This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.
< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212
A lot of the Wikiprojects are dead or near it. Some could be edited to be more effective and some have good ideas that could be implemented. Maybe there should be a Wikiproject of the week similar to the other focused collaboration ideas. I guess there could be a WPOTW Wikiproject. Iunno. It's just one idea to get people interested in some broad topics that they might not ordinarily think to tackle, but might be interested. -- Sketchee 06:43, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)
could get very far in a week.
Maybe. Nothing wrong with it if some people want to do it. I would remark, though, that the fact that a project lacks overt ongoing work does not mean that it is a dead letter. For example, about a year ago I started Wikipedia:WikiProject Ethnic Groups. It kind of petered out as a project, but I think it influenced, and probably continues to influence, a lot of people about how to write encyclopedically about an ethnic group. -- Jmabel | Talk
Looking at the latest changes made to an article and then reverting to the previous state is a way of saying "I don't agree with what the last person who edited this did to the article. Thumbs down." How about (and again, I'm a noob. This is probably another example of me not finding the proper discussion on the subject, or knowing of a feature (or set of features)or built in systemic logic that essentially would do this) a button in the history tab of giving thumbs up (for logged on or even just especially respected users) to a latest edit? Seems to me (without having given it too much thought) it might be helpful for those looking for vandals or disinformationists. They could list articles with recent changes that no one has seconded. They wouldn't have to look at articles someone else has allready looked at and approved of. --Mikko
As an experienced user, I will often add a comment to a discussion page "endorsing" an edit by an anonymous user if I've verified it independently. I'll also make remarks about something seeming likely but needing citation, etc. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:45, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)
I would worry that a feature like this could cut off discussion and eliminate compromise. Why try to incorporate and improve someone's contribution, when a few people have already marked it as "bad"? — Michael Z. 2005-01-28 15:13 Z
How about having two versions of every article; One, which is protected, democratically deemed accurate and NPOV enough (for the time being)etcetera and another, which is the regular kind, edited by anyone,anytime. The version under construction would then be voted to be better than the "Stable" version (or not), and take it's place (or not)? During voting there'd be a third, temporarily protected version so that the anyone,anytime editing would not suffer ... --Mikko
OH, God, no. This is the antithesis of the Wiki way. Rick K 07:26, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)
Can you point me to some discussion of this or give a short summary of the devilish details? I realize that this Wiki way of evolving texts is the best atleast in a world with people committed to the truth, but I'd like to be convinced it's the best even in a world with vandals and advertisers and whatnot... --Mikko
The more I look at this Wikipedia (tonight for the third night(sleep during day)), the more it seems to me to be working and I now believe it is headed for greatness even without an expert or a democratic approval mechanism, unless the world turns into an absolute global totalitarian policestate. I guess my contribution here should be seen as a reminder of how some newcomers might think at a first glance... :) Thank's. --Mikko
I think it would be nice for some long pages to have a shortcut to the top of the page.
As all the pages have an id="top", why not use it?
Could there be an automated process do do that?
Cy21 16:03, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Chris Anderson ( Wired Magazine editor) has a new blog called The Long Tail [1] which discusses the nature of Amazon and Wikipedia and Netflix (and many others) that provide access to content that ranks low on the popularity scale (obscure books, obscure encyclopedia articles, obscure movies) that traditional channels have ignored (compare the number of articles in WP to EB or titles at Blockbuster to Netflix). These obscure titles are the "long tail" on the popularity chart. His most recent entry [2] discusses the nature of "choice" and how we decide which of these obscure titles to read/watch, and the overwhelming variety of choice. He says that we depend on metadata and the wisdom of the crowds-- for example, Google rankings are based on what other people are linking too. Or on Amazon there are item popularity rankings, the circles feature, and other ways.
Wikipedia addresses this problem two ways. First it has Featured Articles to showcase the best articles, and second it relies on Google ranking for the project as a whole. However I contend that these are not enough. For one, Featured Articles is not wisdom of the crowds (more like 10 or 20 people) and is akin to the traditional method of gate-keeping recommendations such as journal editors. Second the google ranking breaks down on obscure titles that may have 1 to none external links to it.
Therefore I propose that a new system of popularity ranking be examined. Wikipedia has close to half a million articles, no one really knows whats here, if you read every article it would take a lifetime. We absolutely must have a system of recommendation.
Because this would involve resources (programming and otherwise) I'm not sure how fruitfull a discussion it would be without input from the powers that be. However, I will say that wisdom of the crowds is the only way to scale such a system. Perhaps one of the easiest and most obvious suggestions would be a page hit counter for each article. -- Stbalbach 16:46, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I heard somewhere that a review system is being developed for Wikipedia. That would be very useful in this regard. Couple this with a rating system (and page hit counters when resources allow) and you're home and hosed. Not sure what code they use but lovefilm.com have an excellent rating system (you'll have to register to try it unfortunately). I'd love to see a rating system that attempted to take into account people's political outlook. For instance you could get members to take a political compass test like that on politicalcompass.org before they can rate articles. This would then allow readers to categorise ratings based on where raters see themselves on the political spectrum. — Christiaan - ☎ 16:29, 20 Jan 2005
I don't think anyone can critisize this idea over any other labor saving ideas. I propose an option that individual users could enable in their preferences area that would allow you to edit any page directly from the article page. Let me explain, when I go to edit a page it takes me to a new screen with a separate window that shows me the wikimark-up. This proposal would enable a user to directly edit a page from the page on which the article is displayed. No separate windows, instead you would just edit the page normally and then click on a "save this page" link. Like I stated earlier, the option would be enabled under a users preferences. It would also make vandalism easier for signed in users, but we don't have many registered vandals. Also, reverting vandalism would be much more streamlined. As well as general over all editing. Yes, you may laugh and shoot my idea down now. Jaberwocky6669 20:22, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)
There is an idea on the backburner for a Blogger style preview page to be used for editing. It's probably not something to expect anytime soon, though -- Alterego 17:15, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)
When I click the diff link on my watchlist, 100% of the time I want to see all of the changes made by the last editor. If he made three edits in a row, I want to see them all at once; the difference between before and after this user's last several edits, yet it only gives me the last edit. We should either:
I am sure I'm not the only one who clicks hist and goes to the last revision before that user every time. It just makes sense.
Now that I am an admin, I have this lovely rollback link that reverts in exactly this way. So it must make sense to someone. - Omegatron 15:07, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)
I agree (I think I actually proposed this before), but I think it would be more useful if you get the diff to the last version since you checked your watchlist. That may be slightly tougher to implement, though, depending on what data is already being tracked. – flamurai TM 22:32, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
Hear me out. I think that before editing users should be given an IQ test. To screen out those people who can only spell and form gramtically correct sentences, without any understanding of the content.-- Jirate 20:43, 2005 Jan 31 (UTC)
I propose a grammar test that when taken, which would be required before anyone can edit, that would give a number beside of a wikipedians name that would indicate how well they scored! If someone edited an article and they had a 1 beside their name then you can rest asured that the edit is good, but if they had a 9 beside their name then you can decide whether or not to check the article they edited out! I understand that English is different in American than in England so a red number could indicate American English and a green number would indicate British English (lol). Any ideas, questions, comments? Please refer them to either here or my talk page... Jaberwocky6669 19:01, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)
Grammar is the least of our problems. And I certainly don't want to discourage editing by non-native speakers. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:40, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)
Also, I would like to add that if someone happened to score the lowest possible score there would be no restrictions whatsoever on what they can and can not do! The same would go for high scores, there would be no special privelages for them. Also, a test like this would have to be timed so that someone can't take the time to look the answers up from somewhere else. They can test only once maybe twice with special permission, which would eliminate the possibility of someone writing the questions down and looking up the answers and then going back and cheating. Jaberwocky6669 20:46, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)
No one would be discouraged, if someone spoke a different dialect of english they would indicate such and be given s special test for their dialect of english. WHich as I mentioned would be indicated by the color of the number. Jaberwocky6669 20:46, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)
One problem is for people who edit from dynamic IP addresses. Do you want to force them to take a test every time they dial in to the internet and try to edit Wikipedia? They would also quickly recognise the correct answers after seeing the test a few times, and so the actual result would be meaningless. Those of us who edit from a fixed IP address could find a way to sit the test via dynamic IP address so we know what to expect before sitting the test that counts. Finally, it wouldn't be long before someone posted the questions with model answers off-site. To counter these problems, you need a very large pool of questions, with the precise questions asked on each occasion selected at random. All questions would need to be of equal difficulty. This still wouldn't avoid the annoyance factor for the dynamic IP contributor.- gadfium 22:13, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Let's save the "grammer" and "reading" tests for weeding out minorities at the polls. Anyone remember why they stopped doing that? No, I don't think this is a good idea. Grammer problems are minor and I'd rather encourage more international Wikipedians to contribute. This would not only probably discourage people from translating because they have imperfect grammer (although they can convey the ideas well enough), but would discourage information from international wikipedians. Not only that but it will discourage everyone else. I really don't want to sit here and answer a dozen questions to edit an article and I'm already here. Will new users really go through with a lengthy process? If you want to make a voluntary test (ie strike the word "required"), I guess I wouldn't discourage you. -- Sketchee 23:53, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)
I have let this idea die, but I still don't understand how it would discourage anyone from editing! I say again that I no longer propose this idea, but anyone who has anything to say are encouraged to comment. Back to my point, no one would be blocked from editing any article anywhere on Wikipedia even if they scored the lowest score. Instead, it would have been merely a tool to judge whether or not an article should be examined for grammatical errors. If I see that a user who scored the highest edited an article then I would not take the time to look that article over; however, if someone scored the lowest score then I would definately utilize my time efficiently by checking the article over. Also, no minorities would be specifically discouraged or excluded simply because a unique test would exist for them that would have been tailored to their specific English dialect. Don't turn this idea that I had into something that would be used to discriminate people. I never had those intentions and I clearly laid out the details of how not to discriminate! I'm done. Jaberwocky6669 03:47, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)
It's as simple as this: All that matters is what's in the article, not who wrote it. – flamurai TM 04:26, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)
All you have to do is read through the archives of at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style to learn very quickly that we are often unable to decide which standard to use to determine what is grammatically correct. You can't always say, "this is correct in American English and this is correct in British English, and in Australian English it's like this". Even if we all agreed that this is a good idea, it would be very difficult to come up with grammatical rules that should be included in the test. It's not just that I think that this would promote discrimination; on a purely practical level, it would be a waste of time and energy to implement (we might eventually be able to agree on some grammar to test, but it would take a long time). - Aranel ("Sarah") 02:55, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I do not think this is a good idea since it would rate low-scoring people and prevent users from editing unless they took the test. Also, there are numerous different dialects, even within the United States. Tezeti
Hello,
I was wondering if it was possible to have a printer friendly version (or better : directly a pdf or ps file) to be more confortable while reading articles from wikisource ?
In any case, would a wiki to ps or wiki to pdf filter be possible ?
Thanks
Printer Friendly is a good idea! This is because when printing a Wikipedia article, part of the page always gets cut off to sacrifice space for the sidebar, which is useless on a piece of paper anyway. Print Preview will not change this. A "remedy" is to select the part of the page that you want to print, and then select the Print Selection option when printing. The problems with this "remedy" are that the resulting page looks funny if there are pictures, and the printer often prints out an empty page at the end, wasting paper, ink, and money; not to mention that it is sometimes difficult to select everything you want without selecting some things you don't want. Several online encyclopedias have a "printer friendly" option, such as The Canadian Encyclopedia. This should be easy to implement. All we have to do is get the designers of MediaWiki to add this feature on their next release. -- Munchkinguy 21:26, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Often, long articles are tagged as disputed, just because one subtopic is disputed. A brief message about the nature of the dispute would greatly help the casual user. I created a new tag Template:Disputeabout, which can be used as e.g. {{Disputeabout|the number of deaths}}. The idea is to have a brief message, so the casual user knows which parts of the article should be used with care. See also Template talk:Disputeabout. -- Chris 73 Talk 02:58, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)
Why don't we give the numerous "List of" articles on Wikipedia their own namespace? Denelson83 22:15, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
When a template is nominated for deletion, a {{tfd}} is placed on it, and a handy-dandy message appears on its page saying something like "This template has been nominated for deletion". That same message appears on every page that features that template. In some cases, that can be bulk untold multiple truckloads of pages (such as with {{actor-stub}} at present). Is there any way of changing the way this message appars so that it is on the template's page but not on the pages of articles featuring that template? It can spoil the look of otherwise good articles. Grutness| hello? 09:11, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I believe that a link should be placed in the tasks pane of the Community Portal that says something along the lines of: "Contribute to the Simple English Wikipedia". With only c.2000 articles, great work still has to be done. A note should also be made that contributors can use the English Wikipedia (en) as a starting point. Alexs letterbox 09:42, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Alterego 02:17, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)
This is not a section for discussing wheter or not we need a Simple English Wikipedia; we already have one. It was created for people who have English as a second (or third, fourth, etc) language. Discussing whether or not there should be one is irrelevent to the topic. Anyway, if the articles do have "rather poor quality", all the more reason to get people to expand it. I didn't even know about it until recently when I noticed "Simple English" on the "other languages" bar on the left side of the screen. Besides, Babelfish does a really bad job of translating webpages. -- Munchkinguy 05:16, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
This one is almost certainly beyond the available technology's capacity, but I'll put it here anyway. I notice that when a two-way conversation is going on on user talk pages, it is common for replies to be posted on both the talk pages concerned. (eg if User X says something on user Y's talk page, then User Y will put a reply on both his/her own talk page and on User X's. Then User X will reply in the same way on both pages, and so on). It would simplify the process (again using the same example) if User Y could type a reply once, but have it simultaneously added to both talk pages. As I say, it's almost certainly beyond the reach of the technology, but it would be useful... Grutness| hello? 11:24, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I should like to write an article about the above mentioned topics but as I am new should appreciate advice.My email jfconnolly@mailcity.com
Good idea, but it seems to conflict with Wikipedia:Neutral Point of View. However, it would be a great project for Wikibooks. -- Munchkinguy 05:27, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
This may have been proposed in the past but I believe it's a useful idea. I propose that a new permissions level of "Power User" be created. These users would have normal permissions except that they would have access to the rollback link. They would not have the admin powers of blocking users or deleting pages. A user would become a power user after hitting a threshold of 500 edits (or 750, 1000, the exact number would need to be agreed upon). If the Power User violates the 3RR or abuses their rollback power, they would lose their Power User status.
Sounds like a good idea, but I wouldn't base it on number of edits, as a number like that has little to do with the quality of edits. I would favor an application/nomination process, however. -- Stevietheman 18:02, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I like the idea of a time-based system. - Omegatron 20:56, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)
Seems like a time-based system would make a lot of inactive ID's into "power users". BigFatDave 23:12, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I wouldn't like to based it on time, because a user might have signed up for a long time but did very little. So this user would be no different to a new user. A combination of a time and edit based system maybe? Also, maybe we should give power users immunity to autoblocking as well (but still can be blocked directly), since they've proven to be genuine contributers. This will save us dynamic IP users a lot of headache. -- SunTzu2 04:25, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
It would be great if there were a simple way to do conditionals in templates. It would be great even to just check if a variable existed. For example,
|- || Release date: || {{{release_date}}} {{{{if awards}}}} |- || Awards: || {{{awards}}} {{{{endif}}}} |- ...
I don't know what the best syntax would be, but this would really be helpful.
– flamurai TM 21:31, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)
Mount Everest | |
---|---|
Height | 8844 |
Range | Himalaya |
Mount Everest | |
---|---|
Height | 8844 |
".
Mount Everest | |
---|---|
Height | 8844 |
Range | Himalaya |
Mount Everest | |
---|---|
Height | 8844 |
".
This has been moved to Wikipedia:Proposal for intuitive table editor and namespace. Please contribute comments and criticism. - Omegatron 00:16, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)
At the recently reopened Museum of Modern Art the audio guide has ad-lib discussions of notable pieces by current "experts" in the field. They aren't scripted - it is just someone who knows something about a subject talking about it and putting it in context with history, other pieces, artists, modernity, etc. Further, M-w.com has verbal pronunciations of many words, indicated to be available by a small speaker symbol ( example).
I am proposing a somewhat mixed integration of these two ideas, and the Ogg Vorbis audio codec would probably suffice, although I admit to having not used it myself. We would openly invite those who feel comfortable with speaking, with a certain subject, and also with licensing a snippet of their voice under the GFDL, to simply speak about a subject and upload the file. This could be concerning a work of art being displayed inside an article, an entire article, a clarification of some point, or anything the speaker wishes. Because some people would find the small speaker symbols annoying, their could be an option in the user preferences to turn them off, or they could hide them with CSS as is often done here. A limitation would be that they could not introduce facts not already indicated in writing somewhere in the encyclopedia.
