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And yes, I've read the FAQ. And I did see it posted. However I don't the reason for objection is strong enough.
For most people on Wikipedia their are
I.P. users, Registered Accounts, and Admins. I think their needs to be a middle level between Registered Accounts and Admins. For example, admins may page protect, delete pages, block users, ect. Most users often come across situations were they might need to protect a page or if they are monitoring AfD and an article needs deleted, they instead have wait for a Admin to delete that article. A middle level, which could be called a Senior Editor, would be able to delete articles and protect pages. The process would work like:
Editor ———> Request for Seniority ———> Senior Editor ———> Request for Admin ———> Admin...ect.
The senior editors would NOT have the power to block a user, but they would be able to make edits to protected pages, protect pages themselves, delete articles (including speedy) , restore deleted articles, ect. They would have to go through a process that would be similar to RfA. I don't have any ideas on this, but it could be possible to become an Admin without being a Senior Editor. I don't know. I'm just throwing the idea out there. Thanks! Wǐkǐɧérṃǐť Talk to me or learn something new! 01:03, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Absolutely not, as currently worded. Probationary periods are easy to fake-out, and we've seen recently how much damage a rogue user with the extra tools can do in 17 minutes. There are any number of things that person could have done that would have been even worse, moreover. Meanwhile, I don't even trust our current administrators enough right now to mentor new admins on a one-on-one basis; the only protection we have against more rogue actions is the global scope of RFA, and that anyone (even an anon. user) can participate to alert us. That's how the 'pedia as a whole works, and that's how the granting of (the dangerous) powers and tools should work. Is RFA's culture sprained? Probably, but doing an end-run is not going to solve that. Change the culture. Support decent users who are on the borderline. Encourage users to run. Nominate someone you think might pass. -- nae' blis 17:16, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Are there plans for Wikipedia to evolve from a collective encyclopedia to a full blown interactive source of education with concrete indexing, say Mathematics with subindexes for basic mathematics followed by Algebra, Geometry, and Trigonomics, followed by Calculus, etc. in a logical coherent learning format including programmed learning, exercises and examples? Can Wikipedia eventually provide an online school or university for all people? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 198.147.225.143 ( talk • contribs).
I wasn't aware of Wikiversity. Thank you. :)
This proposal was on the wrong page. Apparently, policy proposals should be placed on Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy). The original proposal and all related comments have been moved there. -- PeR 21:55, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
I am very much tired of seeing and or or reverting changes to Orange (colour) and similar pages where some editor, usually an anon, has gone through and substituted every "colour" with "color". It is equally frustrating (although less for me, I admit a bias) when an editor on an American English-standardized article to see someone change the article to Commonwealth English (I'll revert that too, though.) It also violates WP:ENGVAR when someone does that, and editors can be quite touchy about people trying to standardise a mixed-spelling article, even in good faith. Since that's the case, wouldn't it be a good idea to create a talk header template for such frequently-abused articles indicating that the article should generally keep using whichever variation is established? I designed a template for this idea:
{| class="messagebox standard-talk" |- |[[Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg|50px]] |This article's spelling has been standardized to {{#switch:{{lc:{{{spelling}}}}} |american='''[[American English]]'''. |british |commonwealth='''[[British English|British]] or [[Commonwealth English]]'''. |#default=a variety of English ('''Please clarify by specifying a variety in the template.''') }} This spelling is established{{#if:{{{revision|}}}|, and has been established since <span class=plainlinks>[http://en.wikipedia.org/?title={{PAGENAMEE}}&oldid={{{revision}}} revision {{{revision}}}]</span>|<!--no revision specified-->}}. {{#if:{{{reason|}}}|{{{reason}}}|<!--no special reason specified-->}} As such, '''please do not change the spelling standardization!''' Changes to the spelling variation to the article, including moves - if the article's title has a variation - may be reverted on sight, according to the [[WP:MOS|Wikipedia Manual of Style]]'s [[WP:ENGVAR|policy]] regarding [[American and British English spelling differences|national varieties of English spelling]]. If consensus on the article's spelling becomes unclear, please remove this notice. |[[Image:Flag of the United States.svg|50px]] |}
Example:
What do you think? Nihiltres 23:05, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
<!--
This article uses [[British English]] spelling, not [[American English]] spelling.
DO NOT CHANGE THE SPELLING!
Please see [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English]]
-->
{| class="messagebox small-talk" |- |[[Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg|50px]] [[Image:Flag of the United States.svg|50px]] |This article's spelling has been standardized to {{#switch:{{lc:{{{spelling}}}}} |american='''[[American English]]'''. |british |commonwealth='''[[British English|British]] or [[Commonwealth English]]'''. |#default=a variety of English ('''Please clarify by specifying a variety in the template.''') }} {{#if:{{{revision|}}}{{{talkrevision|}}}|<!--null-->|'''This spelling is not established.'''}} {{#if:{{{revision|}}}|This spelling was established in the article at <span class=plainlinks>[http://en.wikipedia.org/?title={{PAGENAMEE}}&oldid={{{revision}}} revision {{{revision}}}]</span>.|<!--null-->}} {{#if:{{{talkrevision|}}}|It was established in the talk page on <span class=plainlinks>[http://en.wikipedia.org/?title={{FULLPAGENAMEE}}&oldid={{{talkrevision}}} revision {{{talkrevision}}}]</span>.}} {{#if:{{{reason|}}}|{{{reason}}}|<!--no special reason specified-->}} As such, '''please do not change the spelling standardization!''' Changes to the spelling variation to the article, including moves - if the article's title has a variation - may be reverted on sight, according to the [[WP:MOS|Wikipedia Manual of Style]]'s [[WP:ENGVAR|policy]] regarding [[American and British English spelling differences|national varieties of English spelling]]. If consensus on the article's spelling becomes unclear, please remove this notice. |} {{-}} {| class="messagebox standard-talk" |- |[[Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg|50px]] |This article's spelling has been standardized to {{#switch:{{lc:{{{spelling}}}}} |american='''[[American English]]'''. |british |commonwealth='''[[British English|British]] or [[Commonwealth English]]'''. |#default=a variety of English ('''Please clarify by specifying a variety in the template.''') }} {{#if:{{{revision|}}}{{{talkrevision|}}}|<!--null-->|'''This spelling is not established.'''}} {{#if:{{{revision|}}}|This spelling was established in the article at <span class=plainlinks>[http://en.wikipedia.org/?title={{PAGENAMEE}}&oldid={{{revision}}} revision {{{revision}}}]</span>.|<!--null-->}} {{#if:{{{talkrevision|}}}|It was established in the talk page on <span class=plainlinks>[http://en.wikipedia.org/?title={{FULLPAGENAMEE}}&oldid={{{talkrevision}}} revision {{{talkrevision}}}]</span>.}} {{#if:{{{reason|}}}|{{{reason}}}|<!--no special reason specified-->}} As such, '''please do not change the spelling standardization!''' Changes to the spelling variation to the article, including moves - if the article's title has a variation - may be reverted on sight, according to the [[WP:MOS|Wikipedia Manual of Style]]'s [[WP:ENGVAR|policy]] regarding [[American and British English spelling differences|national varieties of English spelling]]. If consensus on the article's spelling becomes unclear, please remove this notice. |[[Image:Flag of the United States.svg|50px]] |}
Example:
Nihiltres 04:29, 10 April 2007 (UTC) (updated to fix a sentence structure bug 12:14, 10 April 2007 (UTC))
I think that this may be cleaner on a full proposal page - I'll prepare one. Nihiltres( t. c. s) 22:51, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Further discussion may be held at Wikipedia:Proposal for a spelling standardization talk header. If you are interested or opposed, please participate in the poll there, or make suggestions for the improvement of this template. Nihiltres( t. c. s) 02:14, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Dear Wiki, > > I would find it very useful to be able to find particular architectural > buildings - and also I am often curious about who were the designers of > particular buildings. For instance I have recently visited the new Gehery > winery in Spain (which you have in your data base) but I do not know who was > the landscape architect or the design engineer. > > Would it be possible to arrange a search / data base (and I am not very > computer literate) which told you: > > Country > Name of building > Town > Postcode (or other method of finding the building) > Architect > Engineer > Landscape Architect > Contractor / subcontractor > Owner > Contact details / opening times > Other information which might include references to other published > information, specification details etc > > I would find this interesting both for historical buildings - but also for > modern buildings ie when passing an interesting building and being able to > find more information about it. > > I can find no data base that gives me that information. During a recent > visit to Spain - I found it frustating to neither be able to find buildings > I remembered from magazine articles (inspite of remembering the name of the > engineer) - nor to know who designed buildings that I passed. > > Would wiki be interested in developing this. The information would no doubt > be supplied by your readers.
Mrsra 19:06, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
As an IT guy, I love wiki.
I was wondering if we WM5 users could get a little program that installs a quick launching wiki menu, for the pedia or wiktionary.
WM6 will be out soon, but have a coder team work on WM5, which should be relatively cheap since its just a link setup, and then WM6.
The reason i ask is because I have a wikipedia quicksearch on my google desktop sidebar, and its awesome!
Also, my boss needs a fast solution to your thinktank. A simple installer would be awesome.
You could probably generate more traffic and public awareness by pairing up with cell companies like Cingular to include a Wikipedia (or other) program already installed with Cingular WM5 or WM6 devices.
~Jonathan Smith Engineering │ IT Certification Manager S. Bravo Systems, Inc. │ Corporate
Consider the following scenario: User A asks a question. User B then posts a comment or answer. A does not consider B's reply sufficient, so awaits further responses. A might (or might not) post a reply to B indicating as much (i.e., that A is awaiting more). Sometimes, in fact, B did not mean his reply to be complete, and knows that A will await more replies. But: Other potential helpers who see a reply posted will be less likely to read the discussion, figuring it's taken care of, or is being taken care of. So the question is never resolved — not by B, who answered incompletely but with good intention, and not by anyone else, who thinks that the discussion is resolved.
This does happen. Look at WP:VP, WP:RD, and WP:HD, and you'll see that it actually happens pretty often. (I suppose it must happen on WP:NCHP too.)
I therefore propose the following: A new template {{ open}} (or some other name for it) that reads something like:
THIS DISCUSSION IS STILL OPEN. The issues involved have not been resolved to the satisfaction of the original poster. Please read the discussion and help resolve it.
It would be only for use by the originator of a discussion (original poster), and would need to be followed by ~~~~.
Thoughts? — The Great Redirector 20:10, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
There are templates for redirect pages; see WP:TMR if you're unfamiliar with these, or WP:R for redirection info in general.
Among the templates are {{ r to scientific name}} and {{ r from scientific name}}. These are meant, afaIct, to be used for plants, animals, and the like, redirecting an organism's common name to or from its name in binomial nomenclature. E.g., see Balaenoptera brydei or Almond-scented millipede.
