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Can I suggest that as well as being able to rate individual articles, Wikipedians should be able to rate project groups? I am interested in psychology (which I teach), and have been struck by how quiet the Project Group for Psychology seem to be compared with other Project Groups (such as those for Philosophy, Christianity, Religion or Spirituality). I shall be honest, and say that I do not think that the project group for Psychology would get more than a C at most. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 20:27, 9 July 2009 (UTC)I typed this yesterday (that is, July 9 2009) and now have feelings of misgivings about this proposal. Without going as far a total wishing to revert it, I can understand that it is problematic. As other Wikipedians are members of project groups, such ratings might be misconstrued as ratings of individual Wikipedians, and I am sure that if we were to lapse into doing this, it would not be considered good netiquette. So, I shall understand entirely if people would prefer to shy away from this idea. Many apologies if my earlier comments on the WikiProject group for Psychology upset any one - no offense to any individual Wikipedians was intended. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 21:28, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
I kinda like this idea. Grade each project according to how many members it has and how much work it is doing. Of course it would be a challenge to measure said work in a comparative manner. Rating Projects would help them improve and better organize themselves. Rating would also allow Wikipedia to know which areas need more attention from editors. As for the rating tarnishing editor's imagine, IMO this concern is not important.
Ratings would definitely stimulate projects to work harder and become more responsible over the articles belonging to them. EconomistBR 20:27, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Very often I come across the name of a person, place or thing I don't know about. My usual way of knowing more about it is to search for it in Wikipedia. But for that I need to be connected to the Internet. Wouldn't it be great if we could send a text message from my cellphone to a number with the topic that we want to know about and receive a short summary from its Wikipedia entry as a reply? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wiki wiks ( talk • contribs)
Is your cellphone one that has internet access, as some do? ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 19:46, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
If you text "G-O-O-G-L-E" (the numbers that coordinate with those letters), they send back information that answers almost any query. Commonly, it's information that's cited to Wikipedia. hmwith τ 13:32, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
Thank you, but who should you send this text to? For example, if you are with Orange, would you send it to Orange? ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 19:01, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Roll over a linked word to have a short definition (or its article's first paragraph) pop up. Saves having to visit the word's wiki page or use something like "define:word" in Google to quickly find out what that word means. Regarding the technology, it could utilise Javascript and JSON to cut down on extra load (i.e. loading a definition per word versus loading all the definitions per page) and be easily degradable for older browsers.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.108.194.58 ( talk • contribs)
Sometimes an article needs the sections reordered into something more reasonable. Unfortunately this means any diffs say practically everything has changed so it is difficult to see if some edit to the text has been sneaked in at the same time. What I'd like is an edit mode which could only reorder complete sections with perhaps a little extra functionality like renaming or changing the levels of the section headers. This would not change any text with sections, only move them around.
The edit history would say specifically that this was a section reorder and guarantee the text had not changed in that edit. Then people watching the page could be assured they didn't have to check everything.
A nice development would be to be able to show the reordering without showing all the text and a long term project for someone might be to incorporate knowledge about the section edit to do an intelligent diff before or after the section edit. An alternative is to detect moved blocks automatically with a better diff, though getting that right seems to be a continuing problem with diffs. Dmcq ( talk) 22:08, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
(moved from VPT:) According to this, if we set $wgRestrictDisplayTitle to false, we can display any string as the title of an article. This would presumably get round the annoying restrictions on use of special characters that arise occasionally, on pages using {{ wrongtitle}} and so on, like The Singles 81–85. Is there support for doing this?-- Kotniski ( talk) 16:41, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
{{DISPLAYTITLE:}}
can handle that on its own now) also allowed modification of article titles only if they were copy&pastable as a wikilink. You might want to have a look into the discussions that lead to the script.Any more thoughts on the above suggestion?-- Kotniski ( talk) 14:43, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
I was looking around in the Spanish version of wikipedia when i noticed the spanish logo, It says "La enciclopedia libre" which means the free encyclopedia however "libre" refers to being free (as in liberty or not in bondage). If you want to say something is free (no cost or you don't have to pay) you need to use the word "gratis". Just wanted to let your people know in case you meant cost instead of freedom. If not just disregard this message. Thanks!
This is somewhat hard to say coherently, but I will try. I personally find it rather counterproductive to have subcategories appear in the contents of categories in the same alphabetization scheme as articles. I know that I find it both difficult and less than useful to have to page through sometimes twenty or more screens just to see what all the subcategories of a given category are, which at present you sometimes have to do to see all the subcats, given the number of articles some categories have. Would there be any technical way to make all the subcats appear on the first screen of the contents of a given category? I personally think that such a change would make it much more likely that people will use the subcategories, and thus reduce the number of articles less than accurately placed in the larger parent category. I also think it will make categorization of subcategories, as well as creation of them where appropriate, easier and thus more likely. John Carter ( talk) 15:49, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
A discussion about renaming the Administrators' noticeboard for incidents to a name that will be more intuitive to users.
FT2 ( Talk | email) 10:52, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
I propose that we create the first Wikilympics. Its the alternative for the WikiCup (it'll be held in the winter so it won't conflict with the WikiCup in the Summer). It'll follow the same rules of the WikiCup but there will be some difference: IP's are allowed to participate, Two flags for one person will be allowed, more points for each round, add "on this day..." for expansion of it, help for different wikis and uploading pictures. The winner will get a medal.
Support:
Neutral:
Oppose:
For More questions, respond on my talkpage. Secret Saturdays ( talk) 01:07, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Do you guys think it would be a good idea if the Mediawiki Foundation tweaked the editing interface to allow users to tag their changes as a "Major Edit," a complement to the idea of a minor edit? In the edit history it could be prefaced by a capital M where minor edits are prefaced with a small m. Alternatively or additionally, the text in the edit history could be bolded, or its row could be highlighted some color as decided on by the community. Abyssal ( talk) 19:05, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
My earlier comment was just warning against getting too complex with grading edits, for example, a Likert type ranking of edits on a five-point scale according to how major they are would surely confuse people. Can I just ask for clarification as to what you are saying would constitute a "major edit"? We would need to have a little piece of hypertext by the "major edit" box saying "What's this?" just how we do by the "minor edit box". ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 05:57, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
For non-administrators there is no link to delete an article or image, and it is very hard remember the process or appropriate place in the documentation. Could we add a "Delete" link (like Move/Edit) to the interface that redirects the user to the relevant documentation page? In particular I've been using the new "Vector" skin and a link would fit easily in the drop-down menu. For administrators the delete link could remain as it is. Barrylb ( talk) 20:26, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
{{
afd}}
-esque templates will become automagic.Why doesn't this happen? I don't want my IP to be all out and about, and I want to take credit for my work. >.> JPjuice23 ( talk) 04:17, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
“ | You are not currently logged in. Editing this way will cause your IP address to be recorded publicly in this page's edit history. If you create an account, you can conceal your IP address and be provided with many other benefits. Messages sent to your IP can be viewed on your talk page. | ” |
I am not sure which web browser you use, but certainly, if you use Google Chrome,
you can normally put a tick by "Remember me" which will (for thirty days after you tick it) ensure that your username gets recorded, even if you have not logged in. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 20:32, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
/* Turn the "Save page" button green if I'm logged in */
INPUT#wpSave {
background-color:#88ff88;
}
Sometimes when I am browsing through page histories (especially old page histories) and I click on links to other pages, it would be nice if the new page I clicked on chould show a page revision from roughly the same date. Sometimes given the context of the old page, it would be helpful to see what the other page looked at the same time. Besides, it would be an interesting way to browse the development of the wiki, see how things looked on such and such a date, watch how the wiki grew up. Is it possible for something like this to be implemented? -- Nick Penguin( contribs) 06:50, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Hi. In light of recent events and community concerns about the way in which content is transferred I have proposed a new wikiproject which would attempt to address any of the concerns and done in an environment where a major group of editors work together to transfer articles from other wikipedias in the most effective way possible without BLP or referencing problems. Please offer your thoughts at the proposal and whether or not you support or oppose the idea of a wikiproject dedicated to organizing a more efficient process of getting articles in different languages translated into English. Dr. Blofeld White cat 11:50, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Similarly to the article history prior to a protection linked in protection logs, it could be useful to have a link to the user contributions prior to a block in block logs. This would ease the search for informations on the circumstances and reasons for the block, though this may be controversial, as most block-related matters. What do you think ? Cenarium ( talk) 21:07, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
I don't have a firm proposal at this stage, more an idea that I'd like to throw out there for discussion. Has any thought been given to supporting embedded applets(e.g. those Java things you find on physics demonstration sites)? This would be extremely useful in illustrating certain articles in physics, maths and engineering. Of course we are currently using GIFs where applicable, however an interactive application could allow the user to specify certain parameters and see what influence they would have. Interactive apps also aren't limited to graphing. A calculation result may be just as illustrative.
A few concrete examples:
A couple of (difficult) questions to answer:
Thoughts and ideas welcome. Zunaid 12:33, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
Every edit screen includes boilerplate text below the edit box: eight or more lines of reminders and an often lengthy list of transclusions and categories. Can we give registered users the option to hide this extra text? This would simplify edit and preview screens, reducing page lengths and allowing quick access to the edit box using the Home or End keys.
Perhaps boilerplate could be placed in two collapsible sections ( divs), one for policy reminders and another for transclusions and categories. We could optionally add a checkbox in My preferences to show or hide these sections by default. This would be more friendly and flexible than a monobook.css hack.
Hiding the extra text would make for less clutter, less scrolling, and more efficient editing. Pslide ( talk) 16:56, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
#editpage-copywarn { display:none; }
div.mw-tos-summary { display:none; }
#editpage-copywarn2 { display:none; }
span.editHelp { display:none; }
span#minoredit_helplink { display:none; }
div.templatesUsed { display:none; }
and div.hiddencats { display:none; }
will hide them too.
Anomie
⚔ 17:31, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
Here's a quick edit screen mock up – wouldn't this be cleaner and more convenient? Editors could show/hide policies and templates on demand, or set the default state with a checkbox in user preferences.
Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable. You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 and the GFDL. You agree to be credited, at minimum, through a hyperlink or URL when your contributions are reused in any form. See the Terms of Use for details.
If you do not want your writing to be edited, used, and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here. Any text that you did not write yourself (apart from brief citations) must be available under terms consistent with Wikipedia's Terms of Use before you use it.
Once you click the Save button, your changes will be visible immediately.
Please note:
Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page:
It would seem ridiculously easy to implement, since it's done here with just three extra divs per section. Pslide ( talk) 12:04, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
Which one is "If you do not want your writing to be edited, used, and redistributed at will, ..." ? – xeno talk 15:08, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
<small>
tag with the id "mw-wikimedia-editpage-tos-summary" which is wrapped in a div with the class "mw-tos-summary".
Algebraist 15:14, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
See
User:Geoff Plourde/medcon for full information
I have considering the idea of monthly mediator meetings as outlined in the proposal. What are thoughts/questions critiques?
Geoff Plourde (
talk) 07:15, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
I check my watchlist by starting at the bottom; for each article I compare the last revision I checked with the current revision. If the current is better, I move on. Sometimes another editor is changing things, and I don't quite see where it's going - should I leave it and lose track of the revision I thought was better, or should I revert/'fix' and get in the way of the other editor? I also dislike having to open the history for each item - I never know if the last entry is the last-since-I-checked, or if there have been 5 new additions to look through in bulk.
The software has certain features which help us track important things. I want to track what I thought was the last best revision. This would be easy to implement since we already have a watchlist. It would let us leave articles to be checked later. We wouldn't have to go through the watchlist linearly - we'd pick an item, click 'compare to best', and then either mark current as best, fix it, or leave it the way it is without losing track of the "good" version. Perhaps this would reduce the number of reverts? I think that this would make watchlists substantially easier to manage. Yes, there are scripts that probably do something like this, but I think that this, like watchlists, should be handled by the wiki itself.
(It's difficult to get consensus for a lot of things at once, so this is just an incremental step that would even now benefit a large number of editors. But, if we implement this: There's a proposal above that you too should check out by clicking here for creating a recent changes page for unwatched articles. That proposal also has clear immediate benefits, but it's really there just to let us safely turn on the ' how many people are watching this page?' feature (which also has immediate benefits). If we then give editors the option to make their watchlists public, we no longer need flagged revisions: we'll be able to have automated tools that tell us how many people are paying attention to a page, if it's been checked by at least one editor/patroller, if many people prefer an earlier version, and so on. But all this is an aside.)
