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Would it be possible to tweak this feature so that it always appears immediately at the end of a section header instead of on the right hand side of the page. Currently, the [edit] button has a nasty habit of appearing over text and I feel the suggested tweak would remove this problem. Mjroots ( talk) 10:03, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
I'm quite sure this proposal has been made multiple times in the past... Though I would have no clue where to start looking. As a sidenote, moving the edit link will not "Fix" the bunching problem all together, because it applies to all floating elements, so it will just make the problem less common and even more obscure. I have no particular preference either way. — TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 19:17, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
I would be tempted to be WP:BOLD about it, if I knew how to change it. OrangeDog ( talk • edits) 21:13, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
It seems to me that the edit link would get lost if pushed up against the section header. I prefer to keep it out of the way but still associated with the section. Powers T 15:50, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
Article header [edit]
The discussion is mentioned in the current edition of Signpost, so hopefully we'll get much more discussion. Mjroots ( talk) 15:55, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
Sample removed due to TOC-breakage
Maybe like that? Though obviously with a working link. OrangeDog ( talk • edits) 23:41, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
No, it doesn't go against the original proposal, which was to move the [edit] button to immediately at the end of the section header. Details like aesthetics can be sorted out later. FWIW, I like the grey version. Now there's been a fair bit of input, what's the best way to go from here. Should I make this into a formal proposal under a subsection with voting for/against? Mjroots ( talk) 05:14, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
Raised at WP:CENT Mjroots ( talk) 08:39, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
.editsection {
float: none !important;
position: absolute;
font-size: 60% !important;
margin: 1.7em 0em 1.5em 0em !important;
}
MediaWiki:Gadget-lefteditlinks.js has been created. You can now activate the left edit links as a gadget in Special:Preferences. Please report any bugs at User:Drilnoth/lefteditlinks.js/doc. Thanks! – Drilnoth ( T • C • L) 14:29, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
If you look at many discussion pages, you may have noticed that the first section-heading is often preceded by what looks like disorganized random chatter. The likely reason for that just struck me today. When you visit an empty talk page, for example Talk: Crotona Park, it just invites you to start a discussion.
A new user with a question or comment on her or his mind might just start typing the substance without thinking of giving it a title (or perhaps even knowing how). This is different from what the "New Section" tab shows and similar to what happens with a new article, which we want to start with an untitled lead paragraph (something that doesn't apply to most talk pages). "New Section" does provide a box for section headers, but that's actually slightly less necessary when earlier sections show editors an example and a method. Is there some way we could open empty talk pages with a section-header box, or at least instructions for how to enter "==[title]==" to start the first section? —— Shakescene ( talk) 22:08, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
[Further info]: This is the greeting at the (now-empty) Talk:Crotona Park:
Editing Talk:Crotona Park
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wikipedia does not have a talk page with this exact title. Before creating this page, please verify that a subject page called Crotona Park exists.
* To start a page called Talk:Crotona Park, type in the box below. When you are done, preview the page to check for errors and then save it.
This is a talk page. Please respect the talk page guidelines, and remember to sign your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~).
...Comment: Even should we do nothing further (which I strongly believe we must), at least the last instruction should not be "To start a page called Talk:..., type in the box below" unless the box is changed to something closer to a "New Section" page. Otherwise, eliminate the box and instead direct the user to the "New Section" tab. (For example, "To start a page called Talk:..., please open the "New Section" tab above this panel.") —— Shakescene ( talk) 03:09, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
Support At minimum, the extensive, yet deficient, instructions that appear, as shown above, should be updated to the requisite effect, but ideally the system should automatically bring about the conditions under which the user, by default, starts a section when none is yet present (while also continuing to provide the means for WikiProject headers etc. to be added without creating a section). True, it would be easy enough for someone in the know to add a single section header later, on encountering the page, but by that time any number of separate conversations may have been jumbled together. PL290 ( talk) 19:18, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Support There should be a button there just like any other talk page. Reywas92 Talk 17:52, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
¶ Just to keep this section from getting bot-archived without resolution, I was thinking of creating a straw poll here, and then using the results to form a more-formal Request for Comment (with attached technical requests). I was going to break the poll into:
Would this be a good format for a straw poll, or does anyone have other ideas? —— Shakescene ( talk) 07:18, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
In the past I have seen the idea kicked around of putting WikiProject assessment ratings onto the article page, but I don't ever recall what the consensus was, and it has been some time ago. As some editors know, there has been a handy gadget for sometime which allows ratings to be turned on in the mainspace as an option in your preferences:
Display an assessment of an article's quality as part of the page header for each article. (documentation)
I personally find it quite handy to be able to quickly identify the reliability and quality of the article I am reading. Has anyone ever considered turning this on as a default setting to all users? This is not necessarily a proposal, but more of a “have you ever considered this?”
Almost everyone I know has used wikipedia! Even old people! But there is one common theme amongst them all, they always say: “How can I trust what is on there? Everyone edits it.” The most persuasive answer I have always found has been to explain to them the WikiProject rating system, and how certain levels receive peer reviews, and project reviews, and a community review. When they understand what has to take place for an article to get a gold star or a green plus mark, for example, they realize they can have more faith in the article than if it was a C or a B class. When I have told people about this, they are usually amazed that such a thing exists. Most readers (by my conjecture) never go to a discussion page, and very few are aware it exists. I personally believe, IMOSHO, that raising awareness of our rating system among our readers is one of the greatest things we can do to shake the prevailing public image that “you can’t trust Wikipedia.”™
I truly believe our project would benefit from placing article ratings, in some fashion, on the article page. We use the ratings for the CD version of the encyclopedia to identify quality articles. We give FA class articles a gold star, so why not give something for other ratings? Implementing such a thing in the mainspace would of course be of little value unless we also created something to quickly and easily and concisely (meaning in less than 100 words) that would explain to our reader what our rating system means to them. There are many ways such a system could be created, and I have several ideas of my own. — Charles Edward ( Talk | Contribs) 18:21, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
My question for the community is this:
Do you support raising awareness of the WikiProject rating system among our readers?
My secondary questions are, what is the best way to do this? and Do you believe this would help in the public's perception of Wikipedia's quality and reliability? I believe this is a discussion worth having.
I would like to suggest an option to display languages of preference on top under the languages. This would be very handy because most people use most often their own language and only a few others (most English). It should be an addition, so all the languages are also still displayed in the list.
Obviously, I didn't formulate my question right. So second try: I would like to suggest an option on all the articles on Wikipedia. By example on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey there is a list of many different other languages which could be selected. If your second language is German you have to search the whole list (although it's not that work) for 'German'. If Wikipedia should track the languages you (the individual user) use most often, these could also be placed on top of the language list. Especially when you use Wikipedia a lot this could save some time.
Under My preferences there is indeed an option Internationalisation. By example, it would be handy to be able to add here your second languages which are then placed on top.
The English Wikipedia is off course the most complete. But for people from the Netherlands it's most times more convenient to read first the Dutch Wiki, and afterwards the English one. So especially for the Non-English Wiki's it would be handy. Do all the Wiki's have the same frame and only a different language packet or are they really different (by example they also differ in the options under preferences)?
I hope my question became more clear now. LvD ( talk) 07:20, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Please, check this Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BOTijo 2 (again). emijrp ( talk) 15:46, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
I notice the "Create a book" sidebar is back, although it was removed with strong consensus to do so after a discussion here back in May. Was there ever a discussion on whether to reenable the sidebar? Have any of the concerns at the previous discussion been addressed? Them From Space 21:09, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
The Committee has prepared a second provisional draft of an updated arbitration policy for community review. All editors are invited to examine the text and to provide any comments or suggestions they may have via one of the two methods specified on the draft page.
Release of this draft was approved by an 8/1 vote, with no abstentions or recusals:
For the Committee, Kirill [talk] [pf] 16:03, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
I stumbled upon a casual discussion indicating that it's not proper to use the Hidden or Collapse templates to integrate content into articles; this feeling is shared by an experienced editor I spoke with ("Wikipedia never uses show/hide boxes in the middle of articles. Content is either part of the prose properly or shouldn't be included at all."). His position certainly makes sense, but my feeling is that this rule deserves to be broken for certain articles -- generally speaking, articles that perform a thorough close reading of primary sources; more specifically, articles on court cases. I have experimented with this method (somewhat clumsily) here, and (even more clumsily) here.
I have three distinct reasons for desiring this style in articles on legal cases.
I've invited contributors at
Wikipedia:WikiProject_Law and
Wikipedia:WikiProject_U.S._Supreme_Court_cases to join this discussion.
Thanks.
Agradman
appreciates civility/
makes occasional mistakes 01:56, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
CBM, the problem is that this content is not "so tangential that it ought to be hidden by default" ... it's not tangential at all, it's all important, because the quotations from primary sources are the essence of credible legal arguments. The problem is that cases are very lengthy, and often deal with multiple issues.
I'm worried that this proposal won't get a fair shake until the legal professionals start arriving ... I've poked some wikipedia lawyers and I'm hoping they'll stop by ...
