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An idea in the case of editors authorizing changes to Wikipedia articles. Where editors are available for an article, to move public edits to a secondary tab. The editors would then authorize changes to the article from the "new draft" page. Where no editors are available (or are no longer available), the system reverts to the current wiki system, with edits going directly to the primary article and no "new draft" page is displayed. 91.84.88.163 ( talk) 10:28, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
According to the website of the BBC, Jimmy Wales is proposing a change to Wikipedia editing, such that only flagged changes (i.e. changes that are reviewed) will appear visible in Wikipedia. The BBC website claims that this has been the system with the German Wikipedia for about a year. How do people feel about this policy? It is important to alert all Wikipedians to these proposed changes. Wikipedians in the United Kingdom may have heard the Radio 4 programme "Today" on January 31, when Jimmy Wales was interviewed. You can read more fully what the BBC have said if you go to the website for "Today" for January 31, and follow the links accordingly. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 14:28, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
Thank you - I have looked at this debate now. How about only making changes to articles per se flagged, but still allowing unlimited editing of the "Discussion" pages? Just a thought. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 16:35, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
This would pull up a random article out of a named category, going up to CategorySearchDepth subcategory levels deep.
Special:Random?Category=FA-Class&articlesCategorySearchDepth=0 could be linked on the side-bar as "Random featured article."
Individual editors could add Special:Random?Category=All_pages_needing_cleanup&CategorySearchDepth=1 to their sandboxes or user pages as a link to a random article needing cleanup.
davidwr/( talk)/( contribs)/( e-mail) 21:03, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
Please consider giving your opinion at the discussion here. Latest non-redirect version of the page is here. Thanks. 212.200.240.241 ( talk) 13:46, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
Well, all the discussion was suddenly "archived" [1], and the decision made that the consensus of what to do would come from here. Is this a case for userfication (per Wikipedia:Wikipedia essays), or should this very unstable essay remain in WP namespace (after all it has in the past few days undergone a drastic change in scope)? NJGW ( talk) 03:53, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
Hi, during the last donation request period, I noted that the requests for donations seemed to be aimed at general readers and users of Wikipedia (and not enough towards editors and volunteers). Even after you logged in with your user-name, there did not seem to be a change in the types of appeals that were appearing in the header box. I am worried that general appeals to donate to Wikipedia (aimed at readers who just come on the site to read an article here and there) may not be motivating to a Wiki editor who volunteers hundreds of hours a year to Wikipedia. That is, if an editor spends many hours a week working on Wikipedia, they may respond to requests for donations with the sentiment that "Donate to Wikipedia?? Excuse me, but I ALREADY donate to Wikipedia..with my time and expertise as a programmer/editor/ administrator/ etc." Perhaps next year, during the fundraising campaign, there may be some merit to consider specifically targetting Wiki editors and volunteers (e.g., once an editor has logged in). A Wiki editor-targeted donation request might go something like this............"Thank you for giving many hours of your time to write and edit articles and maintain the encyclopedia. However, even with your generous contribution of your time, Wikipedia still needs financial assistance to pay for servers and other administrative costs." OnBeyondZebrax ( talk) 11:31, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
I AFD'd a large group of lists (about 150) basically named "List of companies in ..." as violations of wp:NOTDIRECTORY. It seems from the initial responces that the NOT policy is either unclear on this point or I am misunderstanding it's purpose. Please consider either commenting at the above linked AFD or helping to reword the policy to give clearer guidance. NJGW ( talk) 04:37, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Template:1911 talk has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at
the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you.
NOTE: This particular discussion has been going on for more than a week already. I am a bit surprised that there has not been a greater response. I feel that I have given a good rationale for deletion in my nomination statement, but I would like to see what you all think. -- Eastlaw talk ⁄ contribs 09:43, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
I thought it would be important to let you guys know about this.
Essentially the call is to add:
If an article is deleted under any of the applicable Criteria for Speedy Deletion, this deletion can only be reversed via WP:DRV discussion or via disciplinary discussion in the case of misuse of tools.
Please see why at the RfC here: Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#RfC:_Reverting_speedy_deletions_-_administrator.27s_guide
Thanks!-- Cerejota ( talk) 10:41, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
When I type
* {{citation|last=Staniland|first=Martin|year=1973a|title=The Three-Party System in Dahomey: I, 1946-1956|journal=The Journal of African History|publisher=Cambridge University Press|volume=14|issue=2|url=http://www.jstor.org/pss/180543}}.,
I get
What the hell? I never said it was published on February 8. ~ EDDY ( talk/ contribs/ editor review)~ 00:47, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
importScript('User:RockMFR/blpeditintro.js');
to
your monobook.js and edit any blp after
bypassing your cache.I propose to use an editnotice for all biographies of living persons. It would be added to all articles in Category:Living people, similarly to what has been done for disambiguation pages. We may use the text from {{ blp}} for example, thus it would render this (from Template:BLP editintro):
Notice about sources
This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons policy, even if it is not a biography, because it contains material about living persons. Take extra care to use high-quality sources. Material about living persons should not be added when the only sourcing is tabloid journalism; see more information on sources. Never use self-published sources about a living person unless written or published by the subject; see Wikipedia's guidelines on self-published sources and using the subject as a self-published source. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if you have other concerns, please report the issue to this noticeboard. If you are connected to one of the subjects of this article and need help, see this page. |
I'm sure it would help highly that editors become more aware of the blp policy, and it's prevention, which is particularly important when it comes to blps. We really should try this before considering implementing some drastic measures. Cenarium (Talk) 22:50, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
What is the main idea that we want to tell the editor?
The editnotice should focus mainly on one thing, and it should be the thing that causes the most problems. In my opinion, it is #3. --- RockMFR 06:06, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
To be blunt, we're dealing with people that have trouble with the concept of "saying someone is dead when they really aren't is a bad thing." I don't have much faith that an editnotice will actually have any positive impact. I'm not trying to rain on the parade here, just pointing out the obvious. EVula // talk // ☯ // 06:21, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
The technical implementation is discussed at MediaWiki talk:Common.js#BLP editintro. Cenarium ( talk) 08:24, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
Recent events show certain users abuse this feature. In a similar fashion to the number of rollbacks a non-admin users can perform per minute, I propose limiting the number of page moves done by autoconfirmed users to 1 per minute. This has the benefit that ligitamate users can still move pages ,allbeit more slowly, without the need to be penalized. -- DFS454 ( talk) 18:37, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Agreed with above comments. Without going all BEANSy, page moves are probably the most disruptive thing a vandal can do. They should definitely be limited to rollbackers. It won't stop Grawp, or anyone else if they're determined enough, but it'll help. Majorly talk 03:00, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
I have made a proposal to make an All free media category like for the non-free media template in order to improve bot detection of free media, and possibly better facilitate bot recognition of "interesting" scenarios for WP:PUI (like automatically listing it and notifying the uploader if there is a Non-free media tag present and a Free media tag on the exact same page).
Think this could be good? You can never have enough categorization! ViperSnake151 17:07, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
The automatic TOC's could make better use of space on the majority of monitors if they displayed headings in a multi-column layout, rather than a single column as they do currently. The useless whitespace created on a page can be enormous, depending on how many headings an article contains and how large one's monitor is.
The caveat would be small screens and mobile devices. However, I'm pretty sure coding could be concocted such that if the horizontal space is available in the browser, the TOC would expand into multiple columns, while staying single-columned otherwise.
Just to preempt one response, I'm aware of some quasi-TOC "index" templates for long pages, that extend width-wise along the top or bottom of a page, but those either contain an index of all alphanumeric characters or need to have their entries set up manually. I'm not looking to make this modification in particular instances for my own use. I'm talking about the standard automatic article TOCs, which I think would benefit universally from the modification I describe. Equazcion •✗/ C • 09:05, 9 Feb 2009 (UTC)
Also, an option could be added in preferences to toggle multi-column TOCs on and off, since I know some users will prefer to keep single-column TOCs. Equazcion •✗/ C • 09:17, 9 Feb 2009 (UTC)
Don't forget that they do collapse.
I don't think I'd like a multi-column TOC which monopolizes a chunk of vertical article space completely, or pushes article content below the fold. I'd prefer collapsible TOC subheadings or something (also see Brittanica Online's approach, with collapsed subheadings and a scrolling TOC box, but I don't like their mouse-over scroll widgets). — Michael Z. 2009-02-09 21:06 z
In many articles (for instance: "grapes"), I have found that the main image of the article is not in the public domain, while there are many other similar images in the public domain.
I thought the idea was that the more free content should be preferred to less free content. However, the opposite seems to be true. People are using the least free license they can get away with. There is a profit or vanity reason for contributors to do this-- public domain images don't require attribution, so they will just replace PD images with their own!