Summary: What are people's thoughts on being able to keep track of the last seen/approved/best version of a watchlisted article? M 22:03, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
The establishment of an independent way of appealing ArbCom decisions, and certain community decisions has been discussed quite regularly. As of now, User:Jimbo Wales can appeal ArbCom decisions which doesn't concern himself. But this is not entirely satisfactory, because appeals cannot be considered by a single person timely, fairly and thoroughly enough, and it's not viable in the long term. The only 'appeal' method besides Jimbo Wales is to request for amendments to the ArbCom itself, which is not a proper appeal method because it's the same body that made the decision. There are also other roles that the Appeal Committee may take, which couldn't be conducted by a single person. The Appeal Committee could hear publicly or privately requests to appeal a decision by the Arbitration Committee, community sanctions and some administrative actions. When accepted, the community, the Arbitration Committee when concerned, and the concerned admins when relevant, should be informed, so that they can give their views or evidence, privately or publicly. It is proposed that the Appeal Committee can do some or all of the followings:
Decisions by the Appeal Committee are binding and final on en.wikipedia (with the exception of WMF directives), but are not necessarily permanent, and contradictory decisions can later been taken by the community and ArbCom. The Appeal Committee would be elected by the community, members would have to meet the access to nonpublic data policy and identify to the WMF, and could be granted CU/OS permissions, like arbitrators. No user could serve on both committees simultaneously. This is only a draft proposal for preliminary discussion, organizational details could be worked out later (the clerks and the announcement noticeboard could be shared, for example). Cenarium ( talk) 02:09, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
(unindent) I don't feel Wikipedia is sinking, so why not rearranging deck chairs ? ;) This is simply a preliminary proposal like any other, but I feel we need to further discuss appeals on Wikipedia, this is a recurrent subject of contention. With respect to the ArbCom/AppCom relationship, being able to appeal a decision by a body doesn't make yourself a police/watchmen over this body. If ArbCom is 'the end', or more rightly 'the last step' in dispute resolution, then under this proposal it would be ArbCom + AppCom. I don't feel it would undermine the authority of ArbCom, but potentially make it stronger, since the endorsement of an ArbCom decision by an independent committee would actually reinforce it, while cases were an ArbCom decision would be overturned would probably be extremely rare and not without good cause. However, if this is deemed too controversial, we could not allow the body to overturn ArbCom decisions, but only admin- or community-imposed sanctions for which there is no community consensus to retain as is (and maybe also, deletions and protections ?), and ArbCom would have the final say in any case. So it would be a lower committee, and it could include a limited number of arbitrators in rotation like the Audit Committee, the rest being elected. I definitely feel it could be more efficient than appealing decisions directly to ArbCom, or the Ban appeal subcommittee, because arbitrators have too much workload, and for appealing those decisions to ArbCom, there are no well-defined guidelines, most are through private requests. This would be an occasion to set out clear guidelines. The standards for membership in the Appeal Committee wouldn't so high as those for ArbCom, because ArbCom would be the higher committee, and the Appeal Committee authority would be much more circumvented and lesser, so we would have more candidates likely to be elected. In effect, the later proposal would amount to transform the Ban Appeals subcommittee in a committee including arbs and elected non-arbs, with a specific policy. Cenarium ( talk) 20:58, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
This page Wikipedia:Publicity photos is currently inactive, yet the topic is significant in contributing pictures to Wikipedia articles. Wikimedia Commons has no interest in the fair use of images provided in media kits. There is immediate and pending interest to revive discussion regarding this subject and seek broader input via this forum/proposal page. Henry Delforn ( talk) 22:50, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
Most articles are written in an american perspective, I've probaly noticed this since i'm Australia. For example an article explains the release of a new game, the article will then say some problems [about the game] occur in Perth, Australia and then it will go on to say that Ohio has some problems with it(the problem is, the sentence does not explain that ohio is in America). Now i realise most people who edit/read wikipedia are Americans but that dosen't constitute for an American perspective, there are ALOT of people that read english outside of America too. Before you reply, try to consider yourself living in another country reading this. I propose all articles be written in worldwide perspective. Thankyou-- TUSWCB ( talk) 12:01, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
That post above made no sense except apparently someone is insulting other editors. Call someone a douchebag again and you will be blocked. Camelbinky ( talk) 07:10, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
To be honest this thread has gotten to a point where it's completley indecipherable. I don't think I care anymore, do whatever the hell you want. (btw i havent been around because my internet connection has been slow) -- TUSWCB ( talk) 00:30, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
Addressing this question about whether or not to add national identifiers to locales, I'd like to point out a couple of things. First, omitting to say which nation a given place is located is not always chauvinism, but frequently simply being too close to the material to realize that it might not make sense to another reader -- whether or not that reader is a US citizen. Second, I think everyone would agree that if any passage in an article is unclear to an editor, it is likely to be unclear to many other people, & that editor is encouraged to edit that article & make it clear, whether it is simply the location of a given place, or any given explanation; if the edit is unnecessary, someone else will revert it, at which point all parties involved are encouraged to start talking about the matter. Thirdly, not all Americans are citizens of the United States: this noun is also correctly applied to citizens of Canada & Mexico, for example, & there are a number of active editors from those countries on the English Wikipedia. Lastly, the best solution for this problem is simple education: too many people simply strike out when they encounter a problem like this (& I'll agree that TUSWCB has a point), instead of simply assuming the other party might simply have made a mistake which she/he would be glad if someone fixed it. -- llywrch ( talk) 07:10, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
This is the second time during this calendar year that some one from Australia has observed the pro-American bias on the Village Pump - the earlier comment was that "Did you know" entries on Wikipedia's main page were often about U.S. matters. This led to an involved discusion, including comments to the effect of Wikipedia is written by many people in the United States, and as they will write about what they know about, a pro-U.S. bias is inevitable. I made the point then that Wikipedia is culturally biassed, specifically to Northern American and certain parts of Western Europe. I live in the United Kingdom where coverage of topics related to my home country is probably better than coverage of many parts of the world, but I did point out that this bias is inevitable as long as people are able to log on to the internet in certain parts of the world more than others. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 18:20, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
I still don't see why it's so difficult to click on the Baylor link, which clearly lets you know where the University is located. Who then was a gentleman? ( talk) 20:04, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
In answer to Who was then a Gentleman:
I am certainly NOT suggesting that there should be any limit to the number of Americans, or for that matter, people of any nationality, who edit Wikipedia; I was just pointing out that, owing to where people in the world with internet connections are likely to be, there are likely to be cultural biasses on Wikipedia and indeed, many other websites. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 23:01, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
Can we add this one to peren, on the basis that when it does come up, it generates an excessive amount of often hostile and non-productive discussion? These things really just need to be directed to the systematic bias page. M 23:24, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
Some editors are very distressed by the possibility of accidentally editing while logged out, thus inadvertently revealing their IP address. In most cases it's not a big deal, really, but it seems very important to some people. I've noticed a few regular tips that can help avoid this, and was thinking it might be a good idea to collect them in one place, either as a new {{ infopage}} or as a supplement to some existing page.
So, a few questions:
Currently I can only recall a few such tips. First, and the one I use, apply some special style to the user interface in your custom style sheets (in my case, the save button) that will quickly indicate whether you're logged in or not. Second, get into the habit of checking your watchlist first thing, probably even from a bookmark, since it will fail to open if you're logged out.
Anyhow, just a thought. Any suggestions? – Luna Santin ( talk) 09:14, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
I have started a discussion on the possible depreciation of the "Future" templates at
Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Depreciating "Future" templates, and would welcome comments of all kind. --
Conti|
✉ 16:25, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Whenever I read really good WP articles (e.g. featured articles), I'm caught off-guard by the lack of citations in the Lead. The policy makes sense, but it can have some weird side effects:
My proposal: when I'm making a claim in the lead, I should be able to insert a discreet, downward-pointing, superscript arrow ↓ (not necessarily this particular arrow -- just some alternative to the [2] or the [3]), thus indicating an internal (downward) wikilink pointing to a header/anchor in the document below.
If this requires a template, would someone program it for me?
Or should I just move this proposal, and my silly arrow ↓, to WP:LEAD?
Agradman talk/ contribs 04:19, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
- The necessity for citations in a lead should be determined on a case-by-case basis by editorial consensus. Complex, current, or controversial subjects may require many citations; others, few or none.
So I got to thinking after browsing through some WP:Bot pages that maybe we can have a featured bot of the month? This would be almost like the featured article process. People would vote for a featured bot status based on the following criteria: (1) How effective the bot is, (2) The different array of tasks a single bot handles, (3) If it has ever malfunctioned, if so, then completely fixed, and (4) Just an alround great bot! The criteria needs improving, but hey, it's a suggestion! The featured bot would be posted on WP:Bot and hopefully the mainpage of en.wikipedia.org. What do you guys think? Wii Wiki ( talk) 02:40, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
For example, if you type help desk in the search box (which is how I always find it, I cant find it any other way) you will get to this page Help_desk. you see these two lines of text
For the help desk of Wikipedia, see
Wikipedia:Help desk
For the webcomic, see Help Desk (webcomic).
Wouldnt it be a bit more tidy to make some type of button or box like the box that shows Refimprove|date=September 2008 with brackets instead of just text with links?
Ivtv ( talk) 04:18, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
I think the links are worse. but thats just my opinion. thanks for the reply Ivtv ( talk) 05:20, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
Would it be possible to have Multiple Watchlists? It could be useful.---- Occono ( talk) 19:36, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Also, see this. ╟─ Treasury Tag► constabulary─╢ 19:42, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
The people behind Gives Me Hope have created a fork of Google called Givoogle that uses the Google search engine and a similar webpage interface, but features advertising whose revenue is given to charity. I thought it would be really cool if a fork of Wikipedia could be created that could similarly use advertising to raise money for things like educational charities. Abyssal ( talk) 19:04, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
There is now a proposal to create an Appeal Committee for sanctions imposed by administrators or the community, modified from this thread. Comments and suggestions are welcome. Cenarium ( talk) 01:35, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
We have Special:Booksources for providing access to many different search engines for ISBNs. Has there been any attempt to do the same for sources for recordings? Major modern recordings have similar unique identifiers. +sj + 23:46, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
I think this was brought up for the VP earlier, but I'd like to bring it up for all of EN. I think we should take full advantage of our software by moving all Wikipedia: namespace pages with (disambiguators) (pretty sure that's a real word) to / subpages. I mean to change pages like Wikipedia:Naming conventions (long lists) to Wikipedia:Naming conventions/Long lists. The benefit of the subpage is the backlink created at the top, a more consistent search criteria, and a clear hierarchy/grouping of policy pages. Article space is not hierarchical, but often times WP space is (notice the text of the template on the Manual of Style). I am well aware that "it ain't broke" and it is a "solution looking for a problem" (BTW, so was the laser), so please actually consider it before responding. The annoyance of actually moving the pages will be slight, and the appearance will IMO be more attractive and organic to an online encyclopedia. It's a shame and a waste to leave subpages for user "secret pages" and template documentation (and, of course, WP:AN/I). ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 05:12, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
It looks like some small consensus is forming, but it certainly isn't formed yet. I'll ask around for some more opinions. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 02:16, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
How difficult would it be to have wikicode automatically colored differently from plain text in the editing window, a la emacs? Reading over the results of the Usability and Experience Study, it seems like this could greatly lower the barrier for entry among technophobe potential editors. » Swpb τ • ¢ 16:00, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
Sounds like a good idea (though I'd hope for an easier-on-the-eyes default colour than red). Rd232 talk 14:07, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
...maybe there could be a locking system like on TV Tropes. There a page gets locked for a certain amount of time when someone starts editing a page. If they do not save their edit before the time runs out it's not added. This idea could use some work, I admit.-- Occono ( talk) 00:28, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
(unindent) Having to go through the entire page after an edit conflict IS SO FREAKIN' ANNOYING I have to emphasize it through font and an exclamation point! The solution would be to make so you go back to the section you were working on after an edit conflict, and to use the {{inuse}} and {{underconstruction}} tags, not to lock the page when it's being edited. I have several disabilities that, I'm sure, at times make it so it takes longer for me to edit a page. I do horribly with time limits. My IQ allegedly can't be tested because of this. So, in other words, this solution makes it inaccessible to me at least, and probably a lot of other people with disabilities. I dream of horses ( T) @ 01:43, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
Sounds like a perfect tool for hijacking an WP:OWNing articles, keeping those pesky patrollers off the turf for hours. Hagger's dream. NVO ( talk) 05:36, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
I think there should be at least an informal suggestion somewhere encouraging editors to give new pages "some time" to develop before AfD or slapping a tag on them about "orphan", "uncategorized". or "needs citations" or what have you. Two things brought me to this. One, quite awhile ago, I changed an article that had been a redirect for 2 years into an actual article. It was put up for deletion before I could expand it and show notability, and the reason the editor gave for putting it up for deletion was that it had been around for over 2 years and no one had expanded it from the two sentences that were there (the two I had just put there). He had not checked the history and seen it had been a redirect for those two years and had just got turned into an article. Luckily me and another quickly expanded further and showed notability. Second, and this happened today- I created an article, left it to post at another editor's page and at the appropriate wikiproject's "new article" page that I had created it, and in the 3 minutes it took to do that... someone tagged it with orphan and uncategorized tags! It seems a bit silly to me to not give an article, oh, maybe a couple days to a couple months before we start doing that kind of stuff, what do others think? Camelbinky ( talk) 03:32, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
I think that this falls under the spirit of WP:PEREN. Any limit is just an informal suggestion anyway :P ╟─ Treasury Tag► without portfolio─╢ 08:36, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
(<-){{ underconstruction}} is very helpful in these cases. -- Avi ( talk) 15:10, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Unless it's a SNOW close, an AfD discussion lasts 7 days. If an editor or group of editors can't make the article look like it should be kept in seven days, then either they have no interest in doing so, or they can't. People involved in the discussion can change their minds based on improvements, or the closing admin can take a look at the article in question and decide that, despite the stale !votes, the article now appears notable enough to be kept. Why is the seven days not a sufficient time to get the article improved? Who then was a gentleman? ( talk) 18:47, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
I noticed on the Polish Wikipedia that on the upper right links (where you see "my talk"/"my preferences" etc) there is a link to a user's personal sandbox, which when clicked opens up at the equivalent of "User:YourName/Sandbox". I would find this option very useful as I frequently work in a user sandbox before publishing in mainspace. Is something like this already available? Or even feasible to activate on en.wiki? I think in usability terms it would help too, as many new users could benefit from having a personal, safe location to work on their first articles etc. Sillyfolkboy ( talk) ( edits) WIKIPROJECT ATHLETICS NEEDS YOU! 04:46, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
There is a nascent discussion at Wikipedia talk:PLOT about whether it is best to keep WP:PLOT as a redirect to this section within WP:What Wikipedia is not, where its been for a while, or should be changed to redirect to an existing guideline article about plots ( Wikipedia:How to write a plot summary). You're encouraged to join the conversation. Thanks. 67.100.126.76 ( talk) 00:45, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
We've had abuse filters nearly 5 months now, and they have been quite a tremendous asset. After a few slipups at the beginning, the quality of these filters, has been great, with very little collateral damage. We have learned to prioritize filters, and use the abuse filter efficiently and effectively. Filters of several groups have been developed. One group warns users who make common 'newbie' editing mistakes. For example, if someone were to add '''Bold text''' to an article, they will be given a friendly warning pointing them to the sandbox, a warning that they can override if they wish. Another type attempts to identify and tag possible vandalism. Tagged edits can be reviewed by editors, to identify which edits are vandalism, and which are not. Finally the third type of filter targets specific, repeated, high-priority, and ongoing vandalism. Filter 179 is an example of this. As you can see, the hits from this filter are packed tightly in time, and have extremely good discrimination between good and bad edits. They look only for one specific type of vandalism, and target only that type as narrowly as possible. Due to the nature of these filters, the users who hit them are nearly always compromised hosts, or open proxies. Filter 7s recent repeat triggering today is a great example of this phenomenon. To block these proxies, someone has to manually block every IP that hits the filter. Because of the very targeted nature of these filters (for example, a filter might only target page moves where the new page name contains 'on wheels'), and because these filters tend to be active only during the periods where these vandals are active, is is virtually guaranteed that any hit of the filter is genuine. I think that the ability to make this very small subset of filters automatically block users that trip them would save administrators a great deal of time, as they would not have to constantly monitor and block anyone tripping the filter. Obviously the filters that would be set to block would only be the most narrow in scope and most accurate. What are people's thoughts on enabling the ability to create blocking abuse filters? Prodego talk 22:03, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
If some filters are now identifying issues with high precision, then I would suggest a specific process, akin to approval for an bot. It's the same kind of idea - an automated process will be allowed to act on-wiki, and the community should have the chance to scrutinize the evidence that the filter is tested, stable, mature, and discriminating, before it is in effect given an admin right. Proposal:
A filter that has achieved stability, maturity and a high level of precision (and in particular an extremely low "false positive"), over a period of time, may be proposed to have administrator tool responses added to it. These may include blocking and page protection.