Agradman
appreciates civility/
makes occasional mistakes 04:59, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Wait, let me clarify. You also said "if the content is worth including, it should not be hidden." If there were any other way to integrate 50 paragraphs of text into the "Roe v. Wade" article, I'd do it. The problem is that the article would get too choppy.
Anomie, I'm aware of Wikisource. but it doesn't serve any of the three advantages I've cited above.
Agradman
appreciates civility/
makes occasional mistakes 05:04, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
OK, I've linked to this discussion at Template_talk:Hidden#Within_article_text. I'd appreciate it if someone would write a sentence about this in one of the Guidelines pages. Wikipedia:Layout, perhaps.
This problem will have to be solved by the website that's hosting our caselaw. For example, the hyperlink in 386 U.S. 213, 215 (1234) might automatically scroll down to page 215 and highlight that page; same could apply for paragraphs. Agradman appreciates civility/ makes occasional mistakes 19:18, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Hi!
I'm Iivari Mokelainen, from Finland - a fan of wikipedia. I was reading wikipedia this one time (i do it tens of times a day) and i noticed that if the article is long enough to span on many pages, there is very much space wasted.
The menu on the left (with languages and other links) is on the side, and there is nothing under it I think its a really big concern, especially for small screen users. Moving the menu on the top, and having the language menu as a drop-down list would make the wikipedia not only more usable, but also more estetic. There would be a lot more space for the article, the page would be less cluttered, and well, lets face it, side panels are really oldfashioned in current modern "web 2.0" internet world.
Thank you, cincerely yours,
I suggest inclede a link in the top of the page to edit the lead section of the article. There are troubles when editing the lead section of an article= the user must edit all the article (cannot edit only the lead section). This causes problem when editing in an iphone or mobile device (i.e. Nokia 5800), because the article can be cut and dissapear some sections, because the entire article is too long (ie can dissapear the external links, references, see also... sections). Also is difficult include a new section (the "enter" or "new paragraph"character does not work and also nor the new paragraph tag ). Can we include a Javascript button in the edition toolbar for this?. Regards.-- Nopetro ( talk) 10:50, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
Most (if not all) wikilinks that lead to a disambiguation page are unintentional. It's all too easy to accidentally create one while editing. Wikipedia has redlinks for non-existent pages; how about introducing a new link appearance for wikilinks that lead to a disambiguation page? Unintentional ones can then be seen and fixed much more quickly, perhaps even during preview before ever being saved. One idea would be amberlinks, as long as they're distinctly different from redlinks. Otherwise, perhaps background shading or some other effect that draws attention. PL290 ( talk) 13:16, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
<p><a href="/wiki/Jupiter_(disambiguation)" class="mw-disambig" title="Jupiter (disambiguation)">Jupiter (disambiguation)</a></p>
The AfD process is still very manual, requiring at least three manual edits per AfD. The "prod" process and the Wikipedia:Requested moves process are now semi-automated - there, one template on the page of interest does the job. All the appropriate list pages are updated automatically.
I'd suggest using the Wikipedia:Requested moves machinery for Wikipedia:Articles for Deletion. One template on the page starts the process, and everything else is updated by a 'bot. This will make the process much simpler for users. -- John Nagle ( talk) 19:25, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
On the converse, DumbBOT does a good job of rescuing incomplete nominations that have nomination rationales, but that aren't listed on per-day sub-pages. There's really nothing to do here that isn't already being done. In part, this is because this is a perennial proposal, that has come up before (on the talk pages of the templates as well as at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion), along with editors pointing out the past experiences that we have had with abuse by vandals when the hurdle is made too low, either by 'bots or by the actions of well-intentioned editors completing incomplete nominations where only a tag was applied. Uncle G ( talk) 11:59, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
On the login screen, I want it to "remember me" for only 2 weeks at a time. I'd be curious to see if we can add a drop-down list of some sort to allow people to choose the amount of time they'd like "remember me" to remember them. Would this be possible? iMatthew talk at 01:02, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
This is a suggestion for improvement. It would be good to impose or recommend some limit on the size or length of Wikipedia pages. For mobile users, big pages are problematic. Long articles have to be paginated. Thanks for considering this post. Louenas
Apologies if this has been posted in the wrong place, but regularly, when I visit an article on a foreign (I mean non-English-speaking country) town or city &c., I look for the native pronunciation of the place concerned. As a simple example, Paris has as its first sentence "Paris (pronounced /ˈpærɪs/ or /ˈpɛrəs/ in English; in French) is the capital of France and the country's largest city." But the majority of places do not have such a sentence in the lead. Although it may be a rather tedious process, would it be out of the question to introduce native pronunciations to infoboxes of place articles, with the pronunciations underneath the place name, maybe in a smaller font size so as not to look too conspicuous? 79.71.5.38 ( talk) 19:48, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
When a navbox contains a redirected link, it is displayed in purple when you are on the page it redirects to, as opposed to bold, black text (not linked) if it had been a direct link. It seems to me that the task of fixing these redirected links in the navboxes to point to the page itself (by piping it) is something that a bot could be able to do. So if such a bot task doesn't already exist, I make a proposal about it. Iceblock ( talk) 18:31, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
Based on my brief vandal-hunting experience I think that the current warning system issues one too many warnings to users before blocks are issued. Once a user gets a L-3 or an L-4 warning for vandalism for instance, that user's (normally a vandal) next target is usually the warner's talk page or user page in the form of userpage vandalism. More often than not, this delays the process in processing persistent vandals for blocking as they normally must receive four warnings for a block. I would propose lowering the number of warnings before sending to an admin-related venue (such as WP:AIV) from four to three along with slight adjustments in the wordings of the templates to accomodate that change. Any thoughts? MuZemike 23:02, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
If you search for a term that is not the title of an article (as in this), you get that remarkably chirpy message Create the page " Paradiso girls" on this wiki!. In bold. With an exclamation point. Phrased as a command. All this, despite the fact that the article has been deleted seven times and is create-protected. Can someone tone down the message to something more like There is no article by that name. Look over the search results below, and if you feel our coverage is inadequate, consider creating an article about the search term .— Kww( talk) 04:05, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Proposal: This is a request to allow the New Pages Patrol (NPP) to review an article before it is deleted and/or moved without a disambiguation. This means that the page cannot be marked as patrolled, and stays in the system for much longer, requiring a longer wait for articles that need to be reviewed. -- Gosox5555 ( talk) 12:48, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
Even an admin on NPP should probably tag for CSD (except in obvious circumstances which I will not go into here) and allow another admin to carry out the article's deletion. The same goes for any other user, regardless of user rights. That's my take.
MuZemike 07:22, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
I just came off a short block (violated 3RR, wasn't paying attention), during which I explored what an admin can do while blocked. Not to my surprise, I couldn't protect or delete pages, but I found myself able to block users and unblock myself (neither of which I did, mind you :-). What possible benefit is there of admins being able to do this while blocked? I'd like to see the block/unblock feature disabled during a block, partially because it would prevent someone like me from having the annoying little temptation to unblock myself and be vindictive by blocking the guy who blocked me, but more significantly because it doesn't do anything to stop someone who really doesn't care about the rules. If blocking suspended all the tools rather than leaving this — in my mind, the most powerful of all the tools — we'd not need to worry as much about rogue admins. Keep in mind that case a year or two ago when the guy hacked an admin's account, blocked Jimbo and several other people, deleted the main page, and vandalised tons of pages — he was blocked several times, but simply unblocked himself and kept on going until somebody called a bureaucrat to do an emergency desysopping. If my proposal were accepted, someone else would have had to unblock Jimbo, but the hacker would have done far less damage overall. Nyttend ( talk) 02:29, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
I don't think it at all likely that a rogue could block all 915 active admins without being spotted, Ritzman. ╟─ Treasury Tag► co-prince─╢ 18:51, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
The ability of admins to self-unblock is considered an important safety value to prevent a rogue from blocking everyone else and taking over. On enwiki this is unlikely given the large size of the admin corps, but many other projects have 25 admins or fewer and so a coup is far more possible, so Mediawiki is designed to allow such self-unblocks. This was discussed some years ago. I suppose one could add a Mediawiki configuration to allow this to be disabled in communities like en, but no dev was interested in doing that the last time it was discussed. Dragons flight ( talk) 23:32, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
I recently had an observation about Category:Wikipedia articles needing style editing. All articles tagged with {{ Advert}} are being lumped there with many other "style" issues, such as {{ essay-like}}, {{ colloquial}}, {{ textbook}}, etc. These "advert" articles are potential spam—and from my experience, often much worse than "not-perfect" articles that need tone editing. There is a difference between prose/style issues, and articles which may need heavy whacking or sometimes speedy deletion.
For this reason, I'm proposing that a new category be created for the {{ advert}} tag, such as "Category:Wikipedia articles that are possibly promotional". Spam is a problem, and this would separate Wikipedia's scum from style issues of lesser-importance.