This is further expanded to Wiktionary, where it would be highly useful to have open source pronunciations of words in many regional accents of english speakers, and appropriately for other languages as well. -- Alterego 00:26, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)
I have just come up with a fantastic new idea for a "Wiki" website: Wikicalendar! I got the idea from typing years (like 2005) into the Wikipedia, and learning different facts (like that 2005 is the World Year of Physics). It could either be part of Wikipedia, or on its own. The idea is an open source calendar where people can add holidays and onto the calendar. Then, you coul click on the hyperlinked holidays, and it would take you to a page with an article about that holiday. Another cool feature might be that one could view different formats of calendars (Gregorian, Jewish, Muslim, etc.) -- Munchkinguy 20:03, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I also belive that tables are evil. I was thinking that the current day would be highlited on the calendar, and clicking on the link to other calendars would take you to the current day on that other calendar, with the day highlited on that calendar. I was hoping that somebody more technologically inclined than myself would come up with the coding. -- Munchkinguy 20:58, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I suppose that somebody will have to change the highlited date every day. To colour in the backround of a cell...
hello |
... you type this... <table border=black> <td bgcolor=yellow>hello</td> </table>. I think that the calendar should be created under a new article called "Wikicalendar", and then put a link to it on the "Calendar" article and articles for the years (2004, 2005, etc). As for the cross-language stuff, it is probably good to transliterate, except for the years, in which case they should be translated. I hope that made sense. -- Munchkinguy 21:20, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Tada~~ here comes Wikicalendar: 2005. Needs a lot of work though, so I listed it for expansion. What kind of holidays should we list there? National holidays? State holidays? Religious holidays? Cultural holidays? School holidays? (just kidding on the last one). Do we put all the holidays in every calendar or do we put them in the calendar that marks the occasion only? SunTzu2 15:37, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)
You got to be kidding me......*faints*. Don't forget that's my sweat we're talking about, I've got a huge headache trying to get the tables to the right spot. And you haven't answer me about what to do with the Heavenly Stems. SunTzu2 02:47, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Can I just ask why you haven't done the tables in Wiki markup, because the other usages are deprecated? (See m:Help:Table.) Noisy | Talk 19:11, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)
50% of my work is done now. I found a HTML=>Wiki converter and cut down it's size, but it's still almost 40kb of codes, hope it's worth all the space it's taking. Meanwhile, I need help adding all the holidays, linking pages to and from Wikicalendar and Wikicalendar: 2005, updating the dates daily, and discuss which other holidays to add. (See dicussion page for more info) I'll finish the rest of the Chinese calendar and Muslim calendar myself, in stages. -- SunTzu2 11:04, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Ok, I'll add a manual or something, lol. -- SunTzu2 04:29, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Any suggestions on how else to allow people who are unfamiliar with the calendars to tell when is when? At the moment I'm the only one moving the yellow box daily, and that's several hours after midnight (UTC). I might not be able to keep this up after my holidays come to an end. How do we move the yellow box when it's no longer 2005 anyway? By then there'll be no boxes to move, just a calendar. I just want people to be able to easily determine which 2 days are the same on different calendars even with little maintainence. -- SunTzu2 07:49, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Well, after 2005 is over, we can make a Wikipedia: 2006 page. Remember, we can put links for every year on the Main Wikicalendar Page (sort of an archive), and put the current year at the top -- Munchkinguy 04:56, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
A user posted this on my talk page. I thought it would bet more of a response here. Rmhermen 16:00, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)
funds heres a thought. if you wer a registered charity in the uk, you could apply for UK lottery funding and EEC Social Fund Single Payment funding. All you need is a UK branch of Wiki.
What if we forked development of Wikipedia and locked it. Then trusted contributors get access to the fork first to ONLY FIX PROBLEMS DEALING WITH CORRECTIONS. Then you go higher up, with more trusted admins dealing with major NPOV disputes (as voted on by the members in the unlocked "talk" pages). Then contact university professors to ensure that everything works out. After 1.0 releases, you start on the 2.0 fork. I would love to have a CD of Wikipedia (which I am intending on doing on my Laptop, by Installing Apache for Windows and MySQL then downloading the english site) but I need to know it is as accurate as say Encarta. - Nick Catalano 06:36, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I've never dealt with WP 1.0 before, but I think forking it and then only fixing problems is probably the only way. I am also of the opinion that for this to be managable, WP 1.0 must include only, say, the 100,000 most popular articles - those with the most inner-wiki links to them. — Itai ( f&t) 08:25, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
One thing thats been turning over in my head is that the distance between administrator and a normal user is too large. Administrators are the most trusted members of wikipedia, and they (rightly) yield alot of power. Expectations on them are understandably high and there is a rigorous process to elect them. My problem is that administrators should be concentrating on administrative issues and not be responsible for content, that should be left to the community. I am thinking for instance of the main page, the community should be responsible for that and not just the administrators. In this regard I suggest that there should be a level between administrators and normal users, called a "Trusted" user. The only difference between normal users and trusted users is that trusted user can edit any blocked articles (ie, they can't block pages/users, unblock pages/users, and all the other things administrators can do, just edit blocked pages). The expectations of trusted users should be very high, and there should be strict rules that should be enforced ruthlessly (i.e no changing of content to articles blocked due to edit wars, any hint of vandalism or 3RR violations should result in immediate revoking of trusted user-priviliges, etc.) This would take the load of administrators to update the main page, make sure that articles blocked due to vandalism still gets updated, etc. It should ofcourse be alot easier to become trusted than to become an administrator, and also more frequent. Does this sound like a good idea to anyone besides me :P? I do realise that it would take some devoloping implementing this, but im just floating the idea right now. Oh, and sorry if this has been discussed previously Gkhan 23:10, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)
Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Requested moves/Min edit count
I thought this would be a good forum to bring up some interaction design problems with Wikipedia.
These are some of the problems I found as an active contributor who also happens to be an interaction designer.
Cinema or the Apu Trilogy. One simple heuristic that could help meet the similar goals would be to allow the user to watch all the articles that link to a particular article or watch all the articles that have been manually grouped as categories. The feature "Related Changes" tries to do something similar, but lists the changes to the articles listed only on your watch list.
I believe that encouraging people to collaborate better and giving users better idea of how articles are changing over time would help Wikipedia improve the quality of articles tremendously.
- Kesava 20:46, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
For nearly a year, I've been checking to see how much evidence there was of something relating to Wikipedia article titles that I felt so worried that it was going to happen soon. This is somebody's proposed move of Georgia (country) to Georgia. According to what I found, most early evidence (late 2003-early 2004) didn't make evidence of this so strong, but that it was beginning to get strong in the late spring of 2004 that it became so strong by summer. The moving poll says those who don't want it moved are still in the lead as of now, but not so much as the early days of the poll. In several lower sections of Talk:Georgia, I tried whatever way I could to keep there from being too much evidence that the page will be moved, but it couldn't be accepted too easily. As a result, I now feel so worried that the option of moving Georgia (country) to Georgia will likely be in the lead by mid-2006, and that by the fall of 2006, the answer to the question "Will Georgia (country) be moved to Georgia??" is a very likely YES. Anything to say about this move that I feel so worried will happen?? Georgia guy 19:18, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Erm? I think it should be moved, but why does it matter? Both link to the other, so there's little room for confusion. The Recycling Troll 10:12, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Looking for information on Michelangelo, I stumbled upon Wikipedia in Italian. It surprised me to see that the text was easier to read (I do speak Italian) than the English version, and then I finally understood why:
This part is a little bit slower to be read than this latter part is.
It figures: letters and fonts were created to be easy and fast to read, but underlined reading was far from the top concern.
As Wikipedia becomes more and more linked (as we hope and strive for), its text also becomes more and more intermittently underlined. It is not clean, and it is not natural.
This seems to be of minor importance -- it is not. Wikipedia's primary function is to be read, so such experince has to be as good as we can get it to be.
Please compare the
English and
Italian versions and figure out which one is more natural to the eye.
So, I propose that English Wikipedia's links are to be recognized by color, not by the redundant use of color + underlining, as the default.
-- Subramanian 08:10, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
There could be a few (this will increase as time goes by) Wikipedia articles that have had too many edits to study particular sections in using the table above that says "show last 50 100 250 500 edits". I suggest that we replace it with a new table saying:
Show last few edits since __ __ __ where the blanks are for a month, a day, and a year (for example, March 24, 2004.) Any comments?? (Note that I don't know whether hundreds of articles of this kind exist yet, but I'm pretty sure there will be by about a year from now.) Georgia guy 00:48, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Footnote3 for autonumbering footnotes implemented with simple short templates. Your comments appreciated. The proposal article also serves as a demonstration. Mozzerati 23:11, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)
(note: This proposal is also at Wikipedia talk:Categorization)
There's been quite a bit of discussion about the way we've been setting up categories. There are several problems that need to be addressed somehow. But I think most of this stems from three conflicting attributes of categories:
If the three of these continue, many categories will become fragmented to the point of being unusable, and in some cases some very unwanted side-effects will be created.
Here's an example of a side effect: Category:African-American actors is a subcategory of Category:American actors. Thankfully, all the actors are on both lists. But, according to "the rules" they shouldn't be. The reason for this is because there are really two hierarchies here: There is a hierarchy below category:African Americans that is then broken down by professions, which leads to Category:African-American actors. There is also the hierarchy of Category:Actors which is broken down by nationality to Category:American actors. When someone decided that Category:African-American actors was a subcategory of Category:American actors then according to the rules, all the African-American actors should have been removed from Category:American actors.
As I see it, because our system does not distinguish which sub-categories are part of the hierarchy and which are "related", whenever categories "collide" problems like this occur. I think three things could be done to alleviate this problem:
One reason, perhaps, why there was a move to make more and more subcategories, and to remove articles from a category whenever they could be found in a subcategory is because only 200 entries can be shown on a category page. Recently, we have found a way to make templates that create a table of contents for large categories that make this a little less of a problem. Perhaps we can work out some other ways to make categories more useful and easier to use. I'm offering this as a start. -- Samuel Wantman 10:33, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Another thought about that "You have new messages" alert. There have been occasions when I have had two new messages between log-ins, but have only noticed the last one because the banner remains the same no matter how many messages you get. How difficult would it be to add a number to the front "You have x new messages" if there is more than one new message? Grutness| hello? 00:00, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Maybe Wikipedia could sell its Featured Pictures and use the money for its purpose and maybe some money goes to the photographers. Roscoe x 07:12, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I've just been reading an article about a fascinating battle - full of details - then I realised that this simply was a fictional battle. It is probably labouring under several categories before eventually becoming part of Category Fiction. Would it be sensible (and I realise that this may involve a technical proposal) that we could produce some explicit method of signifying the fictional attribute of an article - say an icon or a particular-coloured background? At the moment, unless I follow the correct chain of categories, I have no quick and easy way of determing the factual or fictional status of any article; and this method may not always be foolproof. If this is suitable, then it should be possible for a robot to cascade any such property down from Category Fiction, but we would need some method of adding this property into a new article. Again, it may be possible to identify orphan fictional articles. (PS: Apologies if this or similar has been discussed before) Thanks, Ian Cairns 15:27, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
What article is this that you are talking about? -- Munchkinguy 23:19, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I've just had an idea. Say two Wikipedians are arguing over some obscure page, watched by no one but them. (This has happened to me.) All they need is a third opinion - someone to break the tie. Hence, Wikipedia:Third opinion. This will be a constantly changing page on which controversies involving only two Wikipedians are listed, so that a tiebreaker may be found. If a third opinion is provided otherwise, the controversy should be delisted. If a user decides to provide such a third opinion, he should remove the controversy from the page. This will ensure that the page will not be cluttered, and will allow for third opinions to be delivered with haste. What do you think? — Itai ( f&t) 00:15, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Okay, this is my first post so I'm hoping it is in the right place. I'm hoping to upgrade the RAM on my computer and so read the appropriate wiki page. Whilst informative, it lacked practical information that I, as an utter novice, required. Is there a page on how to build/upgrade a computer? This relates to my confusion over whether RAM on a desktop should be "balanced", apparently what you have already affects what amount you can add. This answer to this still eludes me.
I just wondered if anyone else had, when dealing with a specialist subject, found that the information, whilst comprehensive, assumed considerable background knowledge. I have found this with the mathematics section also. Perhaps a new addition to wiki, if not found already, might be a series of idiot guides for self-confessed ones such as myself.
The "new message" box at the top of the screen is a wonderful thing, but has one drawback: It always takes you tot he top of your User talk page. If the new message is part of an earlier thread in a long talk page it can take a while to find exactly where the new message is. Could an arrow system offering the choice of taking you straight to the edited section (similar to that used for articles on watchlists) be added somehow? Grutness| hello? 00:07, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the input, I'd like to move further discussion to Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates Also see my page for my idea of how world coordinates should look. -- Plowboylifestyle 02:10, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Its reasonable to say there is a match between Linux distribution copyright and wikipedia content copyright. In some countries, for example Kenya, telecommunication isn't that good and its therefore not possible for us to spend time on line. It therefore happens that most computers over there are highly under utilized since they are not networked. Buddling wikipedia content would automatically increase the value of such a computer. Anyway to organize such a buddling? I know it can be done, but i am suggesting a straight forward solution such that one can send a couple of CD over there and expect somebody who can install an operating system, but not much else would be able to set it up? It could be one of the optional application when installing a linux distro. An operating system update could also involve updating wikipedia content. And to avoid using too much space, the content could be compressed like the linux manuals. Everybody benefits, the linux distro in that, the distro have more value, users, in that his or her PC becomes more valuable and wikipedians gain in that its a good tool to recrute future contributors. A potential problem, how would one handle a PC with a local cache of wikipedia, but well connected to the Internet?
If we could use the wikipedia search engine and modified it to find articles less than certain length of words, those articles could then be reviewed and looked for for stubs that have been missed. There should be an option to ignore already marked stubs. From there, maybe someone with some coding experience could write a dll that would function as a bot? Furthermore, it would be nicer for wikipedia to have a more advanced search engine. -- DoubleRing 06:24, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
<rant warning>
"External links" must die. Both the section title and the tendency to add links arbitrarily and without descriptions.
The standard section for further information should be called "Further information", because the distinction between web-based and printed resources is artificial. Web links are of course special because the user can access them immediately. However, this makes no sense for eventual printed versions of Wikipedia articles, and thanks to the ISBN mechanism even books are "linked".
"Further information" is also superior semantically because it reflects the purpose of the section, not the medium. "External links" is comparable to the link title "click here", which similarly lacks semantics and is unnecessarily medium-specific. On a minor note, the "external" label is confusing when we need to link to pages in the Wikipedia: namespace.
We should avoid links that don't point to specific documents or document collections because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a web index. We should definitely provide links to things like relevant fan sites and web forums, but not in Wikipedia. Instead, we should start a Web directory project and create a nice, shiny sisterproject box that can be used for the "Further information" section in Wikipedia articles. Important websites, such as certain official company websites or major fan sites, should have their own articles or sections.
Needless to say, web links should always be described, including information about author, publisher and date (where applicable). The primary purpose of a "Further information" entry must be to identify a resource, not link to it. URLs change or go away; document titles and author names do to a lesser extent.
(I prefer "Further information" over "Further reading" because the latter excludes audio and video.)
</rant warning>
Fredrik | talk 20:36, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I don't agree with the claim: “the distinction between web-based and printed resources is artificial”. Aside from anything else, printed resources, being more likely to be peer-reviewed, are considerably more reliable (I don't say that they're wholly reliable, of course). Looking at some of the external links in Wikipedia articles, this is a significant issue. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 13:34, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Here is a nice way to format external links. Rather than external link genocide, start a wiki project that adds meta information to them all like so:
-- Alterego 17:12, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)
In some cases, readers don't find out about valuable online resources on their topic because of Wikipedia's 'not a web directory' policy. Though this policy was implemented for important reasons, in some ways, it may be functionally inferior to a more lenient policy.
If we had a web directory sister project, it would also be functionally inferior to have to always be clicking on the additional link before having access to these resources. Could it be possible to have a web directory sister project that piggybacks on the end of articles? Maybe simply editable just by scrolling to the bottom of the edit box (i.e. where the last section of the page is)?-- Nectarflowed 18:51, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Right, at the moment, there are a whole load of pages linking to square kilometer, which is a redirect to square kilometre. I am considering changing all these pages. Does this seem like a good idea? Any objections? Thanks. -- Smoddy | ειπετε 21:44, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Well, Wikipedia policy is to not change spelling from American to British or vice versa on articles which specifically relate to one culture. But if the article is culture-neutral, then I have no problem with your doing all this scut work. Rick K 00:11, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)
User:Neutrality makes a point. I third it. Bart133 (t) 21:52, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
For information only: Wikipedia:Offline_reports/This_is_one_of_the_most_linked_to_redirect_pages is more than a little out of date, but Square kilometer is there at the top. Ian Cairns 23:41, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
A popular type of vandalism is to replace the whole article, or a whole section, with the word "pwn3d" or the like. This kind of vandalism could be autodetected: If an article size decreases by some large amount - perhaps a threshhold could be 20% of the section or article being edited, or 3000 characters, whichever is larger - then the article's name is automatically placed on a list that can be quickly peer-reviewed in the same way that Wikipedia editors currently routinely review new edits.
