake here, and there's no "right" or "wrong" position. Give a little. Herostratus ( talk) 02:24, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
As a different suggestion, I would argue that fully sourced victim lists can be listed over at Wikisource and linked back to the en.wiki article, eliminating any victim lists within en.wiki. Articles in prose can still discuss notable victims and talk about specific victims that had a role in the event, but the tables should be omitted in favor of the Wikisource version. (This also makes those lists available for other Wikiprojects). -- Masem ( t) 00:30, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
I strongly suggest going to the WP:NOT archives and searching for NOTMEMORIAL and similar terms. Review the perennial debates over this policy. NOTMEMORIAL was added in 2004, and in the 14 years since, it has been tweaked slightly here and there, and a lot of effort has gone into what belongs in the non-article namespaces. But the part about the article namespace has not really changed meaningfully, and the meaning has remained controversial throughout.
This isnt like COI or BLP or RS, where new editors have trouble understanding policy, but after some time and experience, we all converge on a general agreement on why these policies exist and what they mean. Wikpedia's best, most experienced editors split into two entrenched camps on whether or not 'not memorial' applies only to article creation/retention, or if it also restrictes consents within articles. No revision of the text in 14 years has touched that simple question because there is no consensus on that question.
It would be great if a proposal could pass that said in plain terms whether or not, like WP:NNC (Notability guidelines do not apply to content within an article), it does or does not limit content of articles. If anyone thinks they can win global consensus for a clear decision one way or the other, more power to them. Please do so, and put this debate to rest.
From what I can tell, it won't pass because Wikipedia is deeply divided. If we can't agree on that, then we have to admit that NOTMEMORIAL isn't much of a policy, since it doesn't represent a global consensus. There is probably global consensus that content with no purpose other than to honor the dead doesn't belong. But the obvious question "does this content in this article serve no purpose except to honor the dead?" has to be answered on a case by case basis. Decided by local consensus. No easy appeal to the top-down dictates of policy, like some simplistic 10-victim rule. No way is there global support for assigning an arbitrary numeric limit like 10 casualties, and no way is there consensus to shift all of it over to some other wikiproject.
The best, most realistic outcome would be a frank admission that this isn't something that Wikipedia has a firm position on, and it will vary from article to article. There are beautiful FAs and FLs with no casualty names mentioned, and beautiful ones with non-notable casualties included. It depends, and that's fine. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 04:02, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
"Some of these pages now have these needless lists, and they are being used to bolster an WP:OSE argument in support of even more such lists."Yet I also find you saying "OK Dennis, you go make a case for having a list of everyone killed in World War II (would want to leave any WWII article readers "hanging" now, would we?)" Aren't you making an Other stuff exists argument right there? Isn't your reasoning that we don't have a list of all the casualties at our World War II article (50 to 85 million fatalities) therefore we should not list the casualties at the "USS Fitzgerald and MV ACX Crystal collision" (7 fatalities) as seen in this version of the article in the "Casualties" section? Bus stop ( talk) 23:29, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Again, I will ask you; how are these names pertinent to the article? How do they lend to the reader's understanding of how the collision occurred, and what transpired after? Yes, seven people died, and that is noted. But we no more need their names to complete this article than we need a list of the names of all ≈80 million people that died in World War II to complete, or understand, any of the articles here about that subject." Unfortunately, Dennis jumped in there right after and I never did a response from you. So how about answering those questions now? (It's somewhat overdue). Thanks - wolf•
thewolfchild—you want me to now respond here to a post you made on an article Talk page 5 days ago? OK. You ask "How do they lend to the reader's understanding of how the collision occurred"? We are not only concerned with "how the collision occurred". That is an area of inquiry that you are putting before us. But it is hardly the only area a reader might inquire about. What you are studiously avoiding is the version of the article containing the so-called victim list. It is a section called "Casualties". It tells us the positions aboard the vessel of each of the deceased, their names, their ages, and their home towns. We are not only concerned with "how the collision occurred". We are also concerned with the identities of the deceased. The names are proper nouns and they don't really shed light on the particular question you pose.
But proper nouns of this sort are not unusual at all. Why are we told at the Thousand Oaks shooting article that it takes place at the "Borderline Bar and Grill"? Please tell me why we are giving the reader that proper name. And the name of the perpetrator—why do we need to know it was "Ian David Long"? Please explain to me why we are giving the reader that proper name. Now that the reader knows it occurred at the "Borderline Bar and Grill" and that the assailant's name is "Ian David Long"—do they now understand the event? I'm obviously not arguing against providing this information. Quite the opposite. A reader wants to know these specifics. There are specifics that can be dispensed with. But brief, rudimentary identification of key components is best included in an article. This gets us back to "who died"? Omitting that is truncating the article. I would contend the "Thousand Oaks shooting" article is a truncated article. The names and ages of the deceased should be included and unfortunately they are not. That is a defect in the article and it should be corrected by adding rudimentary information related to their identities.