There are redirect articles that are not of species or the like, but which, like species, are redirects from an official name to a less-official name, or vice versa. For example, redirecting from a full name to the better-known partial name (e.g., Nicholas Barthelot Lemann) or from a real name to a better-known nickname (e.g., Chamunorwa Kwenda), or vice versa. For most of these, there is no appropriate redirection template, [1] so I've been using {{ r to scientific name}} and {{ r from scientific name}}. Do you think that that's appropriate, or do you think something else (already existing) is better, or should new templates (perhaps {{ r from official name}} and {{ r to official name}}) be created? — The Great Redirector 18:22, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I've been bold and added {{ R from full name}} and Category:Redirects from full names. Note that the text found on both those pages indicates that the template and cat are for redirects from "...a title that is a complete or more complete name...", not necessarily a complete one. — The Great Redirector 19:36, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
This may have already been proposed. It may even already exist. But I've been thinking. If vnadalism is such a big issue on the Wikipedia, how about we let it happen, but not ON the Wikipedia. Place a link, easily viewable, on the mainpage, to a "Vandalpedia". This "Vandalpedia" would be a full mirror of the Wikipedia on which people will have the full right to vandalize it in any way. It probably wouldn't deter the problem much, but at least a little bit. Madhackrviper 15:30, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Would it make sense for the various project teams to make more detailed forks of the WP:VA page for different specialities? (Using, for example, a naming scheme such as: "Wikipedia:Vital {subject} articles", where {subject} is one of the VA sub-section headings.) I know the main VA page still has a lot of topics to address, but I'd like to be able to work on expanding the tree for the few subjects in which I have an interest. Thanks. — RJH ( talk) 17:46, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
Is any one interested in starting a special group known as Wikipedia:WikiProject Maintenance? The Wikiproject Maintenance is a specialized group of people that are just dedicated to cleaning up Wikipedia and making it a better and reliable place to be. If anyone as any comments about this please go to my talk page or write below. This could be huge step forward for Wikipedia. Senators Talk | Contribs 01:40, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
As some might already know, we now have a "Table" namespace. Eventually we'll need a place for deletion discussions - right now, it seems it would default to Mfd. Should this new namespace be handled at Mfd, or should it be handled at Tfd? --- RockMFR 04:30, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
And now it's gone. [1] --- RockMFR 22:36, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
May I suggest that every article in the top 10, 25, or even 50 of Special:Mostrevisions is move protected? Some already are. Let's use common sense: there are a lot of revisions for most of them (by definition), and there's not a chance in hell that (m)any would need to be moved. The openness of our wiki is important, but let's invite people to experience it in more constructive ways.
See the history of Adolf Hitler. Are there better reasons than "BCUZ" to move some of these pages? Gracenotes T § 01:53, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
I brought this up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Deletion sorting several days ago, but there hasn't been any activity there. It seems to me that a bot similar to AlexNewArtBot could be used to automatically sort more than just new pages. A bot could scan articles at WP:AFD, WP:FAC, WP:PR, etc., determine the subject of each article (through the rules system used by AlexNewArtBot), and then post a notice on some page that editors with expertise in that subject could monitor (probably a subpage of the relevant WikiProject). This would provide WikiProject members with a central location to see all articles under the purview of their project that are currently undergoing any sort of Wikipedia process. Is this a good idea? Is it possible? jwillbur talk 02:59, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
There is a proposal to add a new upload link, to Project:Upload, to the sidebar. Discussion is at MediaWiki talk:Uploadtext#Proposal for mass overhaul, matching Commons. Uncle G 18:35, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
What do people think of this? After a stub is no longer a stub, it can be tagged with a "start tag" signifying that it is no longer short,etc etc(whatever a stub is defined as) but now a start(whatever a start is correctly defined as). There could be the same start tags as there are the same stubs (eg "disease stub" with "disease start", and once the stub gets enough content it can move on to the start tag, where more people will have ability to see it and possibly work on it. Thus once the start taged article is worked on long enough it will then go on to the next up level (but by then the article will be far better than what a typical 'start' type article looks like. I know there are already articles labeled as "starts" on their talk page, but there are also "stubs" labeled as such on their talk page as well (articles that are usually rated by their wikiproject) and furthermore, not everyone looks (or bothers) to look at the discussion page anyway (personal random choice really)(Furthermore this is not to say that a "start" tag will trigger a impulse in someone's brain to say, hey lets make this article beter, but they can also say that for the stub tag as well true?..applies to new users in particular). Unless of course youre thinking that having MORE tags is a bad thing, and now it would take FOREVER to implent into the countless "start" articles, im sure it can be achieved.(Probably with the creation of a new wiki fix up project? or bot?). So yeah, sorry if this has already been asked before or its written in the wrong place. Thanks in advance. petze 03:35, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
There are thousands and thoudsands of stubs, and no matter what you object, it will take a very long time to do that. There should always be an improvement impule in one's brain. Labelling something as Start rather than Stub will do nothing. IMO, the rating of articles with Featured, Good, stub, or none is fine enough, without A or B. Reywas92 Talk 03:53, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
The feature article from 2 days ago was corrupted with an explicit (gay sex) photo for a short period of time. I could also see someone going into a feature article and incorrectly/intentionally changing something less obvious. While there are many people who could catch it, the most vulnerable article on Wikipedia is the feature article.
It would be great if there were people who could monitor the article...but it would be even better if the article was locked while it was featured. Changes could either be made once the article was no longer featured, or a separate "proposed changes" page could exist while the article was featured, and changes could be made by committee during or after the article is featured.
Johnny1926 14:49, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Looking at the page history of Gilwell Park, on the Main Page yesterday, it is unacceptable how many reverts had to be made during that 24 hours. IMO, the featured article of the day needs to be at least semi-protected. Reywas92 Talk 14:25, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Dang! William Monahan's history for its day was much worse, with even more vandalism from IPs (than from logged-in vandals). Reywas92 Talk 14:30, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
I just want to bring attention to this template used to listen to an article's title pronunciation. My main problem with it is that it includes nothing less than three links —"pronunciation" or "listen," "info" and "help" (example here)— which are very distracting and add unnecessary clutter, where a simple audio icon linking to the Image (file) page would suffice. All the needed help and information can be placed there, so there's no real reason to clutter the article with "microsoftian" links. I've been trying for months to remove the links, but the talk page is not exactly bustling with activity. I would like to get this issue resolved once and for all. Thank you for your help and support! ☆ CieloEstrellado 09:55, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
If you dislike the links so much, you can put ".audiolinkinfo {display: none}"
(without the quotes) inside
your monobook.css page and they won't be displayed at all. --
Kjoon
lee 15:01, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Please see MediaWiki talk:Sp-contributions-footer#Proposal: useful tools. This is a small but very useful change and some other wikis already done this. — Alex Smotrov 23:28, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Please correct the descriprion in the Home page name with dictator instead of dicator.
Thanks, laaris@yahoo.com
Hi Wikipedian community, I have created a new category entitled "Articles which have been seen by internationally recognised figures who have published work in the field" and added the article [[locus of control] to it. This is because I have e-mailed several people, who I know have published work on locus of control or the related area of attributional style, about this article, and had some very good replies. True to Wikipedia's policy of anonymity, I shall name no names, but just let people know that I have had some helpful replies from people in the United States (I have had less response from the e-mails which I sent to figures in my own country, the United Kingdom). My question is - do you think it is a good idea to have a category such as this? The article on locus of control is still assigned to a category indicating it needs attention from a psychology expert, but I am hoping that this tag can be removed in the very near future. ACEOREVIVED 20:18, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
My proposal is to solve the problem of working with an edit history by allowing reverts and reverted edits to be temporarily hidden from view. Take for example, the Genetic engineering article, started in October 2001. I find it very difficult to believe that the current version is the product of over five and a half years work on that article. If you take a look at the edit history, you'll probably find it difficult to see past the continuous vandalism and reverts. The presence of these edits in the edit history, while potentially important in certain situations, are not necessary and are in fact a hinderence, when trying to see how an article has really developed. If you were willing to spend the time, you'd see that the article has grown reasonably large at times and sections have been removed to put in other articles. I would like to repair this article using versions from its history, but without an easy way to sort through the edits, I can't justify the time it would take. I'm reluctant to contribute to the article, if my contributions will get lost in a sea of vandalism and reverts. This seems like a relatively simple-to-implement improvement to the edit-history. -- Seans Potato Business 19:41, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
At the MCB Wikiproject we are gearing up to import several databases into Wikipedia. These would include families of RNAs in collaboration with the Rfam database and the complete set of publicly-available data on each human gene in collaboration with the Novartis/GNF SymAtlas project.
I'm worried that people may object to the automated creation of these stubs on the ground of notability and wanted to float the idea here. What are people's opinions? Should we restrict this to gene families, rather than individual genes, or should we regard this as the basis for future additions as scientific knowledge grows? Each gene stub would have several references to other databases and information, an example can be seen here.
Thanks for comments. TimVickers 21:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
The number depends on the level that we go into the database. I'd be most happy restricting this to genes with known or proposed functions, as these will have some literature associated with them and can therefore be easily expanded in the future. On the other hand, the simple completeness of Wikipedia having an entry for every human gene is attractive, and could help us recruit more expert editors from the science community. TimVickers 22:07, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Good idea, the references in the Entrez gene page could be used. TimVickers 22:43, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Depending on which estimate you listen to, there are about 20,000 human genes annotated at present. The bot proposal is for 10,000 of these to be imported, these are the genes for which published information is available. The question isn't really how these articles are created, that's just mechanics, but instead we need to discuss what the content will be and if this content will be useful and notable. For example, is the ITK (gene) a notable subject, or does this stub not contain enough information? TimVickers 23:33, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
20,000 is one in every 88 articles! I really don't think articles should be made for every one. I'm not even quite convinced that the gene families are very notable or encyclopedic. Sorry. Reywas92 Talk 00:28, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
I choose number three. How many of them are there? Reywas92 Talk 00:53, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
OK, we seem to be coming to consensus on proposal 2. This would involve the import of approximately 10,000 individual genes into stubs with 76,000 separate citations added to these stubs in order to meet WP:Reliable sources (numbers from GeneRIF statistics).