Possibly valuable because it decreases the chance that 'deletion vandalism' will slip through the cracks unnoticed, and if someone feels like monitoring this list on a particular day, the time-to-revert will also be decreased. Tempshill 21:52, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Knowing a dramatic change in size content might also be useful for other purposes. Most any article changed by a large amount probably needs a quick look over. -- Sketchee 00:00, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)
In regards to the seven dirty words, some consideration must be taken for articles which actually use those words. -- AllyUnion (talk) 12:19, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
In the interests of trying to reduce vandalism, can we have a message at the top of the edit page (for anon users only) which says something like "Yes, you really can edit this page right now, and it really will appear on the website when you press Save. Please don't modify the page just to test this - there is a sandbox for this purpose here. We welcome useful contributions from anyone - but please don't vandalise Wikipedia!". The ickle sandbox message at the bottom, below the Save button, really isn't sufficient IMO. Rd232 08:35, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
As far an vandalisim caused by ignorance goes, another warning message won't help much. Alternative : Anon. users can only save after previewing? Could that be set up? BigFatDave 23:01, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Since there is a similar option for logged-in users, it seems possible, but even that wouldn't stop real vandals. However, we probably should put a bigger sandbox message than the ickle one at the bottom up there somewhere anyway. Bart133 (t) 04:29, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
There is a multi-year dispute about the proper name of Gdansk/Danzig and other locations with a Polish/German history. Unfortunately, lots of discussions were unable to find a compromise. We are trying to finally resolve this dispute with a vote. The vote has two parts, one with questions when to use Gdansk/Danzig, and a second part affecting articles related to locations with Polish/German history in general. An enforcement is also voted on. The vote has a total of 10 questions to vote on, and ends in two weeks on Friday, March 4 0:00
Please vote at
Talk:Gdansk/Vote!
Chris 73
Talk 00:08, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)
I know the VfD procedure is involved, but it is poorly explained on the VfD page. In particular, nominating a page for VfD is just possible following the stuff at the bottom of the VfD page - but the fact that there are two procedures there is confusing - can the two procedures be hived off to separate SHORT pages.
And more importantly, nowhere does it tell you how to vote! After ages of clicking here and there I eventually sussed that you don't vote on the VfD page. Instead you go to the page in question and select the "this page" link in the delete message box and edit that page. This needs clearly stating.
I also spent half an hour trying to locate the source texts for the VfD pages on the off chance that they were not ptotected and that I could edit them to include such an explanation. I failed to find the shortcut sources - where are they? -- SGBailey 22:42, 2005 Feb 16 (UTC)
I have recently come across the use of animations which I consider to be inappropriate to an encyclopaedia. The animations are "pretty", but run too fast to readily follow or study and cannot be rinted out - you just get diagram 1 of the set. Please see my comment on Talk:Octagon. I expect it applies to many other articles in the polygon category. On the other hand, the Asian Tsnami animation seemed right because I don't see people wanting to study individual frames - just to watch the overall flow. Is there an animation policy? -- SGBailey 21:44, 2005 Feb 16 (UTC)
Encarta, Comptons, The Canadian Encyclopedia... They all use animations -- Munchkinguy 23:22, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I think we should lock the main page and all article that link to it to prevent vandalism in the future.
I've had an idea that if high-profile, often-vandalised articles like Tony Blair could have a Tony Blair/GrafWall or similar, that people were freely allowed to "vandalise", it would save a lot of vandalism on actual pages. People vandalise for a number of reasons:
Every now and then, GrafWalls would be reverted back to the original version (to make this easier we could create a Category:Graffiti Walls or similar) and a template to put at the top of a graffiti page and at the top of it's (hopefully) vandalism-free counterpart to say that there's a graffiti wall for that page. The wikitext of the original page could be copy-and-pasted into the GrafWall to start off. In a minute or two I'll begin making a draft WP: page about it at Wikipedia:Graffiti Wall. Do reply and comment here rather than on Wikipedia talk:Graffiti Wall. Thanks,-- AliceCrypto ( Talk| Contributions) 07:21, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I think it's a bad idea. What if someone wanted to libel Tony Blair? We could be held responsible. I don't think it would even work. Most vandals would continue to vandalise the high profile article IMO. If someone wants to make a political statement, add a funny photo of someone, makes jokes etc they can do it on their user page. We allow users to do this because most users who log in make enogh good edits to warrent a page of their own to do (within limits) what they like. Most vandals don't make any good edits, why should they get a space to take this piss out of someone? We are not a free web hosting site, we are an encylopedia. Theresa Knott (The snott rake) 08:54, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I agree that this is a bad idea. If people want to rant about, say, Tony Blair, let them do it elsewhere. Wikipedia is not a forum for unregulated free speech, nor is it a playground. — Charles P. (Mirv) 04:14, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Bad idea. I concur with Rick, Joseph, Theresa, and Charles. Neutrality talk 05:10, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)
fun or not, it's not conductive to building an encyclopedia, which is what WP is still about. Some silliness is fine, but it should in general be kept out of article namespace. dab (ᛏ) 08:00, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
It's good to brainstorm innovative ways to tackle vandalism, so thanks for thinking about this. However, on balance I don't think "Grafitti Walls" are something we really want in WP. — Matt Crypto 15:23, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I have noted that some pages are not simple lists nor are they complete articles; they are somewhat gates, overviews, which explain some basics and then redirect the reader.
The problem is that contributors don't know how to name them, and therefore readers have a hard time finding those. The exemple I have is the mess of looking for current subdivisions within Hinduism:
The List of Hindu sects is clearly not a plain List in the Wikipedia style; and the Schools of Hinduism (Overview) is a good title if I know that I should look for an "... (Overview)" article.
Could we have a standard?
(excuse me for the english, I am italian). Why we can't have a page like Google, which changes his contest from the browser's default's language? [Anon.]
Automatic browser detection of languages is not reliable enough for that, and is annoying to those who work on more than one language. There's a proposal to allow visitors to www.wikipedia.org to voluntarily set a cookie which will remember their language preference -- discuss or help out at meta:Talk:Www.wikipedia.org portal. — Catherine\ talk 22:10, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Now that the Japanese wiki has reached 100 000 articles, and that several (the French and Swedish, maybe a few of the most rapidly growing below 50 000) can be expected to grow up to that number in 2005, how about adding a 100 000 articles level to the main page? -- Circeus 11:48, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC)
As occasionally happens, the database has just been locked for a while, and I (and no doubt countless other wikipedians) have just been idly looking at a few articles until editing was enabled again. To find out whether it was,, I'd simply click an edit link and see what happened (in this case on four occasions), again, as others have no doubt done before me.
May I suggest that - while the database is locked - some tiny signal that it is locked could be used on articles, so that we know not to bother trying to edit them? Maybe the "Edit this page" link could be changed to red, or a little image (such as one of those mock-up roadsigns with a red bar diagonally through a letter E) could be put at the top of the page. That way, when editing is re-enabled, it is possible to tell as soon as a new page is opened. Grutness| hello? 08:16, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I just wanted to create an article about a movie (and about a composer of the music from that movie), and (since I have never written a new article, iirc) I realized, that I would like to have some page which could be both used as an example how to write about specific topic and would also contain all the tips you need to write quite good (or even featured) article. Since Wikipedia is always growing, it's getting more and more difficult to remember/find out all the topic-specific templates, lists, categories and guidelines that people create here. If these could be found in a single place, it would decrease burden to other editors. So I would propose to create a list o specific topic howtos (containing list of common things like animal, spaceship, disambiguation, artist biography, movie, etc.), which should be accessible from the page offered when you create new article. The howto would contain suggested text (for us non-native speakers, I have trouble with style) and formating and other guidelines, how to fill templates, ideas what to include, related lists and categories and stuff like that (maybe there could also be a subpage, that you could copy to editing window, before you start editing). This would also help to unify overall style of Wikipedia. Samohyl Jan 18:05, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Hi I am the web editor for the Graham Hancock site, I was wondering if we could put a link to our upcoming newsletter at this site? Do you have a links area?
Best
Steve
Sometimes you get the wiki search, sometimes the google/yahoo alternative. There are occasions when the google/yahoo alternative is more useful. Would it be possible / sensible to effictively add that script at the end of the wiki search results page - say after the check box block. That way if you didn't like the results you got from wiki you could repeat the search on google in wikipedia or even on the web? -- SGBailey 22:34, 2005 Feb 10 (UTC)
Hello, anybody interested in helping in the West Bank Article? Unfortunately, a highly extremist POV is been expresing withouth giving anybody else the chance to achieve a more appropiate NPOV. I would be glad to hear another ideas User name: Messhermit
I'm no expert on this topic, but a lot of projects have taken advantage of unused computer cycles, like SETI@home, the World Community Grid Project, and Folding@Home . Wikipedia has been, off-and-on slow to load recently (and for as long as I can remember) - its growth has understandably been more than a set of computer clusters can handle. Wouldn't it make sense to make use of the unused computer cycles of Wikipedia's users to help host Wikipedia? Does anyone know if this is feasible? Salasks 15:21, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
We all know how to use the extremely useful numbering system implemented in Wikipedia.
But has anyone ever found that they need a reverse number list? I have. One of the best examples would be a contribution's page. You want to list it so that people see your latest entry, but to label that number one is kind of weird. It also would make it easier to see how many edits you have done. I don't know what symbol we could use...maybe the ^ or & sign?
-- DoubleRing 06:25, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
Another suggestion... for several wikipedia pages (e.g., Wikipedia:Categories for deletion), you need to know what day it is. (I know what you're thinking, but give me a moment). Because we use UTC, the day changes over at different times of the day for different groups of Wikipedians (for me, at 1 p.m. now, and noon in southern hemisphere winter). When it's very close to the change-over from one day to the next (when I do a lot of my editing), the easiest way to see whether the day has changed, Wiki time, is to type five tildes on whatever I'm typing and preview - a cumbersome process. Is there any way of adding something like "page opened at 00:00, Day, Date" onto a page in much the same way as the "page last saved at" message? Under the Wikipedia globe, perhaps? Grutness| hello? (erm, at 05:32, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC))
Very good idea! -- Munchkinguy 23:25, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I have translated the toolbox for the experienced users in Wikipedia, which is originally created by User:Mountain in the Chinese Wikipedia. Users can use this template in your user page. And users can edit the toolbox to improve the toolbox functionary. Shinjiman 14:28, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
What about inserting the pronunciation of the words. Of course I am referring to the title words. English commons words, such us the one whose pronunciation could be fuond on a normal dictionary, can be left out. I am referring to the name of people, country and so one. In the article Salvador Allende I found a footnote with pronunciation. A more general standard way would be better. A link to a sound resource could also be consider, but for the moment I am proposing a textual description of the pronunce via the usual standard description mechanism. AnyFile 11:34, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
this site is going to be an amazing resource when it goes up in a month or two... please help out with the effort to compile & organize information :)
www.knowmore.org
I've made a sample Wikiportal (which is intended to work as a main page for specific subjects) here: Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Biology. The idea of Wikiportals was first introduced in German Wikipedia, and then it spread to French, Dutch, Polish, Hebrew and Japanese ones. I hope more Wikiportals will follow at en:. Ausir 23:17, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I started Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Art. Hope a few people will look over it and edit anything that could be improved. A couple others have been started but there's plenty of other areas that can be introduced. :)
I don't know how actively I'll be able to maintain the art one and there isn't an Art Wikiproject or anything similar (comics is the closest thing right now. -- Sketchee 06:22, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
I also added a few Requested Wikiportals -- Sketchee 06:27, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
IS anyone familiar with the KEO project? If not then here is the link, http://www.keo.org/ Wouldn't it be great if all of Wikipedias articles made their way onto KEO? Not as a substitute for any other source of information. Just as something cool to think about because Im a dreamer =) Jaberwocky6669 16:30, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)
Hi all, Wikipedia is great...i get to read about a lot of famous people and the works of great authors. But unfortunately i cannot pronounce most of their names. It would be a great help if you guys could add pronunciations of non-English names/nouns/verbs/etc.
Thank you.
Perhaps I'm being unduly negative; I hope so, because as I said at the beginning, it is a good idea in principle. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:45, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I have been working from some time to start a project similar to this one... But it some twists:
-Authors should adhere to norms in their Learning Material.
-Learners should pay lots of "points" that they use (a "point" per each K of text) to gain access or possibility to copy or print text, text is visible in screen but Select/Copy doesn´t work, also they pay a "point" per minute, for playing educational games or getting in-line tuition.
-Authors produce: text, educational games, translations, researchs, power point presentations, on-line tuition, etc.
-A percentage of the Income from Learners, should go to the Authors of the accessed learning material, the rest of the income is for the portal operation expenses.
-This will permit willing educators, that have knowledge but are: jobless, disabled, parentes of disabled kids, retired, etc. to earn some adittional income, and will promote quality in submissions, to be attractive and useful to Learners of course, authors names should be prominent, and some will become famous.
-What is your opinion? I will be grateful for brief & practical answers to this post.
Ing. Dagoberto G. Flores-Lozano Ex Research Fellow and University Professor (UNAM, UVM, UIA) Post Degree in Academic Administration, UC at Berk. -- Dagoflores 17:21, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC) Hear me out. I think that before editing [Authors] users should be given an IQ test. To screen out those people who can only spell and form gramtically correct sentences, without any understanding of the content.--Jirate 20:43, 2005 Jan 31 (UTC)
You need to realize that you could never prevent a dedicated user from "stealing" information from an encyclopedia. Disabling copy and paste are only available through javascript, which can easily be disabled. Even if you make javascript required, they can just navigate to the page and then disable it. One way you could do it is through flash, which would disable copy paste. However, it's not to difficult for someone to find the url of the flash file and save it. Just check out the Homestarrunner Wiki (I believe that should be hrwiki.org Cigarette). They post the locations of the actual flash files used on the site. Of course you could use the infamous Brittanica method: only displaying a few words of the article and forcing you to buy the rest, though i doubt it will work in this case. Lastly, the best path that I would take would be to program an application that would communicate with the parent server, bringing back the articles as they were requested. The only way to make money, however, is to use the Britannica method. The disabling select/copy sounds very innovative, however, few people, except plagarizers, directly copy and paste from encyclopedia articles. You've got a good idea though! Don't give up on it. -- DoubleRing 05:23, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)
Sounds very nice. I bookmark this. Agreed about the copy/paste though, it's impractical. Perhaps limit access to nicened diagrams, updates mailing list, animations/movies/audio? r3m0t 18:13, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
(I can't see this mentioned anywhere else; if it is, I apologise.)
I've noticed a number of articles that non-native speakers have edited or even created, in the process introducing useful and informative content, but creating problems because of their grammar, spelling, inability to judge the correct tone, etc. The next native speaker who happens along can then correct it, tidy up the errors, etc., but that might not happen for some time. Not only will the damaged article have been on display for that period, but there might be passages too obscure to be understood, so that the new editor needs to contact the original author for help — and the original author might by then have disappeared. (I've had various experiences of this kind: for example, see Talk:Lentienses and Elgoog.)
Might it be a good idea to advise non-native-speakers (not only in the English version, of course) who recognise their linguistic limitations to add or explain their additions on the relevant Talk page instead of directly in the article, with a request for a native speaker's help? There could be a central page (like this one) on which such requests could be posted. If it is agreed to be a good idea, how easy would it be to set up? I'd be more than happy to lend a hand (or, if it's relatively straightforward, to do it myself). Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:48, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
This can be useful. My english is poor but my ideas are rich. Even if I write with a dictionnary next to me, i'll be glad sometimes to have some advises on the correct sentence structure to reach my purpose. Lvr 09:55, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Sounds like a good idea to me (though I should say that I hadn't envisioned using cleanup templates; just a note on the Talk page and a request on Wikipedia:Contributing to articles outside your native language).
Now that the page is up, how best to publicise it? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 13:01, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
A roughly a month ago, the votes for deletion process was changed in how the VFD pages were handled. At the current moment, when an article is nominated, it is put at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Article name. Where on that page, === Article name === is placed and all the information as to why it should be deleted is placed on that page.
Then it is placed on a VFD day page, a subpage which goes by the UTC date, like today's would be found at: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 2 and tomorrow's would be found at: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 3, and yesterday's would be found at: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 1 and so on.
So, on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 2, a transinclude is placed there, specifically, {{Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Article name}} under the section where the date is placed. In this case, under the section label: == February 2 ==.
Then, from there, transincludes are placed on the main Wikipedia:Votes for deletion page, containing only the pages linking to the dates, thus only having a list of days like: {{Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 2}}
This allows automatic linking using the variables in the MediaWiki system, and a direct way to link to the current day to place a VFD vote.
Prior to this system, everything was placed on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion (main page). This meant that all the subpage transincludes, specifically, {{Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Article name}}, was placed on the main page VFD. So you'd have the section dates on the main page VFD, and each section date would contain the transincludes for each VFD nomination. The only problem with this system was that it could not provide direct linking to the appropriate section to add the VFD nomination to the page.
Several users have made some complaints regarding this, and wish to revert the system back to what it was prior to December 25, 2004, before the inclusion of the day to day subpage transincludes. A vote is now taking place at Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion#VFD_One_Page_a_Day. Please make your comments there, and make any suggestions regarding this issue. -- AllyUnion (talk) 22:51, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I'm curious as to whether anyone would find one of these two related features useful. I certainly would.