Such requests are presented for communal scrutiny, with a formal statement and evidence section showing
If consensus agrees then after a discussion lasting [7, 10] days, the tool will have admin responses enabled (possibly to an agreed limited extent) for a trial period of 2 weeks. Subject to lack of evidenced problems, admin responses will then be considered approved. Any subsequent significant change to the filter code, or nature of responses of a kind likely to introduce a higher risk of errors, shall require reconfirmation. Users making such amendments may wish to trial the code on a new filter so that the original filter is not disturbed. |
Any good?
FT2 ( Talk | email) 23:03, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
<-I agree with Rockfang, automated blocks make me very nervous, if one cannot be virtually certain that false positives will not occur. I'm not familiar with the proxy that blocks open proxies, but if I understand open proxies correctly (and I'm not sure I do), the concept of a block on one's permanent record isn't an issue in that case. I'll toss out an intermediate option (intermediate between a bot blocking and an administrator having to manually block). Why couldn't a bot identifying what appears to be a blockable offense drop a notice on the talk page - saying something like "Attempted edit xxxx appears to be a violation for which blocking is warranted. If you think this is in error, please contact an administrator (you can do this with template adminhelp) within n days. If you do not provide a reason, you will be blocked. If an administrator reviews the edit prior to that time, you may be blocked sooner."-- SPhilbrick T 19:44, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
Not sure. Would requiring 7-10 days of discussion make the feature relatively useless, since it's needed (?) in specific situations where huge numbers of sockpuppets are appearing at that moment? On the other hand, would allowing it without such discussion make it too dangerous? Here's an idea (if it's established that this is needed at all; maybe just FT2's parallel proposal would be enough): Identify a number of admins who have experience with abuse filters and are trusted to do this. If an admin wants to make a filter to address an immediate situation, they get it (quickly) approved by one of those experienced admins, implement it, announce it on AN/I, and if there isn't consensus for it, it can be turned off again. ☺ Coppertwig ( talk) 13:06, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
In parallel with that, this may be an alternative approach that doesn't require approval for admin tool responses, and does not have a problem with error rates, and therefore is useful for many filters that would not meet the approval level above.
If the extension provides a page of "filter hits" with check boxes next to each (AJAX filterable by filter # or the like), then an admin can click on individual checkboxes or shift-click a range, to perform a specified admin action on all selected events or the users responsible. FT2 ( Talk | email) 23:45, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
Should all admins get it, or should it be separate from the admin flag? If the latter, how should users get the flag?
I think it would be very wise not to give the abilty to every admin, since abuse or misuse of it could mean serious harm. Only those that need it should have it, and there should be an informal (like WP:BAG nominations, maybe) vote/discussion about each person who requests the new user flag. -- Conti| ✉ 10:51, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
Note that the following so-far-unseen features apply to blocking abuse filters:
Time permitting, I am happy to implement features of reasonable complexity that improve the safety of blocking Abuse Filters. — Werdna • talk 09:00, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
Okay, let me ask one question of implementation. Assume somebody gets wrongly blocked by the abuse filter (not a common occurrence, but it will probably happen at some point). If a standard adminbot does that, I can go and unblock the user and block the adminbot so the problem doesn't happen again until it is fixed (and I'll talk to the adminbot owner about it). What can I do when I find that somebody was wrongly blocked by the abuse filter? I wouldn't be happy if I can't easily disable the offending filter until it is fixed. (That is our standard way to deal with bot problems: disable them quickly, investigate later before more harm has been done). So please make it easy to disable specific features of the abuse filter without waiting until somebody with technical knowledge shows up. Kusma ( talk) 16:06, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
I have started a thread at AN to discuss the discrepancy between current blocking policy and practice. I believe that much wider discussion of allowing automated procedures to block users is warranted. Delicious carbuncle ( talk) 16:34, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
Why can't we have the filters post to a central page, similar to bot-reported vandalism at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism? This way, the filter does not perform the block itself, but with hundreds of admins watchlisting the filters' reports page, we should have a very quick response time. -- Avi ( talk) 07:02, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
I've been advised to post this here as I've tried Main Page discussion and Main Page/Errors discussion which apparently was the wrong place. Just a minor thing but could the main page sidebar navbox titles (navigation, search, interaction etc.) start with an upper case letter to match the contents of the boxes? Just looks 'wrong' to me! The simple English version is the same but other language wikis appear correct. Many thanks for your time. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 08:37, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
I noticed that Wikia sites have the option to switch between the normal text editor and a rich text editor (when you edit a page, the content appears the same as when you view the page - you don't see the raw code). I think this would be a great option to have (especially on the discussion pages) and would give casual editors a much more user friendly option for editing. Any thoughts?-- SuaveArt ( talk) 09:58, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
I propose we place interwiki links to the simple English Wikipedia at the top of the "other languages" links. The current practise is to sort them alphabetically by language code, putting them somewhere in the middle to lower area where no-one notices it. Of course this would also have to be implemented technically, but I believe this can be done by just asking the maintainers of the interwiki bots and the interwiki bot framework to move the simple English link whenever they modify an article. — Ruud 17:50, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
I would additionally or alternatively like to propose making the links to the simple English Wikipedia stand out more by, for example, making them appear in bold. This can easily we done by adding a single line of CSS to the stylesheet. — Ruud 17:53, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
Just as a note, this has been proposed in Bugzilla and declared a WONTFIX. Any solution to do this would need to be in enwiki's site JS. ^ demon [omg plz] 14:23, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
How about using Template:Sister, like with Commons, Wikiquote, etc.? ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 07:44, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
I'm positive it's been proposed before, but it'd be nice if in your list of watched pages, there were some sort of marker to identify pages that are redirects. I dunno how technically feasible this is, but since the "what links here" shows it, I can't imagine it'd be TOO hard. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ ( talk) 20:08, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
As an improvement to the Article request page, how about an Article Launcher like YKTTW on TV Tropes? It could be useful for allowing I.P.s to start articles whilst limiting the problems that led to Anons not being able to create pages. Thoughts?---- Occono ( talk) 00:31, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
Is it needed? YellowMonkey ( cricket photo poll!) paid editing=POV 03:45, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
After carefully reviewing all the mentions of "Vector" on Village Pump pages and
[5], I propose that it replace Monobook as the default skin immediately for a period of one day after which the default shall be reverted, comments shall be examined, and further proposals including either general adoption and/or goals for the usability team will be in order.
HowDoIUseUnifiedLogin? (
talk) 17:58, 1 August 2009 (UTC) (sock of Nrcprm2026 --
Enric Naval (
talk) 02:24, 7 August 2009 (UTC))
There is absolutely no point in performing a one-day test. There's not a whole lot of point in performing a one-week test. The Foundation has poured thousands of dollars into the usability initiative that has created Vector. This skin, or another like it (certainly 'a skin other than monobook') will become the default skin on WMF wikis. What do we gain from yo-yo-ing between the two skins, other than confusion? If we anticipate problems (other than familiarity issues) with the transition, then that's evidence that the transition is premature. But this change is going to happen at some point AFAICT, despite the huge inertia of the projects. There's no point in rushing: if we can't agree that the time is right to transition permanently, then the time is not right to transition at all. Happy‑ melon 22:19, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
In light of the above I modify my proposal to simply cut everyone over if they have Monobook in preferences, with some kind of a warning in a site notice that they will have to change it back if they want to keep the customizations in their monobook.css or monobook.js file(s).
HowDoIUseUnifiedLogin? (
talk) 01:54, 2 August 2009 (UTC) (sock of Nrcprm2026 --
Enric Naval (
talk) 02:24, 7 August 2009 (UTC))
Out of curiousity, is there a compelling use case for Vector? By which, I mean is there something I can do with Vector that I can't do with Monobook? Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I've played around with Vector and generally find I like the feel of Monobook better, so I plan to continue using it for the foreseeable future. I did install the advanced editing toolbar though, that's nice. Dragons flight ( talk) 02:28, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
I tried out vector, and I see that is wastes more screen area at the top and bottom, making it harder to head articles on small screens. Changing the default skin would also disable all the user scripts people have in their monobook.js files. You would have to copy everyones monobook.js to vector.js, or make the user scripts not connected to the skin. Why is like that anyway? In general I think very few have heard of Vector, even among the most active Wikipedians. You should spread some awareness before you force the switch. -- Apoc2400 ( talk) 10:17, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
Ok, so, usability point: "use sitewide default" as a skin selection? --
Kim Bruning (
talk) 23:42, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
I'm assuming "Vector" is the same as the beta. So, how does one, using the beta, "unwatch" a page, please? - Denimadept ( talk) 23:38, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
This is a terrible idea, and it's being thrown around by a banned editor who uses socks to bounce around ideas
[6]. This guy was just trolling by proposing a preposterous idea. (P.D.: for why it's a preposterous idea, see
Usability testing and how testing is done in small groups before rolling huge changes to the world. This idea makes
Jakob Nielsen sad) --
Enric Naval (
talk) 02:24, 7 August 2009 (UTC) P.D.: actually, after seeing other off-wiki proposals by the person behind the account I think that there is the possibility that he is simply clueless to the point where his good-faith proposals are so terribly misguided that they look like trolling. --
Enric Naval (
talk) 18:54, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
The new toolbar does not work with the editing gadget and Greasemonkey script wikEd, please see Bug 20134. Cacycle ( talk) 19:25, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
As it was mentioned above that WM spent several thousand dollars on Vector, and this will become our default skin at some point, I have scribbled out WP:Vector. My thinking is that the project page will be for explaining vector in depth. What issues is it addressing? How is it addressing them? How much did we spend and where? And known bugs. The talk page would be for discussion of Vector errors or usability issues or help or whatever. There is never enough on-wiki documentation of our new software. This way there is no digging through talk pages or other wikis for basic info. Obviously I didn't put much info on that page, because I don't have any info on vector. Please assist in building this page. Thanks. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 13:51, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
It would be great if some of the stats from en.wikichecker.com could be incorporated into the History tab of articles. The key ones would be:
I have been using this site to check a number of the articles I watch, and think it would be an incredibly valuable resource for everyone from those who mainly read to those who mainly edit. The best way to expose all this information would be to roll it into Wikipedia officially rather than having an external site do it. Note I am in no way affiliated with wikichecker.com, I just think that the stats it presents are really useful! Cheers Mitsuhirato ( talk) 12:14, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
Input is required at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scotland#Scotland location to come to a consensus on which map best serves the purpose. Dr. Blofeld White cat 10:31, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
There's been many recent RFDs on so-called "vanity" redirects (not to single anyone out, but, for example: WT:SANDY -> User talk:SandyGeorgia).
What about allowing users to create shortcut redirects as subpages of the redirect pages " WP:K" (redirects to WP:Keyboard shortcuts) and " WP:U" (redirects to WP:Username policy).
Thoughts? – xeno talk 17:12, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive48#Userspace redirect where I proposed this back at the end of June. The discussion apparently went stale so I didn't pursue it. - 22:53, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
We could say that anyone can create U:xx redirects to pages they use a lot, just to save them typing in the search box, but that wouldn't give them any permanent right to the redirect (someone else might reuse it for something else at some point). The trouble with programmed aliases is that you make it impossible to create an article beginning with that alias should the need arise. (We ought to have personalized redirects that work only for you, but that would require software development...)-- Kotniski ( talk) 09:11, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
I'm not really seeing much tangible benefit to this proposal. Most user names are relatively short and easy to type as it is, and I don't see how there is any need for a shorthand method of typing them. Shortcut redirects also exist to help users get to policy/guideline pages whose titles may not be as memorable as their shortcuts; again, this should not be an issue for usernames. It strikes me as little more than a vanity redirect that has the potential to run into ownership issues down the line. Please forgive me if I'm being narrow-minded, but I just don't see how this would really benefit the community as a whole, rather than select users who manage to stake a claim to a short or a "fun" vanity redirect. Sher eth 13:19, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
Is there any way in which we could make link piping such as [[Link, to be piped|]] display itself as [[Link, to be piped|Link]] in references? Currently, the only way that we can pipe a link inside ref tags is to type the text to be displayed; if we simply put the pipe and then the brackets, it displays as if it were inside nowiki tags. For example, search for the words "Hopewell (Union Bridge, Maryland)" and "Mount Airy Historic District (Mount Airy, Maryland)" in the references section of this version of National Register of Historic Places listings in Maryland. Isn't there some way that we could make it work like in normal text, where all text after the first comma or first parenthesis is hidden? Nyttend ( talk) 14:19, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
I'd like to propose that pages containing or pertaining to sexual content be added to a Category:Sexual Content. This would make it a lot easier for filters. (I am by no means in favor of any kind of censorship). Any opinions on this? Support? Oppose? I'd like to hear what you think. Smallman12q ( talk) 16:02, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
reject early, reject often - rejected every time it comes up for the reasons mentioned above. I might consider it if we also add a category that is called Content that may be offensive to people who are afraid of clowns to all clown related articles. -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 17:48, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
Aw, hell, I had a long post all constructed, and then Xeno makes it obsolete by thinking of a better idea. Yes, rather than upset people by inserting hidden categories into articles, anyone who wanted to could create lists of articles that meet a certain criterion, and then scripts could perform an action based on those lists. There would really be no limit, and no disruption for others, if someone actually did create User:Example/Content that may be offensive to people who are afraid of clowns, and tweaked a master script with their own preferences, so they could see the content but not the images. True phobics could choose to not even be able to load an article listed in it.