That's an interesting point Mr.Z-man, we could create a page for each GO term, and then use Wikilinks rather than external inks to the GO pages, however, then you would lose the classification information you get on GO pages such as this. I think external links are a better choice for the infoboxes (as with the standard Chembox). TimVickers 01:08, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Well...I hate to rain on the parade here, because it's great to see information on genetics and such, but do remember individual articles must assert, and show, notability, since we're not, among other things, a directory. I think bot-copies of a directory of genes, for however noble a purpose, would be counter to that. Now if the various information could be ordered by gene-family, with some additional information on the family, that would probably work quite a bit better. If it turns out later that a ton of information on an individual gene is available, a splitout article can always happen later. Right now, though, I'm convinced a lot of these may remain permastubs. Seraphimblade Talk to me 12:29, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Might be handier to cooperate with the knewco/omegawiki/wikidata people on this kind of thing? Though I'm cool with this either way. It'll be fun. :-) -- Kim Bruning 19:48, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Andrew, this is somewhere I think Wikipedia can gain a great deal by drawing in expertise to add content, and the experts we recruit gaining through free and open distribution of the information they contribute. TimVickers 02:42, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
I would second the comment above about adding more information. Dates and people in particular (ie. history). That may be difficult now, but in the future as more history is written, that may be possible. Take the story of the discovery of DNA for example. If similar stories are written in the future about the research on particular genes, then this should be added. Database and basic scientific information is good, but don't forget to add encyclopedic value (and historical context) to avoid just being a copy of a database. Carcharoth 23:35, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm not really sure how easily this could be accomplished, or if it could be at all, but my school system has recently blocked all wikipedia images because of the adult entertainment sections of the website, it's really annoying to search for some sort of plant or animal and not be able to see what it looks like. Earlier this year I was instrumental in getting the complete ban of wikipedia revoked but I was told that there is no chance of doing that on this one unless wikipedia was willing to host all its non-school appropriate images in one place that they could then block. It does not seem like it'd be hard to have a check box that you simply check if the image is an "adult" image, but then of course I don't really know about it. If this is not possible, how hard would it be to produce a "safe" list, a list that people can go to and put "safe" image url's onto that I could compile and give to the tech department at school. They won't just ban the adult ones because wikipedia is ever changing and new pictures would be added daily. Mrstenoien 6:39, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
According to the tech people down at the district office blocking certain pages is not acceptable because of the ever changing nature of wikipedia. Thats why I was thinking of a whitelist of pictures instead of a blacklist, although a whitelist would be very hard to keep up to date it would be better than no pictures whatsoever, where would I go to get help compiling a list such as that? User:Mrstenoien:Mrstenoien 4:30, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Has wikipidia ever considered trying to aim toward identifying experts contributing to each article or subject on wikipedia. I've noticed that sometimes, a user will become very possessive as though their interpretation of a subject is that which should be shown on wikipedia, using the excuse that those others contributing are not experts on the subject. However these people often aren't experts themselves.
And when an expert does disagree with the views of one or even many users, they face an uphill battle to get the truth into the articles, what I think you term anti-elitism. Supposed 17:01, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
I suggest that the user should be able to obtain extra information on those words that are underlined and highlighted in a requested topic. So if I was reading a topic on water and the hydrogen was highlighted I could either hover of the word for a moment or alt-e (or something) and get an introduction to that subject. I am not sure how this would effect the time it toke to load the page, but it sure would be useful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.239.202.214 ( talk) 15:25, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm proposing a new barnstar. It's still here: User:Rhanyeia/test. Is this the place I should enter it? Rhanyeia 10:42, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
I do not know if pages that discuss individual issues of comic books are wanted. For my own personal reference, I have made summaries of many comic books, and was considering posting them. Pages for comic series, i.e. Detective Comics, exist, but individual issue pages, i.e. Detective Comics #27, do not. Are these wanted, or not? -- TheCoolestDude 16:11, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
As far as doing page on individual books, i say go for it! I would suggest making a "Notable Issues" Section or something similar on the series page, and have links to those issues where a summary would be desirable... Just my two-cents, but I hope it's worth something! Tylerofmaine 17:55, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
IIRC, according to Wikipedia's notability policy, if a publication has over a certain number of copies published, then it is notable. So, if there are more than 5,000 copies of a comic book distributed, then it is notable. And if it's notable, it has a place on Wikipedia. The Transhumanist 20:18, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
I have thought of the idea of having an automatic archival bot, possibly ExtranetBot (my bot), on this Wikipedia page. As it is widely used here, it will definately require one in the future, but I have thought this through and should be actioned now. For this bot to work, WP:ABUSE will have to create a new process of reporting and actioning on abuse, using template messages (similar to WP:ACC) that the bot can read and then take action. I am currently in the process of creating a template system for WP:ABUSE and should be done soon. I believe this is a great initiative and will definately help those tired people to stop archiving. Let us know what you think as my bot, ExtranetBot is nearly ready if we can reach a clear consensus here. Extranet talk 06:24, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
FA |
A |
GA |
B |
Start |
Stub |
The Feature Articles (AF) have a ( )Star thing and the Good Article (GA) class articles have a round stamp image, but nothing for the A class articles (or B class). I thought that there could be a little Thumbnail photo/image for class A articles like the others, this may help motivate some people to work harder to get there article form GA up closer to FA class, because I know for many people the Jump from GA to FA class is a big one that requires a lot of work and more knowledge of the subject and Wikipedia. I see so many people with the little FA and GA Thumbnail pics on their user page showing off how many articles they have worked on and such. They have become a little like the Barnstars people give one another, becoming a little like bages of merit. “Keeping people around is harder than recruiting them; bored editors quickly leave” citation needed. I think Wikipedia most Valuable resource would be the people that edit it. Not the only the people that edit one line of text, but mostly the people that have passion for a subject and given the right positive reinforcement will become vary productive Wikipedians. So do any other Wikipedia members have ideas or experience with some thing like this. We could have people submit their own original take on what the A class Thumbnail Image should look like, and then vote on the entries. Max 16:19, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
--What do you think?--
icon. Circeus 23:58, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
This proposal will make more sense after we've implemented stable versions. Until that happens, article quality, especially for the less-watched articles which haven't achieved FA or GA, will remain, well... unstable.-- Pharos 00:10, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
{{FA}}
stars or the like on the top-right corner of articles any time soon. GAs already tried that, and it was
deleted, setting precedent against these things.
Titoxd(
?!? -
cool stuff) 04:54, 17 April 2007 (UTC)Project | Active | Assessment | Peer review | Collaboration | Portal | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Anthropology | yes |
I like the idea of adding small symbols. On that note, there is a problem with A-class - some projects have a good peer review for it, but many don't, and I have seen articles A-ranked that wouldn't pass GA...-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk 20:28, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
In fact IMO by definition A-class articles should've all passed GA. Therefore the GA icon serves well as the "article status identifier" on those articles. The A-class is simply an extra attribute above the GA mark stating that the article is a high-class GA. It's like FA is scoring an "A*" in public exams, while A and GA are both "A"s. But there exists "A1" and "A2" under the item "A", where "A1" is the A-class and "A2" is GA. -- Der yck C. 09:32, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Alright, ladies and gents. I noticed looking around the MOS that there is no standard naming convention for countries, it appears to be on a case by case basis, and typically using the Common Form of the country name, some times incorrectly. Furthermore, it's somewhat odd that the proper names of countries are redirected to the article anyway, such as:
In all of these articles, the first line begins with "The (Proper Country Name), or commonly known as (Common Name)...", or something along those lines.
I ask simply, for the sake of accuracy, why can we not have a Article Naming Standard for Countries outlined that reflects the accurate name of a country?
I ask this because not so much that people call France The French Republic, but because in discussions over the naming of United States brings up far too many straw man arguments that setting a standard that can be applied fairly to all country articles while maintaining the accuracy of the article.
The standard I would propose is this: The article itself will go by the Proper Translated Name, as used already in the first line and along the top of the infobox. The common name will redirect there to ensure proper searching.
The first line of all country articles will begin the same, such as: "The French Republic, commonly known as France... The above will rarely deviate. I know this will consist of a high volume of page moves, and many people will simply oppose such an idea on this alone. While a valid argument, at the same time a standard needs to be set for country articles that applies fairly to all countries. I also might add that straw men need not apply, I think we've heard all of the straw man arguments out there regarding this issue. I'm looking for more intelligent discussion on this subject. I will not be able to reply until later tonight. Review Me CASCADIA Howl/ Trail 20:59, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
The Manual of Style requies that the most common name in English be used. The most common name for France in English is France. The most common name for Mexico is Mexico. The most common name for the United States is arguable, but United States feels right. Corvus cornix 22:28, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Just to get a wider consensus, User:Vishwin60 has proposed* a bot that will change all <references /> tags to {{ reflist}} tags in articles, as of now only in articles within the scope of WP:USRD. There are advantages to {{ reflist}}, such as the ability to use multiple columns, but most articles don't have enough references to split it up into two columns anyway. It also makes the references small, but if this is done everywhere we may as well just change the stylesheet to automatically display references in a smaller font. An obvious disadvantage is the thousands (potentially hundreds of thousands if all articles are changed) of edits that would be required for such a change. What do you think? If I've missed an advantage or disadvantage, forgive me. Perhaps another option would be to get a database dump, and find only articles with more than 10 references, and if so, replace <references /> with {{ reflist|2}}, otherwise leave the article alone. — METS501 ( talk) 18:19, 7 April 2007 (UTC) * Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Rschen7754bot 3 - Request was rejected, but may of course be resubmitted should consensus change. -- kingboyk 23:51, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
(Reset indent) Mets501 - why are you making a big deal out of nothing? Server resourses aren't a big deal - if these guys want to do it, let them do it. Unless there is a hard-line rule set down by the wikipedia governing bodies, don't worry about it. -- master_son Talk - Edits 18:50, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
For the benefit of those who haven't seen the previous discussion: what is the benefit of this change? Can you provide a link to the proposal? The last time I checked, the <references/> method was not deprecated in any way. Does WP:FA? actually forbid it? CMummert · talk 19:11, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
I've written several FAs and commented on other FACs, and I've never heard of this template. It's most certainly not a requirement for FA. -- kingboyk 19:46, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
Do we all agree that any article with no references section should be given {{ reflist}}? -- Rschen7754 ( talk - contribs) 00:45, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
So you would normalize one possible stylistic variation while hundreds of others would persist. Seems kind fo futile if you ask me. -- Infrangible 23:13, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Upgrading the references seems like a good use of resources to me. The importance of references can't be underestimated. If the improved functionality encourages a few people to add a few more references, then go for it. Savidan 18:36, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
What is the reason for the standardization? {{ reflist}} is a nice shortcut for the lazy, but I can't see how it is any better than using <div class="references-small"><references/></div> (or variations of this for multiple columns). If anything, {{ reflist}} should be the thing that is getting replaced. --- RockMFR 19:12, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
I have recently written some C# code based on pseudo code in some WP articles. Would it be appropriate to edit the article and add the code samples? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.22.213.132 ( talk) 06:41, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
By chance i'm going trough some of the older events pages (like May 2006 for instance). If I diff to the versions that were originally archived, i find a LOT of changes. broken links, self promotion, vandalism, adding unimportant information etc etc. This is really starting to become a problem in my eyes. It's a lot of pages of course, but apparently few people keep this on their watchlist or something. Perhaps we need to setup a system to tackle this issue a bit more thoroughly ? I don't have any direct ideas, but I see it as a problem that needs dealing with.
With the current system it's even worse. You have pages for 365 days in the year, and no way to know if people are patrolling them after a couple of weeks have passed. I think that we for instance could at least add categories to the various pages, so that we can use Special:Recentchangeslinked/Category:Day in history or something to regurly take a look at the recent changes to all of these pages. Or we could setup some sort of special RSS feed perhaps that shows all the recent changes to these pages. I think this is really important, we should take better care of history then we have so far. Any feedback or ideas on how to do this ? -- TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 19:45, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
Hi all. Someone has proberly come up with this before but how about wikipedia has short videos on educational subjects like an egg hatching or the different earthquake types. If we did this it would be comparable to microsoft encarta. Of course there would be problems like people uploading irrellevent stuff or working out who should have the powers to upload the correct videos but if we got past that it would be an even better encyclopedia with people seeing how it really happens and for those people who learn from watching rather than just reading! Wiki.user 19:47, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Hello.