Finally, we have articles such as The Perfect Storm (film) and The Perfect Storm (book). Didn't Sebastian Junger have to know information about the deceased such as their home towns? Don't writers consult Wikipedia articles? To the article's credit, the crew of the "Andrea Gail", upon which Sebastian Junger's book is based, though the 6 crew members are "non-notable", are noted in our article by name, age, and hometown. Bus stop ( talk) 20:57, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
This gets us back to "who died"?" - Who cares? Except those few who might actually know these people, and as has already been made abundantly clear to you, Wikipedia is not an obituary.
I don't really have an opinion on the name of the bar, but if it's just a random, average bar, with no bearing on the event, I don't see a reason to name it.Bus stop ( talk) 09:03, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
It would be much more productive to 1) stop re-fighting the Fitzgerald ship collision debate. You won, in case you forgot. Never seen anybody complain so much after getting a majority of editors to support them. Hate to see how bitter you can be when you don't get your way. Let it go now. 2) Seriously read the old discussions on 'not memorial'. The ones from 2006, the ones year after year after that. The thing to notice is how many editors (names you recognize as admins, from writing FAs, as leaders with years of contributions) confidently see a place for lists or prose mentions of people who were casualties but not main actors in events. Your point of view has many adherents. Many fine, experienced, important editors. But there are just as many fine editors who don't feel obligated to list thousands or millions of dead for every event, just because they do list some names for other events. You say "You can't justify one without the other" and that's fine. Many editors think a consistent standard applies to every event of any kind, and many say, no, it depends. For 14 years, nobody has formed a strong consensus on it.
Maybe now you can change that and get a policy change that settles it. But history suggests you won't, in which case you ought to try to make peace with the reality. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 16:58, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Riiight, I've been just awful, haven't I, Dennis? Look at how deeply I obviously hurt you with my scathing comment about kittens. As for the topic at hand; I simply cited the Talk:USS Fitzgerald and MV ACX Crystal collision discussion as an example of the issue being debated, and the reason that Ad Orientem wisely brought this here for a wider audience and hopefully some kind of solution. I didn't even mention the consensus there. Aside from the topic, I only mentioned that you and BS are arguing for the inclusion of non-notable names of victims. And while I just used the word "vehemently", I could've said 'page-dominating, persistent bludgeoning'... but I didn't. And don't need to either. People can just look at that page for themselves, or here, or here, or here or... here. These are all current talk page debates involving this topic, and a helluva lota' posts by you. Now, I tried this once before, and you blew it, but I'll try it again; I've said what I've needed to say here, (unless there's another proposal, or someone replies to me), so I will now step back and allow others to discuss. You've said enough, haven't you? How about you do the same? I think you can do it... this time. G'nite - wolf 00:13, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
Bare lists of victims, which only compile names and basic information (age, birthplace, occupation, etc.) are to be deprecated. Victims of crimes and disasters and other tragic events may be named as a normal part of a quality prose narrative, but lists of names with no context are not useful to most readers anymore than lists of names are in other Wikipedia articles, and advice for creating lists of names of otherwise non-notable people are as applicable to victim's lists as anywhere else in Wikipedia, and victims lists are not accorded any special exemptions from the normal practices of creating lists of otherwise non-notable people.
The goal here, is not to scrub the names of victims from articles, but to avoid the bad writing of slapping in "contextless" lists just because, or to afford "special status" to people because they died during a notable tragic event. The role of Wikipedia is not to create a remembrance of people who died in such ways, though we should also not be afraid to include names where the actions of those people during events would have come up anyways in the course of writing a prose narrative about the event. Simply put: if you think a person's role in an event in which they died bears coverage, it should be covered in the prose narrative. Simply creating a contextless list of non-notable people is not good writing, in this type of article or in any other. -- Jayron 32 12:07, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
"Simply creating a contextless list of non-notable people is not good writing, in this type of article or in any other."
(Jayron32 12:07, 20 Nov) I precisely disagree. I prefer contextless lists in many instances. The crux of this discussion happens to be contextless lists of non-notable people. Can anyone point to an article in stable condition that is negatively impacted by a contactless contextless list? User:Thewolfchild above attempted to do that above but did not link to
the past version which contained a section called "Casualties". It is worth examining that past version because I would contend it is constructive to the article. "Contextless" is not the negative quality it is purported to be. I'll admit that I was surprised that one of the most starkly contextless lists made it into the
2016 Oakland warehouse fire but even there I would defend it as entirely constructive to the article. I argue we do not have to digest all information for the reader. We are not producing articles that tie up all loose ends. It doesn't matter if some things do not make sense. We are discussing articles in which "senselessness" is a key quality. The argument some of you are making is to take away all crumbs of clues as to the nature of what transpired in the addressed event. Everything is a clue even if an incomplete clue. We should step back and let competent and seasoned editors that are familiar with our already-existing policies and guidelines do what they do pretty well—create articles on the unfortunately proliferating series of tragedies—especially lone gunmen shooting up establishments. No one would disagree that the senselessness of these events defy description. Consider
2017 Las Vegas shooting. Whether there is a victim list or not almost doesn't matter. We should let editors write articles. I think that in every instance that there is a victim list it is constructive to the article. What I find unproductive is the attempt to control other editors. It is not the end of the world or the doom of Wikipedia if "contextless list of non-notable people" are included in articles.