I have no idea how this could be controlled.
Here is an example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Table_grapes_on_white.jpg "If you are a (commercial) publisher and you want me to write you an email or paper mail giving you permission to use my works in your products or a license with the terms of your choice, please email me to negotiate terms." -- not compatible with free usage, much less public domain usage.
-- Agamemnus ( talk) 21:26, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Since when do public-domain images not require attribution?
I don't think public domain should be preferred because it's not viral. The GFDL and relevant CC licenses require that if you modify the content, you make your resulting work available under the same viral license. Public domain content has no such requirement and is therefore detrimental to the promotion of free content. -- B ( talk) 02:57, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
It does not. Wikipedia does not need another "mechanism". It needs fresh quality editors, new content, enforcement of existing policies. Simply replacing licenses (or images with ... other images) does not improve anything; rather, it alienates long-term contributors who, until today, were unaware of any "their own selfish reasons". Thank you, Agamemnus, for reminding the unwashed masses of who they really are. NVO ( talk) 18:48, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
The page Austria-Hungary is supposed to redirect to Austria–Hungary. However a few users (including myself) have raised concern that it doesn't work. Yet it does work fine for other users. It appears like a soft redirect (except it doesn't say soft redirect) for me. Any suggestions why it doesn't work, or better yet how to fix it? -- DFS454 ( talk) 19:53, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
I have used Wikipedia to compile information supporting a group of topics. For example, in preparation for a family vacation to London, I entered the Tower of London, the London Eye, Kensington Palace and Big Ben. I printed each wikipedia write-up separately. It would have been very useful if there was a place to list a collection of Wikipedia articles that could be compiled into a mini book with an index and page numbering which could be either printed or formated into a .pdf. Add the ability to include directions with maps, and that would rock!
This would be useful on holidays (example above), but it could also be useful elsewhere in areas such as research, or general familiarizations of topics, that could be compiled while connected to the web, but then studies or otherwise used off-line.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.170.233.76 ( talk • contribs) 02:48, 9 February 2009
Have we considered a way to use IM or VOIP to help in the editing process. If we could integrate it in a transparent way, I bet we could reduce acrimony and increase collaboration. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 05:13, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
←It's an interesting idea, but again I doubt its viability for Wikipedia. Chillum said it best above -- things are generally transparent and documented clearly here. Even the present IRC rooms are not officially part of Wikipedia, as WP:IRC states very deliberately. I'll let others chime in on this though, see what they think. Equazcion •✗/ C • 06:31, 11 Feb 2009 (UTC)
I'm currently talking to another editor on AIM right now and I've been part of Skype discussions. Before becoming an admin I also published my IM contact info on my userpage (I only ever had two people contact me). I'm sure other do this as well, but I can't see this working on a sanctioned basis (e.g. WMF run Jabber server). It may however be worth it to try and start a "IM contact info" page for people to post their username. BJ Talk 07:03, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Similarly to Wikipedia, other social networks also have to deal with massive amounts of low quality contributions from the public. It seems that the moderation model on Slashdot works fairly well. I propose to use something similar on Wikipedia.
The challenge is to design a mechanism for orchestrating the collaborative moderation effort on Wikipedia. I propose the following model.
1) Edits can only be done by registered Wikipedians.
2) Wikipedians will have a reputation or karma, depending on the quality of their contributions.
3) Long standing Wikipedians of good reputation are selected to moderate edits. Alternatively they can also moderate any page they want. These are Level 1 moderators. Authors of high quality edits will rated up, and authors of low quality edits will be rated down, and this will affect their reputation.
4) Wikipedians with reputation under a threshold will be restricted or banned from doing edits.
5) Long standing wikipedians of good reputation are invited to moderate Level 1 moderators. These are Level 2 moderators. They will judge whether the Level 1 moderators were fair. Altenratively they can moderate any Level 1 moderator they want. Fair Level 1 moderators will be rated up, and unfair moderators will be rated down, which will influence their reputation.
6) Wikipedia staff are all-powerful, and can sanction any Level 1 or Level 2 moderator.
Introducing reputation will give Wikipedians recognition for their work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Josang ( talk • contribs) 09:27, 11 February 2009
Whilst I appreciate the reasoning behind the editors seeking some agreed selection criteria of notable riders I would suggest that there are some sports, like speedway, where riders could be considered to be notable for example they were characters with a strong personal following (fan base) yet did not achieve any of the above. For example a rider who raced at Glasgow Speedway called Joe "Whaler" Ferguson. Joe wrecked bikes regularly but still came back for more. He was never a star but was nonetheless a natable. Views please.
Could somebody create a "Category of broken categories" (or "Category of redlinked categories")? I'm serious. I would be willing to put in some serious work on emtying such a category. I know about Special:WantedCategories, but that is a list and not a category, and just of the 1000 mostly found, not of all of them. Debresser ( talk) 18:14, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
This is not what I meant. I checked a few of those categories. Most have been deleted (the right way, without leaving articles that link to them), while at least one of them (and probably a few others too) is a nice category with a lot of articles and 2 parent categories. See the Special:WantedCategories talk page for a discussion on the subject. Debresser ( talk) 22:43, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
As long as previews require a server query, they might as well check for edit conflicts while they're at it, and notify the user. Equazcion •✗/ C • 22:35, 11 Feb 2009 (UTC)
We often have a number of articles featuring topical subjects on the main page. For example, currently there is a featured article on evolution, and a whole bunch of Darwin/Lincoln articles in DYK that are being featured for the 200th anniversary of both Lincoln's and Darwin's birthday.
The trouble is, there is no obvious announcement that the reason these articles are being featured is because it is an important anniversary. Only if you happen to look at the bottom right hand corner of the main page, in the "On This Day" section, do you notice a line mentioning that this is Darwin's and Lincoln's birthday.
I would like to suggest that on dates on which we are featuring such topical content, there should be a line at the TOP of the page, right above the featured article/in the news sections, which announces the anniversary, so that readers can instantly make the connection between the content of the featured article/DYK sections and the anniversary in question. Otherwise, readers are liable to miss the anniversary, see a lot of articles on similar subjects, and just conclude that there isn't much variety on Wikipedia, which is not the sort of conclusion they are supposed to draw! By making it clear it's a special day on the other hand, we showcase the topical relevance of the site. Gatoclass ( talk) 09:30, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
Hmmm .maybe something like:
|
or in another situation:
|
Would this be sufficient? ViperSnake151 15:46, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
I rather like this suggestion - I was thinking about typing something similar myself on this day (Feb 12) being the Lincoln-Darwin anniversary, but I see it has already been made. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 21:29, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
I suspect the first part of the following is a template because I see it so often on the Help Desk. The second part was written by a separate editor and probably is not a template.
I would like to propose the following text be used for the question "How do I create an article?"
If you are sure you should create your article after reading all of the above, then go ahead. If you are unsure, then, after creating an account, you can then create a sub-page in user space. For example, if your user name is Foobar987, your user page will be User:Foobar987. If your new article is to be named "Blatification" then you can initially create it at User:Foobar987/Blatification. After you create the article and get it up to a standard you are happy with, come back here and ask for someone to review your article. We will then help you to make sure your article is OK according to our strange and wonderous rules. We may even help fix the article or help you to find someone to assist you. Once the article is good enough, you can move the article to "mainspace:" that is, use the "move" feature to change the name of the article from User:Foobar987/Blatification to just Blatification. This approach works because by convention a subpage of your user page is not required to follow all of the rules of a mainspace article. (Note, however, it must still adhere to some fundamentals such as no copyright violations and no personal attacks.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vchimpanzee ( talk • contribs) 14:20, 12 February 2009
Thanks. I figured they get enough questions, but OK. Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 14:30, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
Oh, I see, that's a different page. Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 14:32, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
Sorry if this isn't the place, but everywhere else was locked from editing. So here's the question: do any users have the ability to copy the taxobox over to another site? If you could, that would be very helpful indeed. The site in question is RationalWiki. -- ConservapediaUndergroundResistor ( talk) 00:59, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
I would like to propose the creation of a page where all the current cases involving disputes etc, are listed in the one place. So, in other words, one would have all the current RFC, RFA and RFAR cases listed, in abbreviated form, so that users could see at one glance who or what was being debated. Part of the current problem we have, I think, is that such processes are scattered around on different pages and obscured from ready view. If we had a central page that listed all such processes, users would know they needed to go to only one page to keep tabs on things, and it might encourage more participation, which is often woefully lacking. Gatoclass ( talk) 10:00, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
Recent investigations have uncovered some contributors who habitually employ close paraphrasing over a long period, causing frustrating copyright issues. A while ago I wrote an essay about close paraphrasing, what it is, and how to avoid and detect it. Since it's linked from the cleanup box {{ close paraphrase}}, I'd like it to have the force of a guideline. Please visit Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing and Wikipedia talk:Close paraphrasing#Proposed_as_guideline to leave your opinion. Thanks! Dcoetzee 20:39, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
There's a proposal to change the default styling of navboxes, here. Any comments would be appreciated. SharkD ( talk) 05:10, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
Please note Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion#Speedy removals.3B opposition to hyphenations. In the spirit of "adjectival hyphenation", all "nth century $THING" categories are being speedy-moved to "nth-century $THING". This affects literally thousands of long-standing categories. The "consensus" this is based on is a couple of CfDs with two or three votes. As far as I can see based on a generic rule of "adjectival hyphenation", not on evidence of actual widespread use of hyphens in the case of centuries in particular.