I notice that your articles can make reference to other articles. However, the other articles make no reference to the referencing articles.
For example. The article on Strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLAPP) makes reference to the Oprah Winfrey page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oprah_Winfrey), but the Oprah Winfrey page provides no indication that it is being referenced from the SLAPP article.
I have written applications that make such two way linking the norm. Yet Wikipedia seems not to support it.
Just a suggestion.
Kurt Christensen
When I browse to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page, using Firefox or Internet Explorer, the first thing I usually want to do is to search for something. But I first have to click in the 'search' box.
It's a small thing, yes, but it would be more convenient if the main page, when loading, would automatically place the cursor in the search box by default. And if I didn't want to search, this change wouldn't create any new inconveniences, as far as I can tell.
Thanks, Sally -- S411ygal 15:48, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
OK, thanks for your time.-- 199.244.214.30 17:36, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Um, I don't mean to be a pest, but perhaps I could change the URL I use? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page/search doesn't get me where I want to go, but is there some other such URL I could use for strictly searching? I normally call up Wikipedia through an icon on my Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox.
I understand now, btw, why using the arrow keys is important on the Main Page, and I agree that that functionality is essential. -- S411ygal 18:20, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Depending on your browser, it should be possible to select the search box by pressing tab. — The Storm Surfer 20:01, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Oooh, Pomte, I like it! I have changed my browser search box to WP. Thx! -- S411ygal 20:37, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
And yes, I've read the FAQ. And I did see it posted. However I don't the reason for objection is strong enough.
For most people on Wikipedia their are
I.P. users, Registered Accounts, and Admins. I think their needs to be a middle level between Registered Accounts and Admins. For example, admins may page protect, delete pages, block users, ect. Most users often come across situations were they might need to protect a page or if they are monitoring AfD and an article needs deleted, they instead have wait for a Admin to delete that article. A middle level, which could be called a Senior Editor, would be able to delete articles and protect pages. The process would work like:
Editor ———> Request for Seniority ———> Senior Editor ———> Request for Admin ———> Admin...ect.
The senior editors would NOT have the power to block a user, but they would be able to make edits to protected pages, protect pages themselves, delete articles (including speedy) , restore deleted articles, ect. They would have to go through a process that would be similar to RfA. I don't have any ideas on this, but it could be possible to become an Admin without being a Senior Editor. I don't know. I'm just throwing the idea out there. Thanks! Wǐkǐɧérṃǐť Talk to me or learn something new! 01:03, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Absolutely not, as currently worded. Probationary periods are easy to fake-out, and we've seen recently how much damage a rogue user with the extra tools can do in 17 minutes. There are any number of things that person could have done that would have been even worse, moreover. Meanwhile, I don't even trust our current administrators enough right now to mentor new admins on a one-on-one basis; the only protection we have against more rogue actions is the global scope of RFA, and that anyone (even an anon. user) can participate to alert us. That's how the 'pedia as a whole works, and that's how the granting of (the dangerous) powers and tools should work. Is RFA's culture sprained? Probably, but doing an end-run is not going to solve that. Change the culture. Support decent users who are on the borderline. Encourage users to run. Nominate someone you think might pass. -- nae' blis 17:16, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
There is an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability (highways) on drafting a notability guideline for highway related articles. Please help draft the text of the guideline or express your comments at the talk page. -- Polaron | Talk 13:42, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
i would like to bring up a small discrepancy in all the artical's tabs. the section refered to as the talk page has a small continuity problem with it's tab. it is labaled the discussion tab even though it is always refered to as the talk page. it might cause less confusion if the tab lable was changed so that new users would know that discussion and talk were the same thing— Preceding unsigned comment added by Homecookedskilet ( talk • contribs)
Perhaps Wikipedia could adopt an approach similar to that of Google. If a search is unsuccessful, due to spelling or wording errors, there could be a suggestion made by Wikipedia (i.e. "Did you mean...?") to guide users.
I'd like to plant the idea of time based tagging for information in articles (where appropriate). The end result would be the ability to correlate disparate things together based on time rather than just category or link structure.
Specifically, I suggest the idea of smart tags that can be peppered throughout articles as needed to index the relevant data or paragraphs with a date. This could grow to be an offshoot of categorizing or stub sorting that would extend past the linked years (eg 1998, 1853, etc) we use currently, or perhaps it could be related to it.
The use case would be something like this: While reading an article about a historical battle, a user might use an interface to view all of the other things documented in Wikipedia that were happening at the same time around the world. We have that to a certain degree with the linked years, but it's simultaneously granular and terribly imprecise. Event X might take place over the span of a decade, for example, but the linked years might only reflect the first year and last year with no MediaWiki awareness of the interval between them.
With tags that could be added to define the arcs when events were taking place, a correlation of simultaneity could be made that might help people understand a subject more intimately than before. Cross referencing Medici plots with root cause analysis of fights in Germany, soviet build-up in Turkey while a new type of weapon is being demonstrated in the US, etc, etc. Our current system is still essentially an electronic copy of a paper encyclopedia, despite our assertions to the contrary. Adding more awareness of data to the indexing (past what categorization and 'What links here' can currently offer) could be part of the Next Big Step.
Instead of posting this as a feature request for MediaWiki, I'd like to bring it here for discussion first. If there are ways that can potentially make that happen with what we already have, that'd be great. If not, perhaps there are smarter ways of getting from point A to point B than I've suggested above, so feedback would be very welcome. Regards, CHAIRBOY ( ☎) 22:17, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
I like this, but I dread even more additional complexity of our wiki syntax. I guess it doesn't matter at this point, since we've basically abandoned the idea that regular non-technical people should be able to edit our articles...
But, ideally, this would be as automated as possible. We are supposedly getting a dynamic date formatting feature that works on things inside <date> tags, for instance, which I think is completely backwards. In my mind, we should have robust code for recognizing dates in plain text, and dynamically format all of them by default. For the cases that shouldn't be auto-formatted, which are in the minority, use nowiki tags. Then the automatically-recognized dates could be tied to your idea, maybe?
And I'm imagining something completely unlike categories. Like a dynamic moving timeline thing that you can zoom around in by year and location on earth. :-) We should have similar mindmap-type stuff for categories, too, but who's going to write it? — Omegatron 14:37, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
1. Has anyone else noticed how difficult it is to make even minor edits to text that has a large number of inline references (<ref> ... </ref>)? Trying to find the actual words of the text interspersed amongst reams and reams of reference text is bad enough, and then if you want to rearrange words or sentences it becomes a nightmare trying to keep track of what you're doing and not break anything. Highlighting the <ref> ... </ref> text in the edit window - say in a different colour - would be a start. Even better would be to show the references as [1], [2] etc. in the edit window when you don't actually want to edit them, with a facility to expand when you do.
2. When editing a section the preview window does not show the expanded references, which makes them impossible to check. I tend to temporarily add a <references/> tag at the end of the section, but it's easy to forget to take it out before you save. It would be good if the preview facility did this automatically for you.
Matt 11:26, 15 May 2007 (UTC).
Inspired by this... I was thinking. It would be really cool if you edit a section and then preview your edit were to get a "dummy" <references> added in your preview so you can actually preview changes you made to your ref. I have no idea how this would be implemented (JS, mediawiki or cite.php extension), but I think it would be really useful. -- TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 01:20, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
When I looked at the current logo, I noticed that the antialiasing is absolutely AWFUL. There's white edges on everything. While there have been multiple uploads of a better version, they've been reverted each time. I made one here, which has it all fixed.
First, why have they all been reverted? They work on both IE and Firefox, and should work in all other browsers. Second, could we put my version up? Thanks. ~ Ed B oy [c] 17:04, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm having a bit of a grump at the moment about the number of images, particularly those tagged as PD-art, often orphans, that are already available on Wikimedia Commons, normally in a higher resolution. I've come across these as I've been transferring images to the Wikimedia Commons.
I know {{ ncd}} is meant to be used to facilitate the deletion of exact duplicates but what about non-exact duplicates. For example: Image:JoanOfArc.jpeg on Wikipedia and Image:JoanOfArcLarge.jpeg on Commons - identical image regarding colour and contrast, the Commons version is of a higher resolution. Commons is not meant to contain duplicate images itself, so transferring a lower resolution duplicate seems rather futile. Is it ok to tag non-exact duplicates of this type with {{ ncd}} and hope they get deleted - or do we need a different template or system? Madmedea 20:17, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
The page at Wikipedia is not aniconistic has a historical tag placed on it and a suggestion to post about it on this page. Is there any chance we can make this Wikipedia policy, at least as an extension of Wikipedia is NOT Censored? Certain articles, such as Muhammad have been subject to attack by certain parties which amounts to censorship. Any comments to revive this page and pass it as official policy? -- ProtectWomen 05:51, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
ProtectWomen has spam on multiple user pages so that they can come here and support it. We should not try to develop or rather enforce concensus like that.
Sorry about the Canvas thing, I was half asleep last night. I knew ALM checks my contribs so that's why I didn't bother posting to his page. I just assumed he would tell his friends about it so I wouldn't have to.
Anyway, my understanding is that this IS a guideline already? I am a little confused. HighInBC, who is ArbCom and what do they have to do with this ? -- ProtectWomen 15:56, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
My new Scientific Beliefs article is going to be delected. It's on AIC, so as such, it's incomplete. Really, it only has The structure laid out for the Wikipedian helpers to follow. Please try and put protections or something around AIC, so Wikipedia can't delete the articles because of being incomplete, because AIC is for new articles that are incomplete or anything like that, so that other users can edit, and help them with facts and structure! Please help.
Oh, and AIC has been renamed Wiki:Article in Construction, and i don't want that to be it's name, please help.
Article in Construction is here.
My new article is goning to be delected, this is my side of the delection discussion:
This page should not be delected because unlike the other resorces, this article is so that people with ideals can post the article here, and have people with more intelligence fill in the blank spots for them. A person whom posts and article by themselves is likely to make at least one or so mistakes, but by posting the article here, you have people coming in to help finish it and fix the mistakes, it can help in more ways then the other resorces, it can help lower delection by other users coming in and fixing it up and help it and ways that it fits the code and regulations of Wiki. If you made an article and it was going to be delected, post it here, and other users will fix it right up, and make it to where it fits the reglations. and when you are going to make an article, this place will help to provide facts and structure.
Please let the delection kinda slide. Please help me. Anyone who reads this. AIC is for Wikipedians, it's to help.
AIC {Article in Construction} can be found here
For the discusion page, come here.
Please help.
Nikro 06:37, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
I have a new bold proposal to reduce controversy in our categorization scheme. I propose we categorize people by "country" rather than "nationality". Nationality does not equal citizenship even if that was the original intention. If one changes citizenship or has multiple citizenship it can be tagged by all that apply. Stuff ambiguous like "American people" would also be gone as a result of this since it is "People from the United States". -- Cat chi? 13:54, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
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And yes, I've read the FAQ. And I did see it posted. However I don't the reason for objection is strong enough.