Bus stop (
talk)
15:24, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Can anyone point to an article in stable condition that is negatively impacted by a contactless [contextless] list?That's the second time you've asked that question in this discussion. It was ignored the first time I suspect because it's such a vacuous question (that's certainly the reason I ignored it). List opponents feel that any article containing a list is "negatively impacted" by it—for the reasons we have thoroughly articulated in discussion after discussion, of which you are fully aware. That you disagree with those arguments goes without saying. ― Mandruss ☎ 15:31, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
"the list bloats the article"The article is not overly long. Bus stop ( talk) 16:43, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Why would you prefer a range of ages when a particular person, identified as male or female, can be associated with a particular age?For the reasons I've given in discussion after discussion, including several where you've been present and I know you've seen them. You have a particular talent for not hearing opponents' arguments, repeatedly demanding that they give reasons that they have already given countless times, and I'm beginning to fantasize about a topic ban from victims' lists. I'm not aware of a single other editor that does this in this topic area. ― Mandruss ☎ 16:37, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
"For the reasons I've given in discussion after discussion, including several where you've been present"I must have been out to lunch. Bus stop ( talk) 17:02, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
"You have a particular talent for not hearing opponents' arguments, repeatedly demanding that they give reasons that they have already given countless times, and I'm beginning to fantasize about a topic ban from victims' lists."Perhaps you should learn to repeat yourself. Just because you've said something once, especially in another thread, is not a reason you cannot say it again. You are shying away from debate. Bus stop ( talk) 17:19, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
"I promise to consistently 'shy away from' repetitive debate."When a person asks you a question you should answer it. It is as simple as that. You don't know where they are going with their line of reasoning. You are stymying debate by constant grandstanding. Bus stop ( talk) 17:33, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
"win the debate by sheer force of will". This is a debate between allowing editors of adequate competence to construct articles as they see fit, with Talk page discussion as need be, versus creating many more rules to supplement the already existing rules. WP:MEMORIAL actually does not apply to anything. That is because WP:BIO already serves the purpose of preventing the creation of articles on non-notable people. The question of whether there should be a list of victims is a simple decision best left to editorial discretion. My argument is simple. Bulleted lists have their value. I don't understand why a fuss is made over such lists. But if editors want to argue over them, let them argue over them on article Talk pages. In short I don't think Ad Orientem should have started this discussion. I'm sure Ad Orientem meant well but this is a can of worms. Bus stop ( talk) 18:21, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
This seems like a good proposal. If there's some information about particular victims that would be valuable to the encyclopedia and is well-sourced, then the names can be included as part of that. For example, if there were a disaster or shooting and many sources discussed the actions of one of the dead victims during the event, then that might be worth including in the description of what happened. If there are many sources about what a survivor did in relation to the event afterwards (activism, writing a book about it, whatever), then that might be included in the article as related. Basically, if a survivor's name cannot be included into prose containing some significant thing they did related to the event, then it probably shouldn't be included at all. Even if that's the case, inclusion should of course be subject to the normal BLP and NPOV restraints. I just don't know if lists of unlinked names should be included except maybe on list articles. Red Rock Canyon ( talk) 15:54, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
What about this embedded list of patents for things that are mostly not very significant in of themselves, but taken as a whole, tell a story. It brings us back to why we endorse redundant categories and lists and navigation templates and portals and prose containing the same information. A prose description of an inventor who has a long series of patents for inventions great and minor is fine, but the same information can also be given in bulleted list form, and for some readers, convey meaning better.
We can't prescribe what to do in every case in a top-down directive. Perhaps the real problems is treating names of the dead as a special case. Articles are full of things, in prose and in lists, and some of those things are highly notable, of great significance, and some of those things, names, patents, inventions, filmography or discography, that are worth mentions but not otherwise of great importance. It depends. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 17:30, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Anyways: anyone who thinks not-memorial applies to both article topics and to content should propose plain English words to that effect. Lacking strong consensus for that, admit that there isn't strong consensus that it applies that way. Everyone agrees you can't create a new article about someone for no reason except as a memorial memorial; they have to be notable. Only some editors think this means mentioning a non-notable dead person carries any special burden that wouldn't apply to whether or not we can mention any other fact. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 00:34, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
Or end the 14 years of debate over 'not memorial' by changing it match the de facto state of affairs: there is no global support for applying 'not memorial' to article content, only article creation/retention. For the sake of proving a point, we could start with a proposal to make it say the opposite, that it does limit article content. Succeed or fail, those proposals would shift the debate away from not memorial towards other content guidance like the list guidelines, as well as WP:WEIGHT and other guidance on content triviality vs importance. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 20:06, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
"But as a Wikipedia reader, I would be truly annoyed to come across these victims' lists"Bus stop ( talk) 15:30, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
In the edit record of edits on the watchlist, there are indicators next to every edit detailing the "page size change in bytes". This is obviously a very useful tool for the most part, determining when someone has removed or added a large amount of information to the article and so can be used to detect major changes. However, there are occasions where pages are edited in very large fashions, such as a restructuring or cleanup, that add a lot in some places but delete a lot in other places. Because of this, substantial edits are made to seem smaller because the net gain or loss is small.