I am opposed to this move as premature and misguided, and would ask that it is backed up be a wider community consensus before these speedy moves proceed. -- dab (𒁳) 09:50, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Did it occur to you that Wikipedia has been going for eight years, with its share of grammar nazis, and until late 2008 nobody ever objected to "20th century philosopher"? I will tell you why: when "second century" is used as an adjective it should be hyphenated is simply not a rule that is alive in the real world. I readily admit it sees some use. But by no means is it more common than the unhyphenated spelling. Check the google books results for
at first glance well below 1:10. This is nowhere near anything that would make this giant move at all arguable. What irks me is that this huge transition went underway with all of two CfD votes, no community review, and nobody even bothered to check who is prescribing this, which major publications use it and which don't, the very basic minimal standard for any significant rename. -- dab (𒁳) 09:30, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
A bot has been proposed to deal with the non-free reduce backlog. The discussion is at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/NeuRobot 2, and everyone is encouraged to participate and assist in establishing consensus. — neuro (talk) 23:50, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
I've made a "test proposal" at CfD to see if there is a consensus for replacing the categorization system of classifying biota "by country" with a system that would categorize biota "by ecozone". See here to read or comment. Good Ol’factory (talk) 03:50, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
I know this is similar to other proposals, but I propose that (1) Wikipedia allow editing only by users at least 18 years old and with at least a high school education, (2) a Kidpedia be set up so they can do what ever they want. We have too many problems with edits from kids. Bubba73 (talk), 03:46, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
Here's something for Bubba to do: please offer proof of all your assertions, please. — kur ykh 05:03, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
I would have thought that it is up to the parents or guardians of children to keep any eye on how they might use the Internet, and, if possible, to block their children from accessing certain websites. They may be able to guard their children against using Wikipedia if they feel that children were using Wikipedia for poor purposes. However, let us be realistic. Is it really likely that young children will edit articles on quantum mechanics, existentialism, predicate logic or genetics? There is a Simple Wikipedia - the one that is written in Simple English - which is likely to be more accessible to children than this one, and so may be more likely to be read (and edited) by children. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 16:32, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
I'm strongly against imposing age or education requirements, for a number of reasons, but I've been working on a page providing some introductory guidance and suggestions for our younger group of editors, and hope to have it completed and up for comments within a couple of days. Newyorkbrad ( talk) 23:50, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump/ACFeedback 01:00, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
In terms of how Special:ListUsers is implemented (I see that it was updated into a different format recently), could it indicate whether users have email enabled? I'm not sure how helpful this would be (since there's so many accounts), but I see that some users activate wiki email so that they can send malicious messages via wiki. Perhaps this could be enabled like "Show only users with edits". ~ Troy ( talk) 20:49, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
The purpose of this idea is a solution to the controversy about minors having easy access to articles with explicit content (possibly without even knowing this before they view the article) that will help to avoid arguments over whether explicit content should be in a certain article or not (Wikipedia is not censored so there's no immediate bar to explicit content of course). As for exactly how this would be implemented with the software, I'm not an expert on that but here's my general idea:
Articles that contain (or new articles that are likely to contain) adult content (such as sexually explicit images or links to adult sites) will be placed in a "category" for "articles with explicit content" (this doesn't have to be a normal Wikipedia category necessarily but they'd have to be designated as such in order for the software change to affect them). If an unregistered user tries to view the article, before the article itself is loaded a screen will appear notifying them that it contains explicit content and that they must be of legal age for their country state before viewing the article, and provides them with a link to either acknowledge their age and view the article or go back (the same as most adult websites do). This seems like a good idea to me, but the main downside to it would be that users who are of legal age would have to go through this routine repetitively just to view those articles. My solution to that is to allow registered users an option in their user preferences to confirm that they are the legal age to view adult content (similar to the system on Youtube) at which point they'll be able to view any articles with adult content just as they would a regular article (without the "warning screen" I mentioned appearing before the article itself is loaded). I'd like to hear opinions on this idea as I think it would eliminate defacto the controversy by some Wikipedia critics that Wikipedia "peddles porn to kids" (some would still argue that it's still easy for children to access the explicit content but this would not be any more so than with any other site on the internet that contains adult content so they'd have no real case against Wikipedia).-- The Jazz Thief ( talk) 03:13, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
I think as soon as parents realize most of what they teach their kids is considered pseudoscience, they'll want to censor a lot more than the sex pages. — CharlotteWebb 18:43, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
Propose adopting, or investigating adoption of, "Infobox/V2" graphical style in Infobox headers on English Wikipedia. The presentation is much more professional (& better looking) than the current style. Basically, the title/topper of each infobox type (Music, film, person, society, etc) gets its own background color and background graphic. (For example, infoboxes about transport have a specific background, as seen in Golden Gate Bridge article link below) Other mock-ups can be found in the link below. I raised this at the Infobox Wikiproject's talk page about a month ago, and the response was that while technically possible the question would be if it should be done (so proposing it here to see if there is interest in pursuing/investigating its application here). Examples below (including link to French Wikipedia's Infobox V2 project)
Outsider80 ( talk) 05:50, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Note: The following message was just posted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Infoboxes, in the thread I mentioned at the top of this proposal. Am cross-posting it here since it contains useful links (and examples/mock-ups) for other language Wikipedias not mentioned above. Outsider80 ( talk) 11:12, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
It looks great. Work out any bugs and deploy it gradually to infobox templates. -- Apoc2400 ( talk) 22:33, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Drive-By_Editorials for background.
Proposal: Add a "show/hide cleanup tags" button to the top of each page, which would make article, section, and in-line cleanup templates visible or invisible.
There are many variants of this which can be decided later. I'm just trying to get a feel if the basic concept is useful. davidwr/( talk)/( contribs)/( e-mail) 20:08, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
I'd prefer to see most of these templates show up in compact form, providing a minimal interface and explanatory tooltip, and being individually expanded with a click. In many cases there should be an indication that there are content issues, but there is no need for a huge array of banners always in the reader's face, or a flotilla of inline tags reducing readability, when a few icons or widgets can inform the reader. — Michael Z. 2009-02-13 21:10 z
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I was thinking of the alert-box templates defaulting to collapsed boxes in the right margin. (The sample here is the huge block of two templates from T-44.) While in the collapsed state, they would have a mouse-over tooltip summarizing the message, defaulting to an indication of the message type. Any click would open the box, or all boxes, up to the full width, and a small control would allow them to be re-collapsed. Perhaps the coloured bar could serve as the control, with a bold white + or - in it to invite the action and indicate the state. Alternatively a black or grey + or - could appear in a corner.
Alternatively, they could sit in a horizontal line still floated to the right of the article text. This would have the advantage of not pushing down an infobox as far. In this configuration, the coloured bar could be shown running across the top of the box array.
In the collapsed state, I'd also like to see them made less colourful, perhaps with a greyed-out version of the icon, or having the coloured bar reduced to a 1-pixel border.
Thanks to the modular design of {{ ambox}}, this could be accomplished with a fairly simple javascript, I think. I've created the alternative presentation above using the standard template mechanism's parameters only.