For most people on Wikipedia their are
I.P. users, Registered Accounts, and Admins. I think their needs to be a middle level between Registered Accounts and Admins. For example, admins may page protect, delete pages, block users, ect. Most users often come across situations were they might need to protect a page or if they are monitoring AfD and an article needs deleted, they instead have wait for a Admin to delete that article. A middle level, which could be called a Senior Editor, would be able to delete articles and protect pages. The process would work like:
Editor ———> Request for Seniority ———> Senior Editor ———> Request for Admin ———> Admin...ect.
The senior editors would NOT have the power to block a user, but they would be able to make edits to protected pages, protect pages themselves, delete articles (including speedy) , restore deleted articles, ect. They would have to go through a process that would be similar to RfA. I don't have any ideas on this, but it could be possible to become an Admin without being a Senior Editor. I don't know. I'm just throwing the idea out there. Thanks! Wǐkǐɧérṃǐť Talk to me or learn something new! 01:03, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Absolutely not, as currently worded. Probationary periods are easy to fake-out, and we've seen recently how much damage a rogue user with the extra tools can do in 17 minutes. There are any number of things that person could have done that would have been even worse, moreover. Meanwhile, I don't even trust our current administrators enough right now to mentor new admins on a one-on-one basis; the only protection we have against more rogue actions is the global scope of RFA, and that anyone (even an anon. user) can participate to alert us. That's how the 'pedia as a whole works, and that's how the granting of (the dangerous) powers and tools should work. Is RFA's culture sprained? Probably, but doing an end-run is not going to solve that. Change the culture. Support decent users who are on the borderline. Encourage users to run. Nominate someone you think might pass. -- nae' blis 17:16, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Are there plans for Wikipedia to evolve from a collective encyclopedia to a full blown interactive source of education with concrete indexing, say Mathematics with subindexes for basic mathematics followed by Algebra, Geometry, and Trigonomics, followed by Calculus, etc. in a logical coherent learning format including programmed learning, exercises and examples? Can Wikipedia eventually provide an online school or university for all people? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 198.147.225.143 ( talk • contribs).
I wasn't aware of Wikiversity. Thank you. :)
This proposal was on the wrong page. Apparently, policy proposals should be placed on Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy). The original proposal and all related comments have been moved there. -- PeR 21:55, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
I am very much tired of seeing and or or reverting changes to Orange (colour) and similar pages where some editor, usually an anon, has gone through and substituted every "colour" with "color". It is equally frustrating (although less for me, I admit a bias) when an editor on an American English-standardized article to see someone change the article to Commonwealth English (I'll revert that too, though.) It also violates WP:ENGVAR when someone does that, and editors can be quite touchy about people trying to standardise a mixed-spelling article, even in good faith. Since that's the case, wouldn't it be a good idea to create a talk header template for such frequently-abused articles indicating that the article should generally keep using whichever variation is established? I designed a template for this idea:
{| class="messagebox standard-talk" |- |[[Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg|50px]] |This article's spelling has been standardized to {{#switch:{{lc:{{{spelling}}}}} |american='''[[American English]]'''. |british |commonwealth='''[[British English|British]] or [[Commonwealth English]]'''. |#default=a variety of English ('''Please clarify by specifying a variety in the template.''') }} This spelling is established{{#if:{{{revision|}}}|, and has been established since <span class=plainlinks>[http://en.wikipedia.org/?title={{PAGENAMEE}}&oldid={{{revision}}} revision {{{revision}}}]</span>|<!--no revision specified-->}}. {{#if:{{{reason|}}}|{{{reason}}}|<!--no special reason specified-->}} As such, '''please do not change the spelling standardization!''' Changes to the spelling variation to the article, including moves - if the article's title has a variation - may be reverted on sight, according to the [[WP:MOS|Wikipedia Manual of Style]]'s [[WP:ENGVAR|policy]] regarding [[American and British English spelling differences|national varieties of English spelling]]. If consensus on the article's spelling becomes unclear, please remove this notice. |[[Image:Flag of the United States.svg|50px]] |}
Example:
What do you think? Nihiltres 23:05, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
<!--
This article uses [[British English]] spelling, not [[American English]] spelling.
DO NOT CHANGE THE SPELLING!
Please see [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English]]
-->
{| class="messagebox small-talk" |- |[[Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg|50px]] [[Image:Flag of the United States.svg|50px]] |This article's spelling has been standardized to {{#switch:{{lc:{{{spelling}}}}} |american='''[[American English]]'''. |british |commonwealth='''[[British English|British]] or [[Commonwealth English]]'''. |#default=a variety of English ('''Please clarify by specifying a variety in the template.''') }} {{#if:{{{revision|}}}{{{talkrevision|}}}|<!--null-->|'''This spelling is not established.'''}} {{#if:{{{revision|}}}|This spelling was established in the article at <span class=plainlinks>[http://en.wikipedia.org/?title={{PAGENAMEE}}&oldid={{{revision}}} revision {{{revision}}}]</span>.|<!--null-->}} {{#if:{{{talkrevision|}}}|It was established in the talk page on <span class=plainlinks>[http://en.wikipedia.org/?title={{FULLPAGENAMEE}}&oldid={{{talkrevision}}} revision {{{talkrevision}}}]</span>.}} {{#if:{{{reason|}}}|{{{reason}}}|<!--no special reason specified-->}} As such, '''please do not change the spelling standardization!''' Changes to the spelling variation to the article, including moves - if the article's title has a variation - may be reverted on sight, according to the [[WP:MOS|Wikipedia Manual of Style]]'s [[WP:ENGVAR|policy]] regarding [[American and British English spelling differences|national varieties of English spelling]]. If consensus on the article's spelling becomes unclear, please remove this notice. |} {{-}} {| class="messagebox standard-talk" |- |[[Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg|50px]] |This article's spelling has been standardized to {{#switch:{{lc:{{{spelling}}}}} |american='''[[American English]]'''. |british |commonwealth='''[[British English|British]] or [[Commonwealth English]]'''. |#default=a variety of English ('''Please clarify by specifying a variety in the template.''') }} {{#if:{{{revision|}}}{{{talkrevision|}}}|<!--null-->|'''This spelling is not established.'''}} {{#if:{{{revision|}}}|This spelling was established in the article at <span class=plainlinks>[http://en.wikipedia.org/?title={{PAGENAMEE}}&oldid={{{revision}}} revision {{{revision}}}]</span>.|<!--null-->}} {{#if:{{{talkrevision|}}}|It was established in the talk page on <span class=plainlinks>[http://en.wikipedia.org/?title={{FULLPAGENAMEE}}&oldid={{{talkrevision}}} revision {{{talkrevision}}}]</span>.}} {{#if:{{{reason|}}}|{{{reason}}}|<!--no special reason specified-->}} As such, '''please do not change the spelling standardization!''' Changes to the spelling variation to the article, including moves - if the article's title has a variation - may be reverted on sight, according to the [[WP:MOS|Wikipedia Manual of Style]]'s [[WP:ENGVAR|policy]] regarding [[American and British English spelling differences|national varieties of English spelling]]. If consensus on the article's spelling becomes unclear, please remove this notice. |[[Image:Flag of the United States.svg|50px]] |}
Example:
Nihiltres 04:29, 10 April 2007 (UTC) (updated to fix a sentence structure bug 12:14, 10 April 2007 (UTC))
I think that this may be cleaner on a full proposal page - I'll prepare one. Nihiltres( t. c. s) 22:51, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Further discussion may be held at Wikipedia:Proposal for a spelling standardization talk header. If you are interested or opposed, please participate in the poll there, or make suggestions for the improvement of this template. Nihiltres( t. c. s) 02:14, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Dear Wiki, > > I would find it very useful to be able to find particular architectural > buildings - and also I am often curious about who were the designers of > particular buildings. For instance I have recently visited the new Gehery > winery in Spain (which you have in your data base) but I do not know who was > the landscape architect or the design engineer. > > Would it be possible to arrange a search / data base (and I am not very > computer literate) which told you: > > Country > Name of building > Town > Postcode (or other method of finding the building) > Architect > Engineer > Landscape Architect > Contractor / subcontractor > Owner > Contact details / opening times > Other information which might include references to other published > information, specification details etc > > I would find this interesting both for historical buildings - but also for > modern buildings ie when passing an interesting building and being able to > find more information about it. > > I can find no data base that gives me that information. During a recent > visit to Spain - I found it frustating to neither be able to find buildings > I remembered from magazine articles (inspite of remembering the name of the > engineer) - nor to know who designed buildings that I passed. > > Would wiki be interested in developing this. The information would no doubt > be supplied by your readers.
Mrsra 19:06, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
As an IT guy, I love wiki.
I was wondering if we WM5 users could get a little program that installs a quick launching wiki menu, for the pedia or wiktionary.
WM6 will be out soon, but have a coder team work on WM5, which should be relatively cheap since its just a link setup, and then WM6.
The reason i ask is because I have a wikipedia quicksearch on my google desktop sidebar, and its awesome!
Also, my boss needs a fast solution to your thinktank. A simple installer would be awesome.
You could probably generate more traffic and public awareness by pairing up with cell companies like Cingular to include a Wikipedia (or other) program already installed with Cingular WM5 or WM6 devices.
~Jonathan Smith Engineering │ IT Certification Manager S. Bravo Systems, Inc. │ Corporate
Consider the following scenario: User A asks a question. User B then posts a comment or answer. A does not consider B's reply sufficient, so awaits further responses. A might (or might not) post a reply to B indicating as much (i.e., that A is awaiting more). Sometimes, in fact, B did not mean his reply to be complete, and knows that A will await more replies. But: Other potential helpers who see a reply posted will be less likely to read the discussion, figuring it's taken care of, or is being taken care of. So the question is never resolved — not by B, who answered incompletely but with good intention, and not by anyone else, who thinks that the discussion is resolved.
This does happen. Look at WP:VP, WP:RD, and WP:HD, and you'll see that it actually happens pretty often. (I suppose it must happen on WP:NCHP too.)
I therefore propose the following: A new template {{ open}} (or some other name for it) that reads something like:
THIS DISCUSSION IS STILL OPEN. The issues involved have not been resolved to the satisfaction of the original poster. Please read the discussion and help resolve it.
It would be only for use by the originator of a discussion (original poster), and would need to be followed by ~~~~.
Thoughts? — The Great Redirector 20:10, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
There are templates for redirect pages; see WP:TMR if you're unfamiliar with these, or WP:R for redirection info in general.
Among the templates are {{ r to scientific name}} and {{ r from scientific name}}. These are meant, afaIct, to be used for plants, animals, and the like, redirecting an organism's common name to or from its name in binomial nomenclature. E.g., see Balaenoptera brydei or Almond-scented millipede.