If a change created a long diff, a truncated version could be shown instead. (oops -- forgot to sign. :: jdb ❋ 21:06, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC))
Since the Cleanup page no longer functions like it did originally, does it really serve much of a purpose to keep it on the Wikipedia:Recentchanges page? I'm thinking about removing it, but not without discussion beforehand. Rick K 00:07, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)
Take a look at Category:American_actors as an example. It's a category page with numerous articles and numerous subcategories spanning several pages. At first glance it appears that Category:African-American actors is its only subcategory ("there is 1 subcategory to this category"), but lo-and-behold if you click to the next page, you'll see another subcategory, and so on. This isn't very logical. The problem is that the articles are listed alphabetically such that a page shows all articles that begin with A-C, for example — which makes sense — but the subcategories (which are usually far fewer in number) are divided the same way as the articles, which doesn't make sense. I think a more logical system would be to display a Category listing that lists all subcategories first, followed by all articles. Is it feasible to implement this change? — Brim 23:22, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)
Along similar lines, articles in categories should sort by namespace, then by alphabetical title of articles. This way, all main namespace articles will be listed first, then images, then templates, etc. – flamurai TM 23:35, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)
It would still be great to sort by namespace, but a temporary solution to the alphabetical problem has been found -- insert {{ Template:CategoryTOC}} into any large category to insert a functional table of contents. — Catherine\ talk 22:49, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I was thinking it would be interesting to see what Wikipedians would be in each age group and whatnot. In much the same way that Wikipedians haves lists by interest and location, how about one for birthyear? I have searched for it and have not seen anything resembling one.
However I have another one of my great ideas (which may or may not be agreed with). Why don't we make a new set of category for Wikipedians to assemble them? (i.e. Category:Wikipedian 1980 births|User:Wikipedianguy). But if this seems like too much, then I am fine with just a list. Just floating this idea in the air. -- Riffsyphon1024 05:15, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
In my opinion, there are numerous substubs, which need to be categorized. What is you opinion on making substub templates? тəzєті 03:47, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)
How do you create a stub template? I want to add a template for pharmaceutical or drug releated stubs. googuse 07:24, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
Template:
. I suggest
Template:Pharma-stub
would be appropriate. There, paste this in:{{subst:metastub | article=[[pharmacology]]-related article | id=pharmastub | category=Pharmacology stubs}}
Now, we are using the category system to know the licence of the images. A page of "Uncategoriced images" would let us find the images without licence. Llull 21:07, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I think it would be beneficial if contributors were able to supply their sources through a footnote/bibliography feature. This would provide a natural link to off-line resources and allow contributors to reference coryrighted material, providing a scholarly legitimacy that wikipedia is sometimes accused of lacking. It would also aid fellow wikipedians in further research, editing, and contibuting to articles. -- The bibliograpghy/footnote feature could be removed from the text for the printed wikipedia
When studing a new subject like life and health insurance i find there is a whole aray of new volabulary. My thought would be able to list each new word in a formated screen and it search out the difination so One could study a sheet of defind words. This would be most helpful to the student in all grades and walke of life.
This can be done in Wikipedia. It already is. For example, see the article on Hostile takeovers in which there is a long list of terms. Just do the same thing in the Insurance article. -- Munchkinguy 20:20, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Hi,
I suggest that you make it possible to find other Wikipedia languages from the main page. I knew it existed, but had a heck of a time finding it!
Thanks for the good work, Chris
Hm,... I guess you're right. You see, the german main page has all languages listed on the left. So where do I look for it in the english page? On the left :-)! I find this a lot more "visible"! On a page which is so crowded with text I scroll to the very bottom, expecting to at least find other main sites down there (on the english site). I didn't find it, of course (yes, my monitor is small). And by the way - where's the link to www.wikipedia.org ? It should be at the bottom as well - or on the very top. Just like any home page (main page). Chris
Geez Guys, I just dont have time to become an expert on policy et al, so, please forgive me if this should have gone under another area of the pump and also if this issue has already been addressed. If I sound fearful, it is because you guys can be kinda harsh, but I do admire the high standards maintained here. Ok.
Oh, and why cant there be a spell check on the spiffy tool bar right on top of this window? Apparently, I am not the only one who needs it. Thank you for your time, attention, and for this opportunity to join this wonderful wiki. I am barely out of the sandbox and I'm having way too much fun here! much platonic love -- Lamusette 19:01, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Items are not normally deleted without spending several days at Votes for Deletion and you can see the debates on them there. The ones which are deleted without going through this process are mostly nonsense articles or abusive.- gadfium 22:43, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
'no POV should be axed without some really sound policy behind that decision'...I don't mean this to sound harsh, but how about the policy that this is an encyclopedia and therefore shouldn't contain mere opinion? -- Ben davison 12:40, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps we could embark on a major project in which we go through the Britannica and verify that we have a Wiki article for each of theirs, and at least as thorough as each. It'll take a long time, and is obviously subject to problems, but if we pull it off we can counter the standard Britannica argument that our articles aren't as good as theirs.-- Etaonish 19:23, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
I'm afraid I'm fairly new here, so I don't know what “all the Britannica claims” refers to; could you explain please?
What's to counter? If Britannica makes representations to market their service, sobeit. If they point out shortcomings in the Wikipedia system, that is more information available to the public. I might consider contributing to a free encyclopedia if I trusted the motives of those who run the thing, but I don't trust a group who, for no fiscal interest, seeks to discredit the concerns of a historically respected publisher. Counteradvertising by a volunteer project reeling from unprecedented build-out seems more like unrestrained adolescent ego or grandiose narcicism than service of a legitimate mission. I usually avoid search links that point to Wikipedia unless no other source is available, then I only use the information as a lead in further searches from reputable sources. I can think of no legitimate reason anyone should rebutt my skepticism or attempt to enforce faith in the accuracy of this untested -- yes, academically untested -- media. Let the work speak for itself.
And if mistakes are found in Wikipedia, at least they can be edited quickly. If mistakes are found in Britannica, they presumably have to wait till the next edition to correct it. -- Ben davison 12:31, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Hey. Lets copy the CIA World Factbook into Wipipedia (Say have an Article named (for example) Factbook:Fiji or Fiji_Factbook). Sometimes going into the factbook is rather tedious when you are just searching for instant information. It is in the public domain, might as well post it all automatically. Nick Catalano 18:00, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I believe that song lyrics fall under fair use and may thus be added to Wikipedia. Wikipedia could become a safe place for people to search for song lyrics.-- Mb1000 17:11, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure if this is best covered by "proposal", but none of the other sections seemed quite right either. Please see Talk:Family where I outline a scheme of pages I would like to create. Please add comment on it there. -- SGBailey 15:39, 2005 Mar 21 (UTC)
Never wandered if the article you are looking at (before starting reading it) is new, old, complete...?
It should be technically easy to add to each article indicators about:
This informtion should be take in account more the recent events.
Moreover it is possible that the writer(s) tell us their view on the quality of their articles and their completeness (e.g. in a scale from 1 to 5). In the same way the readers should be able to leave the same kind of information for future readers.
Anybody agrees? Any reason not to do this? 22:12, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)~
Some integers have enough encyclopedic information about them that they warrant their own article, but in some cases it's just a stub. Why not consolidate these stubs into an article titled, for example, "Numbers 101-110"? Each number could be its own subheading. Lkjhgfdsa 16:18, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Wikimedia COTW on Meta is a proposal for a weekly cross-project collaboration similar in process to the Wikipedia:Collaboration of the Week (COTW). To trial this idea, I suggest adding a WM-COTW box to the English Wikipedia Community Portal.
Plase comment on this proposal at:
Wikipedia talk:Community Portal#Proposal: Wikimedia Collaboration of the Week
If this leads to people actually working and voting on the COTW, I will then proceed to propagate the idea to other projects. Ideally, the current WM-COTW would be prominently featured on all the sites, and lead to lots of activity on important tasks such as MediaWiki documentation and Wikimedia promotional materials, as well as an increased group identity, raised awareness of Wikimedia and Meta, and more exposure for our smaller projects.-- Eloquence * 00:21, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)
I would like the Special Search Page to appear in the list of Special Pages, and/or be linked from en.wikipedia.org, so I can bookmark it, go right to it and get my search result without an intermediary step telling me that "Wikipedia search is disabled for performance reasons. You can search via Google or Yahoo! in the meantime." For instance, when I search for "US Congress" from the search box on en.wikipedia.org, I am directed to the the Special Search Page with the above error message and the option of using Google or Yahoo to search Wikipedia or the Web with "US Congress" filled in, in the search box. I would like instead to go directly to the Special Search Page with no search term typed in, so I could type in "US Congress" as my search term, check the Wikipedia option, hit the Google search button and thereby go directly to a list of results headed by "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_the_United_States", which is what I'm looking for.
Of course it would be good to resolve the Wikipedia Search performance problem too, but, in the meantime, the above would do just fine.
I think that there should be a Wiki web translator. 152.163.100.66 03:00, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)CRB
There is currently a poll at Talk:Bible#Opinion_poll_--.3E_Bible_vs_Christian_Bible, you are invited to vote there. Jcbos 23:39, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Interwiki redirects are missing a way to edit the redirect page. They should have a 5-second delay or the "(Redirected from en:TeX help)" or whatever implemented. - Omegatron 21:04, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)
I'm looking for feedback on the practicality of starting a new chronological index to articles, using a logarithmic timeline approach. I happen to have created a full-length (1000-line) timeline [5] that turns out to be very easy to convert-- a demo page is here.
I'm picturing inviting people to add as many articles as necessary to each line-- this duplicates the function of the categorizations by year and decade, but fits a lot more articles onto each index page, and by using the logarithmic line-numbers it provides an intuitive 'big picture' view of all of history. -- robotwisdom 15:22, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I've occasionally wanted to talk to people about edits they've made on articles, and every time I've wished that user-talk pages as well as user pages were linked in article histories. Would there be any way of adding link to those as well? Grutness| hello? 23:33, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I've noticed that when I find an article that I want to assign some category, it is very difficult to find the proper category. There are tens of thousands of them. Searching through the Special:Category page for the right one would take literally forever. Would it be possible to implement a search engine for categories? Or does this feature already exists, and I just don't know about it. DaveTheRed 07:43, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I've noticed sites like AlwaysOn [6] have gone from online to print—and there are a few more as part of this phenomenon. Is this a worthwhile article for Wikipedia? (Feel free to move this if I have put it in the wrong place.) Stombs 05:16, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia is a great source of information to people around the world, but there are thousands of people who would love to be able to hear the content rather then read it, for instance people with eye problems or people that have trouble reading or people who don't want to waste their time listening to the radio or watching television when they could be listening to a world of knowledge, this will be possible when articles in the Wikipedia are made into audio files and made available for download, this concept is not new it was done with a book written by Lawrence Lessig called Free Culture http://webjay.org/by/lucas_gonze/lessigfreecultureaudiobookproject, several people made audio files of one of the chapters and made them avable to download as a podcast. Having the Wikipedia in the audio format would be a truly marvels resource.
By combining podcasting with bittorrent it is possible to place the more of the bandwidth load on the people who are downloading the files, and as broadband becomes ubiquitous the bandwidth issue will become trival.
Text-to-speech is good but the voice lacks expressiveness also a some of the material in an article is not compatible with TTS so its not as good as a good reader, but as TTS becomes more refined these problems are sure to disappear. a good reader currently is far better at keeping most peoples attention then TTS and even a moderately good reader is better then TTS in that respect.The way to spread knowledge to the most people is to get them interested in learning so the more attractive the information is the more people will be interested in getting it remembering it and using it. most people will watch TV rather then read a book or read a blog its not that the books are not interesting so much that the TV uses audio video stimulation to capture peoples attention what we have in the wikipedia is so much better then what people have in the main stream media so lets see what we can do to make the information more attractive to more people.
I added informal voting to the Proposal for intuitive table editor and namespace page. Please add your vote. Do you like it? Is it stupid? - Omegatron 16:34, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to move this page to meta and get more attention to it. How do I do this? (Where do I put it? Where do I announce it? etc.) - Omegatron 14:56, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)
I have started off our first attempt to find a baseline revision for Common Unix Printing System. The proposal is here and is locked in to stop vandals from editing the URL to the revision: Common Unix Printing System/Proposed baseline. See the talk page to see the objections and review for the proposed baseline revision. - Ta bu shi da yu 02:59, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I've had an idea in mind for a long time which I think can now be realized within the Wikipedia framework.
It's really pretty simple...an Audio Music Dictionary.
Just as its name implies, it would be a music dictionary with (mpeg) audio examples. Since music is often called a "language" in its own right, it makes sense to me that Wikipedia would be the right place for it to reside.
If you like the idea and can help me find a mentor to get this organized and underway, please respond here.
When I had the idea originally, I worked at it briefly with a Macintosh and HyperCard, but I was always thinking of the day when universal networking would make the project really possible.
BTW, I'm not clear on the signing instructions, but I'm reachable at 207.62.243.195 00:44, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC) carlnoe@gmail.com and the date is March 10, 2005
Thanks for the feedback. I'll get an account Saturday and look into those things. (I'm on a library computer at a school right now.)
I think Chris is right...no copyrights would be needed on these sort of musical examples, and no copyrighted material would be allowed. As no one would copyright individual words in a dictionary, no one would copyright musical terms/examples in an AMD.
As an example, think of the word "flute" linked to an brief mpeg of an open-hole note played on a flute.
Maybe this music thing should go in the Wikimedia Commons -- Munchkinguy 19:34, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Consider all the people in the world, many of them thinking up new ideas or inventions from time to time. You know, the 2 a.m. brainwave that we have neither the money nor the training to bring to completion but that has some merit nevertheless.
How about building a data base that intakes ideas and idea fragments from all over the world, continuously, with a user-friendly and intelligently organized front-end. The data base itself has to be very robust, and also very intelligently organized. All ideas will be assigned to one or more categories, with many characteristics attachable.
The coolest part, and the reason for doing all of this, is to provide free access to any and all who wish to mine the database. Think of the synergy! This project could have tremendous impact on the development of the human race!
This project would provide enormous challenges for the people who organize it and make it interactive. What a fantastic and worthwhile enterprise, sort of like the Glass Bead Game a million times over.
The part I would like to play in it is to help create feed-in points in all countries and communities in the world. People submitting ideas could provide data about themselves if they chose to do so. This would permit others who found their ideas useful to contact them, or at least to know something about how the idea came about. And over time, the data would provide amazing information about the generation of ideas, the context in which they arise, and so on.
Anybody up for making this Idea Gathering Project a reality?
Linda Golley linda_golley@yahoo.com lgolley@u.washington.edu
Throughout the world we are witnessing major problems arising from a surplus of racing greyhounds. The greyhound has a very short racing career and only its suitability for breeding may save it from ??? There cannot be any justification for destroying a dog simply because it was too slow,too old ( 5yrs), too placid,too expensive to feed or any other feeble reasons proffered. I am full of praise for those wonderful people who run Greyhound Adoption Centres but alas I feel They are losing ground and it is now time for our Countries administrators to take action to protect these warm,wonderful but defenceless creatures. I am sure everybody connected with the sport would welcome controls to help alleviate the dark side of their pusuit.
Question: Why/How was the tsunami link a "rare exception"? -- Munchkinguy 19:32, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
It is perfectly reasonable for an encyclopedia to explain and examine controversial and/or politically charged issues and other causes. It is perfectly reasonable for Wikipedia to have links to organizations working on those causes. The only thing we should require is that issues are presented in a NPOV way. That said, I think it would be good to have links to everything mentioned in the comments above -- without the inflammatory language. -- Samuel Wantman 03:51, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
(I use the classic skin) Would it be possible to get the Go and Search buttons to do their stuff but open in a new window if right clicked? -- SGBailey 09:36, 2005 Mar 9 (UTC)
I had a thought. With the new gallery syntax from MediaWiki 4, it has become very easy to create pages of images. These can be very useful to illustrate certain subjects where pictures can say as much as words, but where it is far harder to fit an adequate number of images into the text. An example of this would be Ancient Greece, but I am sure that many more could also be made. I guess this could be a use of the Commons, but I would consider it more of an encyclopedic thing, rather than being resources. Smoddy (t) (e) 19:24, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The article on Australia has a couple of images with captions that include wikified links. The generated ALT text is the caption text, excluding the text contained within anchor tags ("[John Howard], the [Prime Minister of Australia]" comes out as ", the "). Surely it would be better to include the anchor text, and just exluded the anchor tags within the ALT text?
Josh Parris 01:24, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia:Modular electronics diagrams. - Omegatron 23:44, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)
Please see and comment on Wikipedia:WExCUp, a new idea to organize a group of Wikipedians in a way to resolve various cleanup issues. - RedWordSmith 06:19, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)
Material on both articles are incorporated into each other, the Conviniant edit link provides easy edit. As far as the reader is concerned, Abdullah Öcalan did not change aside from a new {edit}. While PKK had some of the material in Abdullah Öcalan added as the man is relevant to the organisation.
Someone deleted the templates. Just asume that the information is pluged in to both articles. -- Cool Cat My Talk 00:38, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The subpages transcluded in are:
User:Coolcat originally refactored the regular articles using templates for several sections; articles have since been reverted and templates deleted.
nb: Template:Kurdistan Workers Party/Timeline is still extant and used by both Kurdistan Workers Party && User:Coolcat/Kurdistan Workers Party
Examples in userspace reworked by — Davenbelle 06:36, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC) — There is also a discussion on User talk:Davenbelle.
I propose going back to the old names for the tabs. The new names which might be valid are very POV and need to be more neutral. I don't think I'm in the minority in wanting to go back to the "past", but if there is a consensus on keeping the new names it's okay by me. 172.192.204.47 05:14, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Discussion Moved to: WikiProject Rankings
Oh, may I marry you? r3m0t talk 23:01, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)
It would be great if there were a Wiki.org (or whatever) that just shows all of the icons for all the Wiki sites. There should also be a navigation bar at the top or bottom of the screen that gives easy access to the other Wiki sites.