Inline templates, like {{ fact}} and {{ dubious-inline}} are a separate issue, but I'd like to see them appear as minimal symbols or dingbats by default, with tool-tip text. — Michael Z. 2009-02-17 00:02 z
/* pop-open ambox alerts */ table.ambox { /* collapsed by default */ clear: right; float: right; margin: 0 0 0 1em; } table.ambox .mbox-text { display: none; } table.ambox:hover { /* open on hover */ float: none; margin: 0 0 0 20%; } table.ambox:hover .mbox-text { display: table-cell; }
Does anyone think that it would be a good idea to include Amazon in Book sources? I know that this is a blatantly commercial site but the precedent has already been set by the inclusion of Yahoo! and Amazon has a highly useful "search inside" feature on many books. I have come across a number of instances where Amazon gives better access to the book than Google books. For instance I have used Boyer's A History of Mathematics as a ref in several articles (it happens to be on my bookshelf) but anybody trying to find the citation in Google books gets a near useless snippet view whereas Amazon provides a full page preview complete with diagrams. Another example is the book Mutiny on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition, Law, and Diplomacy which recently got an article. Google books version compared with Amazon version. I have even come across cases where no preview is available at all on Google but it is on Amazon, could nto recall an example unfortunately. SpinningSpark 20:25, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
I have undertaken a searching investigation of recent bouts of page-move vandalism, and I have identified the following patterns, and steps which I believe will significantly impede such conduct.
Please discuss the above on their individual merits. Cheers! bd2412 T 21:28, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
A Few points:
I like the throttling idea. It could significantly decrease the damage by a page-move vandal and it has create very little inconvenience - the only way I ever did more than 1 page move per minute is when I reverted a moving vandal. Regarding locking the pagemove permissions IMHO we have three different classes of articles:
IMHO the software should be smart enough to separate those classes. 1 should be moved by everybody, 2 by somehow experienced users, 3 - only by rollbackers or even only by admins Alex Bakharev ( talk) 08:56, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
I do not see that anyone has squarely addressed proposal #1, which is resetting the permissions of a user who has (a) made fewer than 50 mainspace edits, and (b) been completely inactive for a sufficient length of time (60 or 90 days). This would in fact encourage productive users to log in and contribute more often, as they would thereby retain those privileges. Cheers! bd2412 T 00:12, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
The other day, someone made a change to the Meaning of life article, changing the linked word for Heaven in the Islamic section to Syurga. Because it was redlinked, I searched it on google to see if it might be a more appropriate link to have, and if I should created the article. Surprisingly, I see a wiki link on the first page, so I quickly clicked on it. Turns out the article was in Malaysian, so I couldn't read it, but it seemed odd that no article (or even redirect) exist in the English wiki.
So that got me thinking, a lot of other wikis have quality articles in different areas than the english wiki, be it local geography, biographies, books, films and such. And content in other wikis is most likely welcome in this wiki too, it just needs to be translated. So I wondered, what if there was a process setup between Wikipedia:Requested articles, the many wikis in other languages, and one of the many free translators. I envision an automated fetching system, where a bot takes a redlink from Requested articles, searches all the other wikis for that phrase (translating common words like of, in, the etc), then outputting possible results to a list, which includes links to different wiki articles, and if possible, a link to a free translator. There could also be some sort of suggest feature, where articles in other wikis could be selected for potential inclusion, and perhaps something that measures the length of existing English language articles and compares them to existing other language articles, and flags when the English one is shorter.
Keep in mind that no articles get created unless a human takes the translated content, fixes it up, and creates the article by hand. The only thing automated in this process is the suggesting, and the adding of links to pages and translations. Actually, it occurs to me that this process could work in reverse too, it could flag articles from the English wiki for inclusion in other language wikis.
I lack the technical expertise, as well as the wikicratic experience of "the process" that makes something like this come to fruition. Hopefully someone with more experience in these areas can chime in. -- Nick Penguin( contribs) 03:23, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
Like the already existing "Random article" button, it would be nice to also have a "Random images" button. Kingturtle ( talk) 04:54, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
This will give you something like what Commons has:
addPortletLink("p-navigation", "/wiki/Special:Random/File", "Random file", "n-randomfile", null, null, null);
Or you can change it so it still says "image", doesn't matter. You would want to paste this at User:Kingturtle/monobook.js (assuming you use the monobook skin) then clear the cache of your browser. — CharlotteWebb 20:23, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
I think there should be a marker for deliberate misspellings. For instance, Febuary would become double-curly-bracket misspelling|Febuary double-curly-bracket when explaining the misspelling itself. This would do nothing but allow deliberate misspellings to be excluded from the search results (should the user choose to do so). I've spent some time correcting typos and spelling errors using the search engine, and it seems to me this task could be easily automated if the misspelling marker were implemented so the bot could distinguish between deliberate misspellings and accidental misspellings and typos.
Misspellings and typos seem trivial, but I think that as a whole they detract from the professionalism of Wikipedia. For instance there are over instances of the misspelling "Febuary" on the English Wikipedia right now. -- 24.254.194.26 ( talk) 03:50, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
In the article titled Nena, a song title is given as "Ich Kann nix Dafür". Recently someone corrected the spelling "Ich Kann nichts Dafür". I changed it back and added a commented-out note that it's an intentional misspelling—only those who edit will see the comment. In this case that seems appropriate; I don't want to see a visible [sic] there, although I'd usually use that. I'm not sure I can explain exactly why I want this to be an exception. Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:42, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
Okay, I was looking at the article on the {{sic}} template, and I believe {{sic|hide=y}} provides the functionality I had in mind. Michael (Hardy)? -- 24.254.194.26 ( talk) 04:04, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
it will jump start the new user's involvement and understanding of Wikipedia, and will bring fresh input on discussions from many more users. 212.200.241.153 ( talk) 12:03, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
On the subject of welcome messages, I think a lot of them need to be simplified instead. I've seen quite a few that are loud, vibrant, and bombastic, effectively drowning the hapless newbie with a barrage of text and color. Keep it simple, [insert appropriate word here]. — kur ykh 20:47, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
There is a new straw poll for granting crats the technical ability to desysop. Syn ergy 07:06, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
Just brainstorming. What about a software feature that allows an admin to input two user names and the software would tell if the IP is identical. The IP would not be revealed to the admin, but it might reduce workload in some areas and make socking less likely. Thoughts? -- MZMcBride ( talk) 17:57, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
;]
17:58, 18 February 2009 (UTC)"Two users have used the same IP" is not sufficient information to make a judgement on whether the two are sockpuppets. The actual IP address being used affects this. — Werdna • talk 18:04, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
Two users edit-warring about a university from that university's IP address? You just don't know, and our problem is half-information leading to blind accusations leading to drama, not "not enough CheckUsers". If we don't have enough CheckUsers, appoint ten or twenty more. — Werdna • talk 18:09, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, the proposal which was put forth initially is based on a misunderstanding of what CheckUser is and how it works. I'd suggest that if English Wikipedia needs more CheckUsers then more should be appointed. MZMcBride should review prior discussions about this before re-proposing a bad idea which has been rejected before. — Mike. lifeguard | @en.wb 21:51, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
Both templates have the same background color, and the removal of one of these templates often leads to the insertion of the other one. A new editor, thinking it was the same template that got reinserted, will mistakenly remove the AfDM template, which is in violation of policy, but in the vast majority of cases an honest mistake.
To avoid confusion, I suggest that one of these two templates have a different background color. Since red is already in use on speedy deletion templates, I would suggest something bluish like this for the AfDM template. Anyone else has an opinion on that?
So this is actually a two-part discussion:
-- Blanchardb - Me• MyEars• MyMouth- timed 19:07, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
Behold the downside of standardizing the appearance of all these bloody templates. I kinda miss not having to read them to tell them apart. — CharlotteWebb 20:39, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
My current proposal looks like this:
This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia's
deletion policy. Please share your thoughts on the matter at this article's entry on the Articles for deletion page. Feel free to edit the article, but the article must not be blanked, and this notice must not be removed, until the discussion is closed. For more information, particularly on merging or moving the article during the discussion, read the
guide to deletion
Steps to list an article for deletion:
Unregistered users placing this tag on an article cannot complete the deletion nomination and should leave detailed reasons for deletion on Wikipedia talk:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 43. If the nomination is not completed and no message is left on the talkpage, this tag may be removed. |
-- Blanchardb - Me• MyEars• MyMouth- timed 21:36, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia's
deletion policy. Please share your thoughts on the matter at this article's entry on the Articles for deletion page. Feel free to edit the article, but the article must not be blanked, and this notice must not be removed, until the discussion is closed. For more information, particularly on merging or moving the article during the discussion, read the
guide to deletion
Steps to list an article for deletion:
Unregistered users placing this tag on an article cannot complete the deletion nomination and should leave detailed reasons for deletion on Wikipedia talk:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 43. If the nomination is not completed and no message is left on the talkpage, this tag may be removed. |
You may wish to read about banner blindness. The human brain tries desperately to avoid reading these kind of notices. This is a case where familiarity truly does breed contempt. The eyes subconsciously move away from anything resembling a banner. Introducing icon art or differences in color or inner/outer shape can at least keep the templates distinguishable in users' peripheral vision. — CharlotteWebb 02:58, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals). 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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An idea in the case of editors authorizing changes to Wikipedia articles. Where editors are available for an article, to move public edits to a secondary tab. The editors would then authorize changes to the article from the "new draft" page. Where no editors are available (or are no longer available), the system reverts to the current wiki system, with edits going directly to the primary article and no "new draft" page is displayed. 91.84.88.163 ( talk) 10:28, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
According to the website of the BBC, Jimmy Wales is proposing a change to Wikipedia editing, such that only flagged changes (i.e. changes that are reviewed) will appear visible in Wikipedia. The BBC website claims that this has been the system with the German Wikipedia for about a year. How do people feel about this policy? It is important to alert all Wikipedians to these proposed changes. Wikipedians in the United Kingdom may have heard the Radio 4 programme "Today" on January 31, when Jimmy Wales was interviewed. You can read more fully what the BBC have said if you go to the website for "Today" for January 31, and follow the links accordingly. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 14:28, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
Thank you - I have looked at this debate now. How about only making changes to articles per se flagged, but still allowing unlimited editing of the "Discussion" pages? Just a thought. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 16:35, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
This would pull up a random article out of a named category, going up to CategorySearchDepth subcategory levels deep.
