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As some will be aware, Pakistan articles are amongst the worst on wikipedia. Town and clan articles especially. Thousands of really "famous" people and places [1] I was wondering if you'd support me in a mass cleanup thing and greatly reduce the number of articles and leave only notable sourced settlements and those put on watchlists. The ones not up to scratch can be incubated or something. Its far more problematic having many of the articles than not, they attract some of the worst possible spam edits. I think we need to treat Pakistan as a special case, India too really given the large number of people with computer access and poor english but Pakistan for starters. I think the articles need strict regulation and reduced to a manageable amount which go on people's watchlists and then built up gradually with a standard of quality. It's of no use to English readers having these articles and them being plagued with crap. I'm considering organizing a mass AFD of Pakistan articles and then clean up of the more notable ones. The benefit of having Chak 68EB Dogaranwala and Trikhni with the "very famous people" and sheer "beauty" of the villages for instance, more problematic than its worth.There's too many articles to clean them all up. I think we need to strictly monitor Pakistan articles and wipe the slate clean.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 16:23, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
"Much of the unsourced information, even the irrelevant stuff, is harmless". Harmless? Here we are trying to build an encyclopedia of the highest quality, factually accurate and verifiable and it doesn't even remotely concern you that thousands of articles contain unsourced atrociously written text, full of POV, mistruths, adverts and inappropriate lists? Everybody else agree its harmless? I've had enough for today.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 22:25, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
Interesting to me is how Indian and Pakistani usage of English languate is different than British/American. For example, I noticed that families advertise their daughters for marriage in newspaper personal ads describing them as "homely", which in Br/Am usage means ugly, but there seems to mean a cross between "comely" (cute) and "good home-maker". Looking at some of the wikipedia articles using "famous", i suspect that the term means "notable". I myself use "notable" adjective fairly freely sometimes in assertions to throw off deletion-minded editors who can't see the implicit notability of less obvious assertions. Looks like saying a family is "famous" within a village is a way of saying they are notable, that the mention is worth saying.
A few commenters here, 20,000 miles away, have little to contribute in the development of these articles. Like Wnt said, it is wikipedia-as-of-2001 in these areas: let them develop. -- do ncr am 03:26, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
"perhaps you should consider cutting back or taking a break. It's strange, some admins want to whine and complain about being so terribly overworked," We care about building a half decent encyclopedia Gabe and we find what obviously amounts to thousands upon thousands of bog standard articles completely neglected and vulnerable to continuous quality degradation. As virtually nobody from India and Pakistan projects are actively working through cleaning them all up we have a huge problem which needs to be eradicated. The problem is massive and we simply cannot be expected to clean all of them up with just 2 or 3 of us. Not that we need a "wiki break" but we want a decent encyclopedia.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 09:45, 25 October 2012 (UTC) ♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 09:34, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
Comparing the Beatles to some village in Pakistan, seriously.... Want to clean up User:Legoktm/Pakistan/Famous then? I've done 3 and already have a headache. ♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 10:25, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure how I feel about nuking stuff like this, but to add to the cleanup pile: [6] ("beautiful"/"nice"/etc towns and villages in India/Pakistan), [7] india/pakistan articles containing many hyperbolic words, [8] "hard-working" castes, [9] "most ___ village"s in india/pakistan.... (these searches could be improved by combining with wikipedia's category tree, but this is a rough idea of some problem areas.) this list could go on and on. Calliopejen1 ( talk) 19:45, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
Discussion is in progress here. Churn and change ( talk) 22:04, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Most articles in wikipedia, especially the important ones, are far too long and too complex to be understood by the average and below-average readers, who constitute a more than substantial portion of our readers. Adding an infobox at the top of the article linking it to the corresponding 'Simple English' articles [for only those Simple English articles which are rated 'Good' or above] will help a majority of the readers to understand the topic in simple words. {If required, they can always refer back to the original article to go in-depth} Inamos ( talk) 19:07, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
You'll already find interlingual links under "languages" on the left-hand column. Simple English is one of those languages. I don't know why we'd need more than that. -- Philosopher Let us reason together. 22:42, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
...the project is largely dead.: Actually this is going to be good for whole of the WMF including enwp. enwp is visited by a very large number of potential editors who falls out because they have got nothing to edit. Seeing the Simple allows them to contribute into it. (For an outsider, the only way to expand Wikipedia is by adding more info and correcting visible problems - which can be done easily in Simple). just after having a number of edits and days, they will learn more about this and hence become a part of the wikimedia community. After all, there are no side-effects for enwp. So IMHO, what should be discussed here is the way we should give the emphasis to Simple Discuss for the best way possible.
... why we'd need more than that: All of the languages given in the language box except the Simple are only useful to a very few part of the readers. But Simple English is helpful to all the people coming here in enwp (even to the BE 1500 people as they too can read it if they want to have a simpler version.) And no one, unfamiliar with WP, would expect a Simple English Wikipedia under the language box··· Vanischenu 「m/ Talk」 23:36, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
Afrikaans Alemannisch العربية Aragonés ܐܪܡܝܐ Asturianu Avañe'ẽ Aymar aru Azərbaycanca Bamanankan বাংলা Bân-lâm-gú Башҡортса Беларуская Беларуская (тарашкевіца) Български Bosanski Brezhoneg Català Чӑвашла Česky ChiShona Cymraeg Dansk Deitsch Deutsch Eesti Ελληνικά Español Esperanto Euskara فارسی Français Gaeilge Gaelg Galego 贛語 한국어 Հայերեն Hrvatski Ido Bahasa Indonesia Interlingua Interlingue ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ/inuktitut Ирон IsiXhosa Íslenska Italiano עברית Basa Jawa ქართული Қазақша Kinyarwanda Kiswahili Коми Kreyòl ayisyen Kurdî Лезги Latina Latviešu Lëtzebuergesch Lietuvių Lingála Lumbaart Magyar Malagasy മലയാളം मराठी مصرى Bahasa Melayu Mirandés Монгол မြန်မာဘာသာ Nāhuatl Nederlands Nedersaksisch नेपाली नेपाल भाषा 日本語 Nnapulitano Norsk (bokmål) Norsk (nynorsk) Occitan Oʻzbekcha पाळि پنجابی Tok Pisin Plattdüütsch Polski Português Ripoarisch Română Runa Simi Русиньскый Русский Саха тыла Scots Shqip Sicilianu Simple English SiSwati Slovenčina Slovenščina Soomaaliga Српски / srpski Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски Basa Sunda Suomi Svenska Tagalog தமிழ் Taqbaylit Татарча/tatarça తెలుగు ไทย Тоҷикӣ ᏣᎳᎩ Türkçe Українська اردو Tiếng Việt Walon Winaray ייִדיש Yorùbá 粵語 Žemaitėška 中文 Apteva ( talk) 02:52, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
[I have not tried to specifically verify if all the information asked for is present or not, but certainly almost all of it is. In any case, the general case is clear. Quite a handful of our readers find wikipedia hard to cope with. I am positive other reader feedbacks should also throw up similar results] Inamos ( talk) 19:44, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
[offtopic] Aren't we supposed to vote here? Support
Inamos (
talk) 19:44, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
hey guys, i have used wiki for a while now and love it. i wanted to let you guys know, in case you do not, the "pronunciations" on pages need to be auditory. in other words, if i browse a page and do not know how to pronounce whatever it is, I count on Wiki. i see the speaker symbol, and "pronunciation", after the subject name but have never encountered audio. this leaves me having to consult a second source. ONE STOP SHOP thanks guys — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.147.72.145 ( talk) 06:01, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
I've nominated Wikipedia:Wikipedians who are not a Wikipedian for deletion. Since it's likely to be watched by a partisan crowd, I think that a notification here is adequate. Tijfo098 ( talk) 22:42, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Hello, I was reading an article and realized that I didn't remember what Theocracy meant and it was a link in the article, so I clicked it to go to the article on Theocracy to better my understanding of the article I was originally on. Well instead of switching to a new article or in a new tab leading to thousands of tabs, for things we need a quick definition or understanding of why not have a quick on mouse over description?
I've made this example from a screenshot to help out: http://imgur.com/2DMoh
With regards, guesshurley / Brad.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.147.222.123 ( talk) 02:51, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Often times on this encyclopedia, inconsistent information is found buried somewhere deep in articles. This information may be out-of-date or sometimes plain inaccurate with respect to other mentions of the same information found on the encyclopedia. To resolve this problem, I propose that all sentences with an "As of" expression should be tagged, and then sorted according to the content of the rest of the sentence by an automated program. Through a centralized interface, perhaps named Special:InfoTags, users could edit tags so that information on any one event that is mentioned in several articles is consistent throughout articles. A bot could do the final work of inputting a user's edit.
Are there any ways in which this could be improved? Wer900 • talk • coordination consensus defined 19:12, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Hi! I'm really missing to know which educational subject the article I'm reading belongs in. This would make it easier for alot of younger readers where to find more information about the particular article subject. For example, right now I'm reading an article on neurons. It would be useful to know if this is an article belonging in the educational field of psychology/neurology or biology ect. In this case this might be obvious, however when reading other articles this information could be useful to gain a better way of categorizing knowledge and also to have a easier access to similar knowledge by reading books, taking courses or deciding on further educational choices in the future.
Thank you,
- Shellpeck 01:40, 16 November 2012 (UTC)01:40, 16 November 2012 (UTC)~~
Like all modern websites, search functionality at the bottom of an article can be super helpful. After a long wiki entry, to scroll all the way up is a huge hassle to search for something else! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.238.186.43 ( talk) 20:20, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Of possible interest: I have proposed shutting down English Wikinews. 86.152.61.18 ( talk) 01:16, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
Hello, this is my first suggestion, and I'm very new here so excuse any errors in my post. I looked a little to see if it had already been suggested, but apparently it hasn't. I don't know if any of this is possible under the MediaWiki software used here, but my proposition is that, if through consensus, an article is deemed to have inaccurate info, be too long, too short, have too many grammar errors or any other such problems, instead of deletion, it should undergo a overhaul process in which users who are not logged in cannot by any means access the article (or can only see the most recent "adequate" revision, with a corresponding template warning content may be outdated), and users who are logged in can read (the latest revision, with a warning that the article is being overhauled) and edit it. This way, we limit editor access to a bad article without either deleting it (making it impossible to edit) or leading readers to such bad quality articles.
What do you all say?— Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.65.157.142 ( talk • contribs)
The current policy reads:
- A2. Foreign language articles that exist on another Wikimedia project.
- Articles having essentially the same content as an article on another Wikimedia project. If the article is not the same as an article on another project, use the template
{{ Not English}}
instead, and list the page at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English for review and possible translation.
All I want to do is fix what I think is a minor loophole in the WP:CSD policy as pertains to articles written in foreign languages and already available on other encyclopedias: As the policy currently stands, you can copy and paste the text of another Wikipedia's article into one here, and, as soon as the article is tagged with the {{ db-a2}}template, copy that same text into Google Translate and replace the foreign-language text with your result. The patrolling editor is faced with a dilemma: WP:TRANSLATION tells them that "Wikipedia consensus is that an unedited machine translation, left as a Wikipedia article, is worse than nothing"; if this page were not otherwise a speedy-deletion candidate, the logical (and recommended) action would be to revert the machine translation and add the page to Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English. But reverting to the original (preferred) version would require re-nomination, since the page still meets CSD. Re-nomination, though, has two problematic consequences: The re-nominating editor could easily be said to be gaming the system, since criteria for speedy deletion are meant to be narrowly construed, and it's highly frowned upon to nominate a page for deletion after making the edits that made it eligible; additionally, admins are instructed not to delete pages that have salvageable histories, and since machine translation is not a criterion, the machine-translated version would be considered salvageable. In other words, the patrolling admin has to revert to the version that is against consensus.
What I propose is simple: that a sentence be added to the end of the A2 criterion reading "This may also be used for articles that previously met the A2 criterion, and since have been unambiguously translated by a machine, with no other significant changes," or words to that effect.