This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.
< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212
A lot of the Wikiprojects are dead or near it. Some could be edited to be more effective and some have good ideas that could be implemented. Maybe there should be a Wikiproject of the week similar to the other focused collaboration ideas. I guess there could be a WPOTW Wikiproject. Iunno. It's just one idea to get people interested in some broad topics that they might not ordinarily think to tackle, but might be interested. -- Sketchee 06:43, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)
could get very far in a week.
Maybe. Nothing wrong with it if some people want to do it. I would remark, though, that the fact that a project lacks overt ongoing work does not mean that it is a dead letter. For example, about a year ago I started Wikipedia:WikiProject Ethnic Groups. It kind of petered out as a project, but I think it influenced, and probably continues to influence, a lot of people about how to write encyclopedically about an ethnic group. -- Jmabel | Talk
Looking at the latest changes made to an article and then reverting to the previous state is a way of saying "I don't agree with what the last person who edited this did to the article. Thumbs down." How about (and again, I'm a noob. This is probably another example of me not finding the proper discussion on the subject, or knowing of a feature (or set of features)or built in systemic logic that essentially would do this) a button in the history tab of giving thumbs up (for logged on or even just especially respected users) to a latest edit? Seems to me (without having given it too much thought) it might be helpful for those looking for vandals or disinformationists. They could list articles with recent changes that no one has seconded. They wouldn't have to look at articles someone else has allready looked at and approved of. --Mikko
As an experienced user, I will often add a comment to a discussion page "endorsing" an edit by an anonymous user if I've verified it independently. I'll also make remarks about something seeming likely but needing citation, etc. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:45, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)
I would worry that a feature like this could cut off discussion and eliminate compromise. Why try to incorporate and improve someone's contribution, when a few people have already marked it as "bad"? — Michael Z. 2005-01-28 15:13 Z
How about having two versions of every article; One, which is protected, democratically deemed accurate and NPOV enough (for the time being)etcetera and another, which is the regular kind, edited by anyone,anytime. The version under construction would then be voted to be better than the "Stable" version (or not), and take it's place (or not)? During voting there'd be a third, temporarily protected version so that the anyone,anytime editing would not suffer ... --Mikko
OH, God, no. This is the antithesis of the Wiki way. Rick K 07:26, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)
Can you point me to some discussion of this or give a short summary of the devilish details? I realize that this Wiki way of evolving texts is the best atleast in a world with people committed to the truth, but I'd like to be convinced it's the best even in a world with vandals and advertisers and whatnot... --Mikko
The more I look at this Wikipedia (tonight for the third night(sleep during day)), the more it seems to me to be working and I now believe it is headed for greatness even without an expert or a democratic approval mechanism, unless the world turns into an absolute global totalitarian policestate. I guess my contribution here should be seen as a reminder of how some newcomers might think at a first glance... :) Thank's. --Mikko
I think it would be nice for some long pages to have a shortcut to the top of the page.
As all the pages have an id="top", why not use it?
Could there be an automated process do do that?
Cy21 16:03, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Chris Anderson ( Wired Magazine editor) has a new blog called The Long Tail [1] which discusses the nature of Amazon and Wikipedia and Netflix (and many others) that provide access to content that ranks low on the popularity scale (obscure books, obscure encyclopedia articles, obscure movies) that traditional channels have ignored (compare the number of articles in WP to EB or titles at Blockbuster to Netflix). These obscure titles are the "long tail" on the popularity chart. His most recent entry [2] discusses the nature of "choice" and how we decide which of these obscure titles to read/watch, and the overwhelming variety of choice. He says that we depend on metadata and the wisdom of the crowds-- for example, Google rankings are based on what other people are linking too. Or on Amazon there are item popularity rankings, the circles feature, and other ways.
Wikipedia addresses this problem two ways. First it has Featured Articles to showcase the best articles, and second it relies on Google ranking for the project as a whole. However I contend that these are not enough. For one, Featured Articles is not wisdom of the crowds (more like 10 or 20 people) and is akin to the traditional method of gate-keeping recommendations such as journal editors. Second the google ranking breaks down on obscure titles that may have 1 to none external links to it.
Therefore I propose that a new system of popularity ranking be examined. Wikipedia has close to half a million articles, no one really knows whats here, if you read every article it would take a lifetime. We absolutely must have a system of recommendation.
Because this would involve resources (programming and otherwise) I'm not sure how fruitfull a discussion it would be without input from the powers that be. However, I will say that wisdom of the crowds is the only way to scale such a system. Perhaps one of the easiest and most obvious suggestions would be a page hit counter for each article. -- Stbalbach 16:46, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I heard somewhere that a review system is being developed for Wikipedia. That would be very useful in this regard. Couple this with a rating system (and page hit counters when resources allow) and you're home and hosed. Not sure what code they use but lovefilm.com have an excellent rating system (you'll have to register to try it unfortunately). I'd love to see a rating system that attempted to take into account people's political outlook. For instance you could get members to take a political compass test like that on politicalcompass.org before they can rate articles. This would then allow readers to categorise ratings based on where raters see themselves on the political spectrum. — Christiaan - ☎ 16:29, 20 Jan 2005
I don't think anyone can critisize this idea over any other labor saving ideas. I propose an option that individual users could enable in their preferences area that would allow you to edit any page directly from the article page. Let me explain, when I go to edit a page it takes me to a new screen with a separate window that shows me the wikimark-up. This proposal would enable a user to directly edit a page from the page on which the article is displayed. No separate windows, instead you would just edit the page normally and then click on a "save this page" link. Like I stated earlier, the option would be enabled under a users preferences. It would also make vandalism easier for signed in users, but we don't have many registered vandals. Also, reverting vandalism would be much more streamlined. As well as general over all editing. Yes, you may laugh and shoot my idea down now. Jaberwocky6669 20:22, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)
There is an idea on the backburner for a Blogger style preview page to be used for editing. It's probably not something to expect anytime soon, though -- Alterego 17:15, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)
When I click the diff link on my watchlist, 100% of the time I want to see all of the changes made by the last editor. If he made three edits in a row, I want to see them all at once; the difference between before and after this user's last several edits, yet it only gives me the last edit. We should either:
I am sure I'm not the only one who clicks hist and goes to the last revision before that user every time. It just makes sense.
Now that I am an admin, I have this lovely rollback link that reverts in exactly this way. So it must make sense to someone. - Omegatron 15:07, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)
I agree (I think I actually proposed this before), but I think it would be more useful if you get the diff to the last version since you checked your watchlist. That may be slightly tougher to implement, though, depending on what data is already being tracked. – flamurai TM 22:32, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
Hear me out. I think that before editing users should be given an IQ test. To screen out those people who can only spell and form gramtically correct sentences, without any understanding of the content.-- Jirate 20:43, 2005 Jan 31 (UTC)
I propose a grammar test that when taken, which would be required before anyone can edit, that would give a number beside of a wikipedians name that would indicate how well they scored! If someone edited an article and they had a 1 beside their name then you can rest asured that the edit is good, but if they had a 9 beside their name then you can decide whether or not to check the article they edited out! I understand that English is different in American than in England so a red number could indicate American English and a green number would indicate British English (lol). Any ideas, questions, comments? Please refer them to either here or my talk page... Jaberwocky6669 19:01, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)
Grammar is the least of our problems. And I certainly don't want to discourage editing by non-native speakers. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:40, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)
Also, I would like to add that if someone happened to score the lowest possible score there would be no restrictions whatsoever on what they can and can not do! The same would go for high scores, there would be no special privelages for them. Also, a test like this would have to be timed so that someone can't take the time to look the answers up from somewhere else. They can test only once maybe twice with special permission, which would eliminate the possibility of someone writing the questions down and looking up the answers and then going back and cheating. Jaberwocky6669 20:46, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)
No one would be discouraged, if someone spoke a different dialect of english they would indicate such and be given s special test for their dialect of english. WHich as I mentioned would be indicated by the color of the number. Jaberwocky6669 20:46, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)
One problem is for people who edit from dynamic IP addresses. Do you want to force them to take a test every time they dial in to the internet and try to edit Wikipedia? They would also quickly recognise the correct answers after seeing the test a few times, and so the actual result would be meaningless. Those of us who edit from a fixed IP address could find a way to sit the test via dynamic IP address so we know what to expect before sitting the test that counts. Finally, it wouldn't be long before someone posted the questions with model answers off-site. To counter these problems, you need a very large pool of questions, with the precise questions asked on each occasion selected at random. All questions would need to be of equal difficulty. This still wouldn't avoid the annoyance factor for the dynamic IP contributor.- gadfium 22:13, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Let's save the "grammer" and "reading" tests for weeding out minorities at the polls. Anyone remember why they stopped doing that? No, I don't think this is a good idea. Grammer problems are minor and I'd rather encourage more international Wikipedians to contribute. This would not only probably discourage people from translating because they have imperfect grammer (although they can convey the ideas well enough), but would discourage information from international wikipedians. Not only that but it will discourage everyone else. I really don't want to sit here and answer a dozen questions to edit an article and I'm already here. Will new users really go through with a lengthy process? If you want to make a voluntary test (ie strike the word "required"), I guess I wouldn't discourage you. -- Sketchee 23:53, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)
I have let this idea die, but I still don't understand how it would discourage anyone from editing! I say again that I no longer propose this idea, but anyone who has anything to say are encouraged to comment. Back to my point, no one would be blocked from editing any article anywhere on Wikipedia even if they scored the lowest score. Instead, it would have been merely a tool to judge whether or not an article should be examined for grammatical errors. If I see that a user who scored the highest edited an article then I would not take the time to look that article over; however, if someone scored the lowest score then I would definately utilize my time efficiently by checking the article over. Also, no minorities would be specifically discouraged or excluded simply because a unique test would exist for them that would have been tailored to their specific English dialect. Don't turn this idea that I had into something that would be used to discriminate people. I never had those intentions and I clearly laid out the details of how not to discriminate! I'm done. Jaberwocky6669 03:47, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)
It's as simple as this: All that matters is what's in the article, not who wrote it. – flamurai TM 04:26, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)
All you have to do is read through the archives of at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style to learn very quickly that we are often unable to decide which standard to use to determine what is grammatically correct. You can't always say, "this is correct in American English and this is correct in British English, and in Australian English it's like this". Even if we all agreed that this is a good idea, it would be very difficult to come up with grammatical rules that should be included in the test. It's not just that I think that this would promote discrimination; on a purely practical level, it would be a waste of time and energy to implement (we might eventually be able to agree on some grammar to test, but it would take a long time). - Aranel ("Sarah") 02:55, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I do not think this is a good idea since it would rate low-scoring people and prevent users from editing unless they took the test. Also, there are numerous different dialects, even within the United States. Tezeti
Hello,
I was wondering if it was possible to have a printer friendly version (or better : directly a pdf or ps file) to be more confortable while reading articles from wikisource ?
In any case, would a wiki to ps or wiki to pdf filter be possible ?
Thanks
Printer Friendly is a good idea! This is because when printing a Wikipedia article, part of the page always gets cut off to sacrifice space for the sidebar, which is useless on a piece of paper anyway. Print Preview will not change this. A "remedy" is to select the part of the page that you want to print, and then select the Print Selection option when printing. The problems with this "remedy" are that the resulting page looks funny if there are pictures, and the printer often prints out an empty page at the end, wasting paper, ink, and money; not to mention that it is sometimes difficult to select everything you want without selecting some things you don't want. Several online encyclopedias have a "printer friendly" option, such as The Canadian Encyclopedia. This should be easy to implement. All we have to do is get the designers of MediaWiki to add this feature on their next release. -- Munchkinguy 21:26, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Often, long articles are tagged as disputed, just because one subtopic is disputed. A brief message about the nature of the dispute would greatly help the casual user. I created a new tag Template:Disputeabout, which can be used as e.g. {{Disputeabout|the number of deaths}}. The idea is to have a brief message, so the casual user knows which parts of the article should be used with care. See also Template talk:Disputeabout. -- Chris 73 Talk 02:58, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)
Why don't we give the numerous "List of" articles on Wikipedia their own namespace? Denelson83 22:15, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
When a template is nominated for deletion, a {{tfd}} is placed on it, and a handy-dandy message appears on its page saying something like "This template has been nominated for deletion". That same message appears on every page that features that template. In some cases, that can be bulk untold multiple truckloads of pages (such as with {{actor-stub}} at present). Is there any way of changing the way this message appars so that it is on the template's page but not on the pages of articles featuring that template? It can spoil the look of otherwise good articles. Grutness| hello? 09:11, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I believe that a link should be placed in the tasks pane of the Community Portal that says something along the lines of: "Contribute to the Simple English Wikipedia". With only c.2000 articles, great work still has to be done. A note should also be made that contributors can use the English Wikipedia (en) as a starting point. Alexs letterbox 09:42, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Alterego 02:17, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)
This is not a section for discussing wheter or not we need a Simple English Wikipedia; we already have one. It was created for people who have English as a second (or third, fourth, etc) language. Discussing whether or not there should be one is irrelevent to the topic. Anyway, if the articles do have "rather poor quality", all the more reason to get people to expand it. I didn't even know about it until recently when I noticed "Simple English" on the "other languages" bar on the left side of the screen. Besides, Babelfish does a really bad job of translating webpages. -- Munchkinguy 05:16, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
This one is almost certainly beyond the available technology's capacity, but I'll put it here anyway. I notice that when a two-way conversation is going on on user talk pages, it is common for replies to be posted on both the talk pages concerned. (eg if User X says something on user Y's talk page, then User Y will put a reply on both his/her own talk page and on User X's. Then User X will reply in the same way on both pages, and so on). It would simplify the process (again using the same example) if User Y could type a reply once, but have it simultaneously added to both talk pages. As I say, it's almost certainly beyond the reach of the technology, but it would be useful... Grutness| hello? 11:24, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I should like to write an article about the above mentioned topics but as I am new should appreciate advice.My email jfconnolly@mailcity.com
Good idea, but it seems to conflict with Wikipedia:Neutral Point of View. However, it would be a great project for Wikibooks. -- Munchkinguy 05:27, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
This may have been proposed in the past but I believe it's a useful idea. I propose that a new permissions level of "Power User" be created. These users would have normal permissions except that they would have access to the rollback link. They would not have the admin powers of blocking users or deleting pages. A user would become a power user after hitting a threshold of 500 edits (or 750, 1000, the exact number would need to be agreed upon). If the Power User violates the 3RR or abuses their rollback power, they would lose their Power User status.
Sounds like a good idea, but I wouldn't base it on number of edits, as a number like that has little to do with the quality of edits. I would favor an application/nomination process, however. -- Stevietheman 18:02, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I like the idea of a time-based system. - Omegatron 20:56, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)
Seems like a time-based system would make a lot of inactive ID's into "power users". BigFatDave 23:12, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I wouldn't like to based it on time, because a user might have signed up for a long time but did very little. So this user would be no different to a new user. A combination of a time and edit based system maybe? Also, maybe we should give power users immunity to autoblocking as well (but still can be blocked directly), since they've proven to be genuine contributers. This will save us dynamic IP users a lot of headache. -- SunTzu2 04:25, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
It would be great if there were a simple way to do conditionals in templates. It would be great even to just check if a variable existed. For example,
|- || Release date: || {{{release_date}}} {{{{if awards}}}} |- || Awards: || {{{awards}}} {{{{endif}}}} |- ...
I don't know what the best syntax would be, but this would really be helpful.
– flamurai TM 21:31, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)
Mount Everest | |
---|---|
Height | 8844 |
Range | Himalaya |
Mount Everest | |
---|---|
Height | 8844 |
".
Mount Everest | |
---|---|
Height | 8844 |
Range | Himalaya |
Mount Everest | |
---|---|
Height | 8844 |
".
This has been moved to Wikipedia:Proposal for intuitive table editor and namespace. Please contribute comments and criticism. - Omegatron 00:16, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)
At the recently reopened Museum of Modern Art the audio guide has ad-lib discussions of notable pieces by current "experts" in the field. They aren't scripted - it is just someone who knows something about a subject talking about it and putting it in context with history, other pieces, artists, modernity, etc. Further, M-w.com has verbal pronunciations of many words, indicated to be available by a small speaker symbol ( example).
I am proposing a somewhat mixed integration of these two ideas, and the Ogg Vorbis audio codec would probably suffice, although I admit to having not used it myself. We would openly invite those who feel comfortable with speaking, with a certain subject, and also with licensing a snippet of their voice under the GFDL, to simply speak about a subject and upload the file. This could be concerning a work of art being displayed inside an article, an entire article, a clarification of some point, or anything the speaker wishes. Because some people would find the small speaker symbols annoying, their could be an option in the user preferences to turn them off, or they could hide them with CSS as is often done here. A limitation would be that they could not introduce facts not already indicated in writing somewhere in the encyclopedia.