Special:Random?Category=FA-Class&articlesCategorySearchDepth=0 could be linked on the side-bar as "Random featured article."
Individual editors could add Special:Random?Category=All_pages_needing_cleanup&CategorySearchDepth=1 to their sandboxes or user pages as a link to a random article needing cleanup.
davidwr/( talk)/( contribs)/( e-mail) 21:03, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
Please consider giving your opinion at the discussion here. Latest non-redirect version of the page is here. Thanks. 212.200.240.241 ( talk) 13:46, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
Well, all the discussion was suddenly "archived" [1], and the decision made that the consensus of what to do would come from here. Is this a case for userfication (per Wikipedia:Wikipedia essays), or should this very unstable essay remain in WP namespace (after all it has in the past few days undergone a drastic change in scope)? NJGW ( talk) 03:53, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
Hi, during the last donation request period, I noted that the requests for donations seemed to be aimed at general readers and users of Wikipedia (and not enough towards editors and volunteers). Even after you logged in with your user-name, there did not seem to be a change in the types of appeals that were appearing in the header box. I am worried that general appeals to donate to Wikipedia (aimed at readers who just come on the site to read an article here and there) may not be motivating to a Wiki editor who volunteers hundreds of hours a year to Wikipedia. That is, if an editor spends many hours a week working on Wikipedia, they may respond to requests for donations with the sentiment that "Donate to Wikipedia?? Excuse me, but I ALREADY donate to Wikipedia..with my time and expertise as a programmer/editor/ administrator/ etc." Perhaps next year, during the fundraising campaign, there may be some merit to consider specifically targetting Wiki editors and volunteers (e.g., once an editor has logged in). A Wiki editor-targeted donation request might go something like this............"Thank you for giving many hours of your time to write and edit articles and maintain the encyclopedia. However, even with your generous contribution of your time, Wikipedia still needs financial assistance to pay for servers and other administrative costs." OnBeyondZebrax ( talk) 11:31, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
I AFD'd a large group of lists (about 150) basically named "List of companies in ..." as violations of wp:NOTDIRECTORY. It seems from the initial responces that the NOT policy is either unclear on this point or I am misunderstanding it's purpose. Please consider either commenting at the above linked AFD or helping to reword the policy to give clearer guidance. NJGW ( talk) 04:37, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Template:1911 talk has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at
the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you.
NOTE: This particular discussion has been going on for more than a week already. I am a bit surprised that there has not been a greater response. I feel that I have given a good rationale for deletion in my nomination statement, but I would like to see what you all think. -- Eastlaw talk ⁄ contribs 09:43, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
I thought it would be important to let you guys know about this.
Essentially the call is to add:
If an article is deleted under any of the applicable Criteria for Speedy Deletion, this deletion can only be reversed via WP:DRV discussion or via disciplinary discussion in the case of misuse of tools.
Please see why at the RfC here: Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#RfC:_Reverting_speedy_deletions_-_administrator.27s_guide
Thanks!-- Cerejota ( talk) 10:41, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
When I type
* {{citation|last=Staniland|first=Martin|year=1973a|title=The Three-Party System in Dahomey: I, 1946-1956|journal=The Journal of African History|publisher=Cambridge University Press|volume=14|issue=2|url=http://www.jstor.org/pss/180543}}.,
I get
What the hell? I never said it was published on February 8. ~ EDDY ( talk/ contribs/ editor review)~ 00:47, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
importScript('User:RockMFR/blpeditintro.js');
to
your monobook.js and edit any blp after
bypassing your cache.I propose to use an editnotice for all biographies of living persons. It would be added to all articles in Category:Living people, similarly to what has been done for disambiguation pages. We may use the text from {{ blp}} for example, thus it would render this (from Template:BLP editintro):
Notice about sources
This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons policy, even if it is not a biography, because it contains material about living persons. Take extra care to use high-quality sources. Material about living persons should not be added when the only sourcing is tabloid journalism; see more information on sources. Never use self-published sources about a living person unless written or published by the subject; see Wikipedia's guidelines on self-published sources and using the subject as a self-published source. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if you have other concerns, please report the issue to this noticeboard. If you are connected to one of the subjects of this article and need help, see this page. |
I'm sure it would help highly that editors become more aware of the blp policy, and it's prevention, which is particularly important when it comes to blps. We really should try this before considering implementing some drastic measures. Cenarium (Talk) 22:50, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
What is the main idea that we want to tell the editor?
The editnotice should focus mainly on one thing, and it should be the thing that causes the most problems. In my opinion, it is #3. --- RockMFR 06:06, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
To be blunt, we're dealing with people that have trouble with the concept of "saying someone is dead when they really aren't is a bad thing." I don't have much faith that an editnotice will actually have any positive impact. I'm not trying to rain on the parade here, just pointing out the obvious. EVula // talk // ☯ // 06:21, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
The technical implementation is discussed at MediaWiki talk:Common.js#BLP editintro. Cenarium ( talk) 08:24, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
Recent events show certain users abuse this feature. In a similar fashion to the number of rollbacks a non-admin users can perform per minute, I propose limiting the number of page moves done by autoconfirmed users to 1 per minute. This has the benefit that ligitamate users can still move pages ,allbeit more slowly, without the need to be penalized. -- DFS454 ( talk) 18:37, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Agreed with above comments. Without going all BEANSy, page moves are probably the most disruptive thing a vandal can do. They should definitely be limited to rollbackers. It won't stop Grawp, or anyone else if they're determined enough, but it'll help. Majorly talk 03:00, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
I have made a proposal to make an All free media category like for the non-free media template in order to improve bot detection of free media, and possibly better facilitate bot recognition of "interesting" scenarios for WP:PUI (like automatically listing it and notifying the uploader if there is a Non-free media tag present and a Free media tag on the exact same page).
Think this could be good? You can never have enough categorization! ViperSnake151 17:07, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
The automatic TOC's could make better use of space on the majority of monitors if they displayed headings in a multi-column layout, rather than a single column as they do currently. The useless whitespace created on a page can be enormous, depending on how many headings an article contains and how large one's monitor is.
The caveat would be small screens and mobile devices. However, I'm pretty sure coding could be concocted such that if the horizontal space is available in the browser, the TOC would expand into multiple columns, while staying single-columned otherwise.
Just to preempt one response, I'm aware of some quasi-TOC "index" templates for long pages, that extend width-wise along the top or bottom of a page, but those either contain an index of all alphanumeric characters or need to have their entries set up manually. I'm not looking to make this modification in particular instances for my own use. I'm talking about the standard automatic article TOCs, which I think would benefit universally from the modification I describe. Equazcion •✗/ C • 09:05, 9 Feb 2009 (UTC)
Also, an option could be added in preferences to toggle multi-column TOCs on and off, since I know some users will prefer to keep single-column TOCs. Equazcion •✗/ C • 09:17, 9 Feb 2009 (UTC)
Don't forget that they do collapse.
I don't think I'd like a multi-column TOC which monopolizes a chunk of vertical article space completely, or pushes article content below the fold. I'd prefer collapsible TOC subheadings or something (also see Brittanica Online's approach, with collapsed subheadings and a scrolling TOC box, but I don't like their mouse-over scroll widgets). — Michael Z. 2009-02-09 21:06 z
In many articles (for instance: "grapes"), I have found that the main image of the article is not in the public domain, while there are many other similar images in the public domain.
I thought the idea was that the more free content should be preferred to less free content. However, the opposite seems to be true. People are using the least free license they can get away with. There is a profit or vanity reason for contributors to do this-- public domain images don't require attribution, so they will just replace PD images with their own!