My proposal is to add a second indicator that details the gross change in bytes. This way, large restructurings that have net byte change of zero are still shown as more significant than other, more minor edits. After thinking of different ways to do this, I have come up with two ideas: First, a second parenthesis could be added that details gross and is bolded if the gross change is more than 500 bytes, or the current parenthesis bracket could be expanded in a way that shows something like (gross change, +/- net change), where if the net change is high, the whole thing is bolded that color, while if the net change is low but the gross change is high, the indicator is bolded blue (for small nets and gross, the gross could stay blue and the net could be whatever color?). Thank you for your time, IntegralPython ( talk) 03:33, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
I think CC-BY-NC-ND, CC-BY-NC-SA, CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-ND (all creative commons) Flicker images should be allowed here on the English Wikipedia. I found this discussion on the commons about the same issue ( c:Commons_talk:Flickr_files#Why_are_NoDerivatives_&_NonCommercial_not_allowed?) and it got a reply saying some Wikipedias allow these types of Flickr images to be uploaded locally but not globally (as the commons does not allow them as the commons does more the just illustrate Wikipedia). Using the images locally wouldn't be a commercial use as Wikipedia is not an commercial entity, so these images should be allow to be uploaded to Wikipedia. – BrandonXLF (t@lk) 02:58, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
Hi,
I wish to read for hours articles as any user, but it occurs that the reading (on PC) of these articles is not enough comfortable as the white color background tires my eyes. I have to stop reading for a moment.
I wish to see a button called 'Reading-Mode' located before the title of article (Eye icon). By pressing this button, it will allow me to change the white color background of the article to a gray or yellow color (see example below). The purpose will be to let me choose as user what make my reading more comfortable.
example: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7RYcp.jpg — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexmio ( talk • contribs) 14:32, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
.mw-body {background-color: #F1ECE8;}
var readingBG = "#F1ECE8";
mw.loader.load( '//en.wikipedia.org/?title=User:Ahecht/Scripts/ReadingMode.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript' ); //[[User:Ahecht/Scripts/ReadingMode.js]]
#mw-head-base, #content, #mw-navigation {
background-color: #f3f3f1; /* 6S 95L */
}
#toc {
background-color: #e7e6e4;
}
Hello, I'm a pretty new editor here...maybe one month. At first, I kept encountering lots of "class C - high importance" pages. So, I just assumed they were bad. But, then I started leaving messages on various WikiProject Talk pages and never get a reply. I assume they are dead? Even though they seem to have many members. Finally, I decided to get a "start class" article reassessed. I go look at one WikiProject assessment page and they have a queue of 11 articles and the oldest one is from 2013...five years waiting for reassessment!
So, my question to Idea Lab is whether Wikipedia needs to do something about article assessment by the WikiProjects. Perhaps a better messaging system is in order? Well, that was my one idea. Thanks for the consideration! Seahawk01 ( talk) 04:56, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
|importance=
(sometimes called |priority=
ratings, unless I'm very familiar with the group.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
07:03, 3 December 2018 (UTC)Just want to put this here in case anybody wants it, I have developed a hack which allows a editor to undo an edit while on the mobile interface
here. Comments, criticism, bugs, requests welcomed.
—
f
r
+
09:03, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
Go to Bohol Sea.
Look top right.
See "coords" and a globe?
Click the globe.
Did you know it makes a map appear?
I was thinking about consistent maps for bodies of water, and that was pointed out to me. I never knew about that. Should that be made more prominent or the link put elsewhere or something? Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 01:05, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
Thank you Anna - I did not know that clicking on the globe made a map appear, until you had pointed it out. Vorbee ( talk) 16:23, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
Hey guys, when you look up the KKK, go to the dates where the 1st generation began and ended. The real exact date the 1st generation ended was in 1872. Just to let you know. Thanks!
Slenderman4962 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Slenderman4962 ( talk • contribs) 16:12, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
I'm concerned about the limited number of experienced editors / administrators who are taking a large step back from Brexit-related articles / debates (on the basis of lack of knowledge of the subject) and leaving the same small pool of editors to reiterate their positions with ever-decreasing politeness.
Crunch time for Brexit is coming up. There is a crucial vote in the UK's parliament on Tuesday 11 December 2018.
and prior to it a head-to-head TV deabate between the Prime Minister, Theresa May and the Leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, on Sunday 9 December 2018.
In July 2018 the BBC printed the following four Brexit outcomes:
There's a lot of POV-pushing between possible outcomes going on.