Objections, thoughts? Thanks, Jamie ☆ S93 01:30, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
For some time, I've been thinking that the maps in Wikipedia could and should be much better. Good technology exists but we're still using "ancient" technology. Instead of a static picture we should have dynamic maps that users can pan and zoom. Inside the maps we should have links from geographical names to articles.
Today, when Honduras was in the news I looked up WP's Honduras article. Then I wondered what were its neighboring countries. The text has the names of neighbors but the map does not. The first map is a very small scale map that shows country boundaries but does not name them. Later in the article there is another small scale topographical map. If clicked, you can finally see the names of neighboring countries. Then I wondered what were the other countries of Central America. By clicking around in text I eventually found what I was looking for but my curiousity kept creating other questions that good mapping technology could have made faster and easier.
If we used mapping technology such as MapQuest, Google, etc. use, then in the Honduras article, I could have expanded the first map in the Honduras article, zoomed in, panned around, and could have quickly seen the names of other countries. With good technology, I could click on the map and go to the WP article about a country, city, river, etc.
While I was navigating around via typing into the search box, and clicking from one link to another to another to another, one of the maps I saw ( this one) showed part of the Mississippi river with a tributary heading toward Washington, DC. I wondered what river that was. With good technology, I could have zoomed and panned until the name showed up. Instead I typed Mississippi River into the search box, where there weren't any good maps, but at least the text eventually let me find the answer (Ohio River) to my curiousity.
Good mapping technology would be a great improvement to the WP experience. (And yes, I know that in a few places, I can click a geographical icon to get to a modern mapping site, but that is not well integrated into WP, and does not allow clicking from a map back to a WP article.) Sbowers3 ( talk) 18:49, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
If a person posted on a help desk or village pump, you can imagine how hard it is to get back to the specific section where the post was. Where the section is in the user's contribution history, the section name should be blue so you can click on it and go right to the section. Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:09, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
I made those Engrish words a redirect to Pixelization: Mosaic censoring and Censoring mosaics.
Can someone fix the words "mosaic censoring" and "censoring mosaics" in some articles to "pixelization", "pixelized" or whatever? -- JSH-alive talk • cont • mail 10:03, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
The Spotlight was a simple project where users choose an article for collaboration and work on its improvement in realtime via IRC on #wikipedia-spotlight. The project seized however a while ago and after a discussion on IRC we were thinking starting collaboration via the Spotlight again. If anyone's interested just login to #wikipedia-spotlight and where we will choose the next article to work on.-- Diaa abdelmoneim ( talk) 17:18, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
Last night I spent a few hours pasting public-domain sources into talk pages. To get people's attention, I created a section entitled "encyclopedic, public domain source(s)! Please assimilate!", and listed the hyperlinks there. E.g., Talk:Economy of Israel Talk:Au pair Talk:Estuary. (My next step is to make a single list of the 100 pages I've done this to, for wide circulation.)
My proposal is that we sanction this practice on one of the Guidelines pages, so that more people get involved in creating such lists: "Discussion pages may include a list of relevant, encyclopedic, public-domain hyperlinks in a permanent, designated, box, which should then be linked to on a separate outside page." Is this something you guys think would be useful? Agradman talk/ contribs 17:58, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Automatic Adminship is an idea to offer an alternate path to adminship for long standing and highly rated content contributors. Your thoughts and ideas would be most welcome :-) Privatemusings ( talk) 04:37, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Hi folks! Okay, before I begin, I understand this is going to be potentially controversial, as the current design has stood for many years now. But what I would like to do — bear with me here — is propose that we alter (purely in aesthetic terms) the way those handy buttons above every edit window look. Currently, I feel they are not pretty at all; a sort of throwback to the Netscape era, and it seems odd to me they've existed in their current form as long as they have. Many of them were designed at different times (possibly by different people?) and so have a real mish-mash of graphical styles.
Apart from their (admittedly highly subjective) ugliness, many of images are a little confusing given what they are meant to represent. The bold and italic buttons make sense, sure, but what's with the 'small' button?! The gallery button does not at all suggest a selection of pictures (the same could be said for the quote button), and mine only ever be a guess as to what that trumpet is supposed to be signalling (that button brings up videos..?). What's the big 'A' for? In my opinion, the best buttons are those that give their function in words on the button. The <ref> button is marvellous, and I wonder, why can't the rest be designed in its image? Thus, I am proposing that the following re-design be considered:
In my example above, if you look closely, you can see that the buttons in my proposal are of the exact same height and in the exact same order as the buttons before (so that hopefully should lessen the impact on the various scripts users use to alter their positions and whatnot). They also use the Wikipedia standard colour palette in their borders and individual backgrounds, and so sit more comfortably in the website design. They are also wider, as I feel it seems silly to have them all shoved together in the corner, when there's even room to spare with my design on non-widescreen computer screens. This gives more room-per-button to explain what they do, and makes it easier for the pointer to meet with its desired destination.
I understand we might need to convince the developers to help if this were to be implemented, and that is always a hurdle. And before you all hurriedly say, I know that a quick mouse-over will elucidate each button's function, but why should we have to work to suss out the interface? It makes sense, given our utter reliance on new people being attracted to edit, that this encyclopaedia be as user-friendly as possible. Anxietycello ( talk) 02:22, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
Instead of adding the attribut value to every external link, you could add a timestamp for every external link that is placed in an article and if its timestamp is older than one year, you remove the nofollow attribut value. Every time a link is removed the timestamp is refreshed. This avoids spam and supports external sites we trust.
I'd like to propose the creation of a bot that automatically inserts a "what links here?" hyperlink directly to the right of any item that appears in a "requested articles" list. That way, people who are interested in creating new articles off the list will be encouraged to check to see which articles are in the highest demand. Agradman talk/contribs 17:53, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
I propose that a namespace be implemented specifically for userspace redirects. There's currently no policy that forbids redirecting pseudo-namespace to user pages but it's certainly enforced as a policy. To deal with this, I propose setting up U:/UT: redirects as allowable shortcuts for user pages. U: to the user page and UT: to the user talk page. I don't know if this requires anything special other than saying "these are OK" somewhere such as wp:csd#r2 or Wikipedia:Pseudo-namespace or if something has to be done on the backend software wise but this is my proposal. - ALLST✰R▼ echo wuz here 20:41, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
I don't think that this is a good idea at all. WP:DRAMA and Wikipedia:Drama used to redirect to different pages, and then when WP: became a proper redirect namespace, it caused problems. What would happen if people essentially got to choose a "second username" (or more than one) for themselves (I could be U:TAG)... chaos. ╟─ Treasury Tag► ballotbox─╢ 07:40, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
{{U}}
and {{UT}}
templates that do practically the same thing. In the latter case, I think that that would be a really bad idea. I could see a
land run for "vanity" user names. And gods know what would happen to after a user deceased or apparantly stopped editing - would we have
squatters and ownership wars over user name redirects? --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (
coṁrá) 17:51, 5 July 2009 (UTC)U:
as a shortcut for typing User:
and UT:
as a shortcut for typing User talk:
, then it sounds okay to me. I see some minimal utility. (Minimal, yes, but minimal != none.) • Since we're here: I also think T:
as an alias for Talk:
would be useful in the same way. Yah, we're only saving a few keystrokes, but over time it adds up. • If this is about
actual shortcuts, e.g.,
U:DH redirecting to
User:DragonHawk, then no. No way. As
Rannpháirtí anaithnid said, it will just mean people fighting over shortcuts. We don't need the drama, or the confusion if they change in the future. —
DragonHawk (
talk|
hist) 21:44, 6 July 2009 (UTC)U:
as a shortcut for typing User:
and UT:
as a shortcut for typing User talk:
, then it sounds okay to me"; however,
Cryptic C62's entries need to be discussed. On the other hand, "if this is about
actual shortcuts" (borrowing
DH's language), there could be problematic situations. If two editors had similar usernames and wanted shortcuts to their user pages, at best, they'd have a friendly discussion and come up with some compromise; at worst, they'd argue and possibly
war on the redirect page – as
Rannpháirtí anaithnid brought up earlier. In addition, some hypothetical situations…
U:SD3
to my user page, but then SD3
signed up? Well, in that case, all users who want redirects would be required to first create accounts – in my case, I'd have to register the SD3
account before using U:SD3
. But what if the redirect I wanted was already registered?I have created a
straw poll on proposed software changes to <ref>
aimed at improving the way references are organized within wikicode. Please comment at the referenced page.
Dragons flight (
talk) 11:43, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
I was just doing a search and a couple of items came up where the title of the article is followed by (redirect Title of second article)". Since the name of the article is already a link to that article, why not have the redirected article's name be a link to the original article before redirecting? I was curious to see the pre-redirect history of the redirected article, and it would make that a little easier. Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:49, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
The community's views are needed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Advisory Council on Project Development. Many thanks, SlimVirgin talk| contribs 17:22, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
The toolbar for inserting special characters has quotation marks listed in two sections: "Insert" and "Symbols". Currently the quotation marks are listed in the following order:
‘ “ ’ ” «»
while I suggest that they should be listed as
‘’ “” «»
The symbols by themselves are quite tiny so it's not too easy to click them with a mouse, especially when they are interspersed. However if we group them so that opening and closing quotation marks are inserted simultaneously (similarly to how «» works now), editing of articles might become somewhat easier. // Stpasha ( talk) 01:17, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
If this is in the wrong section, I apologize.