I'd like to emphasize that last clause, too: Under this proposal, if you put in your machine-generated text, and then set to copy editing, so that by the time an admin looks at the page (or another user sees it and reviews the speedy deletion rationale), if you've improved it enough that it can no longer be described simply as "machine-translated," then the criterion no longer applies, and the nomination may be struck down. This is on the pattern of A3 deletion, where it's not at all uncommon for one to find that since the placement of the template, some substantive additions have been made to the article, and to strike down the nomination even if the page is still majorly in need of cleanup. (This is a pre-emptive counterargument to any charges that this amendment will result in deletions of bad pages that still deserve to be kept.) — Francophonie&Androphilie ( Je vous invite à me parler) 02:11, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Personally, I would rather have no article than a version from Google Translate on en.wiki. Given different linguistics, we should not be encouraging the dumping of such machine translations in the first place. -- MuZemike 07:28, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
I guess that Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 91#Speedy deletion of machine translations might be somewhat related... -- Martynas Patasius ( talk) 20:31, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia has very high quality mathematics and computer science articles, as long as you have the proper prerequisite knowledge. Otherwise, much time is spent clicking terms to understand, and being sent into a link-maze. The solution to this is where an article is of technical nature, perhaps include simple English as a header link, but absolutely include a tree of prerequisites to truly understand the article.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.205.158.7 ( talk) 08:37, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
Just had a thought. Sometimes you want to quickly identify the status of something in a process - say, the completion amount of a particular day at AFD. So you go to that page's AFD log and there's a great big table of contents. Short of looking down the page there's no way to know what the status is of each item in that TOC. My suggestion: a magic word that allows the appending of text to the display of a heading in a TOC. Something like this:
== what links here ? == Ref Proposal: I intend to prepare course materials for a local sixth form college and could find it useful if the "what links here - tool box" option contained an alphabetical sort function. Thanks, Libby :Hello, Libby! I think that pages in the "What links here" are ordered by date of creation. I agree that other sorting options would be cool, for example alphabetical, last edit and size. The software where Wikipedia runs is [[MediaWiki]]. Can anyone guide us to make the proposal? Thanks! --[[User:NaBUru38|NaBUru38]] ([[User talk:NaBUru38|talk]]) 20:43, 23 November 2012 (UTC) ::[[Bugzilla:2306]] includes a request for alphabetical sorting. [[User:PrimeHunter|PrimeHunter]] ([[User talk:PrimeHunter|talk]]) 20:59, 23 November 2012 (UTC) == Featured template == Like [[Wikipedia:Featured articles|featured articles]], [[WP:FL|featured lists]], [[WP:FPO|featured portals]] and such, I propose creating a "featured template". It will have a criteria, as does other featured processes, and there will be a nomination centre to nominate your templates, as done for other featured processes. I am interested in hearing people's thoughts! Thanks, <font face="Impact">[[User:TBrandley#top|TBr]][[User talk:TBrandley#top|and]][[Special:Contributions/TBrandley|ley]]</font> 18:39, 15 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Support''' as nominator. <font face="Impact">[[User:TBrandley#top|TBr]][[User talk:TBrandley#top|and]][[Special:Contributions/TBrandley|ley]]</font> 19:32, 15 November 2012 (UTC) * '''Support'''. More love for templates! Choosing the criteria will be interesting, considering the incredible range of options. — [[User:Hex|<span style="color:#000">'''Hex'''</span>]] [[User_talk:Hex|<span title="Hex's talk page"><span style="color:#000">(❝</span>'''<span style="color:#900">?!</span>'''<span style="color:#000">❞)</span></span>]] 19:02, 15 November 2012 (UTC) * '''Oppose''' Featured content is meant to highlight WP's best work for our ''readers''. Templates are back-end aspects that are generally invisible to our readers. There's also a far smaller set of editors that can comment on the quality of templates compared with images, lists, and articles which generally any editor can. --[[User:Masem|M<font size="-3">ASEM</font>]] ([[User Talk:Masem|t]]) 19:11, 15 November 2012 (UTC) ::What's wrong with having things ''internally'' featured? Which is what I understood the proposal to mean. Featuring templates to the outside world wouldn't make much sense. — [[User:Hex|<span style="color:#000">'''Hex'''</span>]] [[User_talk:Hex|<span title="Hex's talk page"><span style="color:#000">(❝</span>'''<span style="color:#900">?!</span>'''<span style="color:#000">❞)</span></span>]] 19:20, 15 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Moral support''' But I have my concerns: featured content is intended to show the best of the encyclopedia, and templates are not encyclopedic content. Templates are part of the maintenance and navigation facilities of it. Although, the existece of featured portals makes me think that this could be a very good idea. — [[User:Hahc21|<font color="#333333">'''ΛΧΣ'''</font>]][[User_talk:Hahc21|<font color="#336699">'''21'''™</font>]] 19:13, 15 November 2012 (UTC) * '''Oppose''' I pretty much agree with Masem here. The featured processes are intended for content and I do not see why a reader would be interested in a template (a reader might be interested in the information the template holds in the context of the article the template appears in, but not in the actual page in template namespace). It would be like highlighting the footnote system used in a scientific paper, when actually the content of the paper is what matters. -- [[User:Toshio Yamaguchi|Toshio Yamaguchi]] ([[User talk:Toshio Yamaguchi|tlk]]−[[Special:Contributions/Toshio_Yamaguchi|ctb]]) 20:09, 15 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Why?''' I am not seeing the purpose here, so can you expand on what role you believe such a program would fill? I can't see any reason to support without a good rationale to go with it. [[User:Resolute|Reso]][[User Talk:Resolute|lute]] 20:13, 15 November 2012 (UTC) **+1. [[User:Legoktm|Legoktm]] ([[User talk:Legoktm|talk]]) 20:15, 15 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Oppose''' - Templates are uncool, and adding them as featured content won't help. To encourage template developers for their tough work, I'd prefer to award [[Template:The Template Barnstar|The Template Barnstar]]. --[[User:NaBUru38|NaBUru38]] ([[User talk:NaBUru38|talk]]) 20:14, 15 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Oppose'''. Although the proposed featured process may be the same as others, template purpose is wholly different. Featured content is for the ''readers'' and readers don't read templates. Templates are navigational and informative guides -- back-end aspect, as Masem put it. They are neither unique in where they appear, nor are they presented on their own to the readers. Unless we modify what out featured content represents (and I, personally, don't think we should), I don't think featured status on templates should attempt to serve the same purpose. Highlighting good technical editor work can be done by numerous awards, as mentioned already. — <small> [[user:Hellknowz|<font color="#B00">HELL</font>KNOWZ]] ▎[[User talk:Hellknowz|TALK]]</small> 20:35, 15 November 2012 (UTC) * '''Comment''' Significant discussions, over the years: [[Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 May 5#Featured Template]], [[Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 September 1#Featured Template]], [[Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive P#Featured content according to namespaces]], [[Wikipedia talk:Featured articles/Archive 4#How about "Featured templates"?]], [[Template talk:Template-Class#Overhaul]], and [[Portal talk:Featured content/Archive 2]] (3 threads). —[[User:Quiddity|Quiddity]] ([[User talk:Quiddity|talk]]) 22:10, 15 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Comment''' Whilst searching for the list above, I found these template given as examples; or comments on their talkpages suggesting "if there were such a thing, this would be a Featured Template!": [[Template:Solar System]], [[Template:IPA chart vowels]], [[Template:USAF]], [[Template:Islamic culture]], [[Template:Cold War]], [[Template:US War on Terror]], [NOTE: these might be drastically different than when originally pointed at as exemplary...]. Just FYI/curiosity as to what might be nominated. —[[User:Quiddity|Quiddity]] ([[User talk:Quiddity|talk]]) 22:10, 15 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Oppose''', per past discussion, and comments in this thread.<br />However, two ways to recognize good template work: *#Use them as examples in help/guideline pages. *#Leave talkpage feedback/praise, and give barnstars to individuals. :HTH. —[[User:Quiddity|Quiddity]] ([[User talk:Quiddity|talk]]) 22:10, 15 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Oppose'''. What is next, featured sentence, or featured word, or featured punctuation? Templates are simply internal features and not something that is ever going to be displayed on the main page as an example of Wikipedia's best work. [[User:Apteva|Apteva]] ([[User talk:Apteva|talk]]) 22:21, 15 November 2012 (UTC) *:Easy now. There's no good in mocking the idea. It's been suggested many times before, and has a reasonable basis. Templates ''are'' fundamentally distinct entities, that ''could'' be judged on a series of objective&subjective criteria. As the old discussions suggest, it's comparable to asking for a Featured Disambiguation Page, or Featured Category (and equally complicated, and unlikely to ever exist). Templates are not "simply [an] internal feature", they're (usually) part of a gigantic reader-facing topic-navigation-system (with exceptions in meta/parser templates and similar). Plus not all "Featured" items are displayed on the Main Page.<br /> Anyway, please be nice. Sugar vs vinegar, and all that. —[[User:Quiddity|Quiddity]] ([[User talk:Quiddity|talk]]) 01:27, 16 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Oppose''' - We need less templates. Let's not glorify them. [[User:Ajraddatz|Ajraddatz]]<small> ([[User Talk:Ajraddatz|Talk]])</small> 02:20, 16 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Oppose''' because a template is not content, it's a directory. —<B>[[User:Torchiest|Torchiest]]</B> <sup>[[User talk:Torchiest|talk]]</sup><sub style="margin-left:-3ex;">[[Special:Contributions/Torchiest|edits]]</sub> 14:24, 16 November 2012 (UTC) :A portal could be considered as a directory but yet it can be featured? --[[User:J36miles|J36miles]] ([[User talk:J36miles|talk]]) 19:02, 16 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Support'''. Seems like a good idea from an editor standpoint. --[[User:Nouniquenames|<font color="red">No</font>]][[User Talk:Nouniquenames|<font color="green">unique</font>]][[Special:Contributions/Nouniquenames|<font color="blue">names</font>]] 04:46, 17 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Oppose''' - Templates are utility or convenience tools for editors, not readers. The whole point of featured content is to show all the readers our best encyclopedic work, and only a few would be fascinated by a template with a ParserFunctions hack that performed [[mw:StringFunctions#.23explode:|string splitting]]. <span style="font-family:Euclid Fraktur; background:white;">→[[User:Σ|<font color="#BA0000">Σ</font>]][[User talk:Σ|<font color="#036">σ</font>]][[Special:Contributions/Σ|<font color="#036">ς</font>]]. <small>([[User:Σ|Sigma]])</small></span> 02:54, 18 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Oppose''' only because it essentially ''discusses internal Wikipedia processes'', and the first rule of <del>fight club</del> is don't talk about <del>fight club.</del> I'm reminded of a notion I (and others, probably) had years ago: '''Featured edit''', in which some particularly high quality article improvement with edit summary is highlighted as Wikipedia best practice. Unfortunately, that's also <del>fight club.</del> --[[User:Lexein|Lexein]] ([[User talk:Lexein|talk]]) 03:35, 18 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Comment'''. Since there are no major policy objections, why not just host a "featured templates" subpage in your userspace? Editors who are interested in the real technical side would be able to read it and contribute, and if it got popular enough, ''then'', perhaps you could re-introduce it as a non-userspace suggestion (but I wouldn't hold your breath on it ever being a main-page section, as cool as I think that could be).''' — <u><font color="#000000">[[User:Francophonie&Androphilie|Francophonie&Androphilie]]</font></u> ''(<u><font color="#000000">[[User talk:Francophonie&Androphilie|Je vous invite à me parler]]</font></u>)''''' 17:37, 18 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Oppose''' I think templates are useful, but trying to emphasize and promote them is a bad idea. Wikipedia is still about articles. [[User:Shooterwalker|Shooterwalker]] ([[User talk:Shooterwalker|talk]]) 20:34, 22 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Oppose''' I don't get what could make a template featurable. They're pretty basic and we already have enough of them.--[[User:Astros4477|<span style="color:#FF8C00">'''Astros4477'''</span>]] ([[User talk:Astros4477|<span style="color:#00A550">'''talk'''</span>]]) 20:36, 22 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Oppose''' Templates have almost nothing separating each side of their spectrum. If anything, there's [[Wikipedia:Featured topics]]. [[User:Buggie111|Buggie111]] ([[User talk:Buggie111|talk]]) 05:47, 25 November 2012 (UTC) == Notability across Languages == Has data ever been collected in regard to how notability is defined across different languages (therefore cultures)? There are many things that English speakers may consider notable but that other cultures may find insignificant, and vice versa. I'm intrigued to find out if this sort of information can be meaningfully collected, and if it would be in any way insightful.--[[User:Coin945|Coin945]] ([[User talk:Coin945|talk]]) 14:15, 22 November 2012 (UTC) '''Addendum:''' E.g. if an article is deleted in one language, is it deleted across other langauges? Maybe they all go to AFD, but only some languages agree it should actually be deleted.--[[User:Coin945|Coin945]] ([[User talk:Coin945|talk]]) 14:29, 22 November 2012 (UTC) * ''In my opinion'' (it would be useful to know if this is shared by Wikipedia policy or not), notability is not something which is limited by geography or language, in the same way that it is [[Wikipedia:NTEMP|not limited by time]]. This gets to the reasoning behind there being language-specific wikipedias; is it because they differ based on notability of topics or to provide knowledge collection/dissemination portals which mate up with how we communicate with one another? "Wikipedia" refers to all of the language-specific 'pedias together, not to each language-specific one in isolation. --User:Ceyockey (<small>''[[User talk:Ceyockey|talk to me]]''</small>) 14:27, 22 November 2012 (UTC) *:However, each language Wikipedia has their own policies. While of course notability isn't defined by language, one language's Wikipedia may be stricter than another in the what it considers notable in the first place. [[User:Melodia|♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫]] ([[User talk:Melodia|talk]]) 16:57, 22 November 2012 (UTC) One example: Here, notability is defined by coverage in sources. In Wikipedia in Spanish, the discussions move to discuss if the subject "deserves" being notable or not (which is of course highly subjective, but that's the way things are done in there). In any case, remember that "notability" is ultimately a concept generated by wikipedia for wikipedia, watching but not taken from the real world out there, so the influence of regional cultures is relative. [[User:Cambalachero|Cambalachero]] ([[User talk:Cambalachero|talk]]) 18:41, 22 November 2012 (UTC) * Is there any collation of what constitutes notability in the different language-wikipedias? A gathering of that information might be quite useful + interesting. --User:Ceyockey (<small>''[[User talk:Ceyockey|talk to me]]''</small>) 13:04, 24 November 2012 (UTC) The only rule I think we can apply at en.wiki is that if a topic exists as a sourced-based notable topic - even if those sources aren't in English - we would consider it notable here since we don't discriminate based on the language of sources. --[[User:Masem|M<font size="-3">ASEM</font>]] ([[User Talk:Masem|t]]) 18:43, 22 November 2012 (UTC) Tye--[[Special:Contributions/208.104.133.116|208.104.133.116]] ([[User talk:208.104.133.116|talk]]) 01:45, 23 November 2012 (UTC) :The only case of deleting articles across the different-language Wikipedias, that I know of, is in the case of hoaxes and the like. [[User:Chris857|Chris857]] ([[User talk:Chris857|talk]]) 03:36, 23 November 2012 (UTC) :: I recall having seen a few instances at Articles for Deletion in which, for example, an article on a Russian magician was deleted on notability grounds on Russian Wikipedia and this effectively triggered a successful challenge on the same basis for the same subject on English Wikipedia. This is not common, however, and the case starts fresh at En-WP — it is not a slam dunk for deletion. [[User:Carrite|Carrite]] ([[User talk:Carrite|talk]]) 15:55, 23 November 2012 (UTC) == Third thing {{TOCLABEL:reopened}} == Text
which would render something like:
Contents (hide)
- 1 First thing (closed)
- 2 Second thing (open)
- 3 Third thing (reopened)
Wouldn't that be kind of handy? There would likely be all sorts of uses. The technique might need to be restricted to use outside article space only, though, I think. — Hex (❝?!❞) 15:59, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
<span style="display:none">...</span>
can be used to achieve what you want, but it has some issues such as changing the anchor so section links from other pages may no longer work. And unlike your example, the whole title looks the same in the TOC. As an example I added a hidden "(open)" to this section title. It is displayed in the TOC.
PrimeHunter (
talk) 23:46, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
Hi, all, after reading this ANI thread, I started wondering why we don't have an alternative to attention-getting blocks. The first thing that I thought of as a way to address this would be a standardized bit of Javascript that could be inserted into the problematic user's common.js page. The current talk banner, while very noticeable to me, might not be so noticeable if someone doesn't know to pay attention to it, and I wonder if either a larger banner (perhaps something with "position:fixed") or a popup like alert() might do the trick a bit better. The idea would be that, when there's a disruptive but possibly good-faith editor who's not responding to their talk page, an admin could try adding this Javascript to their common.js page instead of blocking them, and removing it once the user's acknowledged the talk page. I feel that this would be a better, less bitey alternative to blocking, as it seems like many new users interpret blocks negatively, as evidenced by calling them "bans" (only anecdotal evidence for that, but there are probably diffs for it, if needed). Obviously this wouldn't be a bulletproof solution: it fails for anyone who has Javascript disabled, and there are some editors who would ignore the talk page even if they knew it was there. But I think it could be worth a try. Thoughts? Has anything like this been tried before? Writ Keeper ⚇ ♔ 20:15, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
&action=edit
but not other pages? Building off Writ Keeper, would it be possible to exclude user talk pages (not just the talk page for the user viewing the JS, but other users') from the code? And finally, would it be possible for the JS code to work like the SOPA protest thing, i.e. covering the content of the page and leaving a "Please look at
your talk page" message? If we can say "yes" to all of the questions, we might basically be able to prevent (not just discourage) these users from editing problematically without impacting their ability to read pages.
Nyttend (
talk) 04:43, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
I'd like to introduce the Template:Version template to Wikipedia with the goal to establish one standard for version history tables (or lists). It simplifies creation of release histories, standardizes release stages and makes the content more accessible.
Please comment on the template talk page (there already is some discussion). Thanks for your contribution. Jesus Presley ( talk) 04:20, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
User: Dr Blofeld is about to pass this milestone. It deserves a suitable medal. Someone needs to design it, if they haven't already. 7&6=thirteen ( ☎) 19:57, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
To link to the proper John Smith, we link, for example, to John Smith (explorer). But in a wikiarticle, we usually don't want the (explorer) to show, so we set the link to John Smith (explorer)|John Smith (all in double square brackets, of course). I suggest creating a notation of John Smith {explorer}, with curly brackets (braces), for use in the link instead. On display, the {...} part would not show, but on clicking the link, the reader would be directed to the proper John Smith (explorer) article.-- BillFlis ( talk) 13:50, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
[[John Smith (explorer)|]]
will save as [[John Smith (explorer)|John Smith]]
. A new syntax in the saved text is unneeded and would cause confusion. It would require changes to the MediaWiki software and a large number of programs which process wikitext. Don't mess with compatibility without good reason. MediaWiki versions are powering thousands of other wikis than Wikipedia. Wikitext is often copied directly between them.