Elaborated on in November 2018 by Bloomberg News.
Is there some way of widening the pool? There is a Brexit Task Force WP:BREXITTF and I did think about issuing invites on talk pages but who to? It could do more harm than good. I also wrote an essay in my namespace WP:BREXIT101 trying to give a rough guide to Brexit for editors if anyone wants to read it. -- The Vintage Feminist ( talk) 05:06, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
It strikes me that those who oppose the use of the current description of the article's subject essentially do not accept that this article should exist at all!A few more voices saying "wait, this has nothing to do with the complexities of Brexit or working out what may happen in the future, it's just re-numbering" that would really have helped. -- The Vintage Feminist ( talk) 16:18, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
For us, occasional editors who do not get it perfect the 1st time, allow us to eliminate missteps from & clean up the history by adding to the "View history" tab - "Compare selection revisions" button, a function to consolidate the intermediate revisions by the same user into just 1 resulting edit with description. This should reduce storage and clutter in revision searching. — Preceding unsigned comment added by N8HSU ( talk • contribs) 23:11, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
Any comments on this idea - A course on Wikipedia similar to ones on Coursera or EdX:
@ GreenMeansGo: Yes, only a voice over solves the issue of language. As for writing the cost part, So I do have limited experience as a professional video editor (8 months), but it's been over two years and I am out of touch with the financial part of it all. So I will not rush to write down figures just now. And since I live in India, I guess figures will be a little (a lot) different as compared to say UK, US etc but that is besides the point for now. There are other aspects of the proposal that can be worked upon first, see, i quickly copied a sample proposal and pasted it in my userspace as an example - Video (Grant) Proposal Example. This can be developed accordingly. After the initial proposal has be drawn up, (i want to call this an IDEA PROPOSAL rather than a GRANT PROPOSAL just now), then maybe an admin or someone can mass message Wikipedia users seeing if anyone here can help with the production part (outlining the finances first...). DiplomatTesterMan ( talk) 16:58, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
There are frequently statements such as "The new season at Actor's Theatre will open on October 12, 2017 with a production of Hamlet". I question whether such statements are ever justified (they may be just promotional), but if they are included, they should be flagged with and automatic mechanism that alerts somebody to the necessity of updating once the predicted event occurs. Here is my proposed logic for such a flag:
{{the verb tense used in this statement must be updated on October 12, 2017}}-- Toploftical ( talk) 19:50, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
I come across a hypothetical Wikipedia UI revamp mockup with a clean interface and a night mode toggle button. See mockup here: phab:M270 -- Agusbou2015 ( talk) 17:59, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
What is the best way to deal with spoken audio files on English Wikipedia?
Currently you can put a pronunciation in the lead and a complete article recording can be linked via {{ Spoken Wikipedia}} (a little box at the bottom of articles, in the external links section).
But how to work with multiple audio files? For example Channel Tunnel could include "Channel Tunnel" in an English accent, "Chunnel" in an English accent, "Le tunnel sous la Manche" in French. Then there may be an Australian accent for the lead (using metric) and an American version (using Imperial). Finally a recording of the whole article.
What about creating a subpage, eg Channel Tunnel/spoken? It would have several advantages:
Before I complete a load of article subject pronunciations I am looking for suggestions on how to link to spoken audio files.-- Commander Keane ( talk) 05:16, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
I'm working on detecting paid revisions with a framework that requires weak heuristics for their detection. But I've no experience as an editor, so heuristics that I come up with probably aren't going to be very effective. Does this sound interesting to any experienced editors out here?
The framework that I'm working with. Paper supporting the framework. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Apiarant ( talk • contribs) 20:25, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
WP:DRAFTIFY seems to be causing a bump in recent irritation, as regards improper usage, clashing with other guidelines etc etc.
Currently it is stated to be an explanatory supplement. I am not sure this is the case - WP:NPPDRAFT includes only the bare minimum, and I believe the rules of usage in DRAFTIFY are beyond a mere supplement.
In any case, I am aware there are various issues - so I thought I would create a discussion point for people to hopefully comment on and moot solutions (if applicable). Nosebagbear ( talk)
Please feel free to start sub-headers for different issues
Dear all
I've submitted a grant application to the Wikimedia Foundation to continue to work at UNESCO in 2019 and would really appreciate it if you would consider endorsing it (the blue button at the bottom of the infobox). In 2019 we want to focus on:
This will be the last time we ask WMF for funding, we have a grant proposal outlined for a large external grant for 2020 but without this year's funding we won’t get to where we need to be.
Thanks very much
John Cummings ( talk) 10:11, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
Historically, there have been only two ways to fix an edit. Either revert it in its entirety or allow it to stay. This has led to a certain mentality among patrollers to revert even when the edit could have been improved. I personally have come across edits which could have been fixed by adding a citation needed tag or a spelling correction. Often a portion of the edit is incorrect, the rest is okay, however there is only one way to fix it, revert. Suppose we had a extension/script which allowed you to correct these edits, add a citation tag, fix spelling mistakes, remove problematic portions or copy-edit a edit while in diff mode. That would make life a lot more easier and prevent biting of newbies.