So, I was thinking, since we don't like original research, and it's very difficult for someone like me (a virtual unknown high-school student with no Ph.D, which is practically necessary to get any sort of recognition in a scientific journal. Or at least I think it is.)to get any of their evidence-based ideas and thoughts published on a reliable source, to put our evidence-based thoughts on some special group of pages (or perhaps even another Wikimedia project) where they would be peer-reviewed, and maybe recognized by well-known scientists. Then, when/if it gets published in a third-party source, we can use it on an article. Note the bolded evidence-based up there. I'm not saying we should give every little bit of speculation and rumor a chance, just people who have done their research. For example, I have several sources (CIFOR, et al.) that indicate that cattle ranching is the main cause of the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest's destruction. I also have mention in them that the EU buys heavily from this region, thus, I could claim that the EU is indirectly supporting the rainforest's destruction. But I can't do that, because I am not some internationally recognized scientist/sociologist/economist with the community around my little finger. Thus where my proposal comes in. Now then, I'd be happy to take your thoughts on this so that I might improve upon this idea, and if it is not to be, at least know why. -- ArchabacteriaNematoda ( talk) 20:12, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Hi all - just been looking at Tajik language, and wonder whether it might be worth adding a block of identical text to each article on a language. Often you get a feel for how a language appears from a simple block of text. If we could come up with a standard short paragraph in English and add it in both English and the subject language to each article, it might be worthwhile. (Of course, that raises the question "what would the paragraph be?"...) Grutness... wha? 01:41, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
Definite Support: for the reasons listed above, this would be extremely useful. Asdfhgjgiewiuweroiuwer ( talk) 09:34, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
How about
“ | Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing. | ” |
— Jimbo Wales, [4] |
as the text to translate into as many languages as possible?- gadfium 00:20, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Support - although I agree with Grutness that it is inappropriate to use the lord's prayer - a more neutral text should be used. Also, for many languages it wouldn't be difficult to locate fellow wikipedians who could translate a line or two of text. Shimawa zen ( talk) 07:20, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
On it.wiki we use the Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It has been translated to quite a great many languages. -- A. di M. ( talk) 21:15, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
Is there a reason I have to indent every paragraph separately? Couldn't an entire edit be indented once the indenting is done as long as no other indenting takes place? Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:16, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
As I was using wikipedia a couple of days ago I thought struck. What if there was a world map, were you could enter a year and date to see how the world looked like at that specific time? As I see it it's nothing either hard or expensive to create. All that is needed for the user is a map without borders and three diffrent fields to enter the year, the month, and the day in. For the person who is doing the inputs of all these dates it'll be a bit harder. As that person need to be able to draw the borders at each specific date.
I'm don't know very much about programming (I've only taken 2 basic courses), but as I see it this can't be very hard for someone that knows what he's doing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kgjohnsson ( talk • contribs) 12:33, 11 July 2009
Wikipedia exists to give information on a broad range of topics, however, in order to get more specific information on subjects I often have to leave Wikipedia and visit Wikis which deal with very specific types of information. I believe my concept will help to connect this information, and will make finding more specific information easier for the user, without distracting the user who is searching for less specific information. This will also save storage as it removes the need for Wikipedia to copy information from smaller Wikis.
Let's say, for example I visit the Linux page on Wikipedia. Instead of see what is there today, I would see this:
The search bar allows me to search through the
Linux Wiki from Wikipedia, and will take me to Linux Wiki pages embedded within Wikipedia pages. (Shown later.)
Let's say I begin reading the article, and eventually come to the word 'Ubuntu':
Notice the green tint of the Ubuntu link. This green tint indicates that, rather than sending me to an internal, Wikipedia page, or sending me to a completely external web page, this link will send me to a page hosted on another Wiki, but displayed through Wikipedia. (Note, that this would probably not be used for something like Ubuntu, but instead would be used for more esoteric information, such as information about obscure video game characters which are deemed too esoteric for Wikipedia.)
Now, in my quest to learn more about this 'Ubuntu' thing, I click the link, and I'm brought to this page:
As you can see, the Linux Wiki page for Ubuntu is embeded within a Wikipedia page. As the actual content of this page is stored on the Linux Wiki no extra storage is being used to hold this page on Wikipedia. Held within the shell is:
The discussion and edit tabs would of course lead to embeded discussion and edit pages from Linux Wiki.
The design ideas, such as the location of objects, the color of the Wiki links, etc... are less what I'm pitching than the functionality of this change. 8bit ( talk) 04:45, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Except where otherwise specified, the text on Wikia sites is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License 3.0 (Unported) (CC-BY-SA).
This isn't an attempt to turn Wikipedia into anything it's not. As you said, the core functionality already exists within Wikipedia. There are links to external Wikis when deemed necessary. What we have now is essentially a much clunkier, much less fluid, and less powerful version of what I have proposed.
This is an idea based on a very real issue I encounter frequently with Wikipedia. I often visit Wikipedia, only to frustratingly discover that I need to search for the specific wiki for that specific subject. This would smooth that out quite a bit. 8bit ( talk) 15:29, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia is simply intended to be a collection of well sourced information to be easily accessed by it's users, so, within the same mindset, why does Wikipedia exist? If you need that specific information, go to that specific source. Wikipedia, however, offers an easy to use, easy to edit, database of that information- using this database is much easier than hunting down each independent source.
We would, in a way, be "blessing" content, as we would only include wikis with reliable and in-depth information. I don't see why that's a bad thing. 8bit ( talk) 17:28, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
I like to check my contributions list to see if I have been reverted or someone has made an addition to an article I just edited (sometimes the additions are inappropriate). This is made harder when "top" no longer appears by my edit of the article just because of SmackBot. And I found an unusually large number of articles I had edited had SmackBot at the top of the history, meaning I had to do a lot of checking of articles for no reason.
Is there a way to see if the article is still the way I left it, meaning only "real" edits cause "top" to disappear? Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:08, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) I've taken the liberty of renaming this section to reflect what's being proposed. I think it's a good suggestion and I want to ensure it's aired sufficiently. The original section name, albeit amusing (at dear SmackBot's expense!) risks the real discussion being overlooked by interested parties who may not even have read it. PL290 ( talk) 09:25, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
I'd like to have your input on the proposed merge of two template: {{ Technical}} and {{ Technical (expert)}}. Please visit Wikipedia_talk:Make_technical_articles_accessible#Merge. Debresser ( talk) 11:05, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
{{ resolved}} The manually assignable 'confirmed group' with userrights identical to those of the 'autoconfirmed group' has been created. The 'Uploader group' has been removed. Ruslik_ Zero 19:13, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
In the edit window, there's a link at the bottom labeled "Editing help", which opens in a new window. There are two other links that should open new windows: "Edit summary" and "What's this?" (next to the minor edit box). Some browsers don't save information in text boxes once you navigate away from the page. This will help prevent lost information. -- Cryptic C62 · Talk 18:51, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Talk pages currently function in exactly the same way as articles, even though they are usually used solely for message-board-like discussion. This leads to formatting that's all over the place, the need to use colons to indent text, constant adding of tildes, messy code, and edit conflicts whenever multiple people try to comment on the same section. I propose that the software be modified so that sections on non-article pages can be delineated as "message sections", in which people are able to post in a delineated, message board format with automatic indents or de-indents, as well as support for expandable boxes, automatic dates/signatures, and separate, edit conflict-free posts. This would speed up and make the message posting process much easier, especially for inexperienced users, removing the need for bots to add signatures, date tags and such.-- ZXCVBNM ( TALK) 21:24, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
LiquidThreads is in development, and the Wikimedia Foundation recently contracted Andrew Garrett, the freelance programmer responsible for the AbuseFilter, to polish off the extension in the hope of getting it enabled on WMF wikis by the end of this year. Andrew has been doing a lot of work on it in the past few weeks; I have no idea how close it is to completion, but it is significantly closer than many other features. Happy‑ melon 10:16, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
←It's not just spam that's a problem. For instance, I've been dealing with a persistent individual on a rotating IP who keeps adding nonsense crap to Talk:Mothman and Talk:Satan. I and others have been removing it as "off-topic" and disruption (as it's been explained to the user multiple times that gibberish isn't helping improve the article). Plus, removing his comments from my User Talk page, as is my right. What happens to that with Liquid? — The Hand That Feeds You: Bite 15:42, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
The purpose of is to deter untrusted contributors to a site from using it for link spam. But administrators are trusted contributors to Wikipedia. Since we don't give adminship to spammers, and since spam is removed when a page is protected, we can trust protected pages not to have spam on them. I suggest, therefore, that not be applied to links on fully protected pages (by which I mean pages that one must be an admin to edit). Neon Merlin 20:15, 31 July 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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Would it be possible to tweak this feature so that it always appears immediately at the end of a section header instead of on the right hand side of the page. Currently, the [edit] button has a nasty habit of appearing over text and I feel the suggested tweak would remove this problem. Mjroots ( talk) 10:03, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
I'm quite sure this proposal has been made multiple times in the past... Though I would have no clue where to start looking. As a sidenote, moving the edit link will not "Fix" the bunching problem all together, because it applies to all floating elements, so it will just make the problem less common and even more obscure. I have no particular preference either way. — TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 19:17, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
I would be tempted to be WP:BOLD about it, if I knew how to change it. OrangeDog ( talk • edits) 21:13, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
It seems to me that the edit link would get lost if pushed up against the section header. I prefer to keep it out of the way but still associated with the section. Powers T 15:50, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
Article header [edit]
The discussion is mentioned in the current edition of Signpost, so hopefully we'll get much more discussion. Mjroots ( talk) 15:55, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
Sample removed due to TOC-breakage
Maybe like that? Though obviously with a working link. OrangeDog ( talk • edits) 23:41, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
No, it doesn't go against the original proposal, which was to move the [edit] button to immediately at the end of the section header. Details like aesthetics can be sorted out later. FWIW, I like the grey version. Now there's been a fair bit of input, what's the best way to go from here. Should I make this into a formal proposal under a subsection with voting for/against? Mjroots ( talk) 05:14, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
Raised at WP:CENT Mjroots ( talk) 08:39, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
.editsection {
float: none !important;
position: absolute;
font-size: 60% !important;
margin: 1.7em 0em 1.5em 0em !important;
}
MediaWiki:Gadget-lefteditlinks.js has been created. You can now activate the left edit links as a gadget in Special:Preferences. Please report any bugs at User:Drilnoth/lefteditlinks.js/doc. Thanks! – Drilnoth ( T • C • L) 14:29, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
If you look at many discussion pages, you may have noticed that the first section-heading is often preceded by what looks like disorganized random chatter. The likely reason for that just struck me today. When you visit an empty talk page, for example Talk: Crotona Park, it just invites you to start a discussion.