Of course this would be inefficient if each user created their own lists, but very quickly people would stop re-inventing the wheel, and start using the same lists. Subpages of WP:Filtered content could be set up by any group interested in taking the time to do so, with absolutely no effect on those of us who don't want to filter anything, or those of us who do want to filter some things, but aren't scared of clowns. Or, less optimally but still possible, something similar to User:UBX could be used, and subpages of User:Filtered content could be used to set up lists of files there. Or something. anyway, this, to me, is the solution.
It would be nice if Wikipedia's community allowed this to be done in a semi-organized way, but I imagine a group of determined users could set something like this up by themselves. But I don't see any need to force it to happen off-wiki. This would be a true service to readers, and since that is our core business, we should help to make it as useful as possible. -- Floquenbeam ( talk) 18:24, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
I can just imagine all of the Muslims who will want to add all images of women's bare faces to be added to this list. Who then was a gentleman? ( talk) 20:29, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
To address those concerned with censorship, this would be strictly opt-in. Censorship is defined as "the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined by a censor." In this case, the censor would be the person themselves; essentially self-censorship.
Ideally, I'm hoping something along the lines of
Platform for Internet Content Selection can be created. Currently, you can indeed easily write a script to filter based on categories, so all this fuss regarding
Category:Content that may be offensive to (name of some group - Muslims, Christians, Scientologists etc)
is misguided.
Perhaps some kind of central list that more broadly categorizes content (based on certain criteria) can be designed.
I'm not looking to censor anything. I'm not here to create a legal disclaimer about content. I'm here to create a kind of central opt-in list that will allow users to better control the content they want to see. We have pop-up blockers and ad blockers, and so I'm hoping to make wikipedia more friendly to various people. Smallman12q ( talk) 20:46, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
Well instead of physically marking an article, perhaps a central list could be compiled. (Please Note:It could easily be done off wikipedia). Smallman12q ( talk) 22:26, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
Moved discussion to Village pump (proposals) as a more relevant forum. -- Cybercobra (talk) 22:46, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
Hey folks! Am I the only one interested in transferring quality referenced articles from German wikipedia into English? The project needs people who understand a bit of German and see the potential in translating quality articles from German wikipedia. I need your help guys! Dr. Blofeld White cat 19:16, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
Hi there. Well, the page was only created about 3 or 4 days ago. *g* Clicking through to your talkpage we learn you held off from posting to the wider audience here for a week, in order to sensibly focus discussion initially. I don't speak German so won't be able to participate, but as there're several other WikiProject Intertranswiki/$lang pages created around the same time my curiousity is piqued ...
You used the phrase "transferring quality referenced articles", Dr. Blofeld. Please could you say below whether the scope of these Intertranswiki projects is restricted to quality in terms of assessed (FA/GA-equivalents) articles or manually selected well-developed longer articles; additionally, could you clarify if stubs (a sometimes ambiguous term, so take it to mean <3–4 sentences, perhaps unref'd), be they geostubs or others, are definitively excluded from these Intertranswiki projects?
As you might know, there was a recent issue of 4,000 unreferenced German politician substub articles created, involving semi-automated tools. Of course that's since been taken care of, and we don't need to revisit specifics; ultimately a mass-deletion was used to deal with the most part. I understand it wasn't you who created them, as well as that the editor had done so in good faith, with blp management aspects seen only later. We've no suggestion biography articles are involved in this new initiative. Let me explain why I've brought it up: It's purely for illustrating considerations involved in large translation initiatives, often involving topics which may stay short for a long time, and even for which scarce English-language sources may exist for easy expansion by those who aren't fluent in the respective languages. I also appreciate your positive effort with this initiative is so as to approach content transfer *proactively*, allowing things to go smoothly.
Will article intertranswikifys be checked by an editor who has mother tongue fluency or is a native speaker, in the respective language? Additionally, do machine translations play a part in the intertranswikifying?
Last, my understanding is that while there's long been a category system to hold articles tagged with language expansion templates, no active accompanying WikiProject existed to collaborate and direct efforts. Looking at a couple of the categories, there're many tagged articles; I've tagged some myself in the past that remain unexpanded. In excess of 750 German and 7,000 French articles, for example, according to the cat pages. Is initial clearing of those by Intertranswiki projects planned, or is broader concentration on articles in foreign language Wikipedias without en-wp counterparts planned? Sorry, that's quite a few questions! Thanks – Whitehorse1 21:09, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
Uhhh. This is why I established a wikiproject To improve the quality of transwikying to avoid the creation of weak stubs. Please read the main project page 'carefully before jumping to conclusions. Dr. Blofeld White cat 16:50, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
I just dropped my keyboard and rolled back this page. I have seen a lot of people accidentally hit the rollback button on their watchlists, some without even noticing. How would people feel about a little JavaScript popup that asks if you yes or no if you want to actually roll something back? ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 04:40, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
importScript('User:Greg_Tyler/rollbackprompt.js');
to your
monobook.js page.
Greg Tyler (
t •
c) 16:40, 7 August 2009 (UTC)I absolutely recommend adding the following line to your monobook.js:
As long as JavaScript is activated (important point! initially I got bitten several times when it wasn't), it opens a popup where you can enter a custom edit summary. If you just enter return or click OK, you get the default summary. If you click Cancel, the rollback is cancelled.
This function allows the use of rollback for non-vandalism reverts, but you need to be verify that you really want to revert all consecutive edits by the last editor. Hans Adler 17:11, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
Please do not laugh at this proposal - this is only a suggestion. Today (August 6 2009), when looking at the "Deaths in 2009" category, I saw reference to this Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_(koala)
I saw that earlier today, this had the tag "This article is about a person who has recently died" but this has now been removed - and rightly so, I say, since Sam was a koala, not a person. However, how about introducing a tag which says "This article is about an animal that has recently died?" Wikipedia does list recent deaths of notable non-human animals, so perhaps there should be a tag for recent deaths for them, as there is for human beings who recently entered the pearly gates. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 19:40, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
Well, many thanks to the Wikipedian who operates under the uesrname "Canadian Paul" - there is now a category called "2009 Animal Deaths"! Perhaps this Wikipedian saw this discussion, or maybe this was just another Wikipedian thinking likewise. This could be the beginning of the type of thing I had in mind. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 20:38, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Imho it's unlucky that the first sentence of an article often contains so much clutter: synonyms, pronunciation, etymology, etc. I feel the beginning, the article's most prominent place, is being wasted in this way.
An example is the Holocaust article:
The Holocaust (from the Greek [ὁλόκαυστον] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup ( help) (holókauston): holos, "whole" and kaustos, "burnt"), also known as The Shoah ( Hebrew: השואה, Latinized ha'shoah; Yiddish: חורבן, Latinized churben or hurban) is the term generally used to describe ... |
The sentence "The Holocaust is the term generally used ..." is ripped apart, interrupted with several lines that do not help me understand what the Holocaust is. Some other bad examples would be Chernobyl, Uruk, or China.
My proposal is a template to put linguistic information above the main text. It would be similar to the disambig templates. Example:
Word origin:
Greek ὁλόκαυστον (
latinized holókauston): holos "whole" + kaustos "burnt" The Holocaust is the term generally used to describe ... |
The wiki markup would look something like this. I derived it from the markup on the Holocaust page.
{{lingu|origin|{lang|el|ὁλόκαυστον} ({lang|el-Latn|holókauston})|holos "whole" + kaustos "burnt"}}
|
How the template would exactly work is to be determined. People who know how to write templates: please weigh in.
Notes
I hope you like the idea. 84.130.125.27 ( talk) 03:12, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
I believe the main problem is that a lot of editors believe that starting with this etymology clutter makes an article look more official/correct/encyclopedic/.... In my opinion the MOS should strongly discourage long or complicated etymologies in the first sentence, and only allow etymologies there if they actually contribute to an understanding of the topic. An etymology box would be an attempt at a practical solution to the problem, but I am not sure that I like it. Some articles already have too many boxes. Hans Adler 09:20, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
Kyrgyzstan (pronounced /ˈkɜrɡ
ɪstæn/; KUR-gi-stan; Kyrgyz: Кыргызстан, [qɯrʁɯzstɑ́n]; Russian: Кыргызстан [kˠirɡˠisˈtan]), officially the Kyrgyz Republic, is a country in Central Asia. Landlocked and mountainous, it is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the southwest and China to the east. The ethnonym " Kyrgyz", after which the country is named, is thought to originally mean either "forty girls" or "forty tribes", presumably referring to the epic hero Manas who, as legend has it, unified forty tribes against the Khitans. citation needed The 40-ray sun on the flag of Kyrgyzstan symbolizes the forty tribes of Manas. [1]
Below a page are linked the categories to which it belongs. Clicking on a category name takes one to the category page, which is fine. However, If one clicks on the word "Categories" in front of the category list, one is linked to Special:Categories. I propose this to be changed to Category:Contents. Almost never is one interested in Special:Categories, but it can be interesting/useful to browse Category:Contents. -- Gerrit C U T E D H 14:18, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
No proposal here. Just seems an intuitive place to notify of this. I have made a template series that allows users to track the usage of substituted templates. As far as I know, there was no prior way to do this other than to search for unique text of a template, which was never much use and is now almost impossible since we instituted Google noindexing outside the main namespace. Anyone ever confronted with wanting to track a template that is normally substituted, head on over, create a "z number template" and add it to the syntax of the template you want to track. All the information is on the documentation page link above.-- Fuhghettaboutit ( talk) 02:48, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Despite that it is entirely irrelevant what the original motivation was for starting substitution, out of curiosity I did some digging. This is apparently the very first page where substitution is described, as written on December 6, 2003, which does not appear to support the notion that its first use had anything to do with server load (we could always ask Tim Starling, and then either you or I would be well within our inalienable rights to cry "nah-nah" at each other, but this is such a sidetrack).-- Fuhghettaboutit ( talk) 05:03, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
According to WebCite, "[i]n one study published in the journal Science, 13% of Internet references in scholarly articles were inactive after only 27 months." On Wikipedia we can update dead links, but we can't update links where the original page has vanished forever, and sometimes it can take months for someone to notice a link is dead. We also can't rely on archive.org, since it's unpredictable which pages (and which versions of those pages) it will archive. Ideally, Wikipedia should automatically store copies of the webpages it references, at the time that they are referenced, and provide a link to this "archived" version for every reference.
This isn't exactly an urgent matter, since at least in theory all of our web citations ought to include sufficient information to track down the original work if it still exists in some form. Nevertheless it would be really convenient, make fact checking easier, and would help articles be more resistant to the passage of time. I don't believe there's any copyright issue in mirroring exact copies of webpages, since a lot of reputable organisations like archive.org do it, although I'm not sure why this is. Dcoetzee 22:29, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
There are many new page patrollers. Is there anyone to patrol the patrollers?
There are many vandalism patrollers. Is there anyone to patrol the vandalism patrollers?
There are many rollbackers. Is there anyone to review the rollbacks, and perhaps rollback the bad rollbacks?
NotAnIP83:149:66:11 ( talk) 18:50, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
I think Talk Page is for actual discussions (and sometimes additional information and links), and "Discussion" links should not become blue just because of "Wikiproject" template. Majority of pages have such useless (for readers) talk pages. May be "WikiProject" templates should be either in main article (in collapsed state, for example) or in some dedicated namespace? _Vi ( talk) 20:34, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
Note to readers: See its origin, Wikipedia talk:Talk_page#Redlinks to useless content., for further information/clarification of this proposal. -- œ ™ 23:39, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
The
Ogg format is a stupid unfortunate choice. Period.
Reasons not previously discussed:
Reasons already discussed:
Do you want to have professional sounding audio on Wikipedia? Of course we do. Then, please, allow me upload this MP3 file (I just spent two hours recording and mixing). ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 13:08, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
<Look, maybe I shouldn't have mentioned pro audio because it just seems to have confused you all. My point was supposed to be this Wikipedia should conform to widely used standards because the network effect is very powerful. When something is popular, everyone works together to make it better and more useful. In the case of audio file formats, the effect is that every aspect of digital audio, from the studio to the D/A converter in your computer, is designed with MP3, AAC, WAV and AIFF in mind. This is just one more way that the network effect causes the most popular standard to become the best standard. Does that make sense? At any rate, I'm revising my proposal now that I understand what the actual issue is. See the next section. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 06:23, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
These file formats are listed as "free and open" in Audio file formats. Is this correct? If so, why can't Wikimedia allow us to upload these formats, if they are small enough? Wikipedia often needs little snippets of sound, and these files could be compressed later by bots or editors who like doing that kind of thing. What do you say? ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 06:23, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Here's a potentially useful compromise: since AAC can be redistributed without paying licensing fees, why don't we offer an option to automatically convert any OGG file to AAC on-the-fly for playback or download? This would let people who already own AAC tools take advantage of them, while still making OGG available to people who can't afford them. Likewise, we could accept uploads of AAC audio and automatically convert them to OGG on the server side. Dcoetzee 22:48, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
For anyone who cares there is a Flash Ogg Vorbis software player being developed for fun. — Dispenser 09:32, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
Thanks to everyone for helping me to hone my argument. I've entered an enhancement request into bugzilla. See bugzilla 20252. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 07:31, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
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Can I suggest that as well as being able to rate individual articles, Wikipedians should be able to rate project groups? I am interested in psychology (which I teach), and have been struck by how quiet the Project Group for Psychology seem to be compared with other Project Groups (such as those for Philosophy, Christianity, Religion or Spirituality). I shall be honest, and say that I do not think that the project group for Psychology would get more than a C at most. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 20:27, 9 July 2009 (UTC)I typed this yesterday (that is, July 9 2009) and now have feelings of misgivings about this proposal. Without going as far a total wishing to revert it, I can understand that it is problematic. As other Wikipedians are members of project groups, such ratings might be misconstrued as ratings of individual Wikipedians, and I am sure that if we were to lapse into doing this, it would not be considered good netiquette. So, I shall understand entirely if people would prefer to shy away from this idea. Many apologies if my earlier comments on the WikiProject group for Psychology upset any one - no offense to any individual Wikipedians was intended. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 21:28, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
I kinda like this idea. Grade each project according to how many members it has and how much work it is doing. Of course it would be a challenge to measure said work in a comparative manner. Rating Projects would help them improve and better organize themselves. Rating would also allow Wikipedia to know which areas need more attention from editors. As for the rating tarnishing editor's imagine, IMO this concern is not important.