Is there such a script/extension ? Would a lot of editors benefit from such a tool ? Or is it just me who think such a tool is necessary ? — f r + 17:37, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
I believe we should get a Google API key, for the purpose of using their API to keep up to date numbers and improve accuracy. For instance, the key would allow for pages relating to youtube to keep current video statistics, and thereby remove the menial task of having to get them manually. The issue is that the account monitoring the key (as an account is needed for the key) would have to be created officially (Maybe by staff?), because otherwise the key would be under the name of an individual and probably break some rule. Thoughts? WelpThatWorked ( talk) 18:57, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
What does the Google API terms of service say about licensing and usage restrictions? -- Green C 22:03, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
archive-things
on Toolforge – all of the video pages linked from those articles are saved
once an hour); if you make a list of YouTube videos somewhere on-wiki I could also use that list. Wikidata also tends to avoid discarding old but correct data, so adding this data there would start to become unwieldy after a short time.
Jc86035 (
talk)
06:59, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
@
GreenC and
WelpThatWorked: Clarification: the archive-things
script is archiving the YouTube video HTML pages themselves, not making calls to Google's API. I don't believe this would be against Google's TOS, since it doesn't involve the API and IA has been archiving videos based on tweet mentions (i.e. a lot of videos). We don't have to worry about copyright for IA because IA assumes fair use by default, and small amounts of data – e.g. for the YouTube Rewind dislikes graph – wouldn't qualify as violating any sort of database copyright.
Maybe what could be done is that the script could edit the articles every few hours to add some of the data that it's downloaded (since it's downloading the pages anyway so that it can also archive the images), although I'm not really sure how to do that. Jc86035 ( talk) 11:13, 25 December 2018 (UTC)
Hello, I have 1,000+ edits over about six weeks. Things were going along lovely. I found everyone friendly. The Teahouse was working great and same with the Help Desk, Idea Lab (here) was a place to offer suggestions. Couldn't complain at all about my Wikipedia experience. That is, until last week when I went through Wikipedia:Questions to the #wikipedia-en-help IRC chat room...that was a big mistake and after that everything turned dark.
I had a simple question about stubs and ended up having someone put the article I was working on into draft space. Then I had two other people jump all over me. It was quite a shock.
Doing further research I found: Wikipedia:IRC and discover that this is a freenode channel, run by volunteers, but not affiliated with Wikipedia. To quote from that page:
When the channels are used to attack Wikipedians, or when IRC discussions are cited as justification for an on-wiki action, the resulting atmosphere is very damaging to the project's collaborative relationships.
Looking further for policy about IRC, I found this: Wikipedia:IRC/wikipedia-en-help. It is the first Wikipedia help page I ever found which says in big bold letters that the #1 channel guideline is "don't be a jerk", so I am assuming there are a lot of people who like to act like jerks there.
Lastly, I reference this: Wikipedia:Dispute resolution which says:
Resolve disputes as soon as they arise. When two editors disagree over what to do with an article, they must talk things through politely and rationally.
So, in the chat room, people took unilateral actions and made on-wiki changes without any discussions. I repeatedly asked for them to post on my Talk page, but this was ignored. Placing the article in question into draft space was a major hassle. Other people were also working on the page and now they won't be able to find it. This has drained my enthusiasm for Wikipedia and made me really question why I should even volunteer my time.
To sum up, I really think Wikipedia should not endorse the IRC chatroom at all, take all links down and especially take down the link at
Wikipedia:Questions. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Seahawk01 (
talk •
contribs)
02:49, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
New York City is suffering a crisis in housing affordability. Although the city's skyline has been filled with construction cranes for a long time, net affordable units continue to be lost. New York City is one of the most expensive places to live in America. There is a crushing rent burden on the poor, working poor and elderly. Homelessness in the city is currently at an historic high.had some obvious NPOV issues. Second, this seems like a mis-use of page-mover permissions, and moving to draft-space in general. Moving an article to draft-space shouldn't allow non-admins to unilaterally delete articles. power~enwiki ( π, ν) 03:17, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
Duplicate proposal See
Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Wikipedia interaction redesign — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Anomie (
talk •
contribs)
03:18, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
I've noticed that our "you are blocked" templates, such as {{ Uw-block}}, can confuse new editors. Some edit the template's instructions instead of making a proper unblock request. For example: 1, 2, 3. I was thinking that maybe we should edit the templates to warn people not to edit the example unblock request. Then I thought, "Why not use an edit filter?" So, then I wasn't sure which way to go, or if maybe the problem is rare enough that it doesn't even matter all that much. Any thoughts? NinjaRobotPirate ( talk) 09:40, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
Does the "you are blocked" template {Uw-block} distinguish between people who are temporarily blocked and people who are permanently blocked? Vorbee ( talk) 18:49, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
|indef=yes
will change "temporarily" to "indefinitely". --
AntiCompositeNumber (
talk)
19:02, 27 December 2018 (UTC)Discussion was left in 2008 regarding trying to find software (or volunteers) to put pronunciations into the entries in Wikipedia. While I don't usually have a problem with regular words, I do have a problem with foreign words or locations, such as places in the Middle East. Have we gotten anywhere on this discussion / suggestion? ErinBS — Preceding unsigned comment added by ErinBS ( talk • contribs) 11:55, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
I have been wondering how were consensuses (or lack thereof) determined for extended discussions (those that are very long, with multiple layers of replies). Did every participant read the arguments and comments that have already been put forward (so that arguments do not become repetitive) before they start putting forth their own argument? I would if I were to participate in these discussions, but I doubt that every participant has done it or would do it.