PrimeHunter (
talk) 14:09, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Made a proposal at here for a concise edition of wikipedia which is formatted much like an old book encyclopedia with the bare main facts and a smallish word limit for articles as a reference point. Can't imagine all would support, but any input from anybody would be warmly welcome. The idea is for a general reference which is consistently of similar short length and quality and providing the most important facts without having to scan huge articles to retrieve them as leads on articles are very inconsistent. Please discuss there rather than here. ♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 20:20, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Perhaps a page could be created for this entry?
Gertrude Roggendorf, in religion, Sr. Anna Huberta, was born as the second of eight children July 31 1909 in the former mining town of Mechernich in the Eifel region of Germany bordering Belgium. At 17 she entered the Congregation of the Daughters of the Cross of Liège, a sisterhood founded by the Belgians Fr. Habet & Sr. Jean Haze. After a 2 years novitiate, Gertrude Roggendorf took her first vows, taking the name Anna Huberta in religion. For some time she worked in Münster, Westphalia, in a children's home. In 1932 Anna Huberta was sent to India at the age of 23. After her eternal vows in 1934, she was made head of the St. Catherine's Home, an orphanage for girls in Bombay, then completely rundown. St. Catherine's was founded by Ida Dickenson in 1922, but when she could no longer manage it, she handed it over to the Archbishop of Bombay, who called in the Daughters of the Cross of Liège in 1927 to manage the Home. The Home moved location several times until it found its present location on a plot of land donated in Andheri. Over several years, Anna Huberta built up the St. Catherine's Home from the grassroots into a caring home housing about 1,000 girls. To give orphans and foundlings a legal status, Anna Huberta adopted thousands of them. At the beginning of the 1940s, Anna Huberta delegated responsibility to the older children for the education of the younger children. Some of these girls approached Anna Huberta with the request to be formed into a religious congregation to help her with her work and to perpetuate her mission under the motto, "A life for love." On March 27, 1942 the first members took the vows forming the Society. The members of the Society trained as nurses and as healthcare volunteers. Sr Anna Huberta Roggendorf died of lung cancer on July 5, 1973 in Shraddha Vihar, the first Motherhouse of the Society in Bombay.
The Society of the Helpers of Mary, about 300 strong, operate several facilities worldwide, such as orphanages and homes for derelict and abandoned children, leprosy homes, homes for HIV victims, Aged Homes, etc.
In the Bombay Metropolitan Region, these include the "Ma Niketan" (Mother House) on Pokhran Road in Thane, built on land donated by Ms Diwaliben Mohanlal Mehta and the extensive Mukta Jeevan Ashram (Free Life) in Vehloli near Vashind.
http://www.helpersofmary.org http://www.maniketan.org
http://bartholomaeus.org/EN/Helpers_of_Mary_Historie.html
Wiki info@ told me to post here as they don't answer direct emails (understandable) so here it goes...
I'm reaching out to you all as you're the pioneers and now experts of open-source information sharing/building... and this idea would need massive effort (probably help from Google, Apple or another tech company). I'm starting with you all as I hope, if the idea has any merit, I'll have a better chance of generating some interest, than the 100's or 1000's of people working on countless other things over at the tech development companies. So the idea...
The Human History Project
The shortest way I can describe it would be a completely interactive map of the world that would display the history of recorded human events. It would have a sliding time bar that would move forwards and backwards in recorded history. Depending on the level of detail (and I propose that detail be ALL history) this would almost be like mapping the human history genome. It's such a massive project I think it would need to be broken down into stages...
Stage 1 - I'm thinking of a fairly simple interactive Google Maps program. The default map would be today's world, today's political/national borders with a timeline at the bottom of the screen. The user would be able to control the timeline, drag it from today back to the origins of history. Maybe for stage 1, the timeline is set at every hundred years... or on significant shifts of national borders (major wars of expansion). On the global scale the map would be almost a blur as tribes become city states and then kingdoms and eventually empires and nations. It might look like this, but with the whole world and dating back to the origins of time and the user has full control over the timeline, able to move it forward and backwards - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ievGPT-FaSY
Stage 2 -
You can zoom in to any continent, region, all the way down to individual city states or tribal lands. This is where the map/global/tool really takes off... and will need an immense amount of help and coordination between programming and history/archaeology folks. This will add a lot of detail. The controllable timeline will also need to be reduced from 100's of years to something closer to 5-10 years.
Stage 3 - (final stages begin, incredible complexity) Much deeper... now that you've zoomed into very very minute areas, there are date-stamped articles on all of the major historical events of the time/geography.... EVERYTHING. The timeline is now reduced down to days (would work on a changeable scale in case you just want major events. You can set the time slide-bar to days and then see "Declaration of Independence Signed" pop up on July 4, 1776 and it links several article (Wikipedia, academic sites, books, etc) all on the subject... move it forward and you get all of the battles of the War of Independence. Move forward to 1885, say April 15th and you see a flag pop up saying Lincoln was assassinated. Now extrapolate this detail to all over the world. Every nation, kingdom, city state that ever existed. Everywhere. The Map would be offering up flags practically every day in recorded history, and everywhere. This could also work to show a very different or unique view of human history. For example... the user moves the timeline forward and sees that China develops gunpowder around 800 AD, at the same time Charlemagne has united France and expanded its borders to include all of modern day Italy... and Teotihuacan, a once proud, powerful and perhaps the most influential city state in Americas, mysteriously falls or fades away (and rises again as the heart of the Aztec empire).
This would add very different perspective all historical events.
Stage 4 – (Massive, possibly impossible detail... but never doubt open source, right?)
You can zoom in on individual cities. The timeline now links to the significant news of the each date, perhaps citing or linking to scanned/archived newspapers for that particular city (or whatever recorded information that was the accepted historical record for that location at that time). This might be a pipedream (probably is)… but with an open source project, shoot for impossible and end up with something like Wikipedia, the most comprehensive, evolving and updating encyclopedia in human history. This project would be putting the information that we already have into full motion and making it geographically relevant and increasing its accessibility in a whole new way.
This could also, potentially, make every history text book ever written obsolete (if Wiki hasn't done that already).
So that's the rough sketch. I'm not expecting a response, but I figured I'd shoot for the moon here. I'd be happy to just to see if something like this is already in the works. Keep up the great work and thank you for your time.
-Hokie200proof
It's been a while I was thinking of exactly the same project. And now I find that it is more expedient to make it simplier. I mean not using the Google maps, but make a general map which is gonna change depending on the time line. So here is my vision: 1) there is a time scroll 2) there is a zoom scroll
and what has not been said: 3) there is a general map of the world in "point of time X" where each country and each city name has a link, so by clicking on the country you go to this article, which contains a more detailed map of the country. Though what happens to the map is simply automaticaly zooming it in. Then clicking let's say on the city name, you get to the city article. 4) watching a map you can change the time period and the map will change respectively. 5) so basicaly the quantity of the maps depends on how many changes occured during the whole period of time. Adding a new city means creating a new map and locating it in it's time. Though the serious changes of the maps will not be that much... not more than 100 hundred I suppose and mostly they will be located in the ancient epoch.
The open (technical) question is: how are we going to draw the maps, because there should be a better option to mark the borders and cities. Though if no ideas appear, at least we can use some internet available maps like a basis, change them "by hand" if it is neccesary and then upload then to edit in the wikipedia.
For this a "map creating/changing facility" should be created and this doesn't actually seem to be a mass. I've already got some sketches. Whom they should be addressed to? Is there an option to upload them here? or ...?
Does anyone know what is the next step to move this project forward? Joy Dorien ( talk) 01:49, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
This section and the essay is a result of previous discussions held at The Village Pump. The prior discussion is worth reading to add some extra context. It shows initial thinking and how that thinking has moved on as a direct result of that discussion |
This is a topic that concerns me. I'm raising it here to see if the community will visit WIkipedia:Cyberbullying, an essay I created some time ago, but whose relevance has been re-emphasised by the Suicide of Amanda Todd. My purpose in raising it in this forum is to ask editors to read the essay, to massage it into a suitable shape for becoming a policy or at least a guideline, and to then formalise it as such.
It should be clear to all that, though I drafted it I am not wedded to any of the words or thoughts in it. I'm hoping very much to get it more exposure and to bring wiser eyes than mine to bear on the issue. Far better than feedback here is feedback and substantive editing there, though some messages here to keep this current for a while and prevent early archival would be useful. Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 23:01, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Let me attempt to clarify matters. I think we should set Willy on Wheels aside, though as a notorious piece of Wikipedia history.
Wikipedia is much used in education, often during lessons, as a tool to learn how to research, to use the internet wisely (unwisely?), and as a vehicle to learn how to create co-operatve projects. Homework is researched here despite our being 100% certain that we are not the end source for research. In short, kids use the site, and use it a lot.
We see edits here from time to time, sometimes during lessons, that victimise a particular named individual, the person I have styled in the essay as John Victim. We tend to revert them on sight, often issuing warnings, sometimes blocking the editor, usually IP only. That is good practice, but simply addresses the evidence of the bullying, for bullying it is, and not the outcome. We, sitting in our offices, studies bedrooms, living rooms, hotel rooms, as experienced (or inexperienced) WP editors, have absolutely no idea what is going in in John Victim's life, and can quite reasonably consider that we don't care. And we do not always have to care, nor do all of us have to care.
For those of us who care, whatever our reasons for caring, we need to know how to proceed, how to focus our care into a positive outcome. We need to know what we should do next when taking personal responsibility for acting, and at what point we should consider this to be, for example, a credible threat of personal harm and alert the WMF emergency email hotline.
Returning to John Victim, I hope the essay covers what his state of mind may or may not be. Reading the suicide of Amanda Todd one can see how cyberbullying plus her own actions and state of mind drove her to suicide. This makes me wonder if I've been able to explain how Wikipedia may be used for cyberbullying in this short answer to you. It's also not the talk pages that really concern me, but main article namespace with sniping attacks, even ones that are removed fast, perhaps even removed by the person placing them. I'm not unduly concerned about protecting editors here. We have things that do that job. I'm concerned about how material placed here affects those not here.
There is a similarity with Biographies of Living Persons, an area where we are fast, at least in theory, to remove potential libels. But we remove those from articles about the living person. There we have done our job by doing so. But, when someone attacks John Victim in (say) an article about a school chemistry project relevant topic, we have no way of following through.
I'm clear that every editor will not want to follow through, too. This is for those who see the need to follow through, or choose to make it their part time duty. The great majority of our folk here have no interest at all in such matters.
Have I come anywhere near answering your question? Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 10:04, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
There have been some extremely useful and sensitive edits made so far. Those who have read the initial draft are likely to find the current state somewhat altered and to their interest. It;s easy to see how, as the initial drafter, I had a reasonable idea but was standing far too close to it to bring it towards completion. Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 08:47, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
I have been known to revdelete some of the things you talk about if I feel it was a result of cyberbullying. Cyberbullying can be distinguished from the run of the mill "Foo is gay" sorts of vandalism. It often is posted over a string of pages that are related to one local area. I have doubts about if the examples that you posted fall under the OS policy and I have further doubts that it run of the mill vandalism is worth the extra effort of removing from public view. I do not think that we should alert schools unless there is a long term problem. -- Guerillero | My Talk 21:41, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
I have started a RFC regarding allowing bureaucrats to remove the bureaucrat bit, and regarding the regranting of the bureaucrat bit (to bring it into line with the recently-passed policies for administrators). Please see Wikipedia talk:Bureaucrats#2012 bureaucrats RFC. -- Rs chen 7754 01:48, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Hey, I was just thinking that the {{ peacock}} template should be deprecated because it basically means the same thing as the {{ advert}} template. Articles that are written like an advertisement usually contain wording that merely promotes the subject without imparting identifiable information (which is what Wikipedia's "peacock" policy means). So, instead of the {{advert}} template looking like this:
This article contains content that is written like
an advertisement. |
It should look like this:
This article appears to be written like
an advertisement. This includes wording that
promotes the subject in a subjective manner without imparting real information. |
Hope to hear from you guys! Interlude 65 17:56, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
All of the details can be found at the BRFA and I'm looking for consensus here on this task. Thanks. Thine Antique Pen ( talk) 15:20, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
Hi. There's an ongoing discussion about standardizing U.S. Supreme Court case articles here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases#Project's style guide and article standardization. Any and all are welcome to comment and collaborate on forming a style guide for U.S. Supreme Court case articles. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 20:49, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
P.S. I tried advertising this discussion at Template:Centralized discussion, but the entry was rejected. If anyone knows of other places where this discussion should be advertised, please let me know or feel free to post there yourself!
Hi,
I would like to propose a solution as I think the content as it is currently available should remain free and the same, BUT wikipedia should be more independent from donations.
we should have an interactive way of accessing this content in a members section: more intuitive, accessible and fun to go navigate around or to download content. This section would be available through a monthly membership fee.
I have a few ideas on how to make this happen, let me know if you're interested!
Hadrien— Preceding unsigned comment added by Hpiana ( talk • contribs)
Hi guys! I see what you are saying. No worries.. Well the ideas I had in mind were more in the targeting of the information which the user is looking for. Here we just have a search bar. Why not have a tool where you can scroll and select Years or period / domain (litterature, music, art, history, science etc) / geographic location (as narrow as a town and as wide as the world).
The system would then pull all of the information corresponding to your search. This would serve for presentations, research, etc.
Let me know what you think!
Hadrien
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Dear Sirs,
I am one of the many readers that enjoys enormously your webpage and I deeply thank for the monumental effort you have done developing such a knowledge source.
Although widely spread and even accepted by many, there is a mistake when referring to people or events of the United States. On most articles it is used the word American which literally means from America (the continent) instead of USONIAN, which is the correct word when referring to an event, person or place from the United States . American is to the American continent as Asian is to the Asia and European is to Europe.
Certainly, all Usonians are Americans but not all Americans are Usonians. Hope this note can help to improve even more the quality of Wikipedia.
Thanks for considering this suggestion.
Alberto Martinez— Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.68.248.34 ( talk • contribs)
Hi Alberto, American also means citizen of the United States and is most commonly used. a·mer·i·can/əˈmerikən/ Noun: A native or citizen of the United States— Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.244.217.50 ( talk • contribs)
"Usono" is Esperanto for the United States of America, and "Usonano" is Esperanto for what most of my fellow citizens of the U.S.A. persist in referring to as an "American". "Usonia" was, as has been stated, Wright's coinage, and has no other common useage. -- Orange Mike | Talk
Seeing the OP has a Spanish-looking name, it may be worth pointing out that there is a cultural issue involved here (which confused the hell out of me as well originally): in the English speaking world, there is no such continent as “America”. They consider it to be two continents, “North America” and “South America”. Link: Continent#Number of continents.— Emil J. 16:58, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
As wikimedia doesn't provide yet a wiki to publish orginals works (essays, novels, songs, etc.) here is a proposal: Wikikultur. I hope some people here may be interested. -- Psychoslave ( talk) 16:54, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
While I was away a bunch of images I used to ask questions on the Reference Desk (dating some years back) were deleted without my knowledge. The reasons for their deletion included "bad JPG" and not perfectly following the guidelines for chemistry drawings, and not being used in the article space. These are ridiculous reasons when the images were created to ask a Reference Desk question. Why should an image used to ask a question on the Wikipedia:Reference Desk be deleted for not being in articlespace? It makes no sense, do people intentionally want to break the Ref Desk archives. There are tons of other Ref Desk images that have been deleted simply because IFD doesn't seem to recognise the existence of the Reference Desk. John Riemann Soong ( talk) 05:15, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Should we put up a site-wide banner related to Creative Commons's 10th anniversary, should we do something else to mark the date, or should we not do anything? If we decide to do something, then how will we do it technically?