A new user with a question or comment on her or his mind might just start typing the substance without thinking of giving it a title (or perhaps even knowing how). This is different from what the "New Section" tab shows and similar to what happens with a new article, which we want to start with an untitled lead paragraph (something that doesn't apply to most talk pages). "New Section" does provide a box for section headers, but that's actually slightly less necessary when earlier sections show editors an example and a method. Is there some way we could open empty talk pages with a section-header box, or at least instructions for how to enter "==[title]==" to start the first section? —— Shakescene ( talk) 22:08, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
[Further info]: This is the greeting at the (now-empty) Talk:Crotona Park:
Editing Talk:Crotona Park
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wikipedia does not have a talk page with this exact title. Before creating this page, please verify that a subject page called Crotona Park exists.
* To start a page called Talk:Crotona Park, type in the box below. When you are done, preview the page to check for errors and then save it.
This is a talk page. Please respect the talk page guidelines, and remember to sign your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~).
...Comment: Even should we do nothing further (which I strongly believe we must), at least the last instruction should not be "To start a page called Talk:..., type in the box below" unless the box is changed to something closer to a "New Section" page. Otherwise, eliminate the box and instead direct the user to the "New Section" tab. (For example, "To start a page called Talk:..., please open the "New Section" tab above this panel.") —— Shakescene ( talk) 03:09, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
Support At minimum, the extensive, yet deficient, instructions that appear, as shown above, should be updated to the requisite effect, but ideally the system should automatically bring about the conditions under which the user, by default, starts a section when none is yet present (while also continuing to provide the means for WikiProject headers etc. to be added without creating a section). True, it would be easy enough for someone in the know to add a single section header later, on encountering the page, but by that time any number of separate conversations may have been jumbled together. PL290 ( talk) 19:18, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Support There should be a button there just like any other talk page. Reywas92 Talk 17:52, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
¶ Just to keep this section from getting bot-archived without resolution, I was thinking of creating a straw poll here, and then using the results to form a more-formal Request for Comment (with attached technical requests). I was going to break the poll into:
Would this be a good format for a straw poll, or does anyone have other ideas? —— Shakescene ( talk) 07:18, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
In the past I have seen the idea kicked around of putting WikiProject assessment ratings onto the article page, but I don't ever recall what the consensus was, and it has been some time ago. As some editors know, there has been a handy gadget for sometime which allows ratings to be turned on in the mainspace as an option in your preferences:
Display an assessment of an article's quality as part of the page header for each article. (documentation)
I personally find it quite handy to be able to quickly identify the reliability and quality of the article I am reading. Has anyone ever considered turning this on as a default setting to all users? This is not necessarily a proposal, but more of a “have you ever considered this?”
Almost everyone I know has used wikipedia! Even old people! But there is one common theme amongst them all, they always say: “How can I trust what is on there? Everyone edits it.” The most persuasive answer I have always found has been to explain to them the WikiProject rating system, and how certain levels receive peer reviews, and project reviews, and a community review. When they understand what has to take place for an article to get a gold star or a green plus mark, for example, they realize they can have more faith in the article than if it was a C or a B class. When I have told people about this, they are usually amazed that such a thing exists. Most readers (by my conjecture) never go to a discussion page, and very few are aware it exists. I personally believe, IMOSHO, that raising awareness of our rating system among our readers is one of the greatest things we can do to shake the prevailing public image that “you can’t trust Wikipedia.”™
I truly believe our project would benefit from placing article ratings, in some fashion, on the article page. We use the ratings for the CD version of the encyclopedia to identify quality articles. We give FA class articles a gold star, so why not give something for other ratings? Implementing such a thing in the mainspace would of course be of little value unless we also created something to quickly and easily and concisely (meaning in less than 100 words) that would explain to our reader what our rating system means to them. There are many ways such a system could be created, and I have several ideas of my own. — Charles Edward ( Talk | Contribs) 18:21, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
My question for the community is this:
Do you support raising awareness of the WikiProject rating system among our readers?
My secondary questions are, what is the best way to do this? and Do you believe this would help in the public's perception of Wikipedia's quality and reliability? I believe this is a discussion worth having.
I would like to suggest an option to display languages of preference on top under the languages. This would be very handy because most people use most often their own language and only a few others (most English). It should be an addition, so all the languages are also still displayed in the list.
Obviously, I didn't formulate my question right. So second try: I would like to suggest an option on all the articles on Wikipedia. By example on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey there is a list of many different other languages which could be selected. If your second language is German you have to search the whole list (although it's not that work) for 'German'. If Wikipedia should track the languages you (the individual user) use most often, these could also be placed on top of the language list. Especially when you use Wikipedia a lot this could save some time.
Under My preferences there is indeed an option Internationalisation. By example, it would be handy to be able to add here your second languages which are then placed on top.
The English Wikipedia is off course the most complete. But for people from the Netherlands it's most times more convenient to read first the Dutch Wiki, and afterwards the English one. So especially for the Non-English Wiki's it would be handy. Do all the Wiki's have the same frame and only a different language packet or are they really different (by example they also differ in the options under preferences)?
I hope my question became more clear now. LvD ( talk) 07:20, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Please, check this Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BOTijo 2 (again). emijrp ( talk) 15:46, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
I notice the "Create a book" sidebar is back, although it was removed with strong consensus to do so after a discussion here back in May. Was there ever a discussion on whether to reenable the sidebar? Have any of the concerns at the previous discussion been addressed? Them From Space 21:09, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
The Committee has prepared a second provisional draft of an updated arbitration policy for community review. All editors are invited to examine the text and to provide any comments or suggestions they may have via one of the two methods specified on the draft page.
Release of this draft was approved by an 8/1 vote, with no abstentions or recusals:
For the Committee, Kirill [talk] [pf] 16:03, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
I stumbled upon a casual discussion indicating that it's not proper to use the Hidden or Collapse templates to integrate content into articles; this feeling is shared by an experienced editor I spoke with ("Wikipedia never uses show/hide boxes in the middle of articles. Content is either part of the prose properly or shouldn't be included at all."). His position certainly makes sense, but my feeling is that this rule deserves to be broken for certain articles -- generally speaking, articles that perform a thorough close reading of primary sources; more specifically, articles on court cases. I have experimented with this method (somewhat clumsily) here, and (even more clumsily) here.
I have three distinct reasons for desiring this style in articles on legal cases.
I've invited contributors at
Wikipedia:WikiProject_Law and
Wikipedia:WikiProject_U.S._Supreme_Court_cases to join this discussion.
Thanks.
Agradman
appreciates civility/
makes occasional mistakes 01:56, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
CBM, the problem is that this content is not "so tangential that it ought to be hidden by default" ... it's not tangential at all, it's all important, because the quotations from primary sources are the essence of credible legal arguments. The problem is that cases are very lengthy, and often deal with multiple issues.
I'm worried that this proposal won't get a fair shake until the legal professionals start arriving ... I've poked some wikipedia lawyers and I'm hoping they'll stop by ...