This is further expanded to Wiktionary, where it would be highly useful to have open source pronunciations of words in many regional accents of english speakers, and appropriately for other languages as well. -- Alterego 00:26, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)
I have just come up with a fantastic new idea for a "Wiki" website: Wikicalendar! I got the idea from typing years (like 2005) into the Wikipedia, and learning different facts (like that 2005 is the World Year of Physics). It could either be part of Wikipedia, or on its own. The idea is an open source calendar where people can add holidays and onto the calendar. Then, you coul click on the hyperlinked holidays, and it would take you to a page with an article about that holiday. Another cool feature might be that one could view different formats of calendars (Gregorian, Jewish, Muslim, etc.) -- Munchkinguy 20:03, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I also belive that tables are evil. I was thinking that the current day would be highlited on the calendar, and clicking on the link to other calendars would take you to the current day on that other calendar, with the day highlited on that calendar. I was hoping that somebody more technologically inclined than myself would come up with the coding. -- Munchkinguy 20:58, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I suppose that somebody will have to change the highlited date every day. To colour in the backround of a cell...
hello |
... you type this... <table border=black> <td bgcolor=yellow>hello</td> </table>. I think that the calendar should be created under a new article called "Wikicalendar", and then put a link to it on the "Calendar" article and articles for the years (2004, 2005, etc). As for the cross-language stuff, it is probably good to transliterate, except for the years, in which case they should be translated. I hope that made sense. -- Munchkinguy 21:20, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Tada~~ here comes Wikicalendar: 2005. Needs a lot of work though, so I listed it for expansion. What kind of holidays should we list there? National holidays? State holidays? Religious holidays? Cultural holidays? School holidays? (just kidding on the last one). Do we put all the holidays in every calendar or do we put them in the calendar that marks the occasion only? SunTzu2 15:37, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)
You got to be kidding me......*faints*. Don't forget that's my sweat we're talking about, I've got a huge headache trying to get the tables to the right spot. And you haven't answer me about what to do with the Heavenly Stems. SunTzu2 02:47, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Can I just ask why you haven't done the tables in Wiki markup, because the other usages are deprecated? (See m:Help:Table.) Noisy | Talk 19:11, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)
50% of my work is done now. I found a HTML=>Wiki converter and cut down it's size, but it's still almost 40kb of codes, hope it's worth all the space it's taking. Meanwhile, I need help adding all the holidays, linking pages to and from Wikicalendar and Wikicalendar: 2005, updating the dates daily, and discuss which other holidays to add. (See dicussion page for more info) I'll finish the rest of the Chinese calendar and Muslim calendar myself, in stages. -- SunTzu2 11:04, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Ok, I'll add a manual or something, lol. -- SunTzu2 04:29, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Any suggestions on how else to allow people who are unfamiliar with the calendars to tell when is when? At the moment I'm the only one moving the yellow box daily, and that's several hours after midnight (UTC). I might not be able to keep this up after my holidays come to an end. How do we move the yellow box when it's no longer 2005 anyway? By then there'll be no boxes to move, just a calendar. I just want people to be able to easily determine which 2 days are the same on different calendars even with little maintainence. -- SunTzu2 07:49, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Well, after 2005 is over, we can make a Wikipedia: 2006 page. Remember, we can put links for every year on the Main Wikicalendar Page (sort of an archive), and put the current year at the top -- Munchkinguy 04:56, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
A user posted this on my talk page. I thought it would bet more of a response here. Rmhermen 16:00, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)
funds heres a thought. if you wer a registered charity in the uk, you could apply for UK lottery funding and EEC Social Fund Single Payment funding. All you need is a UK branch of Wiki.
What if we forked development of Wikipedia and locked it. Then trusted contributors get access to the fork first to ONLY FIX PROBLEMS DEALING WITH CORRECTIONS. Then you go higher up, with more trusted admins dealing with major NPOV disputes (as voted on by the members in the unlocked "talk" pages). Then contact university professors to ensure that everything works out. After 1.0 releases, you start on the 2.0 fork. I would love to have a CD of Wikipedia (which I am intending on doing on my Laptop, by Installing Apache for Windows and MySQL then downloading the english site) but I need to know it is as accurate as say Encarta. - Nick Catalano 06:36, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I've never dealt with WP 1.0 before, but I think forking it and then only fixing problems is probably the only way. I am also of the opinion that for this to be managable, WP 1.0 must include only, say, the 100,000 most popular articles - those with the most inner-wiki links to them. — Itai ( f&t) 08:25, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
One thing thats been turning over in my head is that the distance between administrator and a normal user is too large. Administrators are the most trusted members of wikipedia, and they (rightly) yield alot of power. Expectations on them are understandably high and there is a rigorous process to elect them. My problem is that administrators should be concentrating on administrative issues and not be responsible for content, that should be left to the community. I am thinking for instance of the main page, the community should be responsible for that and not just the administrators. In this regard I suggest that there should be a level between administrators and normal users, called a "Trusted" user. The only difference between normal users and trusted users is that trusted user can edit any blocked articles (ie, they can't block pages/users, unblock pages/users, and all the other things administrators can do, just edit blocked pages). The expectations of trusted users should be very high, and there should be strict rules that should be enforced ruthlessly (i.e no changing of content to articles blocked due to edit wars, any hint of vandalism or 3RR violations should result in immediate revoking of trusted user-priviliges, etc.) This would take the load of administrators to update the main page, make sure that articles blocked due to vandalism still gets updated, etc. It should ofcourse be alot easier to become trusted than to become an administrator, and also more frequent. Does this sound like a good idea to anyone besides me :P? I do realise that it would take some devoloping implementing this, but im just floating the idea right now. Oh, and sorry if this has been discussed previously Gkhan 23:10, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)
Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Requested moves/Min edit count
I thought this would be a good forum to bring up some interaction design problems with Wikipedia.
These are some of the problems I found as an active contributor who also happens to be an interaction designer.
Cinema or the Apu Trilogy. One simple heuristic that could help meet the similar goals would be to allow the user to watch all the articles that link to a particular article or watch all the articles that have been manually grouped as categories. The feature "Related Changes" tries to do something similar, but lists the changes to the articles listed only on your watch list.
I believe that encouraging people to collaborate better and giving users better idea of how articles are changing over time would help Wikipedia improve the quality of articles tremendously.
- Kesava 20:46, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
For nearly a year, I've been checking to see how much evidence there was of something relating to Wikipedia article titles that I felt so worried that it was going to happen soon. This is somebody's proposed move of Georgia (country) to Georgia. According to what I found, most early evidence (late 2003-early 2004) didn't make evidence of this so strong, but that it was beginning to get strong in the late spring of 2004 that it became so strong by summer. The moving poll says those who don't want it moved are still in the lead as of now, but not so much as the early days of the poll. In several lower sections of Talk:Georgia, I tried whatever way I could to keep there from being too much evidence that the page will be moved, but it couldn't be accepted too easily. As a result, I now feel so worried that the option of moving Georgia (country) to Georgia will likely be in the lead by mid-2006, and that by the fall of 2006, the answer to the question "Will Georgia (country) be moved to Georgia??" is a very likely YES. Anything to say about this move that I feel so worried will happen?? Georgia guy 19:18, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Erm? I think it should be moved, but why does it matter? Both link to the other, so there's little room for confusion. The Recycling Troll 10:12, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Looking for information on Michelangelo, I stumbled upon Wikipedia in Italian. It surprised me to see that the text was easier to read (I do speak Italian) than the English version, and then I finally understood why:
This part is a little bit slower to be read than this latter part is.
It figures: letters and fonts were created to be easy and fast to read, but underlined reading was far from the top concern.
As Wikipedia becomes more and more linked (as we hope and strive for), its text also becomes more and more intermittently underlined. It is not clean, and it is not natural.
This seems to be of minor importance -- it is not. Wikipedia's primary function is to be read, so such experince has to be as good as we can get it to be.
Please compare the
English and
Italian versions and figure out which one is more natural to the eye.
So, I propose that English Wikipedia's links are to be recognized by color, not by the redundant use of color + underlining, as the default.
-- Subramanian 08:10, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
There could be a few (this will increase as time goes by) Wikipedia articles that have had too many edits to study particular sections in using the table above that says "show last 50 100 250 500 edits". I suggest that we replace it with a new table saying:
Show last few edits since __ __ __ where the blanks are for a month, a day, and a year (for example, March 24, 2004.) Any comments?? (Note that I don't know whether hundreds of articles of this kind exist yet, but I'm pretty sure there will be by about a year from now.) Georgia guy 00:48, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Footnote3 for autonumbering footnotes implemented with simple short templates. Your comments appreciated. The proposal article also serves as a demonstration. Mozzerati 23:11, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)
(note: This proposal is also at Wikipedia talk:Categorization)
There's been quite a bit of discussion about the way we've been setting up categories. There are several problems that need to be addressed somehow. But I think most of this stems from three conflicting attributes of categories:
If the three of these continue, many categories will become fragmented to the point of being unusable, and in some cases some very unwanted side-effects will be created.
Here's an example of a side effect: Category:African-American actors is a subcategory of Category:American actors. Thankfully, all the actors are on both lists. But, according to "the rules" they shouldn't be. The reason for this is because there are really two hierarchies here: There is a hierarchy below category:African Americans that is then broken down by professions, which leads to Category:African-American actors. There is also the hierarchy of Category:Actors which is broken down by nationality to Category:American actors. When someone decided that Category:African-American actors was a subcategory of Category:American actors then according to the rules, all the African-American actors should have been removed from Category:American actors.
As I see it, because our system does not distinguish which sub-categories are part of the hierarchy and which are "related", whenever categories "collide" problems like this occur. I think three things could be done to alleviate this problem:
One reason, perhaps, why there was a move to make more and more subcategories, and to remove articles from a category whenever they could be found in a subcategory is because only 200 entries can be shown on a category page. Recently, we have found a way to make templates that create a table of contents for large categories that make this a little less of a problem. Perhaps we can work out some other ways to make categories more useful and easier to use. I'm offering this as a start. -- Samuel Wantman 10:33, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Another thought about that "You have new messages" alert. There have been occasions when I have had two new messages between log-ins, but have only noticed the last one because the banner remains the same no matter how many messages you get. How difficult would it be to add a number to the front "You have x new messages" if there is more than one new message? Grutness| hello? 00:00, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Maybe Wikipedia could sell its Featured Pictures and use the money for its purpose and maybe some money goes to the photographers. Roscoe x 07:12, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I've just been reading an article about a fascinating battle - full of details - then I realised that this simply was a fictional battle. It is probably labouring under several categories before eventually becoming part of Category Fiction. Would it be sensible (and I realise that this may involve a technical proposal) that we could produce some explicit method of signifying the fictional attribute of an article - say an icon or a particular-coloured background? At the moment, unless I follow the correct chain of categories, I have no quick and easy way of determing the factual or fictional status of any article; and this method may not always be foolproof. If this is suitable, then it should be possible for a robot to cascade any such property down from Category Fiction, but we would need some method of adding this property into a new article. Again, it may be possible to identify orphan fictional articles. (PS: Apologies if this or similar has been discussed before) Thanks, Ian Cairns 15:27, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
What article is this that you are talking about? -- Munchkinguy 23:19, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I've just had an idea. Say two Wikipedians are arguing over some obscure page, watched by no one but them. (This has happened to me.) All they need is a third opinion - someone to break the tie. Hence, Wikipedia:Third opinion. This will be a constantly changing page on which controversies involving only two Wikipedians are listed, so that a tiebreaker may be found. If a third opinion is provided otherwise, the controversy should be delisted. If a user decides to provide such a third opinion, he should remove the controversy from the page. This will ensure that the page will not be cluttered, and will allow for third opinions to be delivered with haste. What do you think? — Itai ( f&t) 00:15, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Okay, this is my first post so I'm hoping it is in the right place. I'm hoping to upgrade the RAM on my computer and so read the appropriate wiki page. Whilst informative, it lacked practical information that I, as an utter novice, required. Is there a page on how to build/upgrade a computer? This relates to my confusion over whether RAM on a desktop should be "balanced", apparently what you have already affects what amount you can add. This answer to this still eludes me.
I just wondered if anyone else had, when dealing with a specialist subject, found that the information, whilst comprehensive, assumed considerable background knowledge. I have found this with the mathematics section also. Perhaps a new addition to wiki, if not found already, might be a series of idiot guides for self-confessed ones such as myself.
The "new message" box at the top of the screen is a wonderful thing, but has one drawback: It always takes you tot he top of your User talk page. If the new message is part of an earlier thread in a long talk page it can take a while to find exactly where the new message is. Could an arrow system offering the choice of taking you straight to the edited section (similar to that used for articles on watchlists) be added somehow? Grutness| hello? 00:07, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the input, I'd like to move further discussion to Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates Also see my page for my idea of how world coordinates should look. -- Plowboylifestyle 02:10, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Its reasonable to say there is a match between Linux distribution copyright and wikipedia content copyright. In some countries, for example Kenya, telecommunication isn't that good and its therefore not possible for us to spend time on line. It therefore happens that most computers over there are highly under utilized since they are not networked. Buddling wikipedia content would automatically increase the value of such a computer. Anyway to organize such a buddling? I know it can be done, but i am suggesting a straight forward solution such that one can send a couple of CD over there and expect somebody who can install an operating system, but not much else would be able to set it up? It could be one of the optional application when installing a linux distro. An operating system update could also involve updating wikipedia content. And to avoid using too much space, the content could be compressed like the linux manuals. Everybody benefits, the linux distro in that, the distro have more value, users, in that his or her PC becomes more valuable and wikipedians gain in that its a good tool to recrute future contributors. A potential problem, how would one handle a PC with a local cache of wikipedia, but well connected to the Internet?
If we could use the wikipedia search engine and modified it to find articles less than certain length of words, those articles could then be reviewed and looked for for stubs that have been missed. There should be an option to ignore already marked stubs. From there, maybe someone with some coding experience could write a dll that would function as a bot? Furthermore, it would be nicer for wikipedia to have a more advanced search engine. -- DoubleRing 06:24, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
<rant warning>
"External links" must die. Both the section title and the tendency to add links arbitrarily and without descriptions.
The standard section for further information should be called "Further information", because the distinction between web-based and printed resources is artificial. Web links are of course special because the user can access them immediately. However, this makes no sense for eventual printed versions of Wikipedia articles, and thanks to the ISBN mechanism even books are "linked".
"Further information" is also superior semantically because it reflects the purpose of the section, not the medium. "External links" is comparable to the link title "click here", which similarly lacks semantics and is unnecessarily medium-specific. On a minor note, the "external" label is confusing when we need to link to pages in the Wikipedia: namespace.
We should avoid links that don't point to specific documents or document collections because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a web index. We should definitely provide links to things like relevant fan sites and web forums, but not in Wikipedia. Instead, we should start a Web directory project and create a nice, shiny sisterproject box that can be used for the "Further information" section in Wikipedia articles. Important websites, such as certain official company websites or major fan sites, should have their own articles or sections.
Needless to say, web links should always be described, including information about author, publisher and date (where applicable). The primary purpose of a "Further information" entry must be to identify a resource, not link to it. URLs change or go away; document titles and author names do to a lesser extent.
(I prefer "Further information" over "Further reading" because the latter excludes audio and video.)
</rant warning>
Fredrik | talk 20:36, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I don't agree with the claim: “the distinction between web-based and printed resources is artificial”. Aside from anything else, printed resources, being more likely to be peer-reviewed, are considerably more reliable (I don't say that they're wholly reliable, of course). Looking at some of the external links in Wikipedia articles, this is a significant issue. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 13:34, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Here is a nice way to format external links. Rather than external link genocide, start a wiki project that adds meta information to them all like so:
-- Alterego 17:12, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)
In some cases, readers don't find out about valuable online resources on their topic because of Wikipedia's 'not a web directory' policy. Though this policy was implemented for important reasons, in some ways, it may be functionally inferior to a more lenient policy.
If we had a web directory sister project, it would also be functionally inferior to have to always be clicking on the additional link before having access to these resources. Could it be possible to have a web directory sister project that piggybacks on the end of articles? Maybe simply editable just by scrolling to the bottom of the edit box (i.e. where the last section of the page is)?-- Nectarflowed 18:51, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Right, at the moment, there are a whole load of pages linking to square kilometer, which is a redirect to square kilometre. I am considering changing all these pages. Does this seem like a good idea? Any objections? Thanks. -- Smoddy | ειπετε 21:44, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Well, Wikipedia policy is to not change spelling from American to British or vice versa on articles which specifically relate to one culture. But if the article is culture-neutral, then I have no problem with your doing all this scut work. Rick K 00:11, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)
User:Neutrality makes a point. I third it. Bart133 (t) 21:52, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
For information only: Wikipedia:Offline_reports/This_is_one_of_the_most_linked_to_redirect_pages is more than a little out of date, but Square kilometer is there at the top. Ian Cairns 23:41, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
A popular type of vandalism is to replace the whole article, or a whole section, with the word "pwn3d" or the like. This kind of vandalism could be autodetected: If an article size decreases by some large amount - perhaps a threshhold could be 20% of the section or article being edited, or 3000 characters, whichever is larger - then the article's name is automatically placed on a list that can be quickly peer-reviewed in the same way that Wikipedia editors currently routinely review new edits.