Creative Commons, an organization that makes free content licenses (Wikipedia is published under one of them) is turning ten years old this week. Will we be doing anything? David 1217 What I've done 04:32, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
The storage and dissemination of data in the form of torrents can solve several problems at once:
Unlike Wikipedia resources from other types of distributed resources of the torrent is that the objects of Wikipedia (articles or parts of articles, attachments) may be changed to the original source (central server). Therefore, wiki torrent client should receive notification of a change of objects handed out, and in the event of changes exclude the object from the distribution until it is updated from a central server. Data integrity of the torrent system is checked by computing the hash stored files. In the setting of a wiki torrent client, you can specify limits on the amount of data storage and upload speed, CPU load. In accordance with user central server caches the user's computer a piece of data.
Probably reduce the load on the central server will significantly reduce the cost of maintenance for the Wikipedia community. In addition, in the event of data loss central servers (up to destroy the central server) and the problems of recovery from backups Wikipedia will continue to operate successfully. Caches of data stored in user, you can quickly re-create the temporary (and in the case of destruction of central servers even permanent) central server.
Weak Link offers: development of methods for handling web-browser to the torrent networks. Likely to have to develop a browser extension that allows for accessing the resource Wikipedia (page file) to request the resource (and its components) in the first place in the torrent network, rather than on a central server. But it is preferable to do without extensions, for example using a client-oriented tools java: java on, there are several projects working with torrents (for example,
Java Bittorrent API). Or, the ability to download the requested resource object can provide installed on your computer wiki torrent client. Needless browser extension can be used as a Wiki-BitTorrent client.
--
Lebedev IV (
talk) 22:54, 7 December 2012 (UTC) originally posted on talk page at 22:47, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
Hi, I've opened a proposal to redesign our image policy structure at WP:VPP#Image use policy. All input welcome there. Grandiose ( me, talk, contribs) 19:58, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
This is one of those things I would link to on Twitter, therefore displaying Wikipedia's need for a tweet button. 67.142.179.23 ( talk) 21:58, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
NO, for the same reason you wont see youtube videos. There cant be any promotion of multinationals on Wikipedia. Not even if they would pay the 100 million such a deal would be worth. 84.106.26.81 ( talk) 20:05, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
I agree that Wikipedia should help readers share the content. But social network buttons help them monitor traffic, and Wikipedia should prevent that. -- NaBUru38 ( talk) 18:22, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Hi all,
Whenever I use the "
E-mail this user", I find myself confuzelled by how to add links to articles, editors and external resources. This is 2012, almost 2013, and yet the "E-mail this user" still generates messages in
plain text. HTML formatting
functionality in posting messages has been around for, I dunno, since 15 years ago, maybe?
Text font, size, colours and other chrome would be good too, but would not be, ahem, a mission-specific core business requirement.
Surely this should be a cinch for the developers to code?
--
Shirt58 (
talk) 10:57, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
text/plain
. HTML is for webpages. —
Tom Morris (
talk) 09:55, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
Dear Wikipedia,
I believe that you can increase your fundraising effectiveness. If you just had a Bar/Meter there will be a sense of accumilation by watching the fund requirements being fulfilled. For extra boost, use a volumetic flask with extra small base. Danger: a base too wide and large will depress us all. Preferably, the base is already filled with funds already raised, indicating the hard part is already over. Also, make sure the flask or fancy meter is not intrusive; a good spot could be under the wikipedia globe on the left side of the website. Also it may not be optimal to place the flask inside the "please help" tab since most people will not be motivated enough to click it.
Every day/week you should change the color indicating how much money was donated so that everyone can compare to the previous days. Each color should be at least 1/2 an inch tall to show that progress is being made.
What you can also do is take the amount of funds recieved, say one day's worth and take an average so that each minute or second it seems like people are donating to our beloved wikipedia. Not only that, raise 2-4x more than needed so you can have some accumiliation. (unless insolvency gives you all a thrill.)
Good luck with your endeavors and thanks for wikipedia! If you do decide to take this advice, I would be very grateful to know whether this tactic was successful and how much it increased donations.
I think it's a neat idea. I always wonder how close we are to meeting our goals, or even what our goals are. CharmlessCoin ( talk) 20:05, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
Apologies if this is the incorrect place to put this discussion, but I am uncertain as to how to proceed when trying to set up a task force under a WikiProject that is rather inactive (and therefore, it's unlikely I can gauge the amount of interest / appropriateness for the suggestion). So the following is taken from the talk page of WikiProject Poetry ( found here):
The Canterbury Tales is one of the most important collections of stories in the English language. And it's also in an absolutely dire state on Wikipedia. Many of the articles are poorly-written stubs, inconsistent with one another and lacking much good information — or seemingly a way forward.
I propose that we set up a task force that would help to coordinate the improvement of articles relating to The Canterbury Tales (27 altogether); since I've proposed it, I would be willing to start setting up the framework and other admin business.
Who would be interested in participating?
MasterOfHisOwnDomain ( talk) 20:01, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
I am writing to inquire about a small problem I ran into with Wikipedia, and I will try to present my issue in a way very easy to comprehend (*context*, *problem*, *suggestion*).
The present tools in Wikipedia are very advantageous. Upon reading an article, it is common to click on a hyperlink of a keyword that is not fully understood. Once then this keyword is understood from reading its article, the reader can go back to the original article to continue reading. I will use this tool often. However, upon using this tool and reading another article to better understand the first article, I find myself needing to read a third article just to understand the second article. I hope this makes sense to you. I'm sure it is a common occurrence among people using Wikipedia.
This aforementioned process will happen to me often. However, the process will repeat until I have many Wikipedia tabs open within my browser. I've noticed that this noticeably slows down my laptop. Also, cycling through tabs can be slightly inconvenient. Though this is not a huge problem, I realized it is one with a simple and easy solution that I was hoping Wikipedia might incorporate within its design.
Instead of having multiple tabs open within a browser, it would be nice if Wikipedia conveniently kept track of the links users opened from in an article. This information could then be displayed on the sidebar of Wikipedia's web page in a tree data structure format.
I realize this idea is already present in Wikipedia in the button View History. But my suggestion is to do with optimization and convenience. And the View History button load a new page to show you your past pages, and they aren't in hierarchical order. Hierarchical order meaning -- pages are listed under the pages that the user hyper-linked to them.
For example, if you were previously researching baseball the other day and ran out of time but didn't finish, it would be nice to be able to continue researching baseball by logging onto Wikipedia and viewing the hierarchy of pages you viewed.
ex.
Baseball
batter Babe Ruth bat bases home plate pentagon
Your consideration and any feedback would be greatly appreciated
Thank you— Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.19.105.183 ( talk) 03:50, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I propose closing the Geopolitical, ethnic, and religious conflicts noticeboard. It is a useless (by "useless", I mean no negative effects will happen if it is closed), and it is relatively inactive. For a dispute resolution noticeboard, even if there is a thread, the actioning on the thread takes too long, if at all. The disputes in the area of the noticeboard is also being "absorbed" by other noticeboards, such as AN(/I), DRN, MedCom, and ArbCom (I am not proposing to merge the noticeboard into these, but stating that it is already). In all, the noticeboard is just more bureaucracy. ~~ Ebe 123~~ → report 23:28, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
This seems a likely successful proposal. If it is successful, what would we do with the page? Mark it: Historical? Historical with soft redirect? Redirect? If redirect, where to? -- Izno ( talk) 02:43, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
I don't have time to make a detailed proposal, but can I draw the community's attention to Suicide of Amanda Todd. This concerns a Canadian teenager who appears to have committed suicide last October following cyber-bullying on the internet. The case attracted wide-spread sympathy and is certainly notable enough, especially following an intervention from the Canadian PM, to merit an article.
Presently however, following an AfD on grounds of single-event notability, the article, its very title, focuses on her suicide rather than on Amanda herself. My worry is that this may not be responsible given the potential for teenage copycat suicides. Guidelines for the responsible reporting of suicides are published in various countries. These are a set prepared by the Canadian Psychiatric Association. Its three lead recommendations concern 1. Details of the method 2. The word "suicide" in the headline 3. Photos(s) of the deceased. I have just deleted a reference in the article to the means employed (the Talk page discussion queried why Canadian newsapapers did not give details of the method apparently unaware that Canadian media guidelines prevent them form doing so), in so far as "suicide" is in the title of the article this can be said to transgress the headline recommendation, while the article carries two photos of Amanda. There are also arguably issues with "Admiration of the deceased", "Romanticised reasons for the suicide" and "Simplistic reasons for the suicide".
With some 50% of teenagers (in the UK, no doubt similarly elsewhere) reportedly experiencing on-line harassment and cyber-bullying, I judge the problem acute. There have been some truly dreadful epidemics of teenage copycat suicide in the UK and elsewhere. I suggest the article title is restored simply to "Amanda Todd", that details of her sucide method are kept out of the article and that that images of her are removed at least in the short-term future.
A search on Wikipedia article titled "Suicide of [a named individual]" show that there some 12 articles with this title, of which 9 appear to relate to cyber-bullying of teenagers. I have posted on the Talk page my concerns about that.
In Suicide of Amanda Todd a Wikipedia administrator appears to have determined that the article should be "non-biographical", whatever that might imply. In my view the article, on the contrary, should be a straightforward biographical notice. Amanda Todd's life is either notable or not. JaniB ( talk) 17:54, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
This renaming thing is not a good proposal at all and is contrary to what we try to get away from in this project, these in-the-news one-event people. Amanda Todd as a person is not in the slightest bit notable, but the event itself has been deemed notable by our editors. And really, it isn't even the suicide itself that's a big deal, kids cap themselves every day. It is the aftermath and ensuing controversy about those alleged to have baited and blackmailed, and those who outed the identities. Tarc ( talk) 20:25, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
I'm not aware of any evidence that says that not reporting means of suicide does anything to reduce its incidence. In fact, concealing suicide has been shown to be counter-productive in some situations. In my country, Australia, governments and media have been moving away from the idea of hiding-the-truth-in-order-to-protect-the-children. "The kids" discuss suicides in full detail on social media. I've seen it first hand. And Wikipedia is not censored. Can those wanting censorship on this issue produce evidence that it achieves anything at all? HiLo48 ( talk) 21:41, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
What you're proposing to change is WP:BIO1E. Which I suspect is being cited in the AFD mentioned by the OP. -- Izno Repeat ( talk) 22:38, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
I feel that in general, an event involving a person (e.g. "X of John Doe") should just have the article at the name of the person, unless the person already has their own article. Yes, we do want to be focusing on the event, which is notable, rather than the person, who is non-notable. And I don't think anything should change content-wise in what we do with regards to WP:BLP1E. But I just feel that naming something "Suicide of Amanda Todd" rather than "Amanda Todd" smacks of being overly pedantic. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:33, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
........between 1984 and 1987, journalists in Vienna covered the deaths of individuals who jumped in front of trains in the subway system. The coverage was extensive and dramatic. In 1987, a campaign alerted reporters to the possible negative effects of such reporting, and suggested alternate strategies for coverage. In the first six months after the campaign began, subway suicides and non-fatal attempts dropped by more than eighty percent. The total number of suicides in Vienna declined as well.1-2 Research finds an increase in suicide by readers or viewers when: • • The number of stories about individual suicides increases3,4 • • A particular death is reported at length or in many stories3,5 • • The story of an individual death by suicide is placed on the front page or at the beginning of a broadcast3,4 • • The headlines about specific suicide deaths are dramatic3 (A recent example: "Boy, 10, Kills Himself Over Poor Grades")
It looks like several of you haven't read the guidelines conveniently linked above by Wer900. I recommend having a look at them. Among other things, they summarize the evidence that reporting suicides has a measurable, proven effect on increasing suicides and specifically on increasing copycat suicides.
Many (but not all) suicides can be prevented. Most suicides are not committed by a determined person who will kill himself one way or the other. Suicides are largely method specific (if I can't do it by ___, then I won't do it at all) and are very impulsive. The typical suicide attempt involves less than five minutes between the first thought about committing suicide and the attempt. That's why making people go to two drug stores to buy enough over-the-counter drugs to kill a person has been so effective at cutting the suicide-by-poisoning rate in the UK. By the time the person gets to the second store, he's changed his mind.
So, yes, I think we can take reasonable, ethical steps to reduce our (IMO minor) contribution to the suicide rate. We can do that by providing general information rather than detailed instructions on methods; we can eliminate sympathetic statements about how it's baffling and tragic and everyone is sad (a desire for sympathy of the " Pore Jud Is Daid" type is motivating to some would-be suicides, and besides, it's not encyclopedic); we can even delay adding material until it's firmly established, rather than trying to keep up with all the breaking news; we can be strict about long-term notability and excluding flash-in-the-pan media frenzies. There are many things we can do that will produce less damage and better, more encyclopedic articles. Just changing the article title, however, is likely to be unimportant. The media guidelines aren't about whether you label something as a suicide; they're about whether you make killing yourself sound like a way to meet emotional needs. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 04:30, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
I propose to complete my edits here by citing Death of Kurt Cobain. Here we have a case of an event that was widely publicised as a suicide at the time and decided as a suicide at coroner's court. Nevertheless doubts subsequently surfaced that it was a suicide and not misadventure, and so we have "Death" rather than "Suicide". A coroner's court has yet to rule on Amanda Todd's death. There was a press release that a preliminary investigation has determined it a suicide, but the coroner stressed that it would be a long and complicated investigation. A verdict of misadventure is still possible. Another reason to prefer "Death of Amanda Todd" rather than "Suicide of Amanda Todd".
I thank respondents for their comments. JaniB ( talk) 13:23, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
This proposal arises from an absurd conflation of newspaper headlines and prime-time news reports, with the mere titles of a microscopic handful of articles. The actual likelihood of a suicide-prone teen stumbling on one of these articles and being influenced in any way are so infinitesimal as to make it embarrassing to think that we are actually talking about it seriously. -- Orange Mike | Talk 06:04, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
Personally, I think that this discussion has an impact beyond its original subject matter of teenage suicides, and should be the starting point for a new interpretation of Wikipedia policy. So many individuals here think that the purpose of NOTCENSORED is specifically to offend the sensibilities of various political, religious, or ethnic groups that are not the majority of Wikipedia editors (white Christian males). Living comfortable lives as members of the majority ethnic group in liberal democracies, many Wikipedia editors fail to realize that their edits have a farther-reaching effect that can cause communal violence and hatred in less-developed parts of the world. While I do believe that we should do our duty in ensuring that our articles fulfill all necessary encyclopedic purposes, I see no value in deliberately adding material beyond this whose sole purpose is to incite and inflame. That Wikipedia is not censored should be held in comparison both with WP:DICK and the actual impact that Wikipedia has on the world. We should, by all means, fulfill our encyclopedic purpose; but I don't think that there is any (moderately interpreted) religion on this earth or otherwise sane value systems that espouse deliberate incitement of communities because of some twisted view on the right to freedom of speech.
Now watch me be pelted with tomatoes for stating that in material that incites hatred and division, we should fulfill our encyclopedic purpose and no more. We should not pander to any one group, but we should not inflame them more than necessary either. Wer900 • talk • coordination consensus defined 03:23, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
I think it's time this topic is revisited. The Local Embassy is an unfortunately-named apparatus designed to facilitate aid to "international users". There are a myriad of reasons why this "embassy" ought to be renamed or wholly remodeled; although this is evidently a Wikimedia project and could be extended to other wikis, change regarding this should be initiated here.