I think it would be beneficial to have, at the top, a list of logically valid arguments that have been put forward thus far in the discussion in order to aid those who join later in knowing the state of the debate. It should have two sections: ‘arguments for‘ and ‘arguments against.‘ Each argument on the can have an objection or a counterargument from the other side written right under it. Some arguments can be put into a syllogistic form (premises and conclusion) for clarity and for aiding their evaluation. The list would also help the closer of the discussion in determining whether consensus has been reached and what exactly is the consensus. VarunSoon ( talk) 23:51, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
Arguments for deleting categories of Wikipedians by his/her philosophy (Side 1)
Arguments against deleting categories of Wikipedians by his/her philosophy (Side 2)
VarunSoon ( talk) 08:02, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
For preventing development hell: User:Nosebagbear, User:Donald Albury, User:Phil Bridger VarunSoon ( talk) 07:09, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
"Her Majesty" occurs on the wiki 17,469 times. Scrolling thorough the results, it seems that about half of them refer to the current monarch of England. When the queen dies, we'll have a lot of work to do to fix all of those. I wonder if it would be a good idea to create a "their majesty" template and start changing things over now, so that when we actually have to change it over we can do it in one place. As a bonus, if we're still around in 20-80 years when we have a queen again, it would make our lives much easier. Gaelan 💬 ✏️ 07:24, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
When the queen diesQuite the assumption that the Queen isn't an immortal robot-alien sent to rule us for all eternity. Assuming however, that she will die, I'm not finding too many instances where this would have to change in the search results and in most cases we'd probably have to do more changes than changing "her majesty" to "his majesty" to the pages and thus a template could confuse things by having some things up to date and some not. Galobtter ( pingó mió) 15:50, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
Most articles have fields in the info-box for both ideology and political position. While there is usually agreement about ideology, there are often differences over political position. See for example Talk:Liberal Party of Canada#Drop "Center-Left", Talk:Democratic Party (United States)#Political position discussion, Talk:Labour Party (UK)#Centre-left to left wing for current arguments.
Essentially these arguments boil down to where the ideologies belong on the political spectrum.
Reliable sources are in disagreement over how to characterize various ideologies. For example, Robert M. MacIver said conservatives are right, liberals are center and socialists are left. Seymour Martin Lipset said that in the U.S. the Republicans are the Right and the Democrats are the Left. Some scholars define center left to include social liberals and socialists. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. defined the center as anything between fascism on the right and communism on the left. All of these definitions and more are routinely cited in reliable sources, but there is no agreement on which to use.
I think that instead of arguing the issue over dozens if not hundreds of article talk pages, with no consistency in decisions, we either have a consist policy or determine that the field should not be used.
TFD ( talk) 19:35, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
The current commonly used one-dimensional left-right political spectrum is inadequate for sorting political ideologies. That is because it is not clear what is the necessary characteristic(s) for an ideology or a political party to be categorized as left-wing or left-leaning, or to be categorized as right-wing or right-leaning. Is the left defined by social liberalism or by anti-capitalism? Is the right defined by conservatism or by pro-capitalism?
There are several reasons for this inadequacy:
Because the reliable sources disagree with one another (for the reasons described above), I recommend that the use of a term with the word 'left,' 'right,' or 'center' in it be avoided entirely and that we let the terms such as 'progressive liberalism' or 'libertarianism' do the informing. VarunSoon ( talk) 04:35, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
When I "examine" an attempted edit that was disallowed, it takes me a while to see what changes were attempted. Can we get a few colors there to show what is different? Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 14:11, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
This was probably discussed before but I couldn't find anything in the archives. In the last six months a number of US websites have stopped showing content to EU users (e.g. NY Daily News, LA Times) or show a limited selection of the content (e.g. USA Today), and this doesn't seem to be going away any time soon. There's a number of workarounds that allow those of us in the EU to easily view those pages (Google Cache, Internet Archive, Archive.fo), however these are probably not known/used by the average Wikipedia reader who just wants to follow a reference. Hence I propose to automatically link pages from the GPDR-affected websites to the Internet Archive (easily possible via e.g. https://web.archive.org/*/https://...
) for visitors who geolocate to the European Union.