Ratings would definitely stimulate projects to work harder and become more responsible over the articles belonging to them. EconomistBR 20:27, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Very often I come across the name of a person, place or thing I don't know about. My usual way of knowing more about it is to search for it in Wikipedia. But for that I need to be connected to the Internet. Wouldn't it be great if we could send a text message from my cellphone to a number with the topic that we want to know about and receive a short summary from its Wikipedia entry as a reply? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wiki wiks ( talk • contribs)
Is your cellphone one that has internet access, as some do? ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 19:46, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
If you text "G-O-O-G-L-E" (the numbers that coordinate with those letters), they send back information that answers almost any query. Commonly, it's information that's cited to Wikipedia. hmwith τ 13:32, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
Thank you, but who should you send this text to? For example, if you are with Orange, would you send it to Orange? ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 19:01, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Roll over a linked word to have a short definition (or its article's first paragraph) pop up. Saves having to visit the word's wiki page or use something like "define:word" in Google to quickly find out what that word means. Regarding the technology, it could utilise Javascript and JSON to cut down on extra load (i.e. loading a definition per word versus loading all the definitions per page) and be easily degradable for older browsers.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.108.194.58 ( talk • contribs)
Sometimes an article needs the sections reordered into something more reasonable. Unfortunately this means any diffs say practically everything has changed so it is difficult to see if some edit to the text has been sneaked in at the same time. What I'd like is an edit mode which could only reorder complete sections with perhaps a little extra functionality like renaming or changing the levels of the section headers. This would not change any text with sections, only move them around.
The edit history would say specifically that this was a section reorder and guarantee the text had not changed in that edit. Then people watching the page could be assured they didn't have to check everything.
A nice development would be to be able to show the reordering without showing all the text and a long term project for someone might be to incorporate knowledge about the section edit to do an intelligent diff before or after the section edit. An alternative is to detect moved blocks automatically with a better diff, though getting that right seems to be a continuing problem with diffs. Dmcq ( talk) 22:08, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
(moved from VPT:) According to this, if we set $wgRestrictDisplayTitle to false, we can display any string as the title of an article. This would presumably get round the annoying restrictions on use of special characters that arise occasionally, on pages using {{ wrongtitle}} and so on, like The Singles 81–85. Is there support for doing this?-- Kotniski ( talk) 16:41, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
{{DISPLAYTITLE:}}
can handle that on its own now) also allowed modification of article titles only if they were copy&pastable as a wikilink. You might want to have a look into the discussions that lead to the script.Any more thoughts on the above suggestion?-- Kotniski ( talk) 14:43, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
I was looking around in the Spanish version of wikipedia when i noticed the spanish logo, It says "La enciclopedia libre" which means the free encyclopedia however "libre" refers to being free (as in liberty or not in bondage). If you want to say something is free (no cost or you don't have to pay) you need to use the word "gratis". Just wanted to let your people know in case you meant cost instead of freedom. If not just disregard this message. Thanks!
This is somewhat hard to say coherently, but I will try. I personally find it rather counterproductive to have subcategories appear in the contents of categories in the same alphabetization scheme as articles. I know that I find it both difficult and less than useful to have to page through sometimes twenty or more screens just to see what all the subcategories of a given category are, which at present you sometimes have to do to see all the subcats, given the number of articles some categories have. Would there be any technical way to make all the subcats appear on the first screen of the contents of a given category? I personally think that such a change would make it much more likely that people will use the subcategories, and thus reduce the number of articles less than accurately placed in the larger parent category. I also think it will make categorization of subcategories, as well as creation of them where appropriate, easier and thus more likely. John Carter ( talk) 15:49, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
A discussion about renaming the Administrators' noticeboard for incidents to a name that will be more intuitive to users.
FT2 ( Talk | email) 10:52, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
I propose that we create the first Wikilympics. Its the alternative for the WikiCup (it'll be held in the winter so it won't conflict with the WikiCup in the Summer). It'll follow the same rules of the WikiCup but there will be some difference: IP's are allowed to participate, Two flags for one person will be allowed, more points for each round, add "on this day..." for expansion of it, help for different wikis and uploading pictures. The winner will get a medal.
Support:
Neutral:
Oppose:
For More questions, respond on my talkpage. Secret Saturdays ( talk) 01:07, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Do you guys think it would be a good idea if the Mediawiki Foundation tweaked the editing interface to allow users to tag their changes as a "Major Edit," a complement to the idea of a minor edit? In the edit history it could be prefaced by a capital M where minor edits are prefaced with a small m. Alternatively or additionally, the text in the edit history could be bolded, or its row could be highlighted some color as decided on by the community. Abyssal ( talk) 19:05, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
My earlier comment was just warning against getting too complex with grading edits, for example, a Likert type ranking of edits on a five-point scale according to how major they are would surely confuse people. Can I just ask for clarification as to what you are saying would constitute a "major edit"? We would need to have a little piece of hypertext by the "major edit" box saying "What's this?" just how we do by the "minor edit box". ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 05:57, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
For non-administrators there is no link to delete an article or image, and it is very hard remember the process or appropriate place in the documentation. Could we add a "Delete" link (like Move/Edit) to the interface that redirects the user to the relevant documentation page? In particular I've been using the new "Vector" skin and a link would fit easily in the drop-down menu. For administrators the delete link could remain as it is. Barrylb ( talk) 20:26, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
{{
afd}}
-esque templates will become automagic.Why doesn't this happen? I don't want my IP to be all out and about, and I want to take credit for my work. >.> JPjuice23 ( talk) 04:17, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
“ | You are not currently logged in. Editing this way will cause your IP address to be recorded publicly in this page's edit history. If you create an account, you can conceal your IP address and be provided with many other benefits. Messages sent to your IP can be viewed on your talk page. | ” |
I am not sure which web browser you use, but certainly, if you use Google Chrome,
you can normally put a tick by "Remember me" which will (for thirty days after you tick it) ensure that your username gets recorded, even if you have not logged in. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 20:32, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
/* Turn the "Save page" button green if I'm logged in */
INPUT#wpSave {
background-color:#88ff88;
}
Sometimes when I am browsing through page histories (especially old page histories) and I click on links to other pages, it would be nice if the new page I clicked on chould show a page revision from roughly the same date. Sometimes given the context of the old page, it would be helpful to see what the other page looked at the same time. Besides, it would be an interesting way to browse the development of the wiki, see how things looked on such and such a date, watch how the wiki grew up. Is it possible for something like this to be implemented? -- Nick Penguin( contribs) 06:50, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Hi. In light of recent events and community concerns about the way in which content is transferred I have proposed a new wikiproject which would attempt to address any of the concerns and done in an environment where a major group of editors work together to transfer articles from other wikipedias in the most effective way possible without BLP or referencing problems. Please offer your thoughts at the proposal and whether or not you support or oppose the idea of a wikiproject dedicated to organizing a more efficient process of getting articles in different languages translated into English. Dr. Blofeld White cat 11:50, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Similarly to the article history prior to a protection linked in protection logs, it could be useful to have a link to the user contributions prior to a block in block logs. This would ease the search for informations on the circumstances and reasons for the block, though this may be controversial, as most block-related matters. What do you think ? Cenarium ( talk) 21:07, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
I don't have a firm proposal at this stage, more an idea that I'd like to throw out there for discussion. Has any thought been given to supporting embedded applets(e.g. those Java things you find on physics demonstration sites)? This would be extremely useful in illustrating certain articles in physics, maths and engineering. Of course we are currently using GIFs where applicable, however an interactive application could allow the user to specify certain parameters and see what influence they would have. Interactive apps also aren't limited to graphing. A calculation result may be just as illustrative.
A few concrete examples:
A couple of (difficult) questions to answer:
Thoughts and ideas welcome. Zunaid 12:33, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
Every edit screen includes boilerplate text below the edit box: eight or more lines of reminders and an often lengthy list of transclusions and categories. Can we give registered users the option to hide this extra text? This would simplify edit and preview screens, reducing page lengths and allowing quick access to the edit box using the Home or End keys.
Perhaps boilerplate could be placed in two collapsible sections ( divs), one for policy reminders and another for transclusions and categories. We could optionally add a checkbox in My preferences to show or hide these sections by default. This would be more friendly and flexible than a monobook.css hack.
Hiding the extra text would make for less clutter, less scrolling, and more efficient editing. Pslide ( talk) 16:56, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
#editpage-copywarn { display:none; }
div.mw-tos-summary { display:none; }
#editpage-copywarn2 { display:none; }
span.editHelp { display:none; }
span#minoredit_helplink { display:none; }
div.templatesUsed { display:none; }
and div.hiddencats { display:none; }
will hide them too.
Anomie
⚔ 17:31, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
Here's a quick edit screen mock up – wouldn't this be cleaner and more convenient? Editors could show/hide policies and templates on demand, or set the default state with a checkbox in user preferences.
Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable. You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 and the GFDL. You agree to be credited, at minimum, through a hyperlink or URL when your contributions are reused in any form. See the Terms of Use for details.
If you do not want your writing to be edited, used, and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here. Any text that you did not write yourself (apart from brief citations) must be available under terms consistent with Wikipedia's Terms of Use before you use it.
Once you click the Save button, your changes will be visible immediately.
Please note:
Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page:
It would seem ridiculously easy to implement, since it's done here with just three extra divs per section. Pslide ( talk) 12:04, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
Which one is "If you do not want your writing to be edited, used, and redistributed at will, ..." ? – xeno talk 15:08, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
<small>
tag with the id "mw-wikimedia-editpage-tos-summary" which is wrapped in a div with the class "mw-tos-summary".
Algebraist 15:14, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
See
User:Geoff Plourde/medcon for full information
I have considering the idea of monthly mediator meetings as outlined in the proposal. What are thoughts/questions critiques?
Geoff Plourde (
talk) 07:15, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
I check my watchlist by starting at the bottom; for each article I compare the last revision I checked with the current revision. If the current is better, I move on. Sometimes another editor is changing things, and I don't quite see where it's going - should I leave it and lose track of the revision I thought was better, or should I revert/'fix' and get in the way of the other editor? I also dislike having to open the history for each item - I never know if the last entry is the last-since-I-checked, or if there have been 5 new additions to look through in bulk.
The software has certain features which help us track important things. I want to track what I thought was the last best revision. This would be easy to implement since we already have a watchlist. It would let us leave articles to be checked later. We wouldn't have to go through the watchlist linearly - we'd pick an item, click 'compare to best', and then either mark current as best, fix it, or leave it the way it is without losing track of the "good" version. Perhaps this would reduce the number of reverts? I think that this would make watchlists substantially easier to manage. Yes, there are scripts that probably do something like this, but I think that this, like watchlists, should be handled by the wiki itself.
(It's difficult to get consensus for a lot of things at once, so this is just an incremental step that would even now benefit a large number of editors. But, if we implement this: There's a proposal above that you too should check out by clicking here for creating a recent changes page for unwatched articles. That proposal also has clear immediate benefits, but it's really there just to let us safely turn on the ' how many people are watching this page?' feature (which also has immediate benefits). If we then give editors the option to make their watchlists public, we no longer need flagged revisions: we'll be able to have automated tools that tell us how many people are paying attention to a page, if it's been checked by at least one editor/patroller, if many people prefer an earlier version, and so on. But all this is an aside.)