Currently, the Local Embassy is in need of a rename and some revisions. I would suggest renaming the page "Interlingual coordination". Although kind of bulky, redirects could be created featuring names more accessible to non-English speakers; as mentioned above, "international editors" on Wikipedia are likely fluent in that particular tongue. At any rate, a change will be preferential to the status quo regarding the project. dci | TALK 00:44, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
As some will be aware, Pakistan articles are amongst the worst on wikipedia. Town and clan articles especially. Thousands of really "famous" people and places [1] I was wondering if you'd support me in a mass cleanup thing and greatly reduce the number of articles and leave only notable sourced settlements and those put on watchlists. The ones not up to scratch can be incubated or something. Its far more problematic having many of the articles than not, they attract some of the worst possible spam edits. I think we need to treat Pakistan as a special case, India too really given the large number of people with computer access and poor english but Pakistan for starters. I think the articles need strict regulation and reduced to a manageable amount which go on people's watchlists and then built up gradually with a standard of quality. It's of no use to English readers having these articles and them being plagued with crap. I'm considering organizing a mass AFD of Pakistan articles and then clean up of the more notable ones. The benefit of having Chak 68EB Dogaranwala and Trikhni with the "very famous people" and sheer "beauty" of the villages for instance, more problematic than its worth.There's too many articles to clean them all up. I think we need to strictly monitor Pakistan articles and wipe the slate clean.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 16:23, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
"Much of the unsourced information, even the irrelevant stuff, is harmless". Harmless? Here we are trying to build an encyclopedia of the highest quality, factually accurate and verifiable and it doesn't even remotely concern you that thousands of articles contain unsourced atrociously written text, full of POV, mistruths, adverts and inappropriate lists? Everybody else agree its harmless? I've had enough for today.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 22:25, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
Interesting to me is how Indian and Pakistani usage of English languate is different than British/American. For example, I noticed that families advertise their daughters for marriage in newspaper personal ads describing them as "homely", which in Br/Am usage means ugly, but there seems to mean a cross between "comely" (cute) and "good home-maker". Looking at some of the wikipedia articles using "famous", i suspect that the term means "notable". I myself use "notable" adjective fairly freely sometimes in assertions to throw off deletion-minded editors who can't see the implicit notability of less obvious assertions. Looks like saying a family is "famous" within a village is a way of saying they are notable, that the mention is worth saying.
A few commenters here, 20,000 miles away, have little to contribute in the development of these articles. Like Wnt said, it is wikipedia-as-of-2001 in these areas: let them develop. -- do ncr am 03:26, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
"perhaps you should consider cutting back or taking a break. It's strange, some admins want to whine and complain about being so terribly overworked," We care about building a half decent encyclopedia Gabe and we find what obviously amounts to thousands upon thousands of bog standard articles completely neglected and vulnerable to continuous quality degradation. As virtually nobody from India and Pakistan projects are actively working through cleaning them all up we have a huge problem which needs to be eradicated. The problem is massive and we simply cannot be expected to clean all of them up with just 2 or 3 of us. Not that we need a "wiki break" but we want a decent encyclopedia.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 09:45, 25 October 2012 (UTC) ♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 09:34, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
Comparing the Beatles to some village in Pakistan, seriously.... Want to clean up User:Legoktm/Pakistan/Famous then? I've done 3 and already have a headache. ♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 10:25, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure how I feel about nuking stuff like this, but to add to the cleanup pile: [6] ("beautiful"/"nice"/etc towns and villages in India/Pakistan), [7] india/pakistan articles containing many hyperbolic words, [8] "hard-working" castes, [9] "most ___ village"s in india/pakistan.... (these searches could be improved by combining with wikipedia's category tree, but this is a rough idea of some problem areas.) this list could go on and on. Calliopejen1 ( talk) 19:45, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
Discussion is in progress here. Churn and change ( talk) 22:04, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Most articles in wikipedia, especially the important ones, are far too long and too complex to be understood by the average and below-average readers, who constitute a more than substantial portion of our readers. Adding an infobox at the top of the article linking it to the corresponding 'Simple English' articles [for only those Simple English articles which are rated 'Good' or above] will help a majority of the readers to understand the topic in simple words. {If required, they can always refer back to the original article to go in-depth} Inamos ( talk) 19:07, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
You'll already find interlingual links under "languages" on the left-hand column. Simple English is one of those languages. I don't know why we'd need more than that. -- Philosopher Let us reason together. 22:42, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
...the project is largely dead.: Actually this is going to be good for whole of the WMF including enwp. enwp is visited by a very large number of potential editors who falls out because they have got nothing to edit. Seeing the Simple allows them to contribute into it. (For an outsider, the only way to expand Wikipedia is by adding more info and correcting visible problems - which can be done easily in Simple). just after having a number of edits and days, they will learn more about this and hence become a part of the wikimedia community. After all, there are no side-effects for enwp. So IMHO, what should be discussed here is the way we should give the emphasis to Simple Discuss for the best way possible.
... why we'd need more than that: All of the languages given in the language box except the Simple are only useful to a very few part of the readers. But Simple English is helpful to all the people coming here in enwp (even to the BE 1500 people as they too can read it if they want to have a simpler version.) And no one, unfamiliar with WP, would expect a Simple English Wikipedia under the language box··· Vanischenu 「m/ Talk」 23:36, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
Afrikaans Alemannisch العربية Aragonés ܐܪܡܝܐ Asturianu Avañe'ẽ Aymar aru Azərbaycanca Bamanankan বাংলা Bân-lâm-gú Башҡортса Беларуская Беларуская (тарашкевіца) Български Bosanski Brezhoneg Català Чӑвашла Česky ChiShona Cymraeg Dansk Deitsch Deutsch Eesti Ελληνικά Español Esperanto Euskara فارسی Français Gaeilge Gaelg Galego 贛語 한국어 Հայերեն Hrvatski Ido Bahasa Indonesia Interlingua Interlingue ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ/inuktitut Ирон IsiXhosa Íslenska Italiano עברית Basa Jawa ქართული Қазақша Kinyarwanda Kiswahili Коми Kreyòl ayisyen Kurdî Лезги Latina Latviešu Lëtzebuergesch Lietuvių Lingála Lumbaart Magyar Malagasy മലയാളം मराठी مصرى Bahasa Melayu Mirandés Монгол မြန်မာဘာသာ Nāhuatl Nederlands Nedersaksisch नेपाली नेपाल भाषा 日本語 Nnapulitano Norsk (bokmål) Norsk (nynorsk) Occitan Oʻzbekcha पाळि پنجابی Tok Pisin Plattdüütsch Polski Português Ripoarisch Română Runa Simi Русиньскый Русский Саха тыла Scots Shqip Sicilianu Simple English SiSwati Slovenčina Slovenščina Soomaaliga Српски / srpski Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски Basa Sunda Suomi Svenska Tagalog தமிழ் Taqbaylit Татарча/tatarça తెలుగు ไทย Тоҷикӣ ᏣᎳᎩ Türkçe Українська اردو Tiếng Việt Walon Winaray ייִדיש Yorùbá 粵語 Žemaitėška 中文 Apteva ( talk) 02:52, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
[I have not tried to specifically verify if all the information asked for is present or not, but certainly almost all of it is. In any case, the general case is clear. Quite a handful of our readers find wikipedia hard to cope with. I am positive other reader feedbacks should also throw up similar results] Inamos ( talk) 19:44, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
[offtopic] Aren't we supposed to vote here? Support
Inamos (
talk) 19:44, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
hey guys, i have used wiki for a while now and love it. i wanted to let you guys know, in case you do not, the "pronunciations" on pages need to be auditory. in other words, if i browse a page and do not know how to pronounce whatever it is, I count on Wiki. i see the speaker symbol, and "pronunciation", after the subject name but have never encountered audio. this leaves me having to consult a second source. ONE STOP SHOP thanks guys — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.147.72.145 ( talk) 06:01, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
I've nominated Wikipedia:Wikipedians who are not a Wikipedian for deletion. Since it's likely to be watched by a partisan crowd, I think that a notification here is adequate. Tijfo098 ( talk) 22:42, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Hello, I was reading an article and realized that I didn't remember what Theocracy meant and it was a link in the article, so I clicked it to go to the article on Theocracy to better my understanding of the article I was originally on. Well instead of switching to a new article or in a new tab leading to thousands of tabs, for things we need a quick definition or understanding of why not have a quick on mouse over description?
I've made this example from a screenshot to help out: http://imgur.com/2DMoh
With regards, guesshurley / Brad.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.147.222.123 ( talk) 02:51, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Often times on this encyclopedia, inconsistent information is found buried somewhere deep in articles. This information may be out-of-date or sometimes plain inaccurate with respect to other mentions of the same information found on the encyclopedia. To resolve this problem, I propose that all sentences with an "As of" expression should be tagged, and then sorted according to the content of the rest of the sentence by an automated program. Through a centralized interface, perhaps named Special:InfoTags, users could edit tags so that information on any one event that is mentioned in several articles is consistent throughout articles. A bot could do the final work of inputting a user's edit.
Are there any ways in which this could be improved? Wer900 • talk • coordination consensus defined 19:12, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Hi! I'm really missing to know which educational subject the article I'm reading belongs in. This would make it easier for alot of younger readers where to find more information about the particular article subject. For example, right now I'm reading an article on neurons. It would be useful to know if this is an article belonging in the educational field of psychology/neurology or biology ect. In this case this might be obvious, however when reading other articles this information could be useful to gain a better way of categorizing knowledge and also to have a easier access to similar knowledge by reading books, taking courses or deciding on further educational choices in the future.
Thank you,
- Shellpeck 01:40, 16 November 2012 (UTC)01:40, 16 November 2012 (UTC)~~
Like all modern websites, search functionality at the bottom of an article can be super helpful. After a long wiki entry, to scroll all the way up is a huge hassle to search for something else! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.238.186.43 ( talk) 20:20, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Of possible interest: I have proposed shutting down English Wikinews. 86.152.61.18 ( talk) 01:16, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
Hello, this is my first suggestion, and I'm very new here so excuse any errors in my post. I looked a little to see if it had already been suggested, but apparently it hasn't. I don't know if any of this is possible under the MediaWiki software used here, but my proposition is that, if through consensus, an article is deemed to have inaccurate info, be too long, too short, have too many grammar errors or any other such problems, instead of deletion, it should undergo a overhaul process in which users who are not logged in cannot by any means access the article (or can only see the most recent "adequate" revision, with a corresponding template warning content may be outdated), and users who are logged in can read (the latest revision, with a warning that the article is being overhauled) and edit it. This way, we limit editor access to a bad article without either deleting it (making it impossible to edit) or leading readers to such bad quality articles.
What do you all say?— Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.65.157.142 ( talk • contribs)
The current policy reads:
- A2. Foreign language articles that exist on another Wikimedia project.
- Articles having essentially the same content as an article on another Wikimedia project. If the article is not the same as an article on another project, use the template
{{ Not English}}
instead, and list the page at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English for review and possible translation.
All I want to do is fix what I think is a minor loophole in the WP:CSD policy as pertains to articles written in foreign languages and already available on other encyclopedias: As the policy currently stands, you can copy and paste the text of another Wikipedia's article into one here, and, as soon as the article is tagged with the {{ db-a2}}template, copy that same text into Google Translate and replace the foreign-language text with your result. The patrolling editor is faced with a dilemma: WP:TRANSLATION tells them that "Wikipedia consensus is that an unedited machine translation, left as a Wikipedia article, is worse than nothing"; if this page were not otherwise a speedy-deletion candidate, the logical (and recommended) action would be to revert the machine translation and add the page to Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English. But reverting to the original (preferred) version would require re-nomination, since the page still meets CSD. Re-nomination, though, has two problematic consequences: The re-nominating editor could easily be said to be gaming the system, since criteria for speedy deletion are meant to be narrowly construed, and it's highly frowned upon to nominate a page for deletion after making the edits that made it eligible; additionally, admins are instructed not to delete pages that have salvageable histories, and since machine translation is not a criterion, the machine-translated version would be considered salvageable. In other words, the patrolling admin has to revert to the version that is against consensus.
What I propose is simple: that a sentence be added to the end of the A2 criterion reading "This may also be used for articles that previously met the A2 criterion, and since have been unambiguously translated by a machine, with no other significant changes," or words to that effect.