There are redirect articles that are not of species or the like, but which, like species, are redirects from an official name to a less-official name, or vice versa. For example, redirecting from a full name to the better-known partial name (e.g., Nicholas Barthelot Lemann) or from a real name to a better-known nickname (e.g., Chamunorwa Kwenda), or vice versa. For most of these, there is no appropriate redirection template, [1] so I've been using {{ r to scientific name}} and {{ r from scientific name}}. Do you think that that's appropriate, or do you think something else (already existing) is better, or should new templates (perhaps {{ r from official name}} and {{ r to official name}}) be created? — The Great Redirector 18:22, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I've been bold and added {{ R from full name}} and Category:Redirects from full names. Note that the text found on both those pages indicates that the template and cat are for redirects from "...a title that is a complete or more complete name...", not necessarily a complete one. — The Great Redirector 19:36, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
This may have already been proposed. It may even already exist. But I've been thinking. If vnadalism is such a big issue on the Wikipedia, how about we let it happen, but not ON the Wikipedia. Place a link, easily viewable, on the mainpage, to a "Vandalpedia". This "Vandalpedia" would be a full mirror of the Wikipedia on which people will have the full right to vandalize it in any way. It probably wouldn't deter the problem much, but at least a little bit. Madhackrviper 15:30, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Would it make sense for the various project teams to make more detailed forks of the WP:VA page for different specialities? (Using, for example, a naming scheme such as: "Wikipedia:Vital {subject} articles", where {subject} is one of the VA sub-section headings.) I know the main VA page still has a lot of topics to address, but I'd like to be able to work on expanding the tree for the few subjects in which I have an interest. Thanks. — RJH ( talk) 17:46, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
Is any one interested in starting a special group known as Wikipedia:WikiProject Maintenance? The Wikiproject Maintenance is a specialized group of people that are just dedicated to cleaning up Wikipedia and making it a better and reliable place to be. If anyone as any comments about this please go to my talk page or write below. This could be huge step forward for Wikipedia. Senators Talk | Contribs 01:40, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
As some might already know, we now have a "Table" namespace. Eventually we'll need a place for deletion discussions - right now, it seems it would default to Mfd. Should this new namespace be handled at Mfd, or should it be handled at Tfd? --- RockMFR 04:30, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
And now it's gone. [1] --- RockMFR 22:36, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
May I suggest that every article in the top 10, 25, or even 50 of Special:Mostrevisions is move protected? Some already are. Let's use common sense: there are a lot of revisions for most of them (by definition), and there's not a chance in hell that (m)any would need to be moved. The openness of our wiki is important, but let's invite people to experience it in more constructive ways.
See the history of Adolf Hitler. Are there better reasons than "BCUZ" to move some of these pages? Gracenotes T § 01:53, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
I brought this up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Deletion sorting several days ago, but there hasn't been any activity there. It seems to me that a bot similar to AlexNewArtBot could be used to automatically sort more than just new pages. A bot could scan articles at WP:AFD, WP:FAC, WP:PR, etc., determine the subject of each article (through the rules system used by AlexNewArtBot), and then post a notice on some page that editors with expertise in that subject could monitor (probably a subpage of the relevant WikiProject). This would provide WikiProject members with a central location to see all articles under the purview of their project that are currently undergoing any sort of Wikipedia process. Is this a good idea? Is it possible? jwillbur talk 02:59, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
There is a proposal to add a new upload link, to Project:Upload, to the sidebar. Discussion is at MediaWiki talk:Uploadtext#Proposal for mass overhaul, matching Commons. Uncle G 18:35, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
What do people think of this? After a stub is no longer a stub, it can be tagged with a "start tag" signifying that it is no longer short,etc etc(whatever a stub is defined as) but now a start(whatever a start is correctly defined as). There could be the same start tags as there are the same stubs (eg "disease stub" with "disease start", and once the stub gets enough content it can move on to the start tag, where more people will have ability to see it and possibly work on it. Thus once the start taged article is worked on long enough it will then go on to the next up level (but by then the article will be far better than what a typical 'start' type article looks like. I know there are already articles labeled as "starts" on their talk page, but there are also "stubs" labeled as such on their talk page as well (articles that are usually rated by their wikiproject) and furthermore, not everyone looks (or bothers) to look at the discussion page anyway (personal random choice really)(Furthermore this is not to say that a "start" tag will trigger a impulse in someone's brain to say, hey lets make this article beter, but they can also say that for the stub tag as well true?..applies to new users in particular). Unless of course youre thinking that having MORE tags is a bad thing, and now it would take FOREVER to implent into the countless "start" articles, im sure it can be achieved.(Probably with the creation of a new wiki fix up project? or bot?). So yeah, sorry if this has already been asked before or its written in the wrong place. Thanks in advance. petze 03:35, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
There are thousands and thoudsands of stubs, and no matter what you object, it will take a very long time to do that. There should always be an improvement impule in one's brain. Labelling something as Start rather than Stub will do nothing. IMO, the rating of articles with Featured, Good, stub, or none is fine enough, without A or B. Reywas92 Talk 03:53, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
The feature article from 2 days ago was corrupted with an explicit (gay sex) photo for a short period of time. I could also see someone going into a feature article and incorrectly/intentionally changing something less obvious. While there are many people who could catch it, the most vulnerable article on Wikipedia is the feature article.
It would be great if there were people who could monitor the article...but it would be even better if the article was locked while it was featured. Changes could either be made once the article was no longer featured, or a separate "proposed changes" page could exist while the article was featured, and changes could be made by committee during or after the article is featured.
Johnny1926 14:49, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Looking at the page history of Gilwell Park, on the Main Page yesterday, it is unacceptable how many reverts had to be made during that 24 hours. IMO, the featured article of the day needs to be at least semi-protected. Reywas92 Talk 14:25, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Dang! William Monahan's history for its day was much worse, with even more vandalism from IPs (than from logged-in vandals). Reywas92 Talk 14:30, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
I just want to bring attention to this template used to listen to an article's title pronunciation. My main problem with it is that it includes nothing less than three links —"pronunciation" or "listen," "info" and "help" (example here)— which are very distracting and add unnecessary clutter, where a simple audio icon linking to the Image (file) page would suffice. All the needed help and information can be placed there, so there's no real reason to clutter the article with "microsoftian" links. I've been trying for months to remove the links, but the talk page is not exactly bustling with activity. I would like to get this issue resolved once and for all. Thank you for your help and support! ☆ CieloEstrellado 09:55, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
If you dislike the links so much, you can put ".audiolinkinfo {display: none}"
(without the quotes) inside
your monobook.css page and they won't be displayed at all. --
Kjoon
lee 15:01, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Please see MediaWiki talk:Sp-contributions-footer#Proposal: useful tools. This is a small but very useful change and some other wikis already done this. — Alex Smotrov 23:28, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Please correct the descriprion in the Home page name with dictator instead of dicator.
Thanks, laaris@yahoo.com
Hi Wikipedian community, I have created a new category entitled "Articles which have been seen by internationally recognised figures who have published work in the field" and added the article [[locus of control] to it. This is because I have e-mailed several people, who I know have published work on locus of control or the related area of attributional style, about this article, and had some very good replies. True to Wikipedia's policy of anonymity, I shall name no names, but just let people know that I have had some helpful replies from people in the United States (I have had less response from the e-mails which I sent to figures in my own country, the United Kingdom). My question is - do you think it is a good idea to have a category such as this? The article on locus of control is still assigned to a category indicating it needs attention from a psychology expert, but I am hoping that this tag can be removed in the very near future. ACEOREVIVED 20:18, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
My proposal is to solve the problem of working with an edit history by allowing reverts and reverted edits to be temporarily hidden from view. Take for example, the Genetic engineering article, started in October 2001. I find it very difficult to believe that the current version is the product of over five and a half years work on that article. If you take a look at the edit history, you'll probably find it difficult to see past the continuous vandalism and reverts. The presence of these edits in the edit history, while potentially important in certain situations, are not necessary and are in fact a hinderence, when trying to see how an article has really developed. If you were willing to spend the time, you'd see that the article has grown reasonably large at times and sections have been removed to put in other articles. I would like to repair this article using versions from its history, but without an easy way to sort through the edits, I can't justify the time it would take. I'm reluctant to contribute to the article, if my contributions will get lost in a sea of vandalism and reverts. This seems like a relatively simple-to-implement improvement to the edit-history. -- Seans Potato Business 19:41, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
At the MCB Wikiproject we are gearing up to import several databases into Wikipedia. These would include families of RNAs in collaboration with the Rfam database and the complete set of publicly-available data on each human gene in collaboration with the Novartis/GNF SymAtlas project.
I'm worried that people may object to the automated creation of these stubs on the ground of notability and wanted to float the idea here. What are people's opinions? Should we restrict this to gene families, rather than individual genes, or should we regard this as the basis for future additions as scientific knowledge grows? Each gene stub would have several references to other databases and information, an example can be seen here.
Thanks for comments. TimVickers 21:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
The number depends on the level that we go into the database. I'd be most happy restricting this to genes with known or proposed functions, as these will have some literature associated with them and can therefore be easily expanded in the future. On the other hand, the simple completeness of Wikipedia having an entry for every human gene is attractive, and could help us recruit more expert editors from the science community. TimVickers 22:07, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Good idea, the references in the Entrez gene page could be used. TimVickers 22:43, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Depending on which estimate you listen to, there are about 20,000 human genes annotated at present. The bot proposal is for 10,000 of these to be imported, these are the genes for which published information is available. The question isn't really how these articles are created, that's just mechanics, but instead we need to discuss what the content will be and if this content will be useful and notable. For example, is the ITK (gene) a notable subject, or does this stub not contain enough information? TimVickers 23:33, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
20,000 is one in every 88 articles! I really don't think articles should be made for every one. I'm not even quite convinced that the gene families are very notable or encyclopedic. Sorry. Reywas92 Talk 00:28, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
I choose number three. How many of them are there? Reywas92 Talk 00:53, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
OK, we seem to be coming to consensus on proposal 2. This would involve the import of approximately 10,000 individual genes into stubs with 76,000 separate citations added to these stubs in order to meet WP:Reliable sources (numbers from GeneRIF statistics).