Agradman
appreciates civility/
makes occasional mistakes 04:59, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Wait, let me clarify. You also said "if the content is worth including, it should not be hidden." If there were any other way to integrate 50 paragraphs of text into the "Roe v. Wade" article, I'd do it. The problem is that the article would get too choppy.
Anomie, I'm aware of Wikisource. but it doesn't serve any of the three advantages I've cited above.
Agradman
appreciates civility/
makes occasional mistakes 05:04, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
OK, I've linked to this discussion at Template_talk:Hidden#Within_article_text. I'd appreciate it if someone would write a sentence about this in one of the Guidelines pages. Wikipedia:Layout, perhaps.
This problem will have to be solved by the website that's hosting our caselaw. For example, the hyperlink in 386 U.S. 213, 215 (1234) might automatically scroll down to page 215 and highlight that page; same could apply for paragraphs. Agradman appreciates civility/ makes occasional mistakes 19:18, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Hi!
I'm Iivari Mokelainen, from Finland - a fan of wikipedia. I was reading wikipedia this one time (i do it tens of times a day) and i noticed that if the article is long enough to span on many pages, there is very much space wasted.
The menu on the left (with languages and other links) is on the side, and there is nothing under it I think its a really big concern, especially for small screen users. Moving the menu on the top, and having the language menu as a drop-down list would make the wikipedia not only more usable, but also more estetic. There would be a lot more space for the article, the page would be less cluttered, and well, lets face it, side panels are really oldfashioned in current modern "web 2.0" internet world.
Thank you, cincerely yours,
I suggest inclede a link in the top of the page to edit the lead section of the article. There are troubles when editing the lead section of an article= the user must edit all the article (cannot edit only the lead section). This causes problem when editing in an iphone or mobile device (i.e. Nokia 5800), because the article can be cut and dissapear some sections, because the entire article is too long (ie can dissapear the external links, references, see also... sections). Also is difficult include a new section (the "enter" or "new paragraph"character does not work and also nor the new paragraph tag ). Can we include a Javascript button in the edition toolbar for this?. Regards.-- Nopetro ( talk) 10:50, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
Most (if not all) wikilinks that lead to a disambiguation page are unintentional. It's all too easy to accidentally create one while editing. Wikipedia has redlinks for non-existent pages; how about introducing a new link appearance for wikilinks that lead to a disambiguation page? Unintentional ones can then be seen and fixed much more quickly, perhaps even during preview before ever being saved. One idea would be amberlinks, as long as they're distinctly different from redlinks. Otherwise, perhaps background shading or some other effect that draws attention. PL290 ( talk) 13:16, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
<p><a href="/wiki/Jupiter_(disambiguation)" class="mw-disambig" title="Jupiter (disambiguation)">Jupiter (disambiguation)</a></p>
The AfD process is still very manual, requiring at least three manual edits per AfD. The "prod" process and the Wikipedia:Requested moves process are now semi-automated - there, one template on the page of interest does the job. All the appropriate list pages are updated automatically.
I'd suggest using the Wikipedia:Requested moves machinery for Wikipedia:Articles for Deletion. One template on the page starts the process, and everything else is updated by a 'bot. This will make the process much simpler for users. -- John Nagle ( talk) 19:25, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
On the converse, DumbBOT does a good job of rescuing incomplete nominations that have nomination rationales, but that aren't listed on per-day sub-pages. There's really nothing to do here that isn't already being done. In part, this is because this is a perennial proposal, that has come up before (on the talk pages of the templates as well as at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion), along with editors pointing out the past experiences that we have had with abuse by vandals when the hurdle is made too low, either by 'bots or by the actions of well-intentioned editors completing incomplete nominations where only a tag was applied. Uncle G ( talk) 11:59, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
On the login screen, I want it to "remember me" for only 2 weeks at a time. I'd be curious to see if we can add a drop-down list of some sort to allow people to choose the amount of time they'd like "remember me" to remember them. Would this be possible? iMatthew talk at 01:02, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
This is a suggestion for improvement. It would be good to impose or recommend some limit on the size or length of Wikipedia pages. For mobile users, big pages are problematic. Long articles have to be paginated. Thanks for considering this post. Louenas
Apologies if this has been posted in the wrong place, but regularly, when I visit an article on a foreign (I mean non-English-speaking country) town or city &c., I look for the native pronunciation of the place concerned. As a simple example, Paris has as its first sentence "Paris (pronounced /ˈpærɪs/ or /ˈpɛrəs/ in English; in French) is the capital of France and the country's largest city." But the majority of places do not have such a sentence in the lead. Although it may be a rather tedious process, would it be out of the question to introduce native pronunciations to infoboxes of place articles, with the pronunciations underneath the place name, maybe in a smaller font size so as not to look too conspicuous? 79.71.5.38 ( talk) 19:48, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
When a navbox contains a redirected link, it is displayed in purple when you are on the page it redirects to, as opposed to bold, black text (not linked) if it had been a direct link. It seems to me that the task of fixing these redirected links in the navboxes to point to the page itself (by piping it) is something that a bot could be able to do. So if such a bot task doesn't already exist, I make a proposal about it. Iceblock ( talk) 18:31, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
Based on my brief vandal-hunting experience I think that the current warning system issues one too many warnings to users before blocks are issued. Once a user gets a L-3 or an L-4 warning for vandalism for instance, that user's (normally a vandal) next target is usually the warner's talk page or user page in the form of userpage vandalism. More often than not, this delays the process in processing persistent vandals for blocking as they normally must receive four warnings for a block. I would propose lowering the number of warnings before sending to an admin-related venue (such as WP:AIV) from four to three along with slight adjustments in the wordings of the templates to accomodate that change. Any thoughts? MuZemike 23:02, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
If you search for a term that is not the title of an article (as in this), you get that remarkably chirpy message Create the page " Paradiso girls" on this wiki!. In bold. With an exclamation point. Phrased as a command. All this, despite the fact that the article has been deleted seven times and is create-protected. Can someone tone down the message to something more like There is no article by that name. Look over the search results below, and if you feel our coverage is inadequate, consider creating an article about the search term .— Kww( talk) 04:05, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Proposal: This is a request to allow the New Pages Patrol (NPP) to review an article before it is deleted and/or moved without a disambiguation. This means that the page cannot be marked as patrolled, and stays in the system for much longer, requiring a longer wait for articles that need to be reviewed. -- Gosox5555 ( talk) 12:48, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
Even an admin on NPP should probably tag for CSD (except in obvious circumstances which I will not go into here) and allow another admin to carry out the article's deletion. The same goes for any other user, regardless of user rights. That's my take.
MuZemike 07:22, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
I just came off a short block (violated 3RR, wasn't paying attention), during which I explored what an admin can do while blocked. Not to my surprise, I couldn't protect or delete pages, but I found myself able to block users and unblock myself (neither of which I did, mind you :-). What possible benefit is there of admins being able to do this while blocked? I'd like to see the block/unblock feature disabled during a block, partially because it would prevent someone like me from having the annoying little temptation to unblock myself and be vindictive by blocking the guy who blocked me, but more significantly because it doesn't do anything to stop someone who really doesn't care about the rules. If blocking suspended all the tools rather than leaving this — in my mind, the most powerful of all the tools — we'd not need to worry as much about rogue admins. Keep in mind that case a year or two ago when the guy hacked an admin's account, blocked Jimbo and several other people, deleted the main page, and vandalised tons of pages — he was blocked several times, but simply unblocked himself and kept on going until somebody called a bureaucrat to do an emergency desysopping. If my proposal were accepted, someone else would have had to unblock Jimbo, but the hacker would have done far less damage overall. Nyttend ( talk) 02:29, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
I don't think it at all likely that a rogue could block all 915 active admins without being spotted, Ritzman. ╟─ Treasury Tag► co-prince─╢ 18:51, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
The ability of admins to self-unblock is considered an important safety value to prevent a rogue from blocking everyone else and taking over. On enwiki this is unlikely given the large size of the admin corps, but many other projects have 25 admins or fewer and so a coup is far more possible, so Mediawiki is designed to allow such self-unblocks. This was discussed some years ago. I suppose one could add a Mediawiki configuration to allow this to be disabled in communities like en, but no dev was interested in doing that the last time it was discussed. Dragons flight ( talk) 23:32, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
I recently had an observation about Category:Wikipedia articles needing style editing. All articles tagged with {{ Advert}} are being lumped there with many other "style" issues, such as {{ essay-like}}, {{ colloquial}}, {{ textbook}}, etc. These "advert" articles are potential spam—and from my experience, often much worse than "not-perfect" articles that need tone editing. There is a difference between prose/style issues, and articles which may need heavy whacking or sometimes speedy deletion.
For this reason, I'm proposing that a new category be created for the {{ advert}} tag, such as "Category:Wikipedia articles that are possibly promotional". Spam is a problem, and this would separate Wikipedia's scum from style issues of lesser-importance.