I have no idea how this could be controlled.
Here is an example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Table_grapes_on_white.jpg "If you are a (commercial) publisher and you want me to write you an email or paper mail giving you permission to use my works in your products or a license with the terms of your choice, please email me to negotiate terms." -- not compatible with free usage, much less public domain usage.
-- Agamemnus ( talk) 21:26, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Since when do public-domain images not require attribution?
I don't think public domain should be preferred because it's not viral. The GFDL and relevant CC licenses require that if you modify the content, you make your resulting work available under the same viral license. Public domain content has no such requirement and is therefore detrimental to the promotion of free content. -- B ( talk) 02:57, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
It does not. Wikipedia does not need another "mechanism". It needs fresh quality editors, new content, enforcement of existing policies. Simply replacing licenses (or images with ... other images) does not improve anything; rather, it alienates long-term contributors who, until today, were unaware of any "their own selfish reasons". Thank you, Agamemnus, for reminding the unwashed masses of who they really are. NVO ( talk) 18:48, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
The page Austria-Hungary is supposed to redirect to Austria–Hungary. However a few users (including myself) have raised concern that it doesn't work. Yet it does work fine for other users. It appears like a soft redirect (except it doesn't say soft redirect) for me. Any suggestions why it doesn't work, or better yet how to fix it? -- DFS454 ( talk) 19:53, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
I have used Wikipedia to compile information supporting a group of topics. For example, in preparation for a family vacation to London, I entered the Tower of London, the London Eye, Kensington Palace and Big Ben. I printed each wikipedia write-up separately. It would have been very useful if there was a place to list a collection of Wikipedia articles that could be compiled into a mini book with an index and page numbering which could be either printed or formated into a .pdf. Add the ability to include directions with maps, and that would rock!
This would be useful on holidays (example above), but it could also be useful elsewhere in areas such as research, or general familiarizations of topics, that could be compiled while connected to the web, but then studies or otherwise used off-line.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.170.233.76 ( talk • contribs) 02:48, 9 February 2009
Have we considered a way to use IM or VOIP to help in the editing process. If we could integrate it in a transparent way, I bet we could reduce acrimony and increase collaboration. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 05:13, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
←It's an interesting idea, but again I doubt its viability for Wikipedia. Chillum said it best above -- things are generally transparent and documented clearly here. Even the present IRC rooms are not officially part of Wikipedia, as WP:IRC states very deliberately. I'll let others chime in on this though, see what they think. Equazcion •✗/ C • 06:31, 11 Feb 2009 (UTC)
I'm currently talking to another editor on AIM right now and I've been part of Skype discussions. Before becoming an admin I also published my IM contact info on my userpage (I only ever had two people contact me). I'm sure other do this as well, but I can't see this working on a sanctioned basis (e.g. WMF run Jabber server). It may however be worth it to try and start a "IM contact info" page for people to post their username. BJ Talk 07:03, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Similarly to Wikipedia, other social networks also have to deal with massive amounts of low quality contributions from the public. It seems that the moderation model on Slashdot works fairly well. I propose to use something similar on Wikipedia.
The challenge is to design a mechanism for orchestrating the collaborative moderation effort on Wikipedia. I propose the following model.
1) Edits can only be done by registered Wikipedians.
2) Wikipedians will have a reputation or karma, depending on the quality of their contributions.
3) Long standing Wikipedians of good reputation are selected to moderate edits. Alternatively they can also moderate any page they want. These are Level 1 moderators. Authors of high quality edits will rated up, and authors of low quality edits will be rated down, and this will affect their reputation.
4) Wikipedians with reputation under a threshold will be restricted or banned from doing edits.
5) Long standing wikipedians of good reputation are invited to moderate Level 1 moderators. These are Level 2 moderators. They will judge whether the Level 1 moderators were fair. Altenratively they can moderate any Level 1 moderator they want. Fair Level 1 moderators will be rated up, and unfair moderators will be rated down, which will influence their reputation.
6) Wikipedia staff are all-powerful, and can sanction any Level 1 or Level 2 moderator.
Introducing reputation will give Wikipedians recognition for their work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Josang ( talk • contribs) 09:27, 11 February 2009
Whilst I appreciate the reasoning behind the editors seeking some agreed selection criteria of notable riders I would suggest that there are some sports, like speedway, where riders could be considered to be notable for example they were characters with a strong personal following (fan base) yet did not achieve any of the above. For example a rider who raced at Glasgow Speedway called Joe "Whaler" Ferguson. Joe wrecked bikes regularly but still came back for more. He was never a star but was nonetheless a natable. Views please.
Could somebody create a "Category of broken categories" (or "Category of redlinked categories")? I'm serious. I would be willing to put in some serious work on emtying such a category. I know about Special:WantedCategories, but that is a list and not a category, and just of the 1000 mostly found, not of all of them. Debresser ( talk) 18:14, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
This is not what I meant. I checked a few of those categories. Most have been deleted (the right way, without leaving articles that link to them), while at least one of them (and probably a few others too) is a nice category with a lot of articles and 2 parent categories. See the Special:WantedCategories talk page for a discussion on the subject. Debresser ( talk) 22:43, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
As long as previews require a server query, they might as well check for edit conflicts while they're at it, and notify the user. Equazcion •✗/ C • 22:35, 11 Feb 2009 (UTC)
We often have a number of articles featuring topical subjects on the main page. For example, currently there is a featured article on evolution, and a whole bunch of Darwin/Lincoln articles in DYK that are being featured for the 200th anniversary of both Lincoln's and Darwin's birthday.
The trouble is, there is no obvious announcement that the reason these articles are being featured is because it is an important anniversary. Only if you happen to look at the bottom right hand corner of the main page, in the "On This Day" section, do you notice a line mentioning that this is Darwin's and Lincoln's birthday.
I would like to suggest that on dates on which we are featuring such topical content, there should be a line at the TOP of the page, right above the featured article/in the news sections, which announces the anniversary, so that readers can instantly make the connection between the content of the featured article/DYK sections and the anniversary in question. Otherwise, readers are liable to miss the anniversary, see a lot of articles on similar subjects, and just conclude that there isn't much variety on Wikipedia, which is not the sort of conclusion they are supposed to draw! By making it clear it's a special day on the other hand, we showcase the topical relevance of the site. Gatoclass ( talk) 09:30, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
Hmmm .maybe something like:
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or in another situation:
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Would this be sufficient? ViperSnake151 15:46, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
I rather like this suggestion - I was thinking about typing something similar myself on this day (Feb 12) being the Lincoln-Darwin anniversary, but I see it has already been made. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 21:29, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
I suspect the first part of the following is a template because I see it so often on the Help Desk. The second part was written by a separate editor and probably is not a template.
I would like to propose the following text be used for the question "How do I create an article?"
If you are sure you should create your article after reading all of the above, then go ahead. If you are unsure, then, after creating an account, you can then create a sub-page in user space. For example, if your user name is Foobar987, your user page will be User:Foobar987. If your new article is to be named "Blatification" then you can initially create it at User:Foobar987/Blatification. After you create the article and get it up to a standard you are happy with, come back here and ask for someone to review your article. We will then help you to make sure your article is OK according to our strange and wonderous rules. We may even help fix the article or help you to find someone to assist you. Once the article is good enough, you can move the article to "mainspace:" that is, use the "move" feature to change the name of the article from User:Foobar987/Blatification to just Blatification. This approach works because by convention a subpage of your user page is not required to follow all of the rules of a mainspace article. (Note, however, it must still adhere to some fundamentals such as no copyright violations and no personal attacks.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vchimpanzee ( talk • contribs) 14:20, 12 February 2009
Thanks. I figured they get enough questions, but OK. Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 14:30, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
Oh, I see, that's a different page. Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 14:32, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
Sorry if this isn't the place, but everywhere else was locked from editing. So here's the question: do any users have the ability to copy the taxobox over to another site? If you could, that would be very helpful indeed. The site in question is RationalWiki. -- ConservapediaUndergroundResistor ( talk) 00:59, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
I would like to propose the creation of a page where all the current cases involving disputes etc, are listed in the one place. So, in other words, one would have all the current RFC, RFA and RFAR cases listed, in abbreviated form, so that users could see at one glance who or what was being debated. Part of the current problem we have, I think, is that such processes are scattered around on different pages and obscured from ready view. If we had a central page that listed all such processes, users would know they needed to go to only one page to keep tabs on things, and it might encourage more participation, which is often woefully lacking. Gatoclass ( talk) 10:00, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
Recent investigations have uncovered some contributors who habitually employ close paraphrasing over a long period, causing frustrating copyright issues. A while ago I wrote an essay about close paraphrasing, what it is, and how to avoid and detect it. Since it's linked from the cleanup box {{ close paraphrase}}, I'd like it to have the force of a guideline. Please visit Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing and Wikipedia talk:Close paraphrasing#Proposed_as_guideline to leave your opinion. Thanks! Dcoetzee 20:39, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
There's a proposal to change the default styling of navboxes, here. Any comments would be appreciated. SharkD ( talk) 05:10, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
Please note Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion#Speedy removals.3B opposition to hyphenations. In the spirit of "adjectival hyphenation", all "nth century $THING" categories are being speedy-moved to "nth-century $THING". This affects literally thousands of long-standing categories. The "consensus" this is based on is a couple of CfDs with two or three votes. As far as I can see based on a generic rule of "adjectival hyphenation", not on evidence of actual widespread use of hyphens in the case of centuries in particular.