That's an interesting point Mr.Z-man, we could create a page for each GO term, and then use Wikilinks rather than external inks to the GO pages, however, then you would lose the classification information you get on GO pages such as this. I think external links are a better choice for the infoboxes (as with the standard Chembox). TimVickers 01:08, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Well...I hate to rain on the parade here, because it's great to see information on genetics and such, but do remember individual articles must assert, and show, notability, since we're not, among other things, a directory. I think bot-copies of a directory of genes, for however noble a purpose, would be counter to that. Now if the various information could be ordered by gene-family, with some additional information on the family, that would probably work quite a bit better. If it turns out later that a ton of information on an individual gene is available, a splitout article can always happen later. Right now, though, I'm convinced a lot of these may remain permastubs. Seraphimblade Talk to me 12:29, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Might be handier to cooperate with the knewco/omegawiki/wikidata people on this kind of thing? Though I'm cool with this either way. It'll be fun. :-) -- Kim Bruning 19:48, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Andrew, this is somewhere I think Wikipedia can gain a great deal by drawing in expertise to add content, and the experts we recruit gaining through free and open distribution of the information they contribute. TimVickers 02:42, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
I would second the comment above about adding more information. Dates and people in particular (ie. history). That may be difficult now, but in the future as more history is written, that may be possible. Take the story of the discovery of DNA for example. If similar stories are written in the future about the research on particular genes, then this should be added. Database and basic scientific information is good, but don't forget to add encyclopedic value (and historical context) to avoid just being a copy of a database. Carcharoth 23:35, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm not really sure how easily this could be accomplished, or if it could be at all, but my school system has recently blocked all wikipedia images because of the adult entertainment sections of the website, it's really annoying to search for some sort of plant or animal and not be able to see what it looks like. Earlier this year I was instrumental in getting the complete ban of wikipedia revoked but I was told that there is no chance of doing that on this one unless wikipedia was willing to host all its non-school appropriate images in one place that they could then block. It does not seem like it'd be hard to have a check box that you simply check if the image is an "adult" image, but then of course I don't really know about it. If this is not possible, how hard would it be to produce a "safe" list, a list that people can go to and put "safe" image url's onto that I could compile and give to the tech department at school. They won't just ban the adult ones because wikipedia is ever changing and new pictures would be added daily. Mrstenoien 6:39, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
According to the tech people down at the district office blocking certain pages is not acceptable because of the ever changing nature of wikipedia. Thats why I was thinking of a whitelist of pictures instead of a blacklist, although a whitelist would be very hard to keep up to date it would be better than no pictures whatsoever, where would I go to get help compiling a list such as that? User:Mrstenoien:Mrstenoien 4:30, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Has wikipidia ever considered trying to aim toward identifying experts contributing to each article or subject on wikipedia. I've noticed that sometimes, a user will become very possessive as though their interpretation of a subject is that which should be shown on wikipedia, using the excuse that those others contributing are not experts on the subject. However these people often aren't experts themselves.
And when an expert does disagree with the views of one or even many users, they face an uphill battle to get the truth into the articles, what I think you term anti-elitism. Supposed 17:01, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
I suggest that the user should be able to obtain extra information on those words that are underlined and highlighted in a requested topic. So if I was reading a topic on water and the hydrogen was highlighted I could either hover of the word for a moment or alt-e (or something) and get an introduction to that subject. I am not sure how this would effect the time it toke to load the page, but it sure would be useful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.239.202.214 ( talk) 15:25, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm proposing a new barnstar. It's still here: User:Rhanyeia/test. Is this the place I should enter it? Rhanyeia 10:42, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
I do not know if pages that discuss individual issues of comic books are wanted. For my own personal reference, I have made summaries of many comic books, and was considering posting them. Pages for comic series, i.e. Detective Comics, exist, but individual issue pages, i.e. Detective Comics #27, do not. Are these wanted, or not? -- TheCoolestDude 16:11, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
As far as doing page on individual books, i say go for it! I would suggest making a "Notable Issues" Section or something similar on the series page, and have links to those issues where a summary would be desirable... Just my two-cents, but I hope it's worth something! Tylerofmaine 17:55, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
IIRC, according to Wikipedia's notability policy, if a publication has over a certain number of copies published, then it is notable. So, if there are more than 5,000 copies of a comic book distributed, then it is notable. And if it's notable, it has a place on Wikipedia. The Transhumanist 20:18, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
I have thought of the idea of having an automatic archival bot, possibly ExtranetBot (my bot), on this Wikipedia page. As it is widely used here, it will definately require one in the future, but I have thought this through and should be actioned now. For this bot to work, WP:ABUSE will have to create a new process of reporting and actioning on abuse, using template messages (similar to WP:ACC) that the bot can read and then take action. I am currently in the process of creating a template system for WP:ABUSE and should be done soon. I believe this is a great initiative and will definately help those tired people to stop archiving. Let us know what you think as my bot, ExtranetBot is nearly ready if we can reach a clear consensus here. Extranet talk 06:24, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
FA |
A |
GA |
B |
Start |
Stub |
The Feature Articles (AF) have a ( )Star thing and the Good Article (GA) class articles have a round stamp image, but nothing for the A class articles (or B class). I thought that there could be a little Thumbnail photo/image for class A articles like the others, this may help motivate some people to work harder to get there article form GA up closer to FA class, because I know for many people the Jump from GA to FA class is a big one that requires a lot of work and more knowledge of the subject and Wikipedia. I see so many people with the little FA and GA Thumbnail pics on their user page showing off how many articles they have worked on and such. They have become a little like the Barnstars people give one another, becoming a little like bages of merit. “Keeping people around is harder than recruiting them; bored editors quickly leave” citation needed. I think Wikipedia most Valuable resource would be the people that edit it. Not the only the people that edit one line of text, but mostly the people that have passion for a subject and given the right positive reinforcement will become vary productive Wikipedians. So do any other Wikipedia members have ideas or experience with some thing like this. We could have people submit their own original take on what the A class Thumbnail Image should look like, and then vote on the entries. Max 16:19, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
--What do you think?--
icon. Circeus 23:58, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
This proposal will make more sense after we've implemented stable versions. Until that happens, article quality, especially for the less-watched articles which haven't achieved FA or GA, will remain, well... unstable.-- Pharos 00:10, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
{{FA}}
stars or the like on the top-right corner of articles any time soon. GAs already tried that, and it was
deleted, setting precedent against these things.
Titoxd(
?!? -
cool stuff) 04:54, 17 April 2007 (UTC)Project | Active | Assessment | Peer review | Collaboration | Portal | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Anthropology | yes |
I like the idea of adding small symbols. On that note, there is a problem with A-class - some projects have a good peer review for it, but many don't, and I have seen articles A-ranked that wouldn't pass GA...-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk 20:28, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
In fact IMO by definition A-class articles should've all passed GA. Therefore the GA icon serves well as the "article status identifier" on those articles. The A-class is simply an extra attribute above the GA mark stating that the article is a high-class GA. It's like FA is scoring an "A*" in public exams, while A and GA are both "A"s. But there exists "A1" and "A2" under the item "A", where "A1" is the A-class and "A2" is GA. -- Der yck C. 09:32, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Alright, ladies and gents. I noticed looking around the MOS that there is no standard naming convention for countries, it appears to be on a case by case basis, and typically using the Common Form of the country name, some times incorrectly. Furthermore, it's somewhat odd that the proper names of countries are redirected to the article anyway, such as:
In all of these articles, the first line begins with "The (Proper Country Name), or commonly known as (Common Name)...", or something along those lines.
I ask simply, for the sake of accuracy, why can we not have a Article Naming Standard for Countries outlined that reflects the accurate name of a country?
I ask this because not so much that people call France The French Republic, but because in discussions over the naming of United States brings up far too many straw man arguments that setting a standard that can be applied fairly to all country articles while maintaining the accuracy of the article.
The standard I would propose is this: The article itself will go by the Proper Translated Name, as used already in the first line and along the top of the infobox. The common name will redirect there to ensure proper searching.
The first line of all country articles will begin the same, such as: "The French Republic, commonly known as France... The above will rarely deviate. I know this will consist of a high volume of page moves, and many people will simply oppose such an idea on this alone. While a valid argument, at the same time a standard needs to be set for country articles that applies fairly to all countries. I also might add that straw men need not apply, I think we've heard all of the straw man arguments out there regarding this issue. I'm looking for more intelligent discussion on this subject. I will not be able to reply until later tonight. Review Me CASCADIA Howl/ Trail 20:59, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
The Manual of Style requies that the most common name in English be used. The most common name for France in English is France. The most common name for Mexico is Mexico. The most common name for the United States is arguable, but United States feels right. Corvus cornix 22:28, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Just to get a wider consensus, User:Vishwin60 has proposed* a bot that will change all <references /> tags to {{ reflist}} tags in articles, as of now only in articles within the scope of WP:USRD. There are advantages to {{ reflist}}, such as the ability to use multiple columns, but most articles don't have enough references to split it up into two columns anyway. It also makes the references small, but if this is done everywhere we may as well just change the stylesheet to automatically display references in a smaller font. An obvious disadvantage is the thousands (potentially hundreds of thousands if all articles are changed) of edits that would be required for such a change. What do you think? If I've missed an advantage or disadvantage, forgive me. Perhaps another option would be to get a database dump, and find only articles with more than 10 references, and if so, replace <references /> with {{ reflist|2}}, otherwise leave the article alone. — METS501 ( talk) 18:19, 7 April 2007 (UTC) * Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Rschen7754bot 3 - Request was rejected, but may of course be resubmitted should consensus change. -- kingboyk 23:51, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
(Reset indent) Mets501 - why are you making a big deal out of nothing? Server resourses aren't a big deal - if these guys want to do it, let them do it. Unless there is a hard-line rule set down by the wikipedia governing bodies, don't worry about it. -- master_son Talk - Edits 18:50, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
For the benefit of those who haven't seen the previous discussion: what is the benefit of this change? Can you provide a link to the proposal? The last time I checked, the <references/> method was not deprecated in any way. Does WP:FA? actually forbid it? CMummert · talk 19:11, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
I've written several FAs and commented on other FACs, and I've never heard of this template. It's most certainly not a requirement for FA. -- kingboyk 19:46, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
Do we all agree that any article with no references section should be given {{ reflist}}? -- Rschen7754 ( talk - contribs) 00:45, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
So you would normalize one possible stylistic variation while hundreds of others would persist. Seems kind fo futile if you ask me. -- Infrangible 23:13, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Upgrading the references seems like a good use of resources to me. The importance of references can't be underestimated. If the improved functionality encourages a few people to add a few more references, then go for it. Savidan 18:36, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
What is the reason for the standardization? {{ reflist}} is a nice shortcut for the lazy, but I can't see how it is any better than using <div class="references-small"><references/></div> (or variations of this for multiple columns). If anything, {{ reflist}} should be the thing that is getting replaced. --- RockMFR 19:12, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
I have recently written some C# code based on pseudo code in some WP articles. Would it be appropriate to edit the article and add the code samples? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.22.213.132 ( talk) 06:41, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
By chance i'm going trough some of the older events pages (like May 2006 for instance). If I diff to the versions that were originally archived, i find a LOT of changes. broken links, self promotion, vandalism, adding unimportant information etc etc. This is really starting to become a problem in my eyes. It's a lot of pages of course, but apparently few people keep this on their watchlist or something. Perhaps we need to setup a system to tackle this issue a bit more thoroughly ? I don't have any direct ideas, but I see it as a problem that needs dealing with.
With the current system it's even worse. You have pages for 365 days in the year, and no way to know if people are patrolling them after a couple of weeks have passed. I think that we for instance could at least add categories to the various pages, so that we can use Special:Recentchangeslinked/Category:Day in history or something to regurly take a look at the recent changes to all of these pages. Or we could setup some sort of special RSS feed perhaps that shows all the recent changes to these pages. I think this is really important, we should take better care of history then we have so far. Any feedback or ideas on how to do this ? -- TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 19:45, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
Hi all. Someone has proberly come up with this before but how about wikipedia has short videos on educational subjects like an egg hatching or the different earthquake types. If we did this it would be comparable to microsoft encarta. Of course there would be problems like people uploading irrellevent stuff or working out who should have the powers to upload the correct videos but if we got past that it would be an even better encyclopedia with people seeing how it really happens and for those people who learn from watching rather than just reading! Wiki.user 19:47, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Hello.