Objections, thoughts? Thanks, Jamie ☆ S93 01:30, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
For some time, I've been thinking that the maps in Wikipedia could and should be much better. Good technology exists but we're still using "ancient" technology. Instead of a static picture we should have dynamic maps that users can pan and zoom. Inside the maps we should have links from geographical names to articles.
Today, when Honduras was in the news I looked up WP's Honduras article. Then I wondered what were its neighboring countries. The text has the names of neighbors but the map does not. The first map is a very small scale map that shows country boundaries but does not name them. Later in the article there is another small scale topographical map. If clicked, you can finally see the names of neighboring countries. Then I wondered what were the other countries of Central America. By clicking around in text I eventually found what I was looking for but my curiousity kept creating other questions that good mapping technology could have made faster and easier.
If we used mapping technology such as MapQuest, Google, etc. use, then in the Honduras article, I could have expanded the first map in the Honduras article, zoomed in, panned around, and could have quickly seen the names of other countries. With good technology, I could click on the map and go to the WP article about a country, city, river, etc.
While I was navigating around via typing into the search box, and clicking from one link to another to another to another, one of the maps I saw ( this one) showed part of the Mississippi river with a tributary heading toward Washington, DC. I wondered what river that was. With good technology, I could have zoomed and panned until the name showed up. Instead I typed Mississippi River into the search box, where there weren't any good maps, but at least the text eventually let me find the answer (Ohio River) to my curiousity.
Good mapping technology would be a great improvement to the WP experience. (And yes, I know that in a few places, I can click a geographical icon to get to a modern mapping site, but that is not well integrated into WP, and does not allow clicking from a map back to a WP article.) Sbowers3 ( talk) 18:49, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
If a person posted on a help desk or village pump, you can imagine how hard it is to get back to the specific section where the post was. Where the section is in the user's contribution history, the section name should be blue so you can click on it and go right to the section. Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:09, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
I made those Engrish words a redirect to Pixelization: Mosaic censoring and Censoring mosaics.
Can someone fix the words "mosaic censoring" and "censoring mosaics" in some articles to "pixelization", "pixelized" or whatever? -- JSH-alive talk • cont • mail 10:03, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
The Spotlight was a simple project where users choose an article for collaboration and work on its improvement in realtime via IRC on #wikipedia-spotlight. The project seized however a while ago and after a discussion on IRC we were thinking starting collaboration via the Spotlight again. If anyone's interested just login to #wikipedia-spotlight and where we will choose the next article to work on.-- Diaa abdelmoneim ( talk) 17:18, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
Last night I spent a few hours pasting public-domain sources into talk pages. To get people's attention, I created a section entitled "encyclopedic, public domain source(s)! Please assimilate!", and listed the hyperlinks there. E.g., Talk:Economy of Israel Talk:Au pair Talk:Estuary. (My next step is to make a single list of the 100 pages I've done this to, for wide circulation.)
My proposal is that we sanction this practice on one of the Guidelines pages, so that more people get involved in creating such lists: "Discussion pages may include a list of relevant, encyclopedic, public-domain hyperlinks in a permanent, designated, box, which should then be linked to on a separate outside page." Is this something you guys think would be useful? Agradman talk/ contribs 17:58, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Automatic Adminship is an idea to offer an alternate path to adminship for long standing and highly rated content contributors. Your thoughts and ideas would be most welcome :-) Privatemusings ( talk) 04:37, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Hi folks! Okay, before I begin, I understand this is going to be potentially controversial, as the current design has stood for many years now. But what I would like to do — bear with me here — is propose that we alter (purely in aesthetic terms) the way those handy buttons above every edit window look. Currently, I feel they are not pretty at all; a sort of throwback to the Netscape era, and it seems odd to me they've existed in their current form as long as they have. Many of them were designed at different times (possibly by different people?) and so have a real mish-mash of graphical styles.
Apart from their (admittedly highly subjective) ugliness, many of images are a little confusing given what they are meant to represent. The bold and italic buttons make sense, sure, but what's with the 'small' button?! The gallery button does not at all suggest a selection of pictures (the same could be said for the quote button), and mine only ever be a guess as to what that trumpet is supposed to be signalling (that button brings up videos..?). What's the big 'A' for? In my opinion, the best buttons are those that give their function in words on the button. The <ref> button is marvellous, and I wonder, why can't the rest be designed in its image? Thus, I am proposing that the following re-design be considered:
In my example above, if you look closely, you can see that the buttons in my proposal are of the exact same height and in the exact same order as the buttons before (so that hopefully should lessen the impact on the various scripts users use to alter their positions and whatnot). They also use the Wikipedia standard colour palette in their borders and individual backgrounds, and so sit more comfortably in the website design. They are also wider, as I feel it seems silly to have them all shoved together in the corner, when there's even room to spare with my design on non-widescreen computer screens. This gives more room-per-button to explain what they do, and makes it easier for the pointer to meet with its desired destination.
I understand we might need to convince the developers to help if this were to be implemented, and that is always a hurdle. And before you all hurriedly say, I know that a quick mouse-over will elucidate each button's function, but why should we have to work to suss out the interface? It makes sense, given our utter reliance on new people being attracted to edit, that this encyclopaedia be as user-friendly as possible. Anxietycello ( talk) 02:22, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
Instead of adding the attribut value to every external link, you could add a timestamp for every external link that is placed in an article and if its timestamp is older than one year, you remove the nofollow attribut value. Every time a link is removed the timestamp is refreshed. This avoids spam and supports external sites we trust.
I'd like to propose the creation of a bot that automatically inserts a "what links here?" hyperlink directly to the right of any item that appears in a "requested articles" list. That way, people who are interested in creating new articles off the list will be encouraged to check to see which articles are in the highest demand. Agradman talk/contribs 17:53, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
I propose that a namespace be implemented specifically for userspace redirects. There's currently no policy that forbids redirecting pseudo-namespace to user pages but it's certainly enforced as a policy. To deal with this, I propose setting up U:/UT: redirects as allowable shortcuts for user pages. U: to the user page and UT: to the user talk page. I don't know if this requires anything special other than saying "these are OK" somewhere such as wp:csd#r2 or Wikipedia:Pseudo-namespace or if something has to be done on the backend software wise but this is my proposal. - ALLST✰R▼ echo wuz here 20:41, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
I don't think that this is a good idea at all. WP:DRAMA and Wikipedia:Drama used to redirect to different pages, and then when WP: became a proper redirect namespace, it caused problems. What would happen if people essentially got to choose a "second username" (or more than one) for themselves (I could be U:TAG)... chaos. ╟─ Treasury Tag► ballotbox─╢ 07:40, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
{{U}}
and {{UT}}
templates that do practically the same thing. In the latter case, I think that that would be a really bad idea. I could see a
land run for "vanity" user names. And gods know what would happen to after a user deceased or apparantly stopped editing - would we have
squatters and ownership wars over user name redirects? --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (
coṁrá) 17:51, 5 July 2009 (UTC)U:
as a shortcut for typing User:
and UT:
as a shortcut for typing User talk:
, then it sounds okay to me. I see some minimal utility. (Minimal, yes, but minimal != none.) • Since we're here: I also think T:
as an alias for Talk:
would be useful in the same way. Yah, we're only saving a few keystrokes, but over time it adds up. • If this is about
actual shortcuts, e.g.,
U:DH redirecting to
User:DragonHawk, then no. No way. As
Rannpháirtí anaithnid said, it will just mean people fighting over shortcuts. We don't need the drama, or the confusion if they change in the future. —
DragonHawk (
talk|
hist) 21:44, 6 July 2009 (UTC)U:
as a shortcut for typing User:
and UT:
as a shortcut for typing User talk:
, then it sounds okay to me"; however,
Cryptic C62's entries need to be discussed. On the other hand, "if this is about
actual shortcuts" (borrowing
DH's language), there could be problematic situations. If two editors had similar usernames and wanted shortcuts to their user pages, at best, they'd have a friendly discussion and come up with some compromise; at worst, they'd argue and possibly
war on the redirect page – as
Rannpháirtí anaithnid brought up earlier. In addition, some hypothetical situations…
U:SD3
to my user page, but then SD3
signed up? Well, in that case, all users who want redirects would be required to first create accounts – in my case, I'd have to register the SD3
account before using U:SD3
. But what if the redirect I wanted was already registered?I have created a
straw poll on proposed software changes to <ref>
aimed at improving the way references are organized within wikicode. Please comment at the referenced page.
Dragons flight (
talk) 11:43, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
I was just doing a search and a couple of items came up where the title of the article is followed by (redirect Title of second article)". Since the name of the article is already a link to that article, why not have the redirected article's name be a link to the original article before redirecting? I was curious to see the pre-redirect history of the redirected article, and it would make that a little easier. Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:49, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
The community's views are needed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Advisory Council on Project Development. Many thanks, SlimVirgin talk| contribs 17:22, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
The toolbar for inserting special characters has quotation marks listed in two sections: "Insert" and "Symbols". Currently the quotation marks are listed in the following order:
‘ “ ’ ” «»
while I suggest that they should be listed as
‘’ “” «»
The symbols by themselves are quite tiny so it's not too easy to click them with a mouse, especially when they are interspersed. However if we group them so that opening and closing quotation marks are inserted simultaneously (similarly to how «» works now), editing of articles might become somewhat easier. // Stpasha ( talk) 01:17, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
If this is in the wrong section, I apologize.