Possibly valuable because it decreases the chance that 'deletion vandalism' will slip through the cracks unnoticed, and if someone feels like monitoring this list on a particular day, the time-to-revert will also be decreased. Tempshill 21:52, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Knowing a dramatic change in size content might also be useful for other purposes. Most any article changed by a large amount probably needs a quick look over. -- Sketchee 00:00, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)
In regards to the seven dirty words, some consideration must be taken for articles which actually use those words. -- AllyUnion (talk) 12:19, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
In the interests of trying to reduce vandalism, can we have a message at the top of the edit page (for anon users only) which says something like "Yes, you really can edit this page right now, and it really will appear on the website when you press Save. Please don't modify the page just to test this - there is a sandbox for this purpose here. We welcome useful contributions from anyone - but please don't vandalise Wikipedia!". The ickle sandbox message at the bottom, below the Save button, really isn't sufficient IMO. Rd232 08:35, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
As far an vandalisim caused by ignorance goes, another warning message won't help much. Alternative : Anon. users can only save after previewing? Could that be set up? BigFatDave 23:01, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Since there is a similar option for logged-in users, it seems possible, but even that wouldn't stop real vandals. However, we probably should put a bigger sandbox message than the ickle one at the bottom up there somewhere anyway. Bart133 (t) 04:29, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
There is a multi-year dispute about the proper name of Gdansk/Danzig and other locations with a Polish/German history. Unfortunately, lots of discussions were unable to find a compromise. We are trying to finally resolve this dispute with a vote. The vote has two parts, one with questions when to use Gdansk/Danzig, and a second part affecting articles related to locations with Polish/German history in general. An enforcement is also voted on. The vote has a total of 10 questions to vote on, and ends in two weeks on Friday, March 4 0:00
Please vote at
Talk:Gdansk/Vote!
Chris 73
Talk 00:08, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)
I know the VfD procedure is involved, but it is poorly explained on the VfD page. In particular, nominating a page for VfD is just possible following the stuff at the bottom of the VfD page - but the fact that there are two procedures there is confusing - can the two procedures be hived off to separate SHORT pages.
And more importantly, nowhere does it tell you how to vote! After ages of clicking here and there I eventually sussed that you don't vote on the VfD page. Instead you go to the page in question and select the "this page" link in the delete message box and edit that page. This needs clearly stating.
I also spent half an hour trying to locate the source texts for the VfD pages on the off chance that they were not ptotected and that I could edit them to include such an explanation. I failed to find the shortcut sources - where are they? -- SGBailey 22:42, 2005 Feb 16 (UTC)
I have recently come across the use of animations which I consider to be inappropriate to an encyclopaedia. The animations are "pretty", but run too fast to readily follow or study and cannot be rinted out - you just get diagram 1 of the set. Please see my comment on Talk:Octagon. I expect it applies to many other articles in the polygon category. On the other hand, the Asian Tsnami animation seemed right because I don't see people wanting to study individual frames - just to watch the overall flow. Is there an animation policy? -- SGBailey 21:44, 2005 Feb 16 (UTC)
Encarta, Comptons, The Canadian Encyclopedia... They all use animations -- Munchkinguy 23:22, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I think we should lock the main page and all article that link to it to prevent vandalism in the future.
I've had an idea that if high-profile, often-vandalised articles like Tony Blair could have a Tony Blair/GrafWall or similar, that people were freely allowed to "vandalise", it would save a lot of vandalism on actual pages. People vandalise for a number of reasons:
Every now and then, GrafWalls would be reverted back to the original version (to make this easier we could create a Category:Graffiti Walls or similar) and a template to put at the top of a graffiti page and at the top of it's (hopefully) vandalism-free counterpart to say that there's a graffiti wall for that page. The wikitext of the original page could be copy-and-pasted into the GrafWall to start off. In a minute or two I'll begin making a draft WP: page about it at Wikipedia:Graffiti Wall. Do reply and comment here rather than on Wikipedia talk:Graffiti Wall. Thanks,-- AliceCrypto ( Talk| Contributions) 07:21, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I think it's a bad idea. What if someone wanted to libel Tony Blair? We could be held responsible. I don't think it would even work. Most vandals would continue to vandalise the high profile article IMO. If someone wants to make a political statement, add a funny photo of someone, makes jokes etc they can do it on their user page. We allow users to do this because most users who log in make enogh good edits to warrent a page of their own to do (within limits) what they like. Most vandals don't make any good edits, why should they get a space to take this piss out of someone? We are not a free web hosting site, we are an encylopedia. Theresa Knott (The snott rake) 08:54, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I agree that this is a bad idea. If people want to rant about, say, Tony Blair, let them do it elsewhere. Wikipedia is not a forum for unregulated free speech, nor is it a playground. — Charles P. (Mirv) 04:14, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Bad idea. I concur with Rick, Joseph, Theresa, and Charles. Neutrality talk 05:10, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)
fun or not, it's not conductive to building an encyclopedia, which is what WP is still about. Some silliness is fine, but it should in general be kept out of article namespace. dab (ᛏ) 08:00, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
It's good to brainstorm innovative ways to tackle vandalism, so thanks for thinking about this. However, on balance I don't think "Grafitti Walls" are something we really want in WP. — Matt Crypto 15:23, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I have noted that some pages are not simple lists nor are they complete articles; they are somewhat gates, overviews, which explain some basics and then redirect the reader.
The problem is that contributors don't know how to name them, and therefore readers have a hard time finding those. The exemple I have is the mess of looking for current subdivisions within Hinduism:
The List of Hindu sects is clearly not a plain List in the Wikipedia style; and the Schools of Hinduism (Overview) is a good title if I know that I should look for an "... (Overview)" article.
Could we have a standard?
(excuse me for the english, I am italian). Why we can't have a page like Google, which changes his contest from the browser's default's language? [Anon.]
Automatic browser detection of languages is not reliable enough for that, and is annoying to those who work on more than one language. There's a proposal to allow visitors to www.wikipedia.org to voluntarily set a cookie which will remember their language preference -- discuss or help out at meta:Talk:Www.wikipedia.org portal. — Catherine\ talk 22:10, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Now that the Japanese wiki has reached 100 000 articles, and that several (the French and Swedish, maybe a few of the most rapidly growing below 50 000) can be expected to grow up to that number in 2005, how about adding a 100 000 articles level to the main page? -- Circeus 11:48, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC)
As occasionally happens, the database has just been locked for a while, and I (and no doubt countless other wikipedians) have just been idly looking at a few articles until editing was enabled again. To find out whether it was,, I'd simply click an edit link and see what happened (in this case on four occasions), again, as others have no doubt done before me.
May I suggest that - while the database is locked - some tiny signal that it is locked could be used on articles, so that we know not to bother trying to edit them? Maybe the "Edit this page" link could be changed to red, or a little image (such as one of those mock-up roadsigns with a red bar diagonally through a letter E) could be put at the top of the page. That way, when editing is re-enabled, it is possible to tell as soon as a new page is opened. Grutness| hello? 08:16, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I just wanted to create an article about a movie (and about a composer of the music from that movie), and (since I have never written a new article, iirc) I realized, that I would like to have some page which could be both used as an example how to write about specific topic and would also contain all the tips you need to write quite good (or even featured) article. Since Wikipedia is always growing, it's getting more and more difficult to remember/find out all the topic-specific templates, lists, categories and guidelines that people create here. If these could be found in a single place, it would decrease burden to other editors. So I would propose to create a list o specific topic howtos (containing list of common things like animal, spaceship, disambiguation, artist biography, movie, etc.), which should be accessible from the page offered when you create new article. The howto would contain suggested text (for us non-native speakers, I have trouble with style) and formating and other guidelines, how to fill templates, ideas what to include, related lists and categories and stuff like that (maybe there could also be a subpage, that you could copy to editing window, before you start editing). This would also help to unify overall style of Wikipedia. Samohyl Jan 18:05, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Hi I am the web editor for the Graham Hancock site, I was wondering if we could put a link to our upcoming newsletter at this site? Do you have a links area?
Best
Steve
Sometimes you get the wiki search, sometimes the google/yahoo alternative. There are occasions when the google/yahoo alternative is more useful. Would it be possible / sensible to effictively add that script at the end of the wiki search results page - say after the check box block. That way if you didn't like the results you got from wiki you could repeat the search on google in wikipedia or even on the web? -- SGBailey 22:34, 2005 Feb 10 (UTC)
Hello, anybody interested in helping in the West Bank Article? Unfortunately, a highly extremist POV is been expresing withouth giving anybody else the chance to achieve a more appropiate NPOV. I would be glad to hear another ideas User name: Messhermit
I'm no expert on this topic, but a lot of projects have taken advantage of unused computer cycles, like SETI@home, the World Community Grid Project, and Folding@Home . Wikipedia has been, off-and-on slow to load recently (and for as long as I can remember) - its growth has understandably been more than a set of computer clusters can handle. Wouldn't it make sense to make use of the unused computer cycles of Wikipedia's users to help host Wikipedia? Does anyone know if this is feasible? Salasks 15:21, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
We all know how to use the extremely useful numbering system implemented in Wikipedia.
But has anyone ever found that they need a reverse number list? I have. One of the best examples would be a contribution's page. You want to list it so that people see your latest entry, but to label that number one is kind of weird. It also would make it easier to see how many edits you have done. I don't know what symbol we could use...maybe the ^ or & sign?
-- DoubleRing 06:25, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
Another suggestion... for several wikipedia pages (e.g., Wikipedia:Categories for deletion), you need to know what day it is. (I know what you're thinking, but give me a moment). Because we use UTC, the day changes over at different times of the day for different groups of Wikipedians (for me, at 1 p.m. now, and noon in southern hemisphere winter). When it's very close to the change-over from one day to the next (when I do a lot of my editing), the easiest way to see whether the day has changed, Wiki time, is to type five tildes on whatever I'm typing and preview - a cumbersome process. Is there any way of adding something like "page opened at 00:00, Day, Date" onto a page in much the same way as the "page last saved at" message? Under the Wikipedia globe, perhaps? Grutness| hello? (erm, at 05:32, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC))
Very good idea! -- Munchkinguy 23:25, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I have translated the toolbox for the experienced users in Wikipedia, which is originally created by User:Mountain in the Chinese Wikipedia. Users can use this template in your user page. And users can edit the toolbox to improve the toolbox functionary. Shinjiman 14:28, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
What about inserting the pronunciation of the words. Of course I am referring to the title words. English commons words, such us the one whose pronunciation could be fuond on a normal dictionary, can be left out. I am referring to the name of people, country and so one. In the article Salvador Allende I found a footnote with pronunciation. A more general standard way would be better. A link to a sound resource could also be consider, but for the moment I am proposing a textual description of the pronunce via the usual standard description mechanism. AnyFile 11:34, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
this site is going to be an amazing resource when it goes up in a month or two... please help out with the effort to compile & organize information :)
www.knowmore.org
I've made a sample Wikiportal (which is intended to work as a main page for specific subjects) here: Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Biology. The idea of Wikiportals was first introduced in German Wikipedia, and then it spread to French, Dutch, Polish, Hebrew and Japanese ones. I hope more Wikiportals will follow at en:. Ausir 23:17, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I started Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Art. Hope a few people will look over it and edit anything that could be improved. A couple others have been started but there's plenty of other areas that can be introduced. :)
I don't know how actively I'll be able to maintain the art one and there isn't an Art Wikiproject or anything similar (comics is the closest thing right now. -- Sketchee 06:22, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
I also added a few Requested Wikiportals -- Sketchee 06:27, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
IS anyone familiar with the KEO project? If not then here is the link, http://www.keo.org/ Wouldn't it be great if all of Wikipedias articles made their way onto KEO? Not as a substitute for any other source of information. Just as something cool to think about because Im a dreamer =) Jaberwocky6669 16:30, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)
Hi all, Wikipedia is great...i get to read about a lot of famous people and the works of great authors. But unfortunately i cannot pronounce most of their names. It would be a great help if you guys could add pronunciations of non-English names/nouns/verbs/etc.
Thank you.
Perhaps I'm being unduly negative; I hope so, because as I said at the beginning, it is a good idea in principle. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:45, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I have been working from some time to start a project similar to this one... But it some twists:
-Authors should adhere to norms in their Learning Material.
-Learners should pay lots of "points" that they use (a "point" per each K of text) to gain access or possibility to copy or print text, text is visible in screen but Select/Copy doesn´t work, also they pay a "point" per minute, for playing educational games or getting in-line tuition.
-Authors produce: text, educational games, translations, researchs, power point presentations, on-line tuition, etc.
-A percentage of the Income from Learners, should go to the Authors of the accessed learning material, the rest of the income is for the portal operation expenses.
-This will permit willing educators, that have knowledge but are: jobless, disabled, parentes of disabled kids, retired, etc. to earn some adittional income, and will promote quality in submissions, to be attractive and useful to Learners of course, authors names should be prominent, and some will become famous.
-What is your opinion? I will be grateful for brief & practical answers to this post.
Ing. Dagoberto G. Flores-Lozano Ex Research Fellow and University Professor (UNAM, UVM, UIA) Post Degree in Academic Administration, UC at Berk. -- Dagoflores 17:21, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC) Hear me out. I think that before editing [Authors] users should be given an IQ test. To screen out those people who can only spell and form gramtically correct sentences, without any understanding of the content.--Jirate 20:43, 2005 Jan 31 (UTC)
You need to realize that you could never prevent a dedicated user from "stealing" information from an encyclopedia. Disabling copy and paste are only available through javascript, which can easily be disabled. Even if you make javascript required, they can just navigate to the page and then disable it. One way you could do it is through flash, which would disable copy paste. However, it's not to difficult for someone to find the url of the flash file and save it. Just check out the Homestarrunner Wiki (I believe that should be hrwiki.org Cigarette). They post the locations of the actual flash files used on the site. Of course you could use the infamous Brittanica method: only displaying a few words of the article and forcing you to buy the rest, though i doubt it will work in this case. Lastly, the best path that I would take would be to program an application that would communicate with the parent server, bringing back the articles as they were requested. The only way to make money, however, is to use the Britannica method. The disabling select/copy sounds very innovative, however, few people, except plagarizers, directly copy and paste from encyclopedia articles. You've got a good idea though! Don't give up on it. -- DoubleRing 05:23, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)
Sounds very nice. I bookmark this. Agreed about the copy/paste though, it's impractical. Perhaps limit access to nicened diagrams, updates mailing list, animations/movies/audio? r3m0t 18:13, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
(I can't see this mentioned anywhere else; if it is, I apologise.)
I've noticed a number of articles that non-native speakers have edited or even created, in the process introducing useful and informative content, but creating problems because of their grammar, spelling, inability to judge the correct tone, etc. The next native speaker who happens along can then correct it, tidy up the errors, etc., but that might not happen for some time. Not only will the damaged article have been on display for that period, but there might be passages too obscure to be understood, so that the new editor needs to contact the original author for help — and the original author might by then have disappeared. (I've had various experiences of this kind: for example, see Talk:Lentienses and Elgoog.)
Might it be a good idea to advise non-native-speakers (not only in the English version, of course) who recognise their linguistic limitations to add or explain their additions on the relevant Talk page instead of directly in the article, with a request for a native speaker's help? There could be a central page (like this one) on which such requests could be posted. If it is agreed to be a good idea, how easy would it be to set up? I'd be more than happy to lend a hand (or, if it's relatively straightforward, to do it myself). Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:48, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
This can be useful. My english is poor but my ideas are rich. Even if I write with a dictionnary next to me, i'll be glad sometimes to have some advises on the correct sentence structure to reach my purpose. Lvr 09:55, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Sounds like a good idea to me (though I should say that I hadn't envisioned using cleanup templates; just a note on the Talk page and a request on Wikipedia:Contributing to articles outside your native language).
Now that the page is up, how best to publicise it? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 13:01, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
A roughly a month ago, the votes for deletion process was changed in how the VFD pages were handled. At the current moment, when an article is nominated, it is put at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Article name. Where on that page, === Article name === is placed and all the information as to why it should be deleted is placed on that page.
Then it is placed on a VFD day page, a subpage which goes by the UTC date, like today's would be found at: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 2 and tomorrow's would be found at: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 3, and yesterday's would be found at: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 1 and so on.
So, on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 2, a transinclude is placed there, specifically, {{Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Article name}} under the section where the date is placed. In this case, under the section label: == February 2 ==.
Then, from there, transincludes are placed on the main Wikipedia:Votes for deletion page, containing only the pages linking to the dates, thus only having a list of days like: {{Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 2}}
This allows automatic linking using the variables in the MediaWiki system, and a direct way to link to the current day to place a VFD vote.
Prior to this system, everything was placed on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion (main page). This meant that all the subpage transincludes, specifically, {{Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Article name}}, was placed on the main page VFD. So you'd have the section dates on the main page VFD, and each section date would contain the transincludes for each VFD nomination. The only problem with this system was that it could not provide direct linking to the appropriate section to add the VFD nomination to the page.
Several users have made some complaints regarding this, and wish to revert the system back to what it was prior to December 25, 2004, before the inclusion of the day to day subpage transincludes. A vote is now taking place at Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion#VFD_One_Page_a_Day. Please make your comments there, and make any suggestions regarding this issue. -- AllyUnion (talk) 22:51, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I'm curious as to whether anyone would find one of these two related features useful. I certainly would.