I notice that your articles can make reference to other articles. However, the other articles make no reference to the referencing articles.
For example. The article on Strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLAPP) makes reference to the Oprah Winfrey page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oprah_Winfrey), but the Oprah Winfrey page provides no indication that it is being referenced from the SLAPP article.
I have written applications that make such two way linking the norm. Yet Wikipedia seems not to support it.
Just a suggestion.
Kurt Christensen
When I browse to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page, using Firefox or Internet Explorer, the first thing I usually want to do is to search for something. But I first have to click in the 'search' box.
It's a small thing, yes, but it would be more convenient if the main page, when loading, would automatically place the cursor in the search box by default. And if I didn't want to search, this change wouldn't create any new inconveniences, as far as I can tell.
Thanks, Sally -- S411ygal 15:48, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
OK, thanks for your time.-- 199.244.214.30 17:36, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Um, I don't mean to be a pest, but perhaps I could change the URL I use? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page/search doesn't get me where I want to go, but is there some other such URL I could use for strictly searching? I normally call up Wikipedia through an icon on my Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox.
I understand now, btw, why using the arrow keys is important on the Main Page, and I agree that that functionality is essential. -- S411ygal 18:20, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Depending on your browser, it should be possible to select the search box by pressing tab. — The Storm Surfer 20:01, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Oooh, Pomte, I like it! I have changed my browser search box to WP. Thx! -- S411ygal 20:37, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
And yes, I've read the FAQ. And I did see it posted. However I don't the reason for objection is strong enough.
For most people on Wikipedia their are
I.P. users, Registered Accounts, and Admins. I think their needs to be a middle level between Registered Accounts and Admins. For example, admins may page protect, delete pages, block users, ect. Most users often come across situations were they might need to protect a page or if they are monitoring AfD and an article needs deleted, they instead have wait for a Admin to delete that article. A middle level, which could be called a Senior Editor, would be able to delete articles and protect pages. The process would work like:
Editor ———> Request for Seniority ———> Senior Editor ———> Request for Admin ———> Admin...ect.
The senior editors would NOT have the power to block a user, but they would be able to make edits to protected pages, protect pages themselves, delete articles (including speedy) , restore deleted articles, ect. They would have to go through a process that would be similar to RfA. I don't have any ideas on this, but it could be possible to become an Admin without being a Senior Editor. I don't know. I'm just throwing the idea out there. Thanks! Wǐkǐɧérṃǐť Talk to me or learn something new! 01:03, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Absolutely not, as currently worded. Probationary periods are easy to fake-out, and we've seen recently how much damage a rogue user with the extra tools can do in 17 minutes. There are any number of things that person could have done that would have been even worse, moreover. Meanwhile, I don't even trust our current administrators enough right now to mentor new admins on a one-on-one basis; the only protection we have against more rogue actions is the global scope of RFA, and that anyone (even an anon. user) can participate to alert us. That's how the 'pedia as a whole works, and that's how the granting of (the dangerous) powers and tools should work. Is RFA's culture sprained? Probably, but doing an end-run is not going to solve that. Change the culture. Support decent users who are on the borderline. Encourage users to run. Nominate someone you think might pass. -- nae' blis 17:16, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
There is an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability (highways) on drafting a notability guideline for highway related articles. Please help draft the text of the guideline or express your comments at the talk page. -- Polaron | Talk 13:42, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
i would like to bring up a small discrepancy in all the artical's tabs. the section refered to as the talk page has a small continuity problem with it's tab. it is labaled the discussion tab even though it is always refered to as the talk page. it might cause less confusion if the tab lable was changed so that new users would know that discussion and talk were the same thing— Preceding unsigned comment added by Homecookedskilet ( talk • contribs)
Perhaps Wikipedia could adopt an approach similar to that of Google. If a search is unsuccessful, due to spelling or wording errors, there could be a suggestion made by Wikipedia (i.e. "Did you mean...?") to guide users.
I'd like to plant the idea of time based tagging for information in articles (where appropriate). The end result would be the ability to correlate disparate things together based on time rather than just category or link structure.
Specifically, I suggest the idea of smart tags that can be peppered throughout articles as needed to index the relevant data or paragraphs with a date. This could grow to be an offshoot of categorizing or stub sorting that would extend past the linked years (eg 1998, 1853, etc) we use currently, or perhaps it could be related to it.
The use case would be something like this: While reading an article about a historical battle, a user might use an interface to view all of the other things documented in Wikipedia that were happening at the same time around the world. We have that to a certain degree with the linked years, but it's simultaneously granular and terribly imprecise. Event X might take place over the span of a decade, for example, but the linked years might only reflect the first year and last year with no MediaWiki awareness of the interval between them.
With tags that could be added to define the arcs when events were taking place, a correlation of simultaneity could be made that might help people understand a subject more intimately than before. Cross referencing Medici plots with root cause analysis of fights in Germany, soviet build-up in Turkey while a new type of weapon is being demonstrated in the US, etc, etc. Our current system is still essentially an electronic copy of a paper encyclopedia, despite our assertions to the contrary. Adding more awareness of data to the indexing (past what categorization and 'What links here' can currently offer) could be part of the Next Big Step.
Instead of posting this as a feature request for MediaWiki, I'd like to bring it here for discussion first. If there are ways that can potentially make that happen with what we already have, that'd be great. If not, perhaps there are smarter ways of getting from point A to point B than I've suggested above, so feedback would be very welcome. Regards, CHAIRBOY ( ☎) 22:17, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
I like this, but I dread even more additional complexity of our wiki syntax. I guess it doesn't matter at this point, since we've basically abandoned the idea that regular non-technical people should be able to edit our articles...
But, ideally, this would be as automated as possible. We are supposedly getting a dynamic date formatting feature that works on things inside <date> tags, for instance, which I think is completely backwards. In my mind, we should have robust code for recognizing dates in plain text, and dynamically format all of them by default. For the cases that shouldn't be auto-formatted, which are in the minority, use nowiki tags. Then the automatically-recognized dates could be tied to your idea, maybe?
And I'm imagining something completely unlike categories. Like a dynamic moving timeline thing that you can zoom around in by year and location on earth. :-) We should have similar mindmap-type stuff for categories, too, but who's going to write it? — Omegatron 14:37, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
1. Has anyone else noticed how difficult it is to make even minor edits to text that has a large number of inline references (<ref> ... </ref>)? Trying to find the actual words of the text interspersed amongst reams and reams of reference text is bad enough, and then if you want to rearrange words or sentences it becomes a nightmare trying to keep track of what you're doing and not break anything. Highlighting the <ref> ... </ref> text in the edit window - say in a different colour - would be a start. Even better would be to show the references as [1], [2] etc. in the edit window when you don't actually want to edit them, with a facility to expand when you do.
2. When editing a section the preview window does not show the expanded references, which makes them impossible to check. I tend to temporarily add a <references/> tag at the end of the section, but it's easy to forget to take it out before you save. It would be good if the preview facility did this automatically for you.
Matt 11:26, 15 May 2007 (UTC).
Inspired by this... I was thinking. It would be really cool if you edit a section and then preview your edit were to get a "dummy" <references> added in your preview so you can actually preview changes you made to your ref. I have no idea how this would be implemented (JS, mediawiki or cite.php extension), but I think it would be really useful. -- TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 01:20, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
When I looked at the current logo, I noticed that the antialiasing is absolutely AWFUL. There's white edges on everything. While there have been multiple uploads of a better version, they've been reverted each time. I made one here, which has it all fixed.
First, why have they all been reverted? They work on both IE and Firefox, and should work in all other browsers. Second, could we put my version up? Thanks. ~ Ed B oy [c] 17:04, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm having a bit of a grump at the moment about the number of images, particularly those tagged as PD-art, often orphans, that are already available on Wikimedia Commons, normally in a higher resolution. I've come across these as I've been transferring images to the Wikimedia Commons.
I know {{ ncd}} is meant to be used to facilitate the deletion of exact duplicates but what about non-exact duplicates. For example: Image:JoanOfArc.jpeg on Wikipedia and Image:JoanOfArcLarge.jpeg on Commons - identical image regarding colour and contrast, the Commons version is of a higher resolution. Commons is not meant to contain duplicate images itself, so transferring a lower resolution duplicate seems rather futile. Is it ok to tag non-exact duplicates of this type with {{ ncd}} and hope they get deleted - or do we need a different template or system? Madmedea 20:17, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
The page at Wikipedia is not aniconistic has a historical tag placed on it and a suggestion to post about it on this page. Is there any chance we can make this Wikipedia policy, at least as an extension of Wikipedia is NOT Censored? Certain articles, such as Muhammad have been subject to attack by certain parties which amounts to censorship. Any comments to revive this page and pass it as official policy? -- ProtectWomen 05:51, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
ProtectWomen has spam on multiple user pages so that they can come here and support it. We should not try to develop or rather enforce concensus like that.
Sorry about the Canvas thing, I was half asleep last night. I knew ALM checks my contribs so that's why I didn't bother posting to his page. I just assumed he would tell his friends about it so I wouldn't have to.
Anyway, my understanding is that this IS a guideline already? I am a little confused. HighInBC, who is ArbCom and what do they have to do with this ? -- ProtectWomen 15:56, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
My new Scientific Beliefs article is going to be delected. It's on AIC, so as such, it's incomplete. Really, it only has The structure laid out for the Wikipedian helpers to follow. Please try and put protections or something around AIC, so Wikipedia can't delete the articles because of being incomplete, because AIC is for new articles that are incomplete or anything like that, so that other users can edit, and help them with facts and structure! Please help.
Oh, and AIC has been renamed Wiki:Article in Construction, and i don't want that to be it's name, please help.
Article in Construction is here.
My new article is goning to be delected, this is my side of the delection discussion:
This page should not be delected because unlike the other resorces, this article is so that people with ideals can post the article here, and have people with more intelligence fill in the blank spots for them. A person whom posts and article by themselves is likely to make at least one or so mistakes, but by posting the article here, you have people coming in to help finish it and fix the mistakes, it can help in more ways then the other resorces, it can help lower delection by other users coming in and fixing it up and help it and ways that it fits the code and regulations of Wiki. If you made an article and it was going to be delected, post it here, and other users will fix it right up, and make it to where it fits the reglations. and when you are going to make an article, this place will help to provide facts and structure.
Please let the delection kinda slide. Please help me. Anyone who reads this. AIC is for Wikipedians, it's to help.
AIC {Article in Construction} can be found here
For the discusion page, come here.
Please help.
Nikro 06:37, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
I have a new bold proposal to reduce controversy in our categorization scheme. I propose we categorize people by "country" rather than "nationality". Nationality does not equal citizenship even if that was the original intention. If one changes citizenship or has multiple citizenship it can be tagged by all that apply. Stuff ambiguous like "American people" would also be gone as a result of this since it is "People from the United States". -- Cat chi? 13:54, 4 May 2007 (UTC)