I don't believe there are GDPR impediments to us doing so, since we'd be only linking to the Archive website which we do anyways and the restricted websites wouldn't be gathering EU users' data, and as for other legal issues we regularly link to archived versions of dead webpages from those sites anyway. I suppose this will require programming work, but the payoff will be big as there are many links to these websites on Wikipedia. Thoughts? Daß Wölf 18:06, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
|url=
at web.archive.org and note the archive address in |archive-url=
& the date in |archive-date=
.
Cabayi (
talk)
19:41, 22 December 2018 (UTC)I don't think this is a good idea for a number of reasons. Legislative blocks are happening all over the world, there's no way we can constantly try to fix them. Blocks are at the mercy of human decree, they come and go constantly. Wikipedia is not so technically flexible to edit 100s of thousands (millions) of pages every time there is change in a block so that someone somewhere isn't blocked at that particular time and place. What about the blocks in China, much worse. The dead link system is meant to fix permanent dead links ie. link rot. It doesn't do well as a tool to fix political problems. -- Green C 20:44, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
I personally always preemptively add archive links. Not every one favors that solution, but I think any potential for link rot is worse categorically. What could be done, besides such activity, would be to hack up a script making all links to certain websites go through archive.org. I would guess that this script would not have consensus as either a) for everyone or b) even just opt-out for logged in users, but it would at least be an opt-in for logged-in editors. -- Izno ( talk) 22:17, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
I'm having trouble understanding how this is materially different from the problems we've been dealing with for years, e.g., that some Google Books or YouTube videos are only available to users who geolocate to particular countries. Why should we accept "This website won't show this content to people in Germany because of German copyright laws" but try to build a workaround for "This website won't show this content to people in Germany because of German privacy laws"?
(I wonder whether the decision to block content is primarily a business decision about expenses vs revenue, or if it might not be a deliberate act of civil resistance. Submitting to regulation by a foreign power – even if it weren't one that has somewhat weaker views on the freedom of the press – is not something that I really expect serious American newspapers to do unthinkingly.) WhatamIdoing ( talk) 20:36, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
Many of you might not know, Wikipedia has already been using Artificial Intelligence to manage work. For instance, a team led by Aaron Halfaker designed the Objective Revision Evaluation Service, an open-source machine learning-based service designed to generate real-time predictions on edit quality and article quality. ORES has already been incorporated in over 20 Wikipedia applications to support a variety of critical tasks such as counter-vandalism, task routing and the Wikipedia education program.
We want to know your thoughts on how we should use AI in Wikipedia. Please reach out to me by bowen-yu@umn.edu or my talk page! We are working with Aaron Halfaker and his team to make ORES better. You can find more details on our project here. Look forward to hearing from you! Bobo.03 ( talk) 01:51, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
Thank you for this. A question which arises is how does one define Artificial Intelligence - for example, are bots A.I. ? Vorbee ( talk) 09:13, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
Yes, that makes sense - I have had a brief look at the Wikipedia article on Artificial Intelligence. Vorbee ( talk) 21:03, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
|language=
can be filled in automatically. Actually I have no hats as I keep throwing them away. --
Green
C
21:22, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
Hi. Is there the possibility for switching to a text-only mode, without images?
At the end of the page users visualize a link "mobile view" or "desktop", enabling them to switch from a mode of visualizazion (mobile or desktop view) to the other.
It may be hopefully added a third text-only mode of visualizationthat is useful for users with visual impairments or with speed-up a slow Internet Connection, so as not to have to block images in their browser option settings, or to install a text-based web browser on their Internet devices.
A text-only mode can benefit the server workload, moving also to an even more improved [ Web Traffic performance for those specific but non extraordinary operating scenarios. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.14.139.111 ( talk) 23:23, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
Accounts created which be limited to 5 users per IP on one year, to prevent sock puppets, vandalism and disruptive edits. Also, IP and user blocks should be extented. (Don't forget to ping me) ImmortalWizard (chat) 14:41, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
I'd like to develop a proposal for deprecating the use of indefinite blocks. If the idea survives the scrutiny of this lab, I will. I am prepared to discard the idea, without animosity, if it does not. As a preventive measure, nothing appreciable is lost by using blocks with a prescribed duration instead; a duration capped at a maximum of perhaps 10 or 15 years. I realize that there are, and will continue to be, cases where the restriction is meant to never expire and suggest that in these eventualities, the respective accounts should be locked indefinitely, not blocked.
Since this is not a proposal, there's no "survey" section, and nothing to support or oppose, so: please don't. Please do: ask questions if things are not clear, mention concerns that you may have, and measures that could mitigate your concerns (if such mitigation is possible), speak with candor if you believe there is no realistic means to achieve the desired end, or if you feel the idea is lacking in merit or somehow in need, and most of all, be a colleague and expect the same from others as well. Thank you.-- John Cline ( talk) 09:57, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
I have a new idea for a WikiProject.
feel free to provide any comments. thanks!! -- Sm8900 ( talk) 15:24, 12 February 2020 (UTC)