I'd like to emphasize that last clause, too: Under this proposal, if you put in your machine-generated text, and then set to copy editing, so that by the time an admin looks at the page (or another user sees it and reviews the speedy deletion rationale), if you've improved it enough that it can no longer be described simply as "machine-translated," then the criterion no longer applies, and the nomination may be struck down. This is on the pattern of A3 deletion, where it's not at all uncommon for one to find that since the placement of the template, some substantive additions have been made to the article, and to strike down the nomination even if the page is still majorly in need of cleanup. (This is a pre-emptive counterargument to any charges that this amendment will result in deletions of bad pages that still deserve to be kept.) — Francophonie&Androphilie ( Je vous invite à me parler) 02:11, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Personally, I would rather have no article than a version from Google Translate on en.wiki. Given different linguistics, we should not be encouraging the dumping of such machine translations in the first place. -- MuZemike 07:28, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
I guess that Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 91#Speedy deletion of machine translations might be somewhat related... -- Martynas Patasius ( talk) 20:31, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia has very high quality mathematics and computer science articles, as long as you have the proper prerequisite knowledge. Otherwise, much time is spent clicking terms to understand, and being sent into a link-maze. The solution to this is where an article is of technical nature, perhaps include simple English as a header link, but absolutely include a tree of prerequisites to truly understand the article.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.205.158.7 ( talk) 08:37, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
Just had a thought. Sometimes you want to quickly identify the status of something in a process - say, the completion amount of a particular day at AFD. So you go to that page's AFD log and there's a great big table of contents. Short of looking down the page there's no way to know what the status is of each item in that TOC. My suggestion: a magic word that allows the appending of text to the display of a heading in a TOC. Something like this:
== what links here ? == Ref Proposal: I intend to prepare course materials for a local sixth form college and could find it useful if the "what links here - tool box" option contained an alphabetical sort function. Thanks, Libby :Hello, Libby! I think that pages in the "What links here" are ordered by date of creation. I agree that other sorting options would be cool, for example alphabetical, last edit and size. The software where Wikipedia runs is [[MediaWiki]]. Can anyone guide us to make the proposal? Thanks! --[[User:NaBUru38|NaBUru38]] ([[User talk:NaBUru38|talk]]) 20:43, 23 November 2012 (UTC) ::[[Bugzilla:2306]] includes a request for alphabetical sorting. [[User:PrimeHunter|PrimeHunter]] ([[User talk:PrimeHunter|talk]]) 20:59, 23 November 2012 (UTC) == Featured template == Like [[Wikipedia:Featured articles|featured articles]], [[WP:FL|featured lists]], [[WP:FPO|featured portals]] and such, I propose creating a "featured template". It will have a criteria, as does other featured processes, and there will be a nomination centre to nominate your templates, as done for other featured processes. I am interested in hearing people's thoughts! Thanks, <font face="Impact">[[User:TBrandley#top|TBr]][[User talk:TBrandley#top|and]][[Special:Contributions/TBrandley|ley]]</font> 18:39, 15 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Support''' as nominator. <font face="Impact">[[User:TBrandley#top|TBr]][[User talk:TBrandley#top|and]][[Special:Contributions/TBrandley|ley]]</font> 19:32, 15 November 2012 (UTC) * '''Support'''. More love for templates! Choosing the criteria will be interesting, considering the incredible range of options. — [[User:Hex|<span style="color:#000">'''Hex'''</span>]] [[User_talk:Hex|<span title="Hex's talk page"><span style="color:#000">(❝</span>'''<span style="color:#900">?!</span>'''<span style="color:#000">❞)</span></span>]] 19:02, 15 November 2012 (UTC) * '''Oppose''' Featured content is meant to highlight WP's best work for our ''readers''. Templates are back-end aspects that are generally invisible to our readers. There's also a far smaller set of editors that can comment on the quality of templates compared with images, lists, and articles which generally any editor can. --[[User:Masem|M<font size="-3">ASEM</font>]] ([[User Talk:Masem|t]]) 19:11, 15 November 2012 (UTC) ::What's wrong with having things ''internally'' featured? Which is what I understood the proposal to mean. Featuring templates to the outside world wouldn't make much sense. — [[User:Hex|<span style="color:#000">'''Hex'''</span>]] [[User_talk:Hex|<span title="Hex's talk page"><span style="color:#000">(❝</span>'''<span style="color:#900">?!</span>'''<span style="color:#000">❞)</span></span>]] 19:20, 15 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Moral support''' But I have my concerns: featured content is intended to show the best of the encyclopedia, and templates are not encyclopedic content. Templates are part of the maintenance and navigation facilities of it. Although, the existece of featured portals makes me think that this could be a very good idea. — [[User:Hahc21|<font color="#333333">'''ΛΧΣ'''</font>]][[User_talk:Hahc21|<font color="#336699">'''21'''™</font>]] 19:13, 15 November 2012 (UTC) * '''Oppose''' I pretty much agree with Masem here. The featured processes are intended for content and I do not see why a reader would be interested in a template (a reader might be interested in the information the template holds in the context of the article the template appears in, but not in the actual page in template namespace). It would be like highlighting the footnote system used in a scientific paper, when actually the content of the paper is what matters. -- [[User:Toshio Yamaguchi|Toshio Yamaguchi]] ([[User talk:Toshio Yamaguchi|tlk]]−[[Special:Contributions/Toshio_Yamaguchi|ctb]]) 20:09, 15 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Why?''' I am not seeing the purpose here, so can you expand on what role you believe such a program would fill? I can't see any reason to support without a good rationale to go with it. [[User:Resolute|Reso]][[User Talk:Resolute|lute]] 20:13, 15 November 2012 (UTC) **+1. [[User:Legoktm|Legoktm]] ([[User talk:Legoktm|talk]]) 20:15, 15 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Oppose''' - Templates are uncool, and adding them as featured content won't help. To encourage template developers for their tough work, I'd prefer to award [[Template:The Template Barnstar|The Template Barnstar]]. --[[User:NaBUru38|NaBUru38]] ([[User talk:NaBUru38|talk]]) 20:14, 15 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Oppose'''. Although the proposed featured process may be the same as others, template purpose is wholly different. Featured content is for the ''readers'' and readers don't read templates. Templates are navigational and informative guides -- back-end aspect, as Masem put it. They are neither unique in where they appear, nor are they presented on their own to the readers. Unless we modify what out featured content represents (and I, personally, don't think we should), I don't think featured status on templates should attempt to serve the same purpose. Highlighting good technical editor work can be done by numerous awards, as mentioned already. — <small> [[user:Hellknowz|<font color="#B00">HELL</font>KNOWZ]] ▎[[User talk:Hellknowz|TALK]]</small> 20:35, 15 November 2012 (UTC) * '''Comment''' Significant discussions, over the years: [[Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 May 5#Featured Template]], [[Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 September 1#Featured Template]], [[Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive P#Featured content according to namespaces]], [[Wikipedia talk:Featured articles/Archive 4#How about "Featured templates"?]], [[Template talk:Template-Class#Overhaul]], and [[Portal talk:Featured content/Archive 2]] (3 threads). —[[User:Quiddity|Quiddity]] ([[User talk:Quiddity|talk]]) 22:10, 15 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Comment''' Whilst searching for the list above, I found these template given as examples; or comments on their talkpages suggesting "if there were such a thing, this would be a Featured Template!": [[Template:Solar System]], [[Template:IPA chart vowels]], [[Template:USAF]], [[Template:Islamic culture]], [[Template:Cold War]], [[Template:US War on Terror]], [NOTE: these might be drastically different than when originally pointed at as exemplary...]. Just FYI/curiosity as to what might be nominated. —[[User:Quiddity|Quiddity]] ([[User talk:Quiddity|talk]]) 22:10, 15 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Oppose''', per past discussion, and comments in this thread.<br />However, two ways to recognize good template work: *#Use them as examples in help/guideline pages. *#Leave talkpage feedback/praise, and give barnstars to individuals. :HTH. —[[User:Quiddity|Quiddity]] ([[User talk:Quiddity|talk]]) 22:10, 15 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Oppose'''. What is next, featured sentence, or featured word, or featured punctuation? Templates are simply internal features and not something that is ever going to be displayed on the main page as an example of Wikipedia's best work. [[User:Apteva|Apteva]] ([[User talk:Apteva|talk]]) 22:21, 15 November 2012 (UTC) *:Easy now. There's no good in mocking the idea. It's been suggested many times before, and has a reasonable basis. Templates ''are'' fundamentally distinct entities, that ''could'' be judged on a series of objective&subjective criteria. As the old discussions suggest, it's comparable to asking for a Featured Disambiguation Page, or Featured Category (and equally complicated, and unlikely to ever exist). Templates are not "simply [an] internal feature", they're (usually) part of a gigantic reader-facing topic-navigation-system (with exceptions in meta/parser templates and similar). Plus not all "Featured" items are displayed on the Main Page.<br /> Anyway, please be nice. Sugar vs vinegar, and all that. —[[User:Quiddity|Quiddity]] ([[User talk:Quiddity|talk]]) 01:27, 16 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Oppose''' - We need less templates. Let's not glorify them. [[User:Ajraddatz|Ajraddatz]]<small> ([[User Talk:Ajraddatz|Talk]])</small> 02:20, 16 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Oppose''' because a template is not content, it's a directory. —<B>[[User:Torchiest|Torchiest]]</B> <sup>[[User talk:Torchiest|talk]]</sup><sub style="margin-left:-3ex;">[[Special:Contributions/Torchiest|edits]]</sub> 14:24, 16 November 2012 (UTC) :A portal could be considered as a directory but yet it can be featured? --[[User:J36miles|J36miles]] ([[User talk:J36miles|talk]]) 19:02, 16 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Support'''. Seems like a good idea from an editor standpoint. --[[User:Nouniquenames|<font color="red">No</font>]][[User Talk:Nouniquenames|<font color="green">unique</font>]][[Special:Contributions/Nouniquenames|<font color="blue">names</font>]] 04:46, 17 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Oppose''' - Templates are utility or convenience tools for editors, not readers. The whole point of featured content is to show all the readers our best encyclopedic work, and only a few would be fascinated by a template with a ParserFunctions hack that performed [[mw:StringFunctions#.23explode:|string splitting]]. <span style="font-family:Euclid Fraktur; background:white;">→[[User:Σ|<font color="#BA0000">Σ</font>]][[User talk:Σ|<font color="#036">σ</font>]][[Special:Contributions/Σ|<font color="#036">ς</font>]]. <small>([[User:Σ|Sigma]])</small></span> 02:54, 18 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Oppose''' only because it essentially ''discusses internal Wikipedia processes'', and the first rule of <del>fight club</del> is don't talk about <del>fight club.</del> I'm reminded of a notion I (and others, probably) had years ago: '''Featured edit''', in which some particularly high quality article improvement with edit summary is highlighted as Wikipedia best practice. Unfortunately, that's also <del>fight club.</del> --[[User:Lexein|Lexein]] ([[User talk:Lexein|talk]]) 03:35, 18 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Comment'''. Since there are no major policy objections, why not just host a "featured templates" subpage in your userspace? Editors who are interested in the real technical side would be able to read it and contribute, and if it got popular enough, ''then'', perhaps you could re-introduce it as a non-userspace suggestion (but I wouldn't hold your breath on it ever being a main-page section, as cool as I think that could be).''' — <u><font color="#000000">[[User:Francophonie&Androphilie|Francophonie&Androphilie]]</font></u> ''(<u><font color="#000000">[[User talk:Francophonie&Androphilie|Je vous invite à me parler]]</font></u>)''''' 17:37, 18 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Oppose''' I think templates are useful, but trying to emphasize and promote them is a bad idea. Wikipedia is still about articles. [[User:Shooterwalker|Shooterwalker]] ([[User talk:Shooterwalker|talk]]) 20:34, 22 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Oppose''' I don't get what could make a template featurable. They're pretty basic and we already have enough of them.--[[User:Astros4477|<span style="color:#FF8C00">'''Astros4477'''</span>]] ([[User talk:Astros4477|<span style="color:#00A550">'''talk'''</span>]]) 20:36, 22 November 2012 (UTC) *'''Oppose''' Templates have almost nothing separating each side of their spectrum. If anything, there's [[Wikipedia:Featured topics]]. [[User:Buggie111|Buggie111]] ([[User talk:Buggie111|talk]]) 05:47, 25 November 2012 (UTC) == Notability across Languages == Has data ever been collected in regard to how notability is defined across different languages (therefore cultures)? There are many things that English speakers may consider notable but that other cultures may find insignificant, and vice versa. I'm intrigued to find out if this sort of information can be meaningfully collected, and if it would be in any way insightful.--[[User:Coin945|Coin945]] ([[User talk:Coin945|talk]]) 14:15, 22 November 2012 (UTC) '''Addendum:''' E.g. if an article is deleted in one language, is it deleted across other langauges? Maybe they all go to AFD, but only some languages agree it should actually be deleted.--[[User:Coin945|Coin945]] ([[User talk:Coin945|talk]]) 14:29, 22 November 2012 (UTC) * ''In my opinion'' (it would be useful to know if this is shared by Wikipedia policy or not), notability is not something which is limited by geography or language, in the same way that it is [[Wikipedia:NTEMP|not limited by time]]. This gets to the reasoning behind there being language-specific wikipedias; is it because they differ based on notability of topics or to provide knowledge collection/dissemination portals which mate up with how we communicate with one another? "Wikipedia" refers to all of the language-specific 'pedias together, not to each language-specific one in isolation. --User:Ceyockey (<small>''[[User talk:Ceyockey|talk to me]]''</small>) 14:27, 22 November 2012 (UTC) *:However, each language Wikipedia has their own policies. While of course notability isn't defined by language, one language's Wikipedia may be stricter than another in the what it considers notable in the first place. [[User:Melodia|♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫]] ([[User talk:Melodia|talk]]) 16:57, 22 November 2012 (UTC) One example: Here, notability is defined by coverage in sources. In Wikipedia in Spanish, the discussions move to discuss if the subject "deserves" being notable or not (which is of course highly subjective, but that's the way things are done in there). In any case, remember that "notability" is ultimately a concept generated by wikipedia for wikipedia, watching but not taken from the real world out there, so the influence of regional cultures is relative. [[User:Cambalachero|Cambalachero]] ([[User talk:Cambalachero|talk]]) 18:41, 22 November 2012 (UTC) * Is there any collation of what constitutes notability in the different language-wikipedias? A gathering of that information might be quite useful + interesting. --User:Ceyockey (<small>''[[User talk:Ceyockey|talk to me]]''</small>) 13:04, 24 November 2012 (UTC) The only rule I think we can apply at en.wiki is that if a topic exists as a sourced-based notable topic - even if those sources aren't in English - we would consider it notable here since we don't discriminate based on the language of sources. --[[User:Masem|M<font size="-3">ASEM</font>]] ([[User Talk:Masem|t]]) 18:43, 22 November 2012 (UTC) Tye--[[Special:Contributions/208.104.133.116|208.104.133.116]] ([[User talk:208.104.133.116|talk]]) 01:45, 23 November 2012 (UTC) :The only case of deleting articles across the different-language Wikipedias, that I know of, is in the case of hoaxes and the like. [[User:Chris857|Chris857]] ([[User talk:Chris857|talk]]) 03:36, 23 November 2012 (UTC) :: I recall having seen a few instances at Articles for Deletion in which, for example, an article on a Russian magician was deleted on notability grounds on Russian Wikipedia and this effectively triggered a successful challenge on the same basis for the same subject on English Wikipedia. This is not common, however, and the case starts fresh at En-WP — it is not a slam dunk for deletion. [[User:Carrite|Carrite]] ([[User talk:Carrite|talk]]) 15:55, 23 November 2012 (UTC) == Third thing {{TOCLABEL:reopened}} == Text
which would render something like:
Contents (hide)
- 1 First thing (closed)
- 2 Second thing (open)
- 3 Third thing (reopened)
Wouldn't that be kind of handy? There would likely be all sorts of uses. The technique might need to be restricted to use outside article space only, though, I think. — Hex (❝?!❞) 15:59, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
<span style="display:none">...</span>
can be used to achieve what you want, but it has some issues such as changing the anchor so section links from other pages may no longer work. And unlike your example, the whole title looks the same in the TOC. As an example I added a hidden "(open)" to this section title. It is displayed in the TOC.
PrimeHunter (
talk) 23:46, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
Hi, all, after reading this ANI thread, I started wondering why we don't have an alternative to attention-getting blocks. The first thing that I thought of as a way to address this would be a standardized bit of Javascript that could be inserted into the problematic user's common.js page. The current talk banner, while very noticeable to me, might not be so noticeable if someone doesn't know to pay attention to it, and I wonder if either a larger banner (perhaps something with "position:fixed") or a popup like alert() might do the trick a bit better. The idea would be that, when there's a disruptive but possibly good-faith editor who's not responding to their talk page, an admin could try adding this Javascript to their common.js page instead of blocking them, and removing it once the user's acknowledged the talk page. I feel that this would be a better, less bitey alternative to blocking, as it seems like many new users interpret blocks negatively, as evidenced by calling them "bans" (only anecdotal evidence for that, but there are probably diffs for it, if needed). Obviously this wouldn't be a bulletproof solution: it fails for anyone who has Javascript disabled, and there are some editors who would ignore the talk page even if they knew it was there. But I think it could be worth a try. Thoughts? Has anything like this been tried before? Writ Keeper ⚇ ♔ 20:15, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
&action=edit
but not other pages? Building off Writ Keeper, would it be possible to exclude user talk pages (not just the talk page for the user viewing the JS, but other users') from the code? And finally, would it be possible for the JS code to work like the SOPA protest thing, i.e. covering the content of the page and leaving a "Please look at
your talk page" message? If we can say "yes" to all of the questions, we might basically be able to prevent (not just discourage) these users from editing problematically without impacting their ability to read pages.
Nyttend (
talk) 04:43, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
I'd like to introduce the Template:Version template to Wikipedia with the goal to establish one standard for version history tables (or lists). It simplifies creation of release histories, standardizes release stages and makes the content more accessible.
Please comment on the template talk page (there already is some discussion). Thanks for your contribution. Jesus Presley ( talk) 04:20, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
User: Dr Blofeld is about to pass this milestone. It deserves a suitable medal. Someone needs to design it, if they haven't already. 7&6=thirteen ( ☎) 19:57, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
To link to the proper John Smith, we link, for example, to John Smith (explorer). But in a wikiarticle, we usually don't want the (explorer) to show, so we set the link to John Smith (explorer)|John Smith (all in double square brackets, of course). I suggest creating a notation of John Smith {explorer}, with curly brackets (braces), for use in the link instead. On display, the {...} part would not show, but on clicking the link, the reader would be directed to the proper John Smith (explorer) article.-- BillFlis ( talk) 13:50, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
[[John Smith (explorer)|]]
will save as [[John Smith (explorer)|John Smith]]
. A new syntax in the saved text is unneeded and would cause confusion. It would require changes to the MediaWiki software and a large number of programs which process wikitext. Don't mess with compatibility without good reason. MediaWiki versions are powering thousands of other wikis than Wikipedia. Wikitext is often copied directly between them.