So, I was thinking, since we don't like original research, and it's very difficult for someone like me (a virtual unknown high-school student with no Ph.D, which is practically necessary to get any sort of recognition in a scientific journal. Or at least I think it is.)to get any of their evidence-based ideas and thoughts published on a reliable source, to put our evidence-based thoughts on some special group of pages (or perhaps even another Wikimedia project) where they would be peer-reviewed, and maybe recognized by well-known scientists. Then, when/if it gets published in a third-party source, we can use it on an article. Note the bolded evidence-based up there. I'm not saying we should give every little bit of speculation and rumor a chance, just people who have done their research. For example, I have several sources (CIFOR, et al.) that indicate that cattle ranching is the main cause of the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest's destruction. I also have mention in them that the EU buys heavily from this region, thus, I could claim that the EU is indirectly supporting the rainforest's destruction. But I can't do that, because I am not some internationally recognized scientist/sociologist/economist with the community around my little finger. Thus where my proposal comes in. Now then, I'd be happy to take your thoughts on this so that I might improve upon this idea, and if it is not to be, at least know why. -- ArchabacteriaNematoda ( talk) 20:12, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Hi all - just been looking at Tajik language, and wonder whether it might be worth adding a block of identical text to each article on a language. Often you get a feel for how a language appears from a simple block of text. If we could come up with a standard short paragraph in English and add it in both English and the subject language to each article, it might be worthwhile. (Of course, that raises the question "what would the paragraph be?"...) Grutness... wha? 01:41, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
Definite Support: for the reasons listed above, this would be extremely useful. Asdfhgjgiewiuweroiuwer ( talk) 09:34, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
How about
“ | Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing. | ” |
— Jimbo Wales, [4] |
as the text to translate into as many languages as possible?- gadfium 00:20, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Support - although I agree with Grutness that it is inappropriate to use the lord's prayer - a more neutral text should be used. Also, for many languages it wouldn't be difficult to locate fellow wikipedians who could translate a line or two of text. Shimawa zen ( talk) 07:20, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
On it.wiki we use the Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It has been translated to quite a great many languages. -- A. di M. ( talk) 21:15, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
Is there a reason I have to indent every paragraph separately? Couldn't an entire edit be indented once the indenting is done as long as no other indenting takes place? Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:16, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
As I was using wikipedia a couple of days ago I thought struck. What if there was a world map, were you could enter a year and date to see how the world looked like at that specific time? As I see it it's nothing either hard or expensive to create. All that is needed for the user is a map without borders and three diffrent fields to enter the year, the month, and the day in. For the person who is doing the inputs of all these dates it'll be a bit harder. As that person need to be able to draw the borders at each specific date.
I'm don't know very much about programming (I've only taken 2 basic courses), but as I see it this can't be very hard for someone that knows what he's doing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kgjohnsson ( talk • contribs) 12:33, 11 July 2009
Wikipedia exists to give information on a broad range of topics, however, in order to get more specific information on subjects I often have to leave Wikipedia and visit Wikis which deal with very specific types of information. I believe my concept will help to connect this information, and will make finding more specific information easier for the user, without distracting the user who is searching for less specific information. This will also save storage as it removes the need for Wikipedia to copy information from smaller Wikis.
Let's say, for example I visit the Linux page on Wikipedia. Instead of see what is there today, I would see this:
The search bar allows me to search through the
Linux Wiki from Wikipedia, and will take me to Linux Wiki pages embedded within Wikipedia pages. (Shown later.)
Let's say I begin reading the article, and eventually come to the word 'Ubuntu':
Notice the green tint of the Ubuntu link. This green tint indicates that, rather than sending me to an internal, Wikipedia page, or sending me to a completely external web page, this link will send me to a page hosted on another Wiki, but displayed through Wikipedia. (Note, that this would probably not be used for something like Ubuntu, but instead would be used for more esoteric information, such as information about obscure video game characters which are deemed too esoteric for Wikipedia.)
Now, in my quest to learn more about this 'Ubuntu' thing, I click the link, and I'm brought to this page:
As you can see, the Linux Wiki page for Ubuntu is embeded within a Wikipedia page. As the actual content of this page is stored on the Linux Wiki no extra storage is being used to hold this page on Wikipedia. Held within the shell is:
The discussion and edit tabs would of course lead to embeded discussion and edit pages from Linux Wiki.
The design ideas, such as the location of objects, the color of the Wiki links, etc... are less what I'm pitching than the functionality of this change. 8bit ( talk) 04:45, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Except where otherwise specified, the text on Wikia sites is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License 3.0 (Unported) (CC-BY-SA).
This isn't an attempt to turn Wikipedia into anything it's not. As you said, the core functionality already exists within Wikipedia. There are links to external Wikis when deemed necessary. What we have now is essentially a much clunkier, much less fluid, and less powerful version of what I have proposed.
This is an idea based on a very real issue I encounter frequently with Wikipedia. I often visit Wikipedia, only to frustratingly discover that I need to search for the specific wiki for that specific subject. This would smooth that out quite a bit. 8bit ( talk) 15:29, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia is simply intended to be a collection of well sourced information to be easily accessed by it's users, so, within the same mindset, why does Wikipedia exist? If you need that specific information, go to that specific source. Wikipedia, however, offers an easy to use, easy to edit, database of that information- using this database is much easier than hunting down each independent source.
We would, in a way, be "blessing" content, as we would only include wikis with reliable and in-depth information. I don't see why that's a bad thing. 8bit ( talk) 17:28, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
I like to check my contributions list to see if I have been reverted or someone has made an addition to an article I just edited (sometimes the additions are inappropriate). This is made harder when "top" no longer appears by my edit of the article just because of SmackBot. And I found an unusually large number of articles I had edited had SmackBot at the top of the history, meaning I had to do a lot of checking of articles for no reason.
Is there a way to see if the article is still the way I left it, meaning only "real" edits cause "top" to disappear? Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:08, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) I've taken the liberty of renaming this section to reflect what's being proposed. I think it's a good suggestion and I want to ensure it's aired sufficiently. The original section name, albeit amusing (at dear SmackBot's expense!) risks the real discussion being overlooked by interested parties who may not even have read it. PL290 ( talk) 09:25, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
I'd like to have your input on the proposed merge of two template: {{ Technical}} and {{ Technical (expert)}}. Please visit Wikipedia_talk:Make_technical_articles_accessible#Merge. Debresser ( talk) 11:05, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
{{ resolved}} The manually assignable 'confirmed group' with userrights identical to those of the 'autoconfirmed group' has been created. The 'Uploader group' has been removed. Ruslik_ Zero 19:13, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
In the edit window, there's a link at the bottom labeled "Editing help", which opens in a new window. There are two other links that should open new windows: "Edit summary" and "What's this?" (next to the minor edit box). Some browsers don't save information in text boxes once you navigate away from the page. This will help prevent lost information. -- Cryptic C62 · Talk 18:51, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Talk pages currently function in exactly the same way as articles, even though they are usually used solely for message-board-like discussion. This leads to formatting that's all over the place, the need to use colons to indent text, constant adding of tildes, messy code, and edit conflicts whenever multiple people try to comment on the same section. I propose that the software be modified so that sections on non-article pages can be delineated as "message sections", in which people are able to post in a delineated, message board format with automatic indents or de-indents, as well as support for expandable boxes, automatic dates/signatures, and separate, edit conflict-free posts. This would speed up and make the message posting process much easier, especially for inexperienced users, removing the need for bots to add signatures, date tags and such.-- ZXCVBNM ( TALK) 21:24, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
LiquidThreads is in development, and the Wikimedia Foundation recently contracted Andrew Garrett, the freelance programmer responsible for the AbuseFilter, to polish off the extension in the hope of getting it enabled on WMF wikis by the end of this year. Andrew has been doing a lot of work on it in the past few weeks; I have no idea how close it is to completion, but it is significantly closer than many other features. Happy‑ melon 10:16, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
←It's not just spam that's a problem. For instance, I've been dealing with a persistent individual on a rotating IP who keeps adding nonsense crap to Talk:Mothman and Talk:Satan. I and others have been removing it as "off-topic" and disruption (as it's been explained to the user multiple times that gibberish isn't helping improve the article). Plus, removing his comments from my User Talk page, as is my right. What happens to that with Liquid? — The Hand That Feeds You: Bite 15:42, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
The purpose of is to deter untrusted contributors to a site from using it for link spam. But administrators are trusted contributors to Wikipedia. Since we don't give adminship to spammers, and since spam is removed when a page is protected, we can trust protected pages not to have spam on them. I suggest, therefore, that not be applied to links on fully protected pages (by which I mean pages that one must be an admin to edit). Neon Merlin 20:15, 31 July 2009 (UTC)