Summary: What are people's thoughts on being able to keep track of the last seen/approved/best version of a watchlisted article? M 22:03, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
The establishment of an independent way of appealing ArbCom decisions, and certain community decisions has been discussed quite regularly. As of now, User:Jimbo Wales can appeal ArbCom decisions which doesn't concern himself. But this is not entirely satisfactory, because appeals cannot be considered by a single person timely, fairly and thoroughly enough, and it's not viable in the long term. The only 'appeal' method besides Jimbo Wales is to request for amendments to the ArbCom itself, which is not a proper appeal method because it's the same body that made the decision. There are also other roles that the Appeal Committee may take, which couldn't be conducted by a single person. The Appeal Committee could hear publicly or privately requests to appeal a decision by the Arbitration Committee, community sanctions and some administrative actions. When accepted, the community, the Arbitration Committee when concerned, and the concerned admins when relevant, should be informed, so that they can give their views or evidence, privately or publicly. It is proposed that the Appeal Committee can do some or all of the followings:
Decisions by the Appeal Committee are binding and final on en.wikipedia (with the exception of WMF directives), but are not necessarily permanent, and contradictory decisions can later been taken by the community and ArbCom. The Appeal Committee would be elected by the community, members would have to meet the access to nonpublic data policy and identify to the WMF, and could be granted CU/OS permissions, like arbitrators. No user could serve on both committees simultaneously. This is only a draft proposal for preliminary discussion, organizational details could be worked out later (the clerks and the announcement noticeboard could be shared, for example). Cenarium ( talk) 02:09, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
(unindent) I don't feel Wikipedia is sinking, so why not rearranging deck chairs ? ;) This is simply a preliminary proposal like any other, but I feel we need to further discuss appeals on Wikipedia, this is a recurrent subject of contention. With respect to the ArbCom/AppCom relationship, being able to appeal a decision by a body doesn't make yourself a police/watchmen over this body. If ArbCom is 'the end', or more rightly 'the last step' in dispute resolution, then under this proposal it would be ArbCom + AppCom. I don't feel it would undermine the authority of ArbCom, but potentially make it stronger, since the endorsement of an ArbCom decision by an independent committee would actually reinforce it, while cases were an ArbCom decision would be overturned would probably be extremely rare and not without good cause. However, if this is deemed too controversial, we could not allow the body to overturn ArbCom decisions, but only admin- or community-imposed sanctions for which there is no community consensus to retain as is (and maybe also, deletions and protections ?), and ArbCom would have the final say in any case. So it would be a lower committee, and it could include a limited number of arbitrators in rotation like the Audit Committee, the rest being elected. I definitely feel it could be more efficient than appealing decisions directly to ArbCom, or the Ban appeal subcommittee, because arbitrators have too much workload, and for appealing those decisions to ArbCom, there are no well-defined guidelines, most are through private requests. This would be an occasion to set out clear guidelines. The standards for membership in the Appeal Committee wouldn't so high as those for ArbCom, because ArbCom would be the higher committee, and the Appeal Committee authority would be much more circumvented and lesser, so we would have more candidates likely to be elected. In effect, the later proposal would amount to transform the Ban Appeals subcommittee in a committee including arbs and elected non-arbs, with a specific policy. Cenarium ( talk) 20:58, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
This page Wikipedia:Publicity photos is currently inactive, yet the topic is significant in contributing pictures to Wikipedia articles. Wikimedia Commons has no interest in the fair use of images provided in media kits. There is immediate and pending interest to revive discussion regarding this subject and seek broader input via this forum/proposal page. Henry Delforn ( talk) 22:50, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
Most articles are written in an american perspective, I've probaly noticed this since i'm Australia. For example an article explains the release of a new game, the article will then say some problems [about the game] occur in Perth, Australia and then it will go on to say that Ohio has some problems with it(the problem is, the sentence does not explain that ohio is in America). Now i realise most people who edit/read wikipedia are Americans but that dosen't constitute for an American perspective, there are ALOT of people that read english outside of America too. Before you reply, try to consider yourself living in another country reading this. I propose all articles be written in worldwide perspective. Thankyou-- TUSWCB ( talk) 12:01, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
That post above made no sense except apparently someone is insulting other editors. Call someone a douchebag again and you will be blocked. Camelbinky ( talk) 07:10, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
To be honest this thread has gotten to a point where it's completley indecipherable. I don't think I care anymore, do whatever the hell you want. (btw i havent been around because my internet connection has been slow) -- TUSWCB ( talk) 00:30, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
Addressing this question about whether or not to add national identifiers to locales, I'd like to point out a couple of things. First, omitting to say which nation a given place is located is not always chauvinism, but frequently simply being too close to the material to realize that it might not make sense to another reader -- whether or not that reader is a US citizen. Second, I think everyone would agree that if any passage in an article is unclear to an editor, it is likely to be unclear to many other people, & that editor is encouraged to edit that article & make it clear, whether it is simply the location of a given place, or any given explanation; if the edit is unnecessary, someone else will revert it, at which point all parties involved are encouraged to start talking about the matter. Thirdly, not all Americans are citizens of the United States: this noun is also correctly applied to citizens of Canada & Mexico, for example, & there are a number of active editors from those countries on the English Wikipedia. Lastly, the best solution for this problem is simple education: too many people simply strike out when they encounter a problem like this (& I'll agree that TUSWCB has a point), instead of simply assuming the other party might simply have made a mistake which she/he would be glad if someone fixed it. -- llywrch ( talk) 07:10, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
This is the second time during this calendar year that some one from Australia has observed the pro-American bias on the Village Pump - the earlier comment was that "Did you know" entries on Wikipedia's main page were often about U.S. matters. This led to an involved discusion, including comments to the effect of Wikipedia is written by many people in the United States, and as they will write about what they know about, a pro-U.S. bias is inevitable. I made the point then that Wikipedia is culturally biassed, specifically to Northern American and certain parts of Western Europe. I live in the United Kingdom where coverage of topics related to my home country is probably better than coverage of many parts of the world, but I did point out that this bias is inevitable as long as people are able to log on to the internet in certain parts of the world more than others. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 18:20, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
I still don't see why it's so difficult to click on the Baylor link, which clearly lets you know where the University is located. Who then was a gentleman? ( talk) 20:04, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
In answer to Who was then a Gentleman:
I am certainly NOT suggesting that there should be any limit to the number of Americans, or for that matter, people of any nationality, who edit Wikipedia; I was just pointing out that, owing to where people in the world with internet connections are likely to be, there are likely to be cultural biasses on Wikipedia and indeed, many other websites. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 23:01, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
Can we add this one to peren, on the basis that when it does come up, it generates an excessive amount of often hostile and non-productive discussion? These things really just need to be directed to the systematic bias page. M 23:24, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
Some editors are very distressed by the possibility of accidentally editing while logged out, thus inadvertently revealing their IP address. In most cases it's not a big deal, really, but it seems very important to some people. I've noticed a few regular tips that can help avoid this, and was thinking it might be a good idea to collect them in one place, either as a new {{ infopage}} or as a supplement to some existing page.
So, a few questions:
Currently I can only recall a few such tips. First, and the one I use, apply some special style to the user interface in your custom style sheets (in my case, the save button) that will quickly indicate whether you're logged in or not. Second, get into the habit of checking your watchlist first thing, probably even from a bookmark, since it will fail to open if you're logged out.
Anyhow, just a thought. Any suggestions? – Luna Santin ( talk) 09:14, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
I have started a discussion on the possible depreciation of the "Future" templates at
Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Depreciating "Future" templates, and would welcome comments of all kind. --
Conti|
✉ 16:25, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Whenever I read really good WP articles (e.g. featured articles), I'm caught off-guard by the lack of citations in the Lead. The policy makes sense, but it can have some weird side effects:
My proposal: when I'm making a claim in the lead, I should be able to insert a discreet, downward-pointing, superscript arrow ↓ (not necessarily this particular arrow -- just some alternative to the [2] or the [3]), thus indicating an internal (downward) wikilink pointing to a header/anchor in the document below.
If this requires a template, would someone program it for me?
Or should I just move this proposal, and my silly arrow ↓, to WP:LEAD?
Agradman talk/ contribs 04:19, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
- The necessity for citations in a lead should be determined on a case-by-case basis by editorial consensus. Complex, current, or controversial subjects may require many citations; others, few or none.
So I got to thinking after browsing through some WP:Bot pages that maybe we can have a featured bot of the month? This would be almost like the featured article process. People would vote for a featured bot status based on the following criteria: (1) How effective the bot is, (2) The different array of tasks a single bot handles, (3) If it has ever malfunctioned, if so, then completely fixed, and (4) Just an alround great bot! The criteria needs improving, but hey, it's a suggestion! The featured bot would be posted on WP:Bot and hopefully the mainpage of en.wikipedia.org. What do you guys think? Wii Wiki ( talk) 02:40, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
For example, if you type help desk in the search box (which is how I always find it, I cant find it any other way) you will get to this page Help_desk. you see these two lines of text
For the help desk of Wikipedia, see
Wikipedia:Help desk
For the webcomic, see Help Desk (webcomic).
Wouldnt it be a bit more tidy to make some type of button or box like the box that shows Refimprove|date=September 2008 with brackets instead of just text with links?
Ivtv ( talk) 04:18, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
I think the links are worse. but thats just my opinion. thanks for the reply Ivtv ( talk) 05:20, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
Would it be possible to have Multiple Watchlists? It could be useful.---- Occono ( talk) 19:36, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Also, see this. ╟─ Treasury Tag► constabulary─╢ 19:42, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
The people behind Gives Me Hope have created a fork of Google called Givoogle that uses the Google search engine and a similar webpage interface, but features advertising whose revenue is given to charity. I thought it would be really cool if a fork of Wikipedia could be created that could similarly use advertising to raise money for things like educational charities. Abyssal ( talk) 19:04, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
There is now a proposal to create an Appeal Committee for sanctions imposed by administrators or the community, modified from this thread. Comments and suggestions are welcome. Cenarium ( talk) 01:35, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
We have Special:Booksources for providing access to many different search engines for ISBNs. Has there been any attempt to do the same for sources for recordings? Major modern recordings have similar unique identifiers. +sj + 23:46, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
I think this was brought up for the VP earlier, but I'd like to bring it up for all of EN. I think we should take full advantage of our software by moving all Wikipedia: namespace pages with (disambiguators) (pretty sure that's a real word) to / subpages. I mean to change pages like Wikipedia:Naming conventions (long lists) to Wikipedia:Naming conventions/Long lists. The benefit of the subpage is the backlink created at the top, a more consistent search criteria, and a clear hierarchy/grouping of policy pages. Article space is not hierarchical, but often times WP space is (notice the text of the template on the Manual of Style). I am well aware that "it ain't broke" and it is a "solution looking for a problem" (BTW, so was the laser), so please actually consider it before responding. The annoyance of actually moving the pages will be slight, and the appearance will IMO be more attractive and organic to an online encyclopedia. It's a shame and a waste to leave subpages for user "secret pages" and template documentation (and, of course, WP:AN/I). ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 05:12, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
It looks like some small consensus is forming, but it certainly isn't formed yet. I'll ask around for some more opinions. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 02:16, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
How difficult would it be to have wikicode automatically colored differently from plain text in the editing window, a la emacs? Reading over the results of the Usability and Experience Study, it seems like this could greatly lower the barrier for entry among technophobe potential editors. » Swpb τ • ¢ 16:00, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
Sounds like a good idea (though I'd hope for an easier-on-the-eyes default colour than red). Rd232 talk 14:07, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
...maybe there could be a locking system like on TV Tropes. There a page gets locked for a certain amount of time when someone starts editing a page. If they do not save their edit before the time runs out it's not added. This idea could use some work, I admit.-- Occono ( talk) 00:28, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
(unindent) Having to go through the entire page after an edit conflict IS SO FREAKIN' ANNOYING I have to emphasize it through font and an exclamation point! The solution would be to make so you go back to the section you were working on after an edit conflict, and to use the {{inuse}} and {{underconstruction}} tags, not to lock the page when it's being edited. I have several disabilities that, I'm sure, at times make it so it takes longer for me to edit a page. I do horribly with time limits. My IQ allegedly can't be tested because of this. So, in other words, this solution makes it inaccessible to me at least, and probably a lot of other people with disabilities. I dream of horses ( T) @ 01:43, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
Sounds like a perfect tool for hijacking an WP:OWNing articles, keeping those pesky patrollers off the turf for hours. Hagger's dream. NVO ( talk) 05:36, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
I think there should be at least an informal suggestion somewhere encouraging editors to give new pages "some time" to develop before AfD or slapping a tag on them about "orphan", "uncategorized". or "needs citations" or what have you. Two things brought me to this. One, quite awhile ago, I changed an article that had been a redirect for 2 years into an actual article. It was put up for deletion before I could expand it and show notability, and the reason the editor gave for putting it up for deletion was that it had been around for over 2 years and no one had expanded it from the two sentences that were there (the two I had just put there). He had not checked the history and seen it had been a redirect for those two years and had just got turned into an article. Luckily me and another quickly expanded further and showed notability. Second, and this happened today- I created an article, left it to post at another editor's page and at the appropriate wikiproject's "new article" page that I had created it, and in the 3 minutes it took to do that... someone tagged it with orphan and uncategorized tags! It seems a bit silly to me to not give an article, oh, maybe a couple days to a couple months before we start doing that kind of stuff, what do others think? Camelbinky ( talk) 03:32, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
I think that this falls under the spirit of WP:PEREN. Any limit is just an informal suggestion anyway :P ╟─ Treasury Tag► without portfolio─╢ 08:36, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
(<-){{ underconstruction}} is very helpful in these cases. -- Avi ( talk) 15:10, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Unless it's a SNOW close, an AfD discussion lasts 7 days. If an editor or group of editors can't make the article look like it should be kept in seven days, then either they have no interest in doing so, or they can't. People involved in the discussion can change their minds based on improvements, or the closing admin can take a look at the article in question and decide that, despite the stale !votes, the article now appears notable enough to be kept. Why is the seven days not a sufficient time to get the article improved? Who then was a gentleman? ( talk) 18:47, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
I noticed on the Polish Wikipedia that on the upper right links (where you see "my talk"/"my preferences" etc) there is a link to a user's personal sandbox, which when clicked opens up at the equivalent of "User:YourName/Sandbox". I would find this option very useful as I frequently work in a user sandbox before publishing in mainspace. Is something like this already available? Or even feasible to activate on en.wiki? I think in usability terms it would help too, as many new users could benefit from having a personal, safe location to work on their first articles etc. Sillyfolkboy ( talk) ( edits) WIKIPROJECT ATHLETICS NEEDS YOU! 04:46, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
There is a nascent discussion at Wikipedia talk:PLOT about whether it is best to keep WP:PLOT as a redirect to this section within WP:What Wikipedia is not, where its been for a while, or should be changed to redirect to an existing guideline article about plots ( Wikipedia:How to write a plot summary). You're encouraged to join the conversation. Thanks. 67.100.126.76 ( talk) 00:45, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
We've had abuse filters nearly 5 months now, and they have been quite a tremendous asset. After a few slipups at the beginning, the quality of these filters, has been great, with very little collateral damage. We have learned to prioritize filters, and use the abuse filter efficiently and effectively. Filters of several groups have been developed. One group warns users who make common 'newbie' editing mistakes. For example, if someone were to add '''Bold text''' to an article, they will be given a friendly warning pointing them to the sandbox, a warning that they can override if they wish. Another type attempts to identify and tag possible vandalism. Tagged edits can be reviewed by editors, to identify which edits are vandalism, and which are not. Finally the third type of filter targets specific, repeated, high-priority, and ongoing vandalism. Filter 179 is an example of this. As you can see, the hits from this filter are packed tightly in time, and have extremely good discrimination between good and bad edits. They look only for one specific type of vandalism, and target only that type as narrowly as possible. Due to the nature of these filters, the users who hit them are nearly always compromised hosts, or open proxies. Filter 7s recent repeat triggering today is a great example of this phenomenon. To block these proxies, someone has to manually block every IP that hits the filter. Because of the very targeted nature of these filters (for example, a filter might only target page moves where the new page name contains 'on wheels'), and because these filters tend to be active only during the periods where these vandals are active, is is virtually guaranteed that any hit of the filter is genuine. I think that the ability to make this very small subset of filters automatically block users that trip them would save administrators a great deal of time, as they would not have to constantly monitor and block anyone tripping the filter. Obviously the filters that would be set to block would only be the most narrow in scope and most accurate. What are people's thoughts on enabling the ability to create blocking abuse filters? Prodego talk 22:03, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
If some filters are now identifying issues with high precision, then I would suggest a specific process, akin to approval for an bot. It's the same kind of idea - an automated process will be allowed to act on-wiki, and the community should have the chance to scrutinize the evidence that the filter is tested, stable, mature, and discriminating, before it is in effect given an admin right. Proposal:
A filter that has achieved stability, maturity and a high level of precision (and in particular an extremely low "false positive"), over a period of time, may be proposed to have administrator tool responses added to it. These may include blocking and page protection.