PrimeHunter (
talk) 14:09, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Made a proposal at here for a concise edition of wikipedia which is formatted much like an old book encyclopedia with the bare main facts and a smallish word limit for articles as a reference point. Can't imagine all would support, but any input from anybody would be warmly welcome. The idea is for a general reference which is consistently of similar short length and quality and providing the most important facts without having to scan huge articles to retrieve them as leads on articles are very inconsistent. Please discuss there rather than here. ♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 20:20, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Perhaps a page could be created for this entry?
Gertrude Roggendorf, in religion, Sr. Anna Huberta, was born as the second of eight children July 31 1909 in the former mining town of Mechernich in the Eifel region of Germany bordering Belgium. At 17 she entered the Congregation of the Daughters of the Cross of Liège, a sisterhood founded by the Belgians Fr. Habet & Sr. Jean Haze. After a 2 years novitiate, Gertrude Roggendorf took her first vows, taking the name Anna Huberta in religion. For some time she worked in Münster, Westphalia, in a children's home. In 1932 Anna Huberta was sent to India at the age of 23. After her eternal vows in 1934, she was made head of the St. Catherine's Home, an orphanage for girls in Bombay, then completely rundown. St. Catherine's was founded by Ida Dickenson in 1922, but when she could no longer manage it, she handed it over to the Archbishop of Bombay, who called in the Daughters of the Cross of Liège in 1927 to manage the Home. The Home moved location several times until it found its present location on a plot of land donated in Andheri. Over several years, Anna Huberta built up the St. Catherine's Home from the grassroots into a caring home housing about 1,000 girls. To give orphans and foundlings a legal status, Anna Huberta adopted thousands of them. At the beginning of the 1940s, Anna Huberta delegated responsibility to the older children for the education of the younger children. Some of these girls approached Anna Huberta with the request to be formed into a religious congregation to help her with her work and to perpetuate her mission under the motto, "A life for love." On March 27, 1942 the first members took the vows forming the Society. The members of the Society trained as nurses and as healthcare volunteers. Sr Anna Huberta Roggendorf died of lung cancer on July 5, 1973 in Shraddha Vihar, the first Motherhouse of the Society in Bombay.
The Society of the Helpers of Mary, about 300 strong, operate several facilities worldwide, such as orphanages and homes for derelict and abandoned children, leprosy homes, homes for HIV victims, Aged Homes, etc.
In the Bombay Metropolitan Region, these include the "Ma Niketan" (Mother House) on Pokhran Road in Thane, built on land donated by Ms Diwaliben Mohanlal Mehta and the extensive Mukta Jeevan Ashram (Free Life) in Vehloli near Vashind.
http://www.helpersofmary.org http://www.maniketan.org
http://bartholomaeus.org/EN/Helpers_of_Mary_Historie.html
Wiki info@ told me to post here as they don't answer direct emails (understandable) so here it goes...
I'm reaching out to you all as you're the pioneers and now experts of open-source information sharing/building... and this idea would need massive effort (probably help from Google, Apple or another tech company). I'm starting with you all as I hope, if the idea has any merit, I'll have a better chance of generating some interest, than the 100's or 1000's of people working on countless other things over at the tech development companies. So the idea...
The Human History Project
The shortest way I can describe it would be a completely interactive map of the world that would display the history of recorded human events. It would have a sliding time bar that would move forwards and backwards in recorded history. Depending on the level of detail (and I propose that detail be ALL history) this would almost be like mapping the human history genome. It's such a massive project I think it would need to be broken down into stages...
Stage 1 - I'm thinking of a fairly simple interactive Google Maps program. The default map would be today's world, today's political/national borders with a timeline at the bottom of the screen. The user would be able to control the timeline, drag it from today back to the origins of history. Maybe for stage 1, the timeline is set at every hundred years... or on significant shifts of national borders (major wars of expansion). On the global scale the map would be almost a blur as tribes become city states and then kingdoms and eventually empires and nations. It might look like this, but with the whole world and dating back to the origins of time and the user has full control over the timeline, able to move it forward and backwards - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ievGPT-FaSY
Stage 2 -
You can zoom in to any continent, region, all the way down to individual city states or tribal lands. This is where the map/global/tool really takes off... and will need an immense amount of help and coordination between programming and history/archaeology folks. This will add a lot of detail. The controllable timeline will also need to be reduced from 100's of years to something closer to 5-10 years.
Stage 3 - (final stages begin, incredible complexity) Much deeper... now that you've zoomed into very very minute areas, there are date-stamped articles on all of the major historical events of the time/geography.... EVERYTHING. The timeline is now reduced down to days (would work on a changeable scale in case you just want major events. You can set the time slide-bar to days and then see "Declaration of Independence Signed" pop up on July 4, 1776 and it links several article (Wikipedia, academic sites, books, etc) all on the subject... move it forward and you get all of the battles of the War of Independence. Move forward to 1885, say April 15th and you see a flag pop up saying Lincoln was assassinated. Now extrapolate this detail to all over the world. Every nation, kingdom, city state that ever existed. Everywhere. The Map would be offering up flags practically every day in recorded history, and everywhere. This could also work to show a very different or unique view of human history. For example... the user moves the timeline forward and sees that China develops gunpowder around 800 AD, at the same time Charlemagne has united France and expanded its borders to include all of modern day Italy... and Teotihuacan, a once proud, powerful and perhaps the most influential city state in Americas, mysteriously falls or fades away (and rises again as the heart of the Aztec empire).
This would add very different perspective all historical events.
Stage 4 – (Massive, possibly impossible detail... but never doubt open source, right?)
You can zoom in on individual cities. The timeline now links to the significant news of the each date, perhaps citing or linking to scanned/archived newspapers for that particular city (or whatever recorded information that was the accepted historical record for that location at that time). This might be a pipedream (probably is)… but with an open source project, shoot for impossible and end up with something like Wikipedia, the most comprehensive, evolving and updating encyclopedia in human history. This project would be putting the information that we already have into full motion and making it geographically relevant and increasing its accessibility in a whole new way.
This could also, potentially, make every history text book ever written obsolete (if Wiki hasn't done that already).
So that's the rough sketch. I'm not expecting a response, but I figured I'd shoot for the moon here. I'd be happy to just to see if something like this is already in the works. Keep up the great work and thank you for your time.
-Hokie200proof
It's been a while I was thinking of exactly the same project. And now I find that it is more expedient to make it simplier. I mean not using the Google maps, but make a general map which is gonna change depending on the time line. So here is my vision: 1) there is a time scroll 2) there is a zoom scroll
and what has not been said: 3) there is a general map of the world in "point of time X" where each country and each city name has a link, so by clicking on the country you go to this article, which contains a more detailed map of the country. Though what happens to the map is simply automaticaly zooming it in. Then clicking let's say on the city name, you get to the city article. 4) watching a map you can change the time period and the map will change respectively. 5) so basicaly the quantity of the maps depends on how many changes occured during the whole period of time. Adding a new city means creating a new map and locating it in it's time. Though the serious changes of the maps will not be that much... not more than 100 hundred I suppose and mostly they will be located in the ancient epoch.
The open (technical) question is: how are we going to draw the maps, because there should be a better option to mark the borders and cities. Though if no ideas appear, at least we can use some internet available maps like a basis, change them "by hand" if it is neccesary and then upload then to edit in the wikipedia.
For this a "map creating/changing facility" should be created and this doesn't actually seem to be a mass. I've already got some sketches. Whom they should be addressed to? Is there an option to upload them here? or ...?
Does anyone know what is the next step to move this project forward? Joy Dorien ( talk) 01:49, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
This section and the essay is a result of previous discussions held at The Village Pump. The prior discussion is worth reading to add some extra context. It shows initial thinking and how that thinking has moved on as a direct result of that discussion |
This is a topic that concerns me. I'm raising it here to see if the community will visit WIkipedia:Cyberbullying, an essay I created some time ago, but whose relevance has been re-emphasised by the Suicide of Amanda Todd. My purpose in raising it in this forum is to ask editors to read the essay, to massage it into a suitable shape for becoming a policy or at least a guideline, and to then formalise it as such.
It should be clear to all that, though I drafted it I am not wedded to any of the words or thoughts in it. I'm hoping very much to get it more exposure and to bring wiser eyes than mine to bear on the issue. Far better than feedback here is feedback and substantive editing there, though some messages here to keep this current for a while and prevent early archival would be useful. Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 23:01, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Let me attempt to clarify matters. I think we should set Willy on Wheels aside, though as a notorious piece of Wikipedia history.
Wikipedia is much used in education, often during lessons, as a tool to learn how to research, to use the internet wisely (unwisely?), and as a vehicle to learn how to create co-operatve projects. Homework is researched here despite our being 100% certain that we are not the end source for research. In short, kids use the site, and use it a lot.
We see edits here from time to time, sometimes during lessons, that victimise a particular named individual, the person I have styled in the essay as John Victim. We tend to revert them on sight, often issuing warnings, sometimes blocking the editor, usually IP only. That is good practice, but simply addresses the evidence of the bullying, for bullying it is, and not the outcome. We, sitting in our offices, studies bedrooms, living rooms, hotel rooms, as experienced (or inexperienced) WP editors, have absolutely no idea what is going in in John Victim's life, and can quite reasonably consider that we don't care. And we do not always have to care, nor do all of us have to care.
For those of us who care, whatever our reasons for caring, we need to know how to proceed, how to focus our care into a positive outcome. We need to know what we should do next when taking personal responsibility for acting, and at what point we should consider this to be, for example, a credible threat of personal harm and alert the WMF emergency email hotline.
Returning to John Victim, I hope the essay covers what his state of mind may or may not be. Reading the suicide of Amanda Todd one can see how cyberbullying plus her own actions and state of mind drove her to suicide. This makes me wonder if I've been able to explain how Wikipedia may be used for cyberbullying in this short answer to you. It's also not the talk pages that really concern me, but main article namespace with sniping attacks, even ones that are removed fast, perhaps even removed by the person placing them. I'm not unduly concerned about protecting editors here. We have things that do that job. I'm concerned about how material placed here affects those not here.
There is a similarity with Biographies of Living Persons, an area where we are fast, at least in theory, to remove potential libels. But we remove those from articles about the living person. There we have done our job by doing so. But, when someone attacks John Victim in (say) an article about a school chemistry project relevant topic, we have no way of following through.
I'm clear that every editor will not want to follow through, too. This is for those who see the need to follow through, or choose to make it their part time duty. The great majority of our folk here have no interest at all in such matters.
Have I come anywhere near answering your question? Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 10:04, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
There have been some extremely useful and sensitive edits made so far. Those who have read the initial draft are likely to find the current state somewhat altered and to their interest. It;s easy to see how, as the initial drafter, I had a reasonable idea but was standing far too close to it to bring it towards completion. Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 08:47, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
I have been known to revdelete some of the things you talk about if I feel it was a result of cyberbullying. Cyberbullying can be distinguished from the run of the mill "Foo is gay" sorts of vandalism. It often is posted over a string of pages that are related to one local area. I have doubts about if the examples that you posted fall under the OS policy and I have further doubts that it run of the mill vandalism is worth the extra effort of removing from public view. I do not think that we should alert schools unless there is a long term problem. -- Guerillero | My Talk 21:41, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
I have started a RFC regarding allowing bureaucrats to remove the bureaucrat bit, and regarding the regranting of the bureaucrat bit (to bring it into line with the recently-passed policies for administrators). Please see Wikipedia talk:Bureaucrats#2012 bureaucrats RFC. -- Rs chen 7754 01:48, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Hey, I was just thinking that the {{ peacock}} template should be deprecated because it basically means the same thing as the {{ advert}} template. Articles that are written like an advertisement usually contain wording that merely promotes the subject without imparting identifiable information (which is what Wikipedia's "peacock" policy means). So, instead of the {{advert}} template looking like this:
This article contains content that is written like
an advertisement. |
It should look like this:
This article appears to be written like
an advertisement. This includes wording that
promotes the subject in a subjective manner without imparting real information. |
Hope to hear from you guys! Interlude 65 17:56, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
All of the details can be found at the BRFA and I'm looking for consensus here on this task. Thanks. Thine Antique Pen ( talk) 15:20, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
Hi. There's an ongoing discussion about standardizing U.S. Supreme Court case articles here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases#Project's style guide and article standardization. Any and all are welcome to comment and collaborate on forming a style guide for U.S. Supreme Court case articles. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 20:49, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
P.S. I tried advertising this discussion at Template:Centralized discussion, but the entry was rejected. If anyone knows of other places where this discussion should be advertised, please let me know or feel free to post there yourself!
Hi,
I would like to propose a solution as I think the content as it is currently available should remain free and the same, BUT wikipedia should be more independent from donations.
we should have an interactive way of accessing this content in a members section: more intuitive, accessible and fun to go navigate around or to download content. This section would be available through a monthly membership fee.
I have a few ideas on how to make this happen, let me know if you're interested!
Hadrien— Preceding unsigned comment added by Hpiana ( talk • contribs)
Hi guys! I see what you are saying. No worries.. Well the ideas I had in mind were more in the targeting of the information which the user is looking for. Here we just have a search bar. Why not have a tool where you can scroll and select Years or period / domain (litterature, music, art, history, science etc) / geographic location (as narrow as a town and as wide as the world).
The system would then pull all of the information corresponding to your search. This would serve for presentations, research, etc.
Let me know what you think!
Hadrien
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Dear Sirs,
I am one of the many readers that enjoys enormously your webpage and I deeply thank for the monumental effort you have done developing such a knowledge source.
Although widely spread and even accepted by many, there is a mistake when referring to people or events of the United States. On most articles it is used the word American which literally means from America (the continent) instead of USONIAN, which is the correct word when referring to an event, person or place from the United States . American is to the American continent as Asian is to the Asia and European is to Europe.
Certainly, all Usonians are Americans but not all Americans are Usonians. Hope this note can help to improve even more the quality of Wikipedia.
Thanks for considering this suggestion.
Alberto Martinez— Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.68.248.34 ( talk • contribs)
Hi Alberto, American also means citizen of the United States and is most commonly used. a·mer·i·can/əˈmerikən/ Noun: A native or citizen of the United States— Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.244.217.50 ( talk • contribs)
"Usono" is Esperanto for the United States of America, and "Usonano" is Esperanto for what most of my fellow citizens of the U.S.A. persist in referring to as an "American". "Usonia" was, as has been stated, Wright's coinage, and has no other common useage. -- Orange Mike | Talk
Seeing the OP has a Spanish-looking name, it may be worth pointing out that there is a cultural issue involved here (which confused the hell out of me as well originally): in the English speaking world, there is no such continent as “America”. They consider it to be two continents, “North America” and “South America”. Link: Continent#Number of continents.— Emil J. 16:58, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
As wikimedia doesn't provide yet a wiki to publish orginals works (essays, novels, songs, etc.) here is a proposal: Wikikultur. I hope some people here may be interested. -- Psychoslave ( talk) 16:54, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
While I was away a bunch of images I used to ask questions on the Reference Desk (dating some years back) were deleted without my knowledge. The reasons for their deletion included "bad JPG" and not perfectly following the guidelines for chemistry drawings, and not being used in the article space. These are ridiculous reasons when the images were created to ask a Reference Desk question. Why should an image used to ask a question on the Wikipedia:Reference Desk be deleted for not being in articlespace? It makes no sense, do people intentionally want to break the Ref Desk archives. There are tons of other Ref Desk images that have been deleted simply because IFD doesn't seem to recognise the existence of the Reference Desk. John Riemann Soong ( talk) 05:15, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Should we put up a site-wide banner related to Creative Commons's 10th anniversary, should we do something else to mark the date, or should we not do anything? If we decide to do something, then how will we do it technically?