I am opposed to this move as premature and misguided, and would ask that it is backed up be a wider community consensus before these speedy moves proceed. -- dab (𒁳) 09:50, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Did it occur to you that Wikipedia has been going for eight years, with its share of grammar nazis, and until late 2008 nobody ever objected to "20th century philosopher"? I will tell you why: when "second century" is used as an adjective it should be hyphenated is simply not a rule that is alive in the real world. I readily admit it sees some use. But by no means is it more common than the unhyphenated spelling. Check the google books results for
at first glance well below 1:10. This is nowhere near anything that would make this giant move at all arguable. What irks me is that this huge transition went underway with all of two CfD votes, no community review, and nobody even bothered to check who is prescribing this, which major publications use it and which don't, the very basic minimal standard for any significant rename. -- dab (𒁳) 09:30, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
A bot has been proposed to deal with the non-free reduce backlog. The discussion is at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/NeuRobot 2, and everyone is encouraged to participate and assist in establishing consensus. — neuro (talk) 23:50, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
I've made a "test proposal" at CfD to see if there is a consensus for replacing the categorization system of classifying biota "by country" with a system that would categorize biota "by ecozone". See here to read or comment. Good Ol’factory (talk) 03:50, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
I know this is similar to other proposals, but I propose that (1) Wikipedia allow editing only by users at least 18 years old and with at least a high school education, (2) a Kidpedia be set up so they can do what ever they want. We have too many problems with edits from kids. Bubba73 (talk), 03:46, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
Here's something for Bubba to do: please offer proof of all your assertions, please. — kur ykh 05:03, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
I would have thought that it is up to the parents or guardians of children to keep any eye on how they might use the Internet, and, if possible, to block their children from accessing certain websites. They may be able to guard their children against using Wikipedia if they feel that children were using Wikipedia for poor purposes. However, let us be realistic. Is it really likely that young children will edit articles on quantum mechanics, existentialism, predicate logic or genetics? There is a Simple Wikipedia - the one that is written in Simple English - which is likely to be more accessible to children than this one, and so may be more likely to be read (and edited) by children. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 16:32, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
I'm strongly against imposing age or education requirements, for a number of reasons, but I've been working on a page providing some introductory guidance and suggestions for our younger group of editors, and hope to have it completed and up for comments within a couple of days. Newyorkbrad ( talk) 23:50, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump/ACFeedback 01:00, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
In terms of how Special:ListUsers is implemented (I see that it was updated into a different format recently), could it indicate whether users have email enabled? I'm not sure how helpful this would be (since there's so many accounts), but I see that some users activate wiki email so that they can send malicious messages via wiki. Perhaps this could be enabled like "Show only users with edits". ~ Troy ( talk) 20:49, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
The purpose of this idea is a solution to the controversy about minors having easy access to articles with explicit content (possibly without even knowing this before they view the article) that will help to avoid arguments over whether explicit content should be in a certain article or not (Wikipedia is not censored so there's no immediate bar to explicit content of course). As for exactly how this would be implemented with the software, I'm not an expert on that but here's my general idea:
Articles that contain (or new articles that are likely to contain) adult content (such as sexually explicit images or links to adult sites) will be placed in a "category" for "articles with explicit content" (this doesn't have to be a normal Wikipedia category necessarily but they'd have to be designated as such in order for the software change to affect them). If an unregistered user tries to view the article, before the article itself is loaded a screen will appear notifying them that it contains explicit content and that they must be of legal age for their country state before viewing the article, and provides them with a link to either acknowledge their age and view the article or go back (the same as most adult websites do). This seems like a good idea to me, but the main downside to it would be that users who are of legal age would have to go through this routine repetitively just to view those articles. My solution to that is to allow registered users an option in their user preferences to confirm that they are the legal age to view adult content (similar to the system on Youtube) at which point they'll be able to view any articles with adult content just as they would a regular article (without the "warning screen" I mentioned appearing before the article itself is loaded). I'd like to hear opinions on this idea as I think it would eliminate defacto the controversy by some Wikipedia critics that Wikipedia "peddles porn to kids" (some would still argue that it's still easy for children to access the explicit content but this would not be any more so than with any other site on the internet that contains adult content so they'd have no real case against Wikipedia).-- The Jazz Thief ( talk) 03:13, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
I think as soon as parents realize most of what they teach their kids is considered pseudoscience, they'll want to censor a lot more than the sex pages. — CharlotteWebb 18:43, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
Propose adopting, or investigating adoption of, "Infobox/V2" graphical style in Infobox headers on English Wikipedia. The presentation is much more professional (& better looking) than the current style. Basically, the title/topper of each infobox type (Music, film, person, society, etc) gets its own background color and background graphic. (For example, infoboxes about transport have a specific background, as seen in Golden Gate Bridge article link below) Other mock-ups can be found in the link below. I raised this at the Infobox Wikiproject's talk page about a month ago, and the response was that while technically possible the question would be if it should be done (so proposing it here to see if there is interest in pursuing/investigating its application here). Examples below (including link to French Wikipedia's Infobox V2 project)
Outsider80 ( talk) 05:50, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Note: The following message was just posted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Infoboxes, in the thread I mentioned at the top of this proposal. Am cross-posting it here since it contains useful links (and examples/mock-ups) for other language Wikipedias not mentioned above. Outsider80 ( talk) 11:12, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
It looks great. Work out any bugs and deploy it gradually to infobox templates. -- Apoc2400 ( talk) 22:33, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Drive-By_Editorials for background.
Proposal: Add a "show/hide cleanup tags" button to the top of each page, which would make article, section, and in-line cleanup templates visible or invisible.
There are many variants of this which can be decided later. I'm just trying to get a feel if the basic concept is useful. davidwr/( talk)/( contribs)/( e-mail) 20:08, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
I'd prefer to see most of these templates show up in compact form, providing a minimal interface and explanatory tooltip, and being individually expanded with a click. In many cases there should be an indication that there are content issues, but there is no need for a huge array of banners always in the reader's face, or a flotilla of inline tags reducing readability, when a few icons or widgets can inform the reader. — Michael Z. 2009-02-13 21:10 z
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This section requires expansion. |
I was thinking of the alert-box templates defaulting to collapsed boxes in the right margin. (The sample here is the huge block of two templates from T-44.) While in the collapsed state, they would have a mouse-over tooltip summarizing the message, defaulting to an indication of the message type. Any click would open the box, or all boxes, up to the full width, and a small control would allow them to be re-collapsed. Perhaps the coloured bar could serve as the control, with a bold white + or - in it to invite the action and indicate the state. Alternatively a black or grey + or - could appear in a corner.
Alternatively, they could sit in a horizontal line still floated to the right of the article text. This would have the advantage of not pushing down an infobox as far. In this configuration, the coloured bar could be shown running across the top of the box array.
In the collapsed state, I'd also like to see them made less colourful, perhaps with a greyed-out version of the icon, or having the coloured bar reduced to a 1-pixel border.
Thanks to the modular design of {{ ambox}}, this could be accomplished with a fairly simple javascript, I think. I've created the alternative presentation above using the standard template mechanism's parameters only.