Such requests are presented for communal scrutiny, with a formal statement and evidence section showing
If consensus agrees then after a discussion lasting [7, 10] days, the tool will have admin responses enabled (possibly to an agreed limited extent) for a trial period of 2 weeks. Subject to lack of evidenced problems, admin responses will then be considered approved. Any subsequent significant change to the filter code, or nature of responses of a kind likely to introduce a higher risk of errors, shall require reconfirmation. Users making such amendments may wish to trial the code on a new filter so that the original filter is not disturbed. |
Any good?
FT2 ( Talk | email) 23:03, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
<-I agree with Rockfang, automated blocks make me very nervous, if one cannot be virtually certain that false positives will not occur. I'm not familiar with the proxy that blocks open proxies, but if I understand open proxies correctly (and I'm not sure I do), the concept of a block on one's permanent record isn't an issue in that case. I'll toss out an intermediate option (intermediate between a bot blocking and an administrator having to manually block). Why couldn't a bot identifying what appears to be a blockable offense drop a notice on the talk page - saying something like "Attempted edit xxxx appears to be a violation for which blocking is warranted. If you think this is in error, please contact an administrator (you can do this with template adminhelp) within n days. If you do not provide a reason, you will be blocked. If an administrator reviews the edit prior to that time, you may be blocked sooner."-- SPhilbrick T 19:44, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
Not sure. Would requiring 7-10 days of discussion make the feature relatively useless, since it's needed (?) in specific situations where huge numbers of sockpuppets are appearing at that moment? On the other hand, would allowing it without such discussion make it too dangerous? Here's an idea (if it's established that this is needed at all; maybe just FT2's parallel proposal would be enough): Identify a number of admins who have experience with abuse filters and are trusted to do this. If an admin wants to make a filter to address an immediate situation, they get it (quickly) approved by one of those experienced admins, implement it, announce it on AN/I, and if there isn't consensus for it, it can be turned off again. ☺ Coppertwig ( talk) 13:06, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
In parallel with that, this may be an alternative approach that doesn't require approval for admin tool responses, and does not have a problem with error rates, and therefore is useful for many filters that would not meet the approval level above.
If the extension provides a page of "filter hits" with check boxes next to each (AJAX filterable by filter # or the like), then an admin can click on individual checkboxes or shift-click a range, to perform a specified admin action on all selected events or the users responsible. FT2 ( Talk | email) 23:45, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
Should all admins get it, or should it be separate from the admin flag? If the latter, how should users get the flag?
I think it would be very wise not to give the abilty to every admin, since abuse or misuse of it could mean serious harm. Only those that need it should have it, and there should be an informal (like WP:BAG nominations, maybe) vote/discussion about each person who requests the new user flag. -- Conti| ✉ 10:51, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
Note that the following so-far-unseen features apply to blocking abuse filters:
Time permitting, I am happy to implement features of reasonable complexity that improve the safety of blocking Abuse Filters. — Werdna • talk 09:00, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
Okay, let me ask one question of implementation. Assume somebody gets wrongly blocked by the abuse filter (not a common occurrence, but it will probably happen at some point). If a standard adminbot does that, I can go and unblock the user and block the adminbot so the problem doesn't happen again until it is fixed (and I'll talk to the adminbot owner about it). What can I do when I find that somebody was wrongly blocked by the abuse filter? I wouldn't be happy if I can't easily disable the offending filter until it is fixed. (That is our standard way to deal with bot problems: disable them quickly, investigate later before more harm has been done). So please make it easy to disable specific features of the abuse filter without waiting until somebody with technical knowledge shows up. Kusma ( talk) 16:06, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
I have started a thread at AN to discuss the discrepancy between current blocking policy and practice. I believe that much wider discussion of allowing automated procedures to block users is warranted. Delicious carbuncle ( talk) 16:34, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
Why can't we have the filters post to a central page, similar to bot-reported vandalism at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism? This way, the filter does not perform the block itself, but with hundreds of admins watchlisting the filters' reports page, we should have a very quick response time. -- Avi ( talk) 07:02, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
I've been advised to post this here as I've tried Main Page discussion and Main Page/Errors discussion which apparently was the wrong place. Just a minor thing but could the main page sidebar navbox titles (navigation, search, interaction etc.) start with an upper case letter to match the contents of the boxes? Just looks 'wrong' to me! The simple English version is the same but other language wikis appear correct. Many thanks for your time. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 08:37, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
I noticed that Wikia sites have the option to switch between the normal text editor and a rich text editor (when you edit a page, the content appears the same as when you view the page - you don't see the raw code). I think this would be a great option to have (especially on the discussion pages) and would give casual editors a much more user friendly option for editing. Any thoughts?-- SuaveArt ( talk) 09:58, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
I propose we place interwiki links to the simple English Wikipedia at the top of the "other languages" links. The current practise is to sort them alphabetically by language code, putting them somewhere in the middle to lower area where no-one notices it. Of course this would also have to be implemented technically, but I believe this can be done by just asking the maintainers of the interwiki bots and the interwiki bot framework to move the simple English link whenever they modify an article. — Ruud 17:50, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
I would additionally or alternatively like to propose making the links to the simple English Wikipedia stand out more by, for example, making them appear in bold. This can easily we done by adding a single line of CSS to the stylesheet. — Ruud 17:53, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
Just as a note, this has been proposed in Bugzilla and declared a WONTFIX. Any solution to do this would need to be in enwiki's site JS. ^ demon [omg plz] 14:23, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
How about using Template:Sister, like with Commons, Wikiquote, etc.? ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 07:44, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
I'm positive it's been proposed before, but it'd be nice if in your list of watched pages, there were some sort of marker to identify pages that are redirects. I dunno how technically feasible this is, but since the "what links here" shows it, I can't imagine it'd be TOO hard. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ ( talk) 20:08, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
As an improvement to the Article request page, how about an Article Launcher like YKTTW on TV Tropes? It could be useful for allowing I.P.s to start articles whilst limiting the problems that led to Anons not being able to create pages. Thoughts?---- Occono ( talk) 00:31, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
Is it needed? YellowMonkey ( cricket photo poll!) paid editing=POV 03:45, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
After carefully reviewing all the mentions of "Vector" on Village Pump pages and
[5], I propose that it replace Monobook as the default skin immediately for a period of one day after which the default shall be reverted, comments shall be examined, and further proposals including either general adoption and/or goals for the usability team will be in order.
HowDoIUseUnifiedLogin? (
talk) 17:58, 1 August 2009 (UTC) (sock of Nrcprm2026 --
Enric Naval (
talk) 02:24, 7 August 2009 (UTC))
There is absolutely no point in performing a one-day test. There's not a whole lot of point in performing a one-week test. The Foundation has poured thousands of dollars into the usability initiative that has created Vector. This skin, or another like it (certainly 'a skin other than monobook') will become the default skin on WMF wikis. What do we gain from yo-yo-ing between the two skins, other than confusion? If we anticipate problems (other than familiarity issues) with the transition, then that's evidence that the transition is premature. But this change is going to happen at some point AFAICT, despite the huge inertia of the projects. There's no point in rushing: if we can't agree that the time is right to transition permanently, then the time is not right to transition at all. Happy‑ melon 22:19, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
In light of the above I modify my proposal to simply cut everyone over if they have Monobook in preferences, with some kind of a warning in a site notice that they will have to change it back if they want to keep the customizations in their monobook.css or monobook.js file(s).
HowDoIUseUnifiedLogin? (
talk) 01:54, 2 August 2009 (UTC) (sock of Nrcprm2026 --
Enric Naval (
talk) 02:24, 7 August 2009 (UTC))
Out of curiousity, is there a compelling use case for Vector? By which, I mean is there something I can do with Vector that I can't do with Monobook? Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I've played around with Vector and generally find I like the feel of Monobook better, so I plan to continue using it for the foreseeable future. I did install the advanced editing toolbar though, that's nice. Dragons flight ( talk) 02:28, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
I tried out vector, and I see that is wastes more screen area at the top and bottom, making it harder to head articles on small screens. Changing the default skin would also disable all the user scripts people have in their monobook.js files. You would have to copy everyones monobook.js to vector.js, or make the user scripts not connected to the skin. Why is like that anyway? In general I think very few have heard of Vector, even among the most active Wikipedians. You should spread some awareness before you force the switch. -- Apoc2400 ( talk) 10:17, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
Ok, so, usability point: "use sitewide default" as a skin selection? --
Kim Bruning (
talk) 23:42, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
I'm assuming "Vector" is the same as the beta. So, how does one, using the beta, "unwatch" a page, please? - Denimadept ( talk) 23:38, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
This is a terrible idea, and it's being thrown around by a banned editor who uses socks to bounce around ideas
[6]. This guy was just trolling by proposing a preposterous idea. (P.D.: for why it's a preposterous idea, see
Usability testing and how testing is done in small groups before rolling huge changes to the world. This idea makes
Jakob Nielsen sad) --
Enric Naval (
talk) 02:24, 7 August 2009 (UTC) P.D.: actually, after seeing other off-wiki proposals by the person behind the account I think that there is the possibility that he is simply clueless to the point where his good-faith proposals are so terribly misguided that they look like trolling. --
Enric Naval (
talk) 18:54, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
The new toolbar does not work with the editing gadget and Greasemonkey script wikEd, please see Bug 20134. Cacycle ( talk) 19:25, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
As it was mentioned above that WM spent several thousand dollars on Vector, and this will become our default skin at some point, I have scribbled out WP:Vector. My thinking is that the project page will be for explaining vector in depth. What issues is it addressing? How is it addressing them? How much did we spend and where? And known bugs. The talk page would be for discussion of Vector errors or usability issues or help or whatever. There is never enough on-wiki documentation of our new software. This way there is no digging through talk pages or other wikis for basic info. Obviously I didn't put much info on that page, because I don't have any info on vector. Please assist in building this page. Thanks. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 13:51, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
It would be great if some of the stats from en.wikichecker.com could be incorporated into the History tab of articles. The key ones would be:
I have been using this site to check a number of the articles I watch, and think it would be an incredibly valuable resource for everyone from those who mainly read to those who mainly edit. The best way to expose all this information would be to roll it into Wikipedia officially rather than having an external site do it. Note I am in no way affiliated with wikichecker.com, I just think that the stats it presents are really useful! Cheers Mitsuhirato ( talk) 12:14, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
Input is required at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scotland#Scotland location to come to a consensus on which map best serves the purpose. Dr. Blofeld White cat 10:31, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
There's been many recent RFDs on so-called "vanity" redirects (not to single anyone out, but, for example: WT:SANDY -> User talk:SandyGeorgia).
What about allowing users to create shortcut redirects as subpages of the redirect pages " WP:K" (redirects to WP:Keyboard shortcuts) and " WP:U" (redirects to WP:Username policy).
Thoughts? – xeno talk 17:12, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive48#Userspace redirect where I proposed this back at the end of June. The discussion apparently went stale so I didn't pursue it. - 22:53, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
We could say that anyone can create U:xx redirects to pages they use a lot, just to save them typing in the search box, but that wouldn't give them any permanent right to the redirect (someone else might reuse it for something else at some point). The trouble with programmed aliases is that you make it impossible to create an article beginning with that alias should the need arise. (We ought to have personalized redirects that work only for you, but that would require software development...)-- Kotniski ( talk) 09:11, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
I'm not really seeing much tangible benefit to this proposal. Most user names are relatively short and easy to type as it is, and I don't see how there is any need for a shorthand method of typing them. Shortcut redirects also exist to help users get to policy/guideline pages whose titles may not be as memorable as their shortcuts; again, this should not be an issue for usernames. It strikes me as little more than a vanity redirect that has the potential to run into ownership issues down the line. Please forgive me if I'm being narrow-minded, but I just don't see how this would really benefit the community as a whole, rather than select users who manage to stake a claim to a short or a "fun" vanity redirect. Sher eth 13:19, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
Is there any way in which we could make link piping such as [[Link, to be piped|]] display itself as [[Link, to be piped|Link]] in references? Currently, the only way that we can pipe a link inside ref tags is to type the text to be displayed; if we simply put the pipe and then the brackets, it displays as if it were inside nowiki tags. For example, search for the words "Hopewell (Union Bridge, Maryland)" and "Mount Airy Historic District (Mount Airy, Maryland)" in the references section of this version of National Register of Historic Places listings in Maryland. Isn't there some way that we could make it work like in normal text, where all text after the first comma or first parenthesis is hidden? Nyttend ( talk) 14:19, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
I'd like to propose that pages containing or pertaining to sexual content be added to a Category:Sexual Content. This would make it a lot easier for filters. (I am by no means in favor of any kind of censorship). Any opinions on this? Support? Oppose? I'd like to hear what you think. Smallman12q ( talk) 16:02, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
reject early, reject often - rejected every time it comes up for the reasons mentioned above. I might consider it if we also add a category that is called Content that may be offensive to people who are afraid of clowns to all clown related articles. -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 17:48, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
Aw, hell, I had a long post all constructed, and then Xeno makes it obsolete by thinking of a better idea. Yes, rather than upset people by inserting hidden categories into articles, anyone who wanted to could create lists of articles that meet a certain criterion, and then scripts could perform an action based on those lists. There would really be no limit, and no disruption for others, if someone actually did create User:Example/Content that may be offensive to people who are afraid of clowns, and tweaked a master script with their own preferences, so they could see the content but not the images. True phobics could choose to not even be able to load an article listed in it.