Creative Commons, an organization that makes free content licenses (Wikipedia is published under one of them) is turning ten years old this week. Will we be doing anything? David 1217 What I've done 04:32, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
The storage and dissemination of data in the form of torrents can solve several problems at once:
Unlike Wikipedia resources from other types of distributed resources of the torrent is that the objects of Wikipedia (articles or parts of articles, attachments) may be changed to the original source (central server). Therefore, wiki torrent client should receive notification of a change of objects handed out, and in the event of changes exclude the object from the distribution until it is updated from a central server. Data integrity of the torrent system is checked by computing the hash stored files. In the setting of a wiki torrent client, you can specify limits on the amount of data storage and upload speed, CPU load. In accordance with user central server caches the user's computer a piece of data.
Probably reduce the load on the central server will significantly reduce the cost of maintenance for the Wikipedia community. In addition, in the event of data loss central servers (up to destroy the central server) and the problems of recovery from backups Wikipedia will continue to operate successfully. Caches of data stored in user, you can quickly re-create the temporary (and in the case of destruction of central servers even permanent) central server.
Weak Link offers: development of methods for handling web-browser to the torrent networks. Likely to have to develop a browser extension that allows for accessing the resource Wikipedia (page file) to request the resource (and its components) in the first place in the torrent network, rather than on a central server. But it is preferable to do without extensions, for example using a client-oriented tools java: java on, there are several projects working with torrents (for example,
Java Bittorrent API). Or, the ability to download the requested resource object can provide installed on your computer wiki torrent client. Needless browser extension can be used as a Wiki-BitTorrent client.
--
Lebedev IV (
talk) 22:54, 7 December 2012 (UTC) originally posted on talk page at 22:47, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
Hi, I've opened a proposal to redesign our image policy structure at WP:VPP#Image use policy. All input welcome there. Grandiose ( me, talk, contribs) 19:58, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
This is one of those things I would link to on Twitter, therefore displaying Wikipedia's need for a tweet button. 67.142.179.23 ( talk) 21:58, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
NO, for the same reason you wont see youtube videos. There cant be any promotion of multinationals on Wikipedia. Not even if they would pay the 100 million such a deal would be worth. 84.106.26.81 ( talk) 20:05, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
I agree that Wikipedia should help readers share the content. But social network buttons help them monitor traffic, and Wikipedia should prevent that. -- NaBUru38 ( talk) 18:22, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Hi all,
Whenever I use the "
E-mail this user", I find myself confuzelled by how to add links to articles, editors and external resources. This is 2012, almost 2013, and yet the "E-mail this user" still generates messages in
plain text. HTML formatting
functionality in posting messages has been around for, I dunno, since 15 years ago, maybe?
Text font, size, colours and other chrome would be good too, but would not be, ahem, a mission-specific core business requirement.
Surely this should be a cinch for the developers to code?
--
Shirt58 (
talk) 10:57, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
text/plain
. HTML is for webpages. —
Tom Morris (
talk) 09:55, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
Dear Wikipedia,
I believe that you can increase your fundraising effectiveness. If you just had a Bar/Meter there will be a sense of accumilation by watching the fund requirements being fulfilled. For extra boost, use a volumetic flask with extra small base. Danger: a base too wide and large will depress us all. Preferably, the base is already filled with funds already raised, indicating the hard part is already over. Also, make sure the flask or fancy meter is not intrusive; a good spot could be under the wikipedia globe on the left side of the website. Also it may not be optimal to place the flask inside the "please help" tab since most people will not be motivated enough to click it.
Every day/week you should change the color indicating how much money was donated so that everyone can compare to the previous days. Each color should be at least 1/2 an inch tall to show that progress is being made.
What you can also do is take the amount of funds recieved, say one day's worth and take an average so that each minute or second it seems like people are donating to our beloved wikipedia. Not only that, raise 2-4x more than needed so you can have some accumiliation. (unless insolvency gives you all a thrill.)
Good luck with your endeavors and thanks for wikipedia! If you do decide to take this advice, I would be very grateful to know whether this tactic was successful and how much it increased donations.
I think it's a neat idea. I always wonder how close we are to meeting our goals, or even what our goals are. CharmlessCoin ( talk) 20:05, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
Apologies if this is the incorrect place to put this discussion, but I am uncertain as to how to proceed when trying to set up a task force under a WikiProject that is rather inactive (and therefore, it's unlikely I can gauge the amount of interest / appropriateness for the suggestion). So the following is taken from the talk page of WikiProject Poetry ( found here):
The Canterbury Tales is one of the most important collections of stories in the English language. And it's also in an absolutely dire state on Wikipedia. Many of the articles are poorly-written stubs, inconsistent with one another and lacking much good information — or seemingly a way forward.
I propose that we set up a task force that would help to coordinate the improvement of articles relating to The Canterbury Tales (27 altogether); since I've proposed it, I would be willing to start setting up the framework and other admin business.
Who would be interested in participating?
MasterOfHisOwnDomain ( talk) 20:01, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
I am writing to inquire about a small problem I ran into with Wikipedia, and I will try to present my issue in a way very easy to comprehend (*context*, *problem*, *suggestion*).
The present tools in Wikipedia are very advantageous. Upon reading an article, it is common to click on a hyperlink of a keyword that is not fully understood. Once then this keyword is understood from reading its article, the reader can go back to the original article to continue reading. I will use this tool often. However, upon using this tool and reading another article to better understand the first article, I find myself needing to read a third article just to understand the second article. I hope this makes sense to you. I'm sure it is a common occurrence among people using Wikipedia.
This aforementioned process will happen to me often. However, the process will repeat until I have many Wikipedia tabs open within my browser. I've noticed that this noticeably slows down my laptop. Also, cycling through tabs can be slightly inconvenient. Though this is not a huge problem, I realized it is one with a simple and easy solution that I was hoping Wikipedia might incorporate within its design.
Instead of having multiple tabs open within a browser, it would be nice if Wikipedia conveniently kept track of the links users opened from in an article. This information could then be displayed on the sidebar of Wikipedia's web page in a tree data structure format.
I realize this idea is already present in Wikipedia in the button View History. But my suggestion is to do with optimization and convenience. And the View History button load a new page to show you your past pages, and they aren't in hierarchical order. Hierarchical order meaning -- pages are listed under the pages that the user hyper-linked to them.
For example, if you were previously researching baseball the other day and ran out of time but didn't finish, it would be nice to be able to continue researching baseball by logging onto Wikipedia and viewing the hierarchy of pages you viewed.
ex.
Baseball
batter Babe Ruth bat bases home plate pentagon
Your consideration and any feedback would be greatly appreciated
Thank you— Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.19.105.183 ( talk) 03:50, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I propose closing the Geopolitical, ethnic, and religious conflicts noticeboard. It is a useless (by "useless", I mean no negative effects will happen if it is closed), and it is relatively inactive. For a dispute resolution noticeboard, even if there is a thread, the actioning on the thread takes too long, if at all. The disputes in the area of the noticeboard is also being "absorbed" by other noticeboards, such as AN(/I), DRN, MedCom, and ArbCom (I am not proposing to merge the noticeboard into these, but stating that it is already). In all, the noticeboard is just more bureaucracy. ~~ Ebe 123~~ → report 23:28, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
This seems a likely successful proposal. If it is successful, what would we do with the page? Mark it: Historical? Historical with soft redirect? Redirect? If redirect, where to? -- Izno ( talk) 02:43, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
I don't have time to make a detailed proposal, but can I draw the community's attention to Suicide of Amanda Todd. This concerns a Canadian teenager who appears to have committed suicide last October following cyber-bullying on the internet. The case attracted wide-spread sympathy and is certainly notable enough, especially following an intervention from the Canadian PM, to merit an article.
Presently however, following an AfD on grounds of single-event notability, the article, its very title, focuses on her suicide rather than on Amanda herself. My worry is that this may not be responsible given the potential for teenage copycat suicides. Guidelines for the responsible reporting of suicides are published in various countries. These are a set prepared by the Canadian Psychiatric Association. Its three lead recommendations concern 1. Details of the method 2. The word "suicide" in the headline 3. Photos(s) of the deceased. I have just deleted a reference in the article to the means employed (the Talk page discussion queried why Canadian newsapapers did not give details of the method apparently unaware that Canadian media guidelines prevent them form doing so), in so far as "suicide" is in the title of the article this can be said to transgress the headline recommendation, while the article carries two photos of Amanda. There are also arguably issues with "Admiration of the deceased", "Romanticised reasons for the suicide" and "Simplistic reasons for the suicide".
With some 50% of teenagers (in the UK, no doubt similarly elsewhere) reportedly experiencing on-line harassment and cyber-bullying, I judge the problem acute. There have been some truly dreadful epidemics of teenage copycat suicide in the UK and elsewhere. I suggest the article title is restored simply to "Amanda Todd", that details of her sucide method are kept out of the article and that that images of her are removed at least in the short-term future.
A search on Wikipedia article titled "Suicide of [a named individual]" show that there some 12 articles with this title, of which 9 appear to relate to cyber-bullying of teenagers. I have posted on the Talk page my concerns about that.
In Suicide of Amanda Todd a Wikipedia administrator appears to have determined that the article should be "non-biographical", whatever that might imply. In my view the article, on the contrary, should be a straightforward biographical notice. Amanda Todd's life is either notable or not. JaniB ( talk) 17:54, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
This renaming thing is not a good proposal at all and is contrary to what we try to get away from in this project, these in-the-news one-event people. Amanda Todd as a person is not in the slightest bit notable, but the event itself has been deemed notable by our editors. And really, it isn't even the suicide itself that's a big deal, kids cap themselves every day. It is the aftermath and ensuing controversy about those alleged to have baited and blackmailed, and those who outed the identities. Tarc ( talk) 20:25, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
I'm not aware of any evidence that says that not reporting means of suicide does anything to reduce its incidence. In fact, concealing suicide has been shown to be counter-productive in some situations. In my country, Australia, governments and media have been moving away from the idea of hiding-the-truth-in-order-to-protect-the-children. "The kids" discuss suicides in full detail on social media. I've seen it first hand. And Wikipedia is not censored. Can those wanting censorship on this issue produce evidence that it achieves anything at all? HiLo48 ( talk) 21:41, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
What you're proposing to change is WP:BIO1E. Which I suspect is being cited in the AFD mentioned by the OP. -- Izno Repeat ( talk) 22:38, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
I feel that in general, an event involving a person (e.g. "X of John Doe") should just have the article at the name of the person, unless the person already has their own article. Yes, we do want to be focusing on the event, which is notable, rather than the person, who is non-notable. And I don't think anything should change content-wise in what we do with regards to WP:BLP1E. But I just feel that naming something "Suicide of Amanda Todd" rather than "Amanda Todd" smacks of being overly pedantic. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:33, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
........between 1984 and 1987, journalists in Vienna covered the deaths of individuals who jumped in front of trains in the subway system. The coverage was extensive and dramatic. In 1987, a campaign alerted reporters to the possible negative effects of such reporting, and suggested alternate strategies for coverage. In the first six months after the campaign began, subway suicides and non-fatal attempts dropped by more than eighty percent. The total number of suicides in Vienna declined as well.1-2 Research finds an increase in suicide by readers or viewers when: • • The number of stories about individual suicides increases3,4 • • A particular death is reported at length or in many stories3,5 • • The story of an individual death by suicide is placed on the front page or at the beginning of a broadcast3,4 • • The headlines about specific suicide deaths are dramatic3 (A recent example: "Boy, 10, Kills Himself Over Poor Grades")
It looks like several of you haven't read the guidelines conveniently linked above by Wer900. I recommend having a look at them. Among other things, they summarize the evidence that reporting suicides has a measurable, proven effect on increasing suicides and specifically on increasing copycat suicides.
Many (but not all) suicides can be prevented. Most suicides are not committed by a determined person who will kill himself one way or the other. Suicides are largely method specific (if I can't do it by ___, then I won't do it at all) and are very impulsive. The typical suicide attempt involves less than five minutes between the first thought about committing suicide and the attempt. That's why making people go to two drug stores to buy enough over-the-counter drugs to kill a person has been so effective at cutting the suicide-by-poisoning rate in the UK. By the time the person gets to the second store, he's changed his mind.
So, yes, I think we can take reasonable, ethical steps to reduce our (IMO minor) contribution to the suicide rate. We can do that by providing general information rather than detailed instructions on methods; we can eliminate sympathetic statements about how it's baffling and tragic and everyone is sad (a desire for sympathy of the " Pore Jud Is Daid" type is motivating to some would-be suicides, and besides, it's not encyclopedic); we can even delay adding material until it's firmly established, rather than trying to keep up with all the breaking news; we can be strict about long-term notability and excluding flash-in-the-pan media frenzies. There are many things we can do that will produce less damage and better, more encyclopedic articles. Just changing the article title, however, is likely to be unimportant. The media guidelines aren't about whether you label something as a suicide; they're about whether you make killing yourself sound like a way to meet emotional needs. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 04:30, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
I propose to complete my edits here by citing Death of Kurt Cobain. Here we have a case of an event that was widely publicised as a suicide at the time and decided as a suicide at coroner's court. Nevertheless doubts subsequently surfaced that it was a suicide and not misadventure, and so we have "Death" rather than "Suicide". A coroner's court has yet to rule on Amanda Todd's death. There was a press release that a preliminary investigation has determined it a suicide, but the coroner stressed that it would be a long and complicated investigation. A verdict of misadventure is still possible. Another reason to prefer "Death of Amanda Todd" rather than "Suicide of Amanda Todd".
I thank respondents for their comments. JaniB ( talk) 13:23, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
This proposal arises from an absurd conflation of newspaper headlines and prime-time news reports, with the mere titles of a microscopic handful of articles. The actual likelihood of a suicide-prone teen stumbling on one of these articles and being influenced in any way are so infinitesimal as to make it embarrassing to think that we are actually talking about it seriously. -- Orange Mike | Talk 06:04, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
Personally, I think that this discussion has an impact beyond its original subject matter of teenage suicides, and should be the starting point for a new interpretation of Wikipedia policy. So many individuals here think that the purpose of NOTCENSORED is specifically to offend the sensibilities of various political, religious, or ethnic groups that are not the majority of Wikipedia editors (white Christian males). Living comfortable lives as members of the majority ethnic group in liberal democracies, many Wikipedia editors fail to realize that their edits have a farther-reaching effect that can cause communal violence and hatred in less-developed parts of the world. While I do believe that we should do our duty in ensuring that our articles fulfill all necessary encyclopedic purposes, I see no value in deliberately adding material beyond this whose sole purpose is to incite and inflame. That Wikipedia is not censored should be held in comparison both with WP:DICK and the actual impact that Wikipedia has on the world. We should, by all means, fulfill our encyclopedic purpose; but I don't think that there is any (moderately interpreted) religion on this earth or otherwise sane value systems that espouse deliberate incitement of communities because of some twisted view on the right to freedom of speech.
Now watch me be pelted with tomatoes for stating that in material that incites hatred and division, we should fulfill our encyclopedic purpose and no more. We should not pander to any one group, but we should not inflame them more than necessary either. Wer900 • talk • coordination consensus defined 03:23, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
I think it's time this topic is revisited. The Local Embassy is an unfortunately-named apparatus designed to facilitate aid to "international users". There are a myriad of reasons why this "embassy" ought to be renamed or wholly remodeled; although this is evidently a Wikimedia project and could be extended to other wikis, change regarding this should be initiated here.
Currently, the Local Embassy is in need of a rename and some revisions. I would suggest renaming the page "Interlingual coordination". Although kind of bulky, redirects could be created featuring names more accessible to non-English speakers; as mentioned above, "international editors" on Wikipedia are likely fluent in that particular tongue. At any rate, a change will be preferential to the status quo regarding the project. dci | TALK 00:44, 14 December 2012 (UTC)