Inline templates, like {{ fact}} and {{ dubious-inline}} are a separate issue, but I'd like to see them appear as minimal symbols or dingbats by default, with tool-tip text. — Michael Z. 2009-02-17 00:02 z
/* pop-open ambox alerts */ table.ambox { /* collapsed by default */ clear: right; float: right; margin: 0 0 0 1em; } table.ambox .mbox-text { display: none; } table.ambox:hover { /* open on hover */ float: none; margin: 0 0 0 20%; } table.ambox:hover .mbox-text { display: table-cell; }
Does anyone think that it would be a good idea to include Amazon in Book sources? I know that this is a blatantly commercial site but the precedent has already been set by the inclusion of Yahoo! and Amazon has a highly useful "search inside" feature on many books. I have come across a number of instances where Amazon gives better access to the book than Google books. For instance I have used Boyer's A History of Mathematics as a ref in several articles (it happens to be on my bookshelf) but anybody trying to find the citation in Google books gets a near useless snippet view whereas Amazon provides a full page preview complete with diagrams. Another example is the book Mutiny on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition, Law, and Diplomacy which recently got an article. Google books version compared with Amazon version. I have even come across cases where no preview is available at all on Google but it is on Amazon, could nto recall an example unfortunately. SpinningSpark 20:25, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
I have undertaken a searching investigation of recent bouts of page-move vandalism, and I have identified the following patterns, and steps which I believe will significantly impede such conduct.
Please discuss the above on their individual merits. Cheers! bd2412 T 21:28, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
A Few points:
I like the throttling idea. It could significantly decrease the damage by a page-move vandal and it has create very little inconvenience - the only way I ever did more than 1 page move per minute is when I reverted a moving vandal. Regarding locking the pagemove permissions IMHO we have three different classes of articles:
IMHO the software should be smart enough to separate those classes. 1 should be moved by everybody, 2 by somehow experienced users, 3 - only by rollbackers or even only by admins Alex Bakharev ( talk) 08:56, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
I do not see that anyone has squarely addressed proposal #1, which is resetting the permissions of a user who has (a) made fewer than 50 mainspace edits, and (b) been completely inactive for a sufficient length of time (60 or 90 days). This would in fact encourage productive users to log in and contribute more often, as they would thereby retain those privileges. Cheers! bd2412 T 00:12, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
The other day, someone made a change to the Meaning of life article, changing the linked word for Heaven in the Islamic section to Syurga. Because it was redlinked, I searched it on google to see if it might be a more appropriate link to have, and if I should created the article. Surprisingly, I see a wiki link on the first page, so I quickly clicked on it. Turns out the article was in Malaysian, so I couldn't read it, but it seemed odd that no article (or even redirect) exist in the English wiki.
So that got me thinking, a lot of other wikis have quality articles in different areas than the english wiki, be it local geography, biographies, books, films and such. And content in other wikis is most likely welcome in this wiki too, it just needs to be translated. So I wondered, what if there was a process setup between Wikipedia:Requested articles, the many wikis in other languages, and one of the many free translators. I envision an automated fetching system, where a bot takes a redlink from Requested articles, searches all the other wikis for that phrase (translating common words like of, in, the etc), then outputting possible results to a list, which includes links to different wiki articles, and if possible, a link to a free translator. There could also be some sort of suggest feature, where articles in other wikis could be selected for potential inclusion, and perhaps something that measures the length of existing English language articles and compares them to existing other language articles, and flags when the English one is shorter.
Keep in mind that no articles get created unless a human takes the translated content, fixes it up, and creates the article by hand. The only thing automated in this process is the suggesting, and the adding of links to pages and translations. Actually, it occurs to me that this process could work in reverse too, it could flag articles from the English wiki for inclusion in other language wikis.
I lack the technical expertise, as well as the wikicratic experience of "the process" that makes something like this come to fruition. Hopefully someone with more experience in these areas can chime in. -- Nick Penguin( contribs) 03:23, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
Like the already existing "Random article" button, it would be nice to also have a "Random images" button. Kingturtle ( talk) 04:54, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
This will give you something like what Commons has:
addPortletLink("p-navigation", "/wiki/Special:Random/File", "Random file", "n-randomfile", null, null, null);
Or you can change it so it still says "image", doesn't matter. You would want to paste this at User:Kingturtle/monobook.js (assuming you use the monobook skin) then clear the cache of your browser. — CharlotteWebb 20:23, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
I think there should be a marker for deliberate misspellings. For instance, Febuary would become double-curly-bracket misspelling|Febuary double-curly-bracket when explaining the misspelling itself. This would do nothing but allow deliberate misspellings to be excluded from the search results (should the user choose to do so). I've spent some time correcting typos and spelling errors using the search engine, and it seems to me this task could be easily automated if the misspelling marker were implemented so the bot could distinguish between deliberate misspellings and accidental misspellings and typos.
Misspellings and typos seem trivial, but I think that as a whole they detract from the professionalism of Wikipedia. For instance there are over instances of the misspelling "Febuary" on the English Wikipedia right now. -- 24.254.194.26 ( talk) 03:50, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
In the article titled Nena, a song title is given as "Ich Kann nix Dafür". Recently someone corrected the spelling "Ich Kann nichts Dafür". I changed it back and added a commented-out note that it's an intentional misspelling—only those who edit will see the comment. In this case that seems appropriate; I don't want to see a visible [sic] there, although I'd usually use that. I'm not sure I can explain exactly why I want this to be an exception. Michael Hardy ( talk) 17:42, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
Okay, I was looking at the article on the {{sic}} template, and I believe {{sic|hide=y}} provides the functionality I had in mind. Michael (Hardy)? -- 24.254.194.26 ( talk) 04:04, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
it will jump start the new user's involvement and understanding of Wikipedia, and will bring fresh input on discussions from many more users. 212.200.241.153 ( talk) 12:03, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
On the subject of welcome messages, I think a lot of them need to be simplified instead. I've seen quite a few that are loud, vibrant, and bombastic, effectively drowning the hapless newbie with a barrage of text and color. Keep it simple, [insert appropriate word here]. — kur ykh 20:47, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
There is a new straw poll for granting crats the technical ability to desysop. Syn ergy 07:06, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
Just brainstorming. What about a software feature that allows an admin to input two user names and the software would tell if the IP is identical. The IP would not be revealed to the admin, but it might reduce workload in some areas and make socking less likely. Thoughts? -- MZMcBride ( talk) 17:57, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
;]
17:58, 18 February 2009 (UTC)"Two users have used the same IP" is not sufficient information to make a judgement on whether the two are sockpuppets. The actual IP address being used affects this. — Werdna • talk 18:04, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
Two users edit-warring about a university from that university's IP address? You just don't know, and our problem is half-information leading to blind accusations leading to drama, not "not enough CheckUsers". If we don't have enough CheckUsers, appoint ten or twenty more. — Werdna • talk 18:09, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, the proposal which was put forth initially is based on a misunderstanding of what CheckUser is and how it works. I'd suggest that if English Wikipedia needs more CheckUsers then more should be appointed. MZMcBride should review prior discussions about this before re-proposing a bad idea which has been rejected before. — Mike. lifeguard | @en.wb 21:51, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
Both templates have the same background color, and the removal of one of these templates often leads to the insertion of the other one. A new editor, thinking it was the same template that got reinserted, will mistakenly remove the AfDM template, which is in violation of policy, but in the vast majority of cases an honest mistake.
To avoid confusion, I suggest that one of these two templates have a different background color. Since red is already in use on speedy deletion templates, I would suggest something bluish like this for the AfDM template. Anyone else has an opinion on that?
So this is actually a two-part discussion:
-- Blanchardb - Me• MyEars• MyMouth- timed 19:07, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
Behold the downside of standardizing the appearance of all these bloody templates. I kinda miss not having to read them to tell them apart. — CharlotteWebb 20:39, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
My current proposal looks like this:
This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia's
deletion policy. Please share your thoughts on the matter at this article's entry on the Articles for deletion page. Feel free to edit the article, but the article must not be blanked, and this notice must not be removed, until the discussion is closed. For more information, particularly on merging or moving the article during the discussion, read the
guide to deletion
Steps to list an article for deletion:
Unregistered users placing this tag on an article cannot complete the deletion nomination and should leave detailed reasons for deletion on Wikipedia talk:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 43. If the nomination is not completed and no message is left on the talkpage, this tag may be removed. |
-- Blanchardb - Me• MyEars• MyMouth- timed 21:36, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia's
deletion policy. Please share your thoughts on the matter at this article's entry on the Articles for deletion page. Feel free to edit the article, but the article must not be blanked, and this notice must not be removed, until the discussion is closed. For more information, particularly on merging or moving the article during the discussion, read the
guide to deletion
Steps to list an article for deletion:
Unregistered users placing this tag on an article cannot complete the deletion nomination and should leave detailed reasons for deletion on Wikipedia talk:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 43. If the nomination is not completed and no message is left on the talkpage, this tag may be removed. |
You may wish to read about banner blindness. The human brain tries desperately to avoid reading these kind of notices. This is a case where familiarity truly does breed contempt. The eyes subconsciously move away from anything resembling a banner. Introducing icon art or differences in color or inner/outer shape can at least keep the templates distinguishable in users' peripheral vision. — CharlotteWebb 02:58, 17 February 2009 (UTC)