Of course this would be inefficient if each user created their own lists, but very quickly people would stop re-inventing the wheel, and start using the same lists. Subpages of WP:Filtered content could be set up by any group interested in taking the time to do so, with absolutely no effect on those of us who don't want to filter anything, or those of us who do want to filter some things, but aren't scared of clowns. Or, less optimally but still possible, something similar to User:UBX could be used, and subpages of User:Filtered content could be used to set up lists of files there. Or something. anyway, this, to me, is the solution.
It would be nice if Wikipedia's community allowed this to be done in a semi-organized way, but I imagine a group of determined users could set something like this up by themselves. But I don't see any need to force it to happen off-wiki. This would be a true service to readers, and since that is our core business, we should help to make it as useful as possible. -- Floquenbeam ( talk) 18:24, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
I can just imagine all of the Muslims who will want to add all images of women's bare faces to be added to this list. Who then was a gentleman? ( talk) 20:29, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
To address those concerned with censorship, this would be strictly opt-in. Censorship is defined as "the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined by a censor." In this case, the censor would be the person themselves; essentially self-censorship.
Ideally, I'm hoping something along the lines of
Platform for Internet Content Selection can be created. Currently, you can indeed easily write a script to filter based on categories, so all this fuss regarding
Category:Content that may be offensive to (name of some group - Muslims, Christians, Scientologists etc)
is misguided.
Perhaps some kind of central list that more broadly categorizes content (based on certain criteria) can be designed.
I'm not looking to censor anything. I'm not here to create a legal disclaimer about content. I'm here to create a kind of central opt-in list that will allow users to better control the content they want to see. We have pop-up blockers and ad blockers, and so I'm hoping to make wikipedia more friendly to various people. Smallman12q ( talk) 20:46, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
Well instead of physically marking an article, perhaps a central list could be compiled. (Please Note:It could easily be done off wikipedia). Smallman12q ( talk) 22:26, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
Moved discussion to Village pump (proposals) as a more relevant forum. -- Cybercobra (talk) 22:46, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
Hey folks! Am I the only one interested in transferring quality referenced articles from German wikipedia into English? The project needs people who understand a bit of German and see the potential in translating quality articles from German wikipedia. I need your help guys! Dr. Blofeld White cat 19:16, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
Hi there. Well, the page was only created about 3 or 4 days ago. *g* Clicking through to your talkpage we learn you held off from posting to the wider audience here for a week, in order to sensibly focus discussion initially. I don't speak German so won't be able to participate, but as there're several other WikiProject Intertranswiki/$lang pages created around the same time my curiousity is piqued ...
You used the phrase "transferring quality referenced articles", Dr. Blofeld. Please could you say below whether the scope of these Intertranswiki projects is restricted to quality in terms of assessed (FA/GA-equivalents) articles or manually selected well-developed longer articles; additionally, could you clarify if stubs (a sometimes ambiguous term, so take it to mean <3–4 sentences, perhaps unref'd), be they geostubs or others, are definitively excluded from these Intertranswiki projects?
As you might know, there was a recent issue of 4,000 unreferenced German politician substub articles created, involving semi-automated tools. Of course that's since been taken care of, and we don't need to revisit specifics; ultimately a mass-deletion was used to deal with the most part. I understand it wasn't you who created them, as well as that the editor had done so in good faith, with blp management aspects seen only later. We've no suggestion biography articles are involved in this new initiative. Let me explain why I've brought it up: It's purely for illustrating considerations involved in large translation initiatives, often involving topics which may stay short for a long time, and even for which scarce English-language sources may exist for easy expansion by those who aren't fluent in the respective languages. I also appreciate your positive effort with this initiative is so as to approach content transfer *proactively*, allowing things to go smoothly.
Will article intertranswikifys be checked by an editor who has mother tongue fluency or is a native speaker, in the respective language? Additionally, do machine translations play a part in the intertranswikifying?
Last, my understanding is that while there's long been a category system to hold articles tagged with language expansion templates, no active accompanying WikiProject existed to collaborate and direct efforts. Looking at a couple of the categories, there're many tagged articles; I've tagged some myself in the past that remain unexpanded. In excess of 750 German and 7,000 French articles, for example, according to the cat pages. Is initial clearing of those by Intertranswiki projects planned, or is broader concentration on articles in foreign language Wikipedias without en-wp counterparts planned? Sorry, that's quite a few questions! Thanks – Whitehorse1 21:09, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
Uhhh. This is why I established a wikiproject To improve the quality of transwikying to avoid the creation of weak stubs. Please read the main project page 'carefully before jumping to conclusions. Dr. Blofeld White cat 16:50, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
I just dropped my keyboard and rolled back this page. I have seen a lot of people accidentally hit the rollback button on their watchlists, some without even noticing. How would people feel about a little JavaScript popup that asks if you yes or no if you want to actually roll something back? ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 04:40, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
importScript('User:Greg_Tyler/rollbackprompt.js');
to your
monobook.js page.
Greg Tyler (
t •
c) 16:40, 7 August 2009 (UTC)I absolutely recommend adding the following line to your monobook.js:
As long as JavaScript is activated (important point! initially I got bitten several times when it wasn't), it opens a popup where you can enter a custom edit summary. If you just enter return or click OK, you get the default summary. If you click Cancel, the rollback is cancelled.
This function allows the use of rollback for non-vandalism reverts, but you need to be verify that you really want to revert all consecutive edits by the last editor. Hans Adler 17:11, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
Please do not laugh at this proposal - this is only a suggestion. Today (August 6 2009), when looking at the "Deaths in 2009" category, I saw reference to this Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_(koala)
I saw that earlier today, this had the tag "This article is about a person who has recently died" but this has now been removed - and rightly so, I say, since Sam was a koala, not a person. However, how about introducing a tag which says "This article is about an animal that has recently died?" Wikipedia does list recent deaths of notable non-human animals, so perhaps there should be a tag for recent deaths for them, as there is for human beings who recently entered the pearly gates. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 19:40, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
Well, many thanks to the Wikipedian who operates under the uesrname "Canadian Paul" - there is now a category called "2009 Animal Deaths"! Perhaps this Wikipedian saw this discussion, or maybe this was just another Wikipedian thinking likewise. This could be the beginning of the type of thing I had in mind. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 20:38, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Imho it's unlucky that the first sentence of an article often contains so much clutter: synonyms, pronunciation, etymology, etc. I feel the beginning, the article's most prominent place, is being wasted in this way.
An example is the Holocaust article:
The Holocaust (from the Greek [ὁλόκαυστον] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup ( help) (holókauston): holos, "whole" and kaustos, "burnt"), also known as The Shoah ( Hebrew: השואה, Latinized ha'shoah; Yiddish: חורבן, Latinized churben or hurban) is the term generally used to describe ... |
The sentence "The Holocaust is the term generally used ..." is ripped apart, interrupted with several lines that do not help me understand what the Holocaust is. Some other bad examples would be Chernobyl, Uruk, or China.
My proposal is a template to put linguistic information above the main text. It would be similar to the disambig templates. Example:
Word origin:
Greek ὁλόκαυστον (
latinized holókauston): holos "whole" + kaustos "burnt" The Holocaust is the term generally used to describe ... |
The wiki markup would look something like this. I derived it from the markup on the Holocaust page.
{{lingu|origin|{lang|el|ὁλόκαυστον} ({lang|el-Latn|holókauston})|holos "whole" + kaustos "burnt"}}
|
How the template would exactly work is to be determined. People who know how to write templates: please weigh in.
Notes
I hope you like the idea. 84.130.125.27 ( talk) 03:12, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
I believe the main problem is that a lot of editors believe that starting with this etymology clutter makes an article look more official/correct/encyclopedic/.... In my opinion the MOS should strongly discourage long or complicated etymologies in the first sentence, and only allow etymologies there if they actually contribute to an understanding of the topic. An etymology box would be an attempt at a practical solution to the problem, but I am not sure that I like it. Some articles already have too many boxes. Hans Adler 09:20, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
Kyrgyzstan (pronounced /ˈkɜrɡ
ɪstæn/; KUR-gi-stan; Kyrgyz: Кыргызстан, [qɯrʁɯzstɑ́n]; Russian: Кыргызстан [kˠirɡˠisˈtan]), officially the Kyrgyz Republic, is a country in Central Asia. Landlocked and mountainous, it is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the southwest and China to the east. The ethnonym " Kyrgyz", after which the country is named, is thought to originally mean either "forty girls" or "forty tribes", presumably referring to the epic hero Manas who, as legend has it, unified forty tribes against the Khitans. citation needed The 40-ray sun on the flag of Kyrgyzstan symbolizes the forty tribes of Manas. [1]
Below a page are linked the categories to which it belongs. Clicking on a category name takes one to the category page, which is fine. However, If one clicks on the word "Categories" in front of the category list, one is linked to Special:Categories. I propose this to be changed to Category:Contents. Almost never is one interested in Special:Categories, but it can be interesting/useful to browse Category:Contents. -- Gerrit C U T E D H 14:18, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
No proposal here. Just seems an intuitive place to notify of this. I have made a template series that allows users to track the usage of substituted templates. As far as I know, there was no prior way to do this other than to search for unique text of a template, which was never much use and is now almost impossible since we instituted Google noindexing outside the main namespace. Anyone ever confronted with wanting to track a template that is normally substituted, head on over, create a "z number template" and add it to the syntax of the template you want to track. All the information is on the documentation page link above.-- Fuhghettaboutit ( talk) 02:48, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Despite that it is entirely irrelevant what the original motivation was for starting substitution, out of curiosity I did some digging. This is apparently the very first page where substitution is described, as written on December 6, 2003, which does not appear to support the notion that its first use had anything to do with server load (we could always ask Tim Starling, and then either you or I would be well within our inalienable rights to cry "nah-nah" at each other, but this is such a sidetrack).-- Fuhghettaboutit ( talk) 05:03, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
According to WebCite, "[i]n one study published in the journal Science, 13% of Internet references in scholarly articles were inactive after only 27 months." On Wikipedia we can update dead links, but we can't update links where the original page has vanished forever, and sometimes it can take months for someone to notice a link is dead. We also can't rely on archive.org, since it's unpredictable which pages (and which versions of those pages) it will archive. Ideally, Wikipedia should automatically store copies of the webpages it references, at the time that they are referenced, and provide a link to this "archived" version for every reference.
This isn't exactly an urgent matter, since at least in theory all of our web citations ought to include sufficient information to track down the original work if it still exists in some form. Nevertheless it would be really convenient, make fact checking easier, and would help articles be more resistant to the passage of time. I don't believe there's any copyright issue in mirroring exact copies of webpages, since a lot of reputable organisations like archive.org do it, although I'm not sure why this is. Dcoetzee 22:29, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
There are many new page patrollers. Is there anyone to patrol the patrollers?
There are many vandalism patrollers. Is there anyone to patrol the vandalism patrollers?
There are many rollbackers. Is there anyone to review the rollbacks, and perhaps rollback the bad rollbacks?
NotAnIP83:149:66:11 ( talk) 18:50, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
I think Talk Page is for actual discussions (and sometimes additional information and links), and "Discussion" links should not become blue just because of "Wikiproject" template. Majority of pages have such useless (for readers) talk pages. May be "WikiProject" templates should be either in main article (in collapsed state, for example) or in some dedicated namespace? _Vi ( talk) 20:34, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
Note to readers: See its origin, Wikipedia talk:Talk_page#Redlinks to useless content., for further information/clarification of this proposal. -- œ ™ 23:39, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
The
Ogg format is a stupid unfortunate choice. Period.
Reasons not previously discussed:
Reasons already discussed:
Do you want to have professional sounding audio on Wikipedia? Of course we do. Then, please, allow me upload this MP3 file (I just spent two hours recording and mixing). ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 13:08, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
<Look, maybe I shouldn't have mentioned pro audio because it just seems to have confused you all. My point was supposed to be this Wikipedia should conform to widely used standards because the network effect is very powerful. When something is popular, everyone works together to make it better and more useful. In the case of audio file formats, the effect is that every aspect of digital audio, from the studio to the D/A converter in your computer, is designed with MP3, AAC, WAV and AIFF in mind. This is just one more way that the network effect causes the most popular standard to become the best standard. Does that make sense? At any rate, I'm revising my proposal now that I understand what the actual issue is. See the next section. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 06:23, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
These file formats are listed as "free and open" in Audio file formats. Is this correct? If so, why can't Wikimedia allow us to upload these formats, if they are small enough? Wikipedia often needs little snippets of sound, and these files could be compressed later by bots or editors who like doing that kind of thing. What do you say? ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 06:23, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Here's a potentially useful compromise: since AAC can be redistributed without paying licensing fees, why don't we offer an option to automatically convert any OGG file to AAC on-the-fly for playback or download? This would let people who already own AAC tools take advantage of them, while still making OGG available to people who can't afford them. Likewise, we could accept uploads of AAC audio and automatically convert them to OGG on the server side. Dcoetzee 22:48, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
For anyone who cares there is a Flash Ogg Vorbis software player being developed for fun. — Dispenser 09:32, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
Thanks to everyone for helping me to hone my argument. I've entered an enhancement request into bugzilla. See bugzilla 20252. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 07:31, 15 August 2009 (UTC)