If a change created a long diff, a truncated version could be shown instead. (oops -- forgot to sign. :: jdb ❋ 21:06, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC))
Since the Cleanup page no longer functions like it did originally, does it really serve much of a purpose to keep it on the Wikipedia:Recentchanges page? I'm thinking about removing it, but not without discussion beforehand. Rick K 00:07, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)
Take a look at Category:American_actors as an example. It's a category page with numerous articles and numerous subcategories spanning several pages. At first glance it appears that Category:African-American actors is its only subcategory ("there is 1 subcategory to this category"), but lo-and-behold if you click to the next page, you'll see another subcategory, and so on. This isn't very logical. The problem is that the articles are listed alphabetically such that a page shows all articles that begin with A-C, for example — which makes sense — but the subcategories (which are usually far fewer in number) are divided the same way as the articles, which doesn't make sense. I think a more logical system would be to display a Category listing that lists all subcategories first, followed by all articles. Is it feasible to implement this change? — Brim 23:22, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)
Along similar lines, articles in categories should sort by namespace, then by alphabetical title of articles. This way, all main namespace articles will be listed first, then images, then templates, etc. – flamurai TM 23:35, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)
It would still be great to sort by namespace, but a temporary solution to the alphabetical problem has been found -- insert {{ Template:CategoryTOC}} into any large category to insert a functional table of contents. — Catherine\ talk 22:49, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I was thinking it would be interesting to see what Wikipedians would be in each age group and whatnot. In much the same way that Wikipedians haves lists by interest and location, how about one for birthyear? I have searched for it and have not seen anything resembling one.
However I have another one of my great ideas (which may or may not be agreed with). Why don't we make a new set of category for Wikipedians to assemble them? (i.e. Category:Wikipedian 1980 births|User:Wikipedianguy). But if this seems like too much, then I am fine with just a list. Just floating this idea in the air. -- Riffsyphon1024 05:15, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
In my opinion, there are numerous substubs, which need to be categorized. What is you opinion on making substub templates? тəzєті 03:47, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)
How do you create a stub template? I want to add a template for pharmaceutical or drug releated stubs. googuse 07:24, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
Template:
. I suggest
Template:Pharma-stub
would be appropriate. There, paste this in:{{subst:metastub | article=[[pharmacology]]-related article | id=pharmastub | category=Pharmacology stubs}}
Now, we are using the category system to know the licence of the images. A page of "Uncategoriced images" would let us find the images without licence. Llull 21:07, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I think it would be beneficial if contributors were able to supply their sources through a footnote/bibliography feature. This would provide a natural link to off-line resources and allow contributors to reference coryrighted material, providing a scholarly legitimacy that wikipedia is sometimes accused of lacking. It would also aid fellow wikipedians in further research, editing, and contibuting to articles. -- The bibliograpghy/footnote feature could be removed from the text for the printed wikipedia
When studing a new subject like life and health insurance i find there is a whole aray of new volabulary. My thought would be able to list each new word in a formated screen and it search out the difination so One could study a sheet of defind words. This would be most helpful to the student in all grades and walke of life.
This can be done in Wikipedia. It already is. For example, see the article on Hostile takeovers in which there is a long list of terms. Just do the same thing in the Insurance article. -- Munchkinguy 20:20, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Hi,
I suggest that you make it possible to find other Wikipedia languages from the main page. I knew it existed, but had a heck of a time finding it!
Thanks for the good work, Chris
Hm,... I guess you're right. You see, the german main page has all languages listed on the left. So where do I look for it in the english page? On the left :-)! I find this a lot more "visible"! On a page which is so crowded with text I scroll to the very bottom, expecting to at least find other main sites down there (on the english site). I didn't find it, of course (yes, my monitor is small). And by the way - where's the link to www.wikipedia.org ? It should be at the bottom as well - or on the very top. Just like any home page (main page). Chris
Geez Guys, I just dont have time to become an expert on policy et al, so, please forgive me if this should have gone under another area of the pump and also if this issue has already been addressed. If I sound fearful, it is because you guys can be kinda harsh, but I do admire the high standards maintained here. Ok.
Oh, and why cant there be a spell check on the spiffy tool bar right on top of this window? Apparently, I am not the only one who needs it. Thank you for your time, attention, and for this opportunity to join this wonderful wiki. I am barely out of the sandbox and I'm having way too much fun here! much platonic love -- Lamusette 19:01, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Items are not normally deleted without spending several days at Votes for Deletion and you can see the debates on them there. The ones which are deleted without going through this process are mostly nonsense articles or abusive.- gadfium 22:43, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
'no POV should be axed without some really sound policy behind that decision'...I don't mean this to sound harsh, but how about the policy that this is an encyclopedia and therefore shouldn't contain mere opinion? -- Ben davison 12:40, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps we could embark on a major project in which we go through the Britannica and verify that we have a Wiki article for each of theirs, and at least as thorough as each. It'll take a long time, and is obviously subject to problems, but if we pull it off we can counter the standard Britannica argument that our articles aren't as good as theirs.-- Etaonish 19:23, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
I'm afraid I'm fairly new here, so I don't know what “all the Britannica claims” refers to; could you explain please?
What's to counter? If Britannica makes representations to market their service, sobeit. If they point out shortcomings in the Wikipedia system, that is more information available to the public. I might consider contributing to a free encyclopedia if I trusted the motives of those who run the thing, but I don't trust a group who, for no fiscal interest, seeks to discredit the concerns of a historically respected publisher. Counteradvertising by a volunteer project reeling from unprecedented build-out seems more like unrestrained adolescent ego or grandiose narcicism than service of a legitimate mission. I usually avoid search links that point to Wikipedia unless no other source is available, then I only use the information as a lead in further searches from reputable sources. I can think of no legitimate reason anyone should rebutt my skepticism or attempt to enforce faith in the accuracy of this untested -- yes, academically untested -- media. Let the work speak for itself.
And if mistakes are found in Wikipedia, at least they can be edited quickly. If mistakes are found in Britannica, they presumably have to wait till the next edition to correct it. -- Ben davison 12:31, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Hey. Lets copy the CIA World Factbook into Wipipedia (Say have an Article named (for example) Factbook:Fiji or Fiji_Factbook). Sometimes going into the factbook is rather tedious when you are just searching for instant information. It is in the public domain, might as well post it all automatically. Nick Catalano 18:00, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I believe that song lyrics fall under fair use and may thus be added to Wikipedia. Wikipedia could become a safe place for people to search for song lyrics.-- Mb1000 17:11, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure if this is best covered by "proposal", but none of the other sections seemed quite right either. Please see Talk:Family where I outline a scheme of pages I would like to create. Please add comment on it there. -- SGBailey 15:39, 2005 Mar 21 (UTC)
Never wandered if the article you are looking at (before starting reading it) is new, old, complete...?
It should be technically easy to add to each article indicators about:
This informtion should be take in account more the recent events.
Moreover it is possible that the writer(s) tell us their view on the quality of their articles and their completeness (e.g. in a scale from 1 to 5). In the same way the readers should be able to leave the same kind of information for future readers.
Anybody agrees? Any reason not to do this? 22:12, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)~
Some integers have enough encyclopedic information about them that they warrant their own article, but in some cases it's just a stub. Why not consolidate these stubs into an article titled, for example, "Numbers 101-110"? Each number could be its own subheading. Lkjhgfdsa 16:18, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Wikimedia COTW on Meta is a proposal for a weekly cross-project collaboration similar in process to the Wikipedia:Collaboration of the Week (COTW). To trial this idea, I suggest adding a WM-COTW box to the English Wikipedia Community Portal.
Plase comment on this proposal at:
Wikipedia talk:Community Portal#Proposal: Wikimedia Collaboration of the Week
If this leads to people actually working and voting on the COTW, I will then proceed to propagate the idea to other projects. Ideally, the current WM-COTW would be prominently featured on all the sites, and lead to lots of activity on important tasks such as MediaWiki documentation and Wikimedia promotional materials, as well as an increased group identity, raised awareness of Wikimedia and Meta, and more exposure for our smaller projects.-- Eloquence * 00:21, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)
I would like the Special Search Page to appear in the list of Special Pages, and/or be linked from en.wikipedia.org, so I can bookmark it, go right to it and get my search result without an intermediary step telling me that "Wikipedia search is disabled for performance reasons. You can search via Google or Yahoo! in the meantime." For instance, when I search for "US Congress" from the search box on en.wikipedia.org, I am directed to the the Special Search Page with the above error message and the option of using Google or Yahoo to search Wikipedia or the Web with "US Congress" filled in, in the search box. I would like instead to go directly to the Special Search Page with no search term typed in, so I could type in "US Congress" as my search term, check the Wikipedia option, hit the Google search button and thereby go directly to a list of results headed by "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_the_United_States", which is what I'm looking for.
Of course it would be good to resolve the Wikipedia Search performance problem too, but, in the meantime, the above would do just fine.
I think that there should be a Wiki web translator. 152.163.100.66 03:00, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)CRB
There is currently a poll at Talk:Bible#Opinion_poll_--.3E_Bible_vs_Christian_Bible, you are invited to vote there. Jcbos 23:39, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Interwiki redirects are missing a way to edit the redirect page. They should have a 5-second delay or the "(Redirected from en:TeX help)" or whatever implemented. - Omegatron 21:04, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)
I'm looking for feedback on the practicality of starting a new chronological index to articles, using a logarithmic timeline approach. I happen to have created a full-length (1000-line) timeline [5] that turns out to be very easy to convert-- a demo page is here.
I'm picturing inviting people to add as many articles as necessary to each line-- this duplicates the function of the categorizations by year and decade, but fits a lot more articles onto each index page, and by using the logarithmic line-numbers it provides an intuitive 'big picture' view of all of history. -- robotwisdom 15:22, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I've occasionally wanted to talk to people about edits they've made on articles, and every time I've wished that user-talk pages as well as user pages were linked in article histories. Would there be any way of adding link to those as well? Grutness| hello? 23:33, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I've noticed that when I find an article that I want to assign some category, it is very difficult to find the proper category. There are tens of thousands of them. Searching through the Special:Category page for the right one would take literally forever. Would it be possible to implement a search engine for categories? Or does this feature already exists, and I just don't know about it. DaveTheRed 07:43, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I've noticed sites like AlwaysOn [6] have gone from online to print—and there are a few more as part of this phenomenon. Is this a worthwhile article for Wikipedia? (Feel free to move this if I have put it in the wrong place.) Stombs 05:16, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia is a great source of information to people around the world, but there are thousands of people who would love to be able to hear the content rather then read it, for instance people with eye problems or people that have trouble reading or people who don't want to waste their time listening to the radio or watching television when they could be listening to a world of knowledge, this will be possible when articles in the Wikipedia are made into audio files and made available for download, this concept is not new it was done with a book written by Lawrence Lessig called Free Culture http://webjay.org/by/lucas_gonze/lessigfreecultureaudiobookproject, several people made audio files of one of the chapters and made them avable to download as a podcast. Having the Wikipedia in the audio format would be a truly marvels resource.
By combining podcasting with bittorrent it is possible to place the more of the bandwidth load on the people who are downloading the files, and as broadband becomes ubiquitous the bandwidth issue will become trival.
Text-to-speech is good but the voice lacks expressiveness also a some of the material in an article is not compatible with TTS so its not as good as a good reader, but as TTS becomes more refined these problems are sure to disappear. a good reader currently is far better at keeping most peoples attention then TTS and even a moderately good reader is better then TTS in that respect.The way to spread knowledge to the most people is to get them interested in learning so the more attractive the information is the more people will be interested in getting it remembering it and using it. most people will watch TV rather then read a book or read a blog its not that the books are not interesting so much that the TV uses audio video stimulation to capture peoples attention what we have in the wikipedia is so much better then what people have in the main stream media so lets see what we can do to make the information more attractive to more people.
I added informal voting to the Proposal for intuitive table editor and namespace page. Please add your vote. Do you like it? Is it stupid? - Omegatron 16:34, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to move this page to meta and get more attention to it. How do I do this? (Where do I put it? Where do I announce it? etc.) - Omegatron 14:56, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)
I have started off our first attempt to find a baseline revision for Common Unix Printing System. The proposal is here and is locked in to stop vandals from editing the URL to the revision: Common Unix Printing System/Proposed baseline. See the talk page to see the objections and review for the proposed baseline revision. - Ta bu shi da yu 02:59, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I've had an idea in mind for a long time which I think can now be realized within the Wikipedia framework.
It's really pretty simple...an Audio Music Dictionary.
Just as its name implies, it would be a music dictionary with (mpeg) audio examples. Since music is often called a "language" in its own right, it makes sense to me that Wikipedia would be the right place for it to reside.
If you like the idea and can help me find a mentor to get this organized and underway, please respond here.
When I had the idea originally, I worked at it briefly with a Macintosh and HyperCard, but I was always thinking of the day when universal networking would make the project really possible.
BTW, I'm not clear on the signing instructions, but I'm reachable at 207.62.243.195 00:44, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC) carlnoe@gmail.com and the date is March 10, 2005
Thanks for the feedback. I'll get an account Saturday and look into those things. (I'm on a library computer at a school right now.)
I think Chris is right...no copyrights would be needed on these sort of musical examples, and no copyrighted material would be allowed. As no one would copyright individual words in a dictionary, no one would copyright musical terms/examples in an AMD.
As an example, think of the word "flute" linked to an brief mpeg of an open-hole note played on a flute.
Maybe this music thing should go in the Wikimedia Commons -- Munchkinguy 19:34, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Consider all the people in the world, many of them thinking up new ideas or inventions from time to time. You know, the 2 a.m. brainwave that we have neither the money nor the training to bring to completion but that has some merit nevertheless.
How about building a data base that intakes ideas and idea fragments from all over the world, continuously, with a user-friendly and intelligently organized front-end. The data base itself has to be very robust, and also very intelligently organized. All ideas will be assigned to one or more categories, with many characteristics attachable.
The coolest part, and the reason for doing all of this, is to provide free access to any and all who wish to mine the database. Think of the synergy! This project could have tremendous impact on the development of the human race!
This project would provide enormous challenges for the people who organize it and make it interactive. What a fantastic and worthwhile enterprise, sort of like the Glass Bead Game a million times over.
The part I would like to play in it is to help create feed-in points in all countries and communities in the world. People submitting ideas could provide data about themselves if they chose to do so. This would permit others who found their ideas useful to contact them, or at least to know something about how the idea came about. And over time, the data would provide amazing information about the generation of ideas, the context in which they arise, and so on.
Anybody up for making this Idea Gathering Project a reality?
Linda Golley linda_golley@yahoo.com lgolley@u.washington.edu
Throughout the world we are witnessing major problems arising from a surplus of racing greyhounds. The greyhound has a very short racing career and only its suitability for breeding may save it from ??? There cannot be any justification for destroying a dog simply because it was too slow,too old ( 5yrs), too placid,too expensive to feed or any other feeble reasons proffered. I am full of praise for those wonderful people who run Greyhound Adoption Centres but alas I feel They are losing ground and it is now time for our Countries administrators to take action to protect these warm,wonderful but defenceless creatures. I am sure everybody connected with the sport would welcome controls to help alleviate the dark side of their pusuit.
Question: Why/How was the tsunami link a "rare exception"? -- Munchkinguy 19:32, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
It is perfectly reasonable for an encyclopedia to explain and examine controversial and/or politically charged issues and other causes. It is perfectly reasonable for Wikipedia to have links to organizations working on those causes. The only thing we should require is that issues are presented in a NPOV way. That said, I think it would be good to have links to everything mentioned in the comments above -- without the inflammatory language. -- Samuel Wantman 03:51, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
(I use the classic skin) Would it be possible to get the Go and Search buttons to do their stuff but open in a new window if right clicked? -- SGBailey 09:36, 2005 Mar 9 (UTC)
I had a thought. With the new gallery syntax from MediaWiki 4, it has become very easy to create pages of images. These can be very useful to illustrate certain subjects where pictures can say as much as words, but where it is far harder to fit an adequate number of images into the text. An example of this would be Ancient Greece, but I am sure that many more could also be made. I guess this could be a use of the Commons, but I would consider it more of an encyclopedic thing, rather than being resources. Smoddy (t) (e) 19:24, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The article on Australia has a couple of images with captions that include wikified links. The generated ALT text is the caption text, excluding the text contained within anchor tags ("[John Howard], the [Prime Minister of Australia]" comes out as ", the "). Surely it would be better to include the anchor text, and just exluded the anchor tags within the ALT text?
Josh Parris 01:24, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia:Modular electronics diagrams. - Omegatron 23:44, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)
Please see and comment on Wikipedia:WExCUp, a new idea to organize a group of Wikipedians in a way to resolve various cleanup issues. - RedWordSmith 06:19, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)
Material on both articles are incorporated into each other, the Conviniant edit link provides easy edit. As far as the reader is concerned, Abdullah Öcalan did not change aside from a new {edit}. While PKK had some of the material in Abdullah Öcalan added as the man is relevant to the organisation.
Someone deleted the templates. Just asume that the information is pluged in to both articles. -- Cool Cat My Talk 00:38, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The subpages transcluded in are:
User:Coolcat originally refactored the regular articles using templates for several sections; articles have since been reverted and templates deleted.
nb: Template:Kurdistan Workers Party/Timeline is still extant and used by both Kurdistan Workers Party && User:Coolcat/Kurdistan Workers Party
Examples in userspace reworked by — Davenbelle 06:36, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC) — There is also a discussion on User talk:Davenbelle.
I propose going back to the old names for the tabs. The new names which might be valid are very POV and need to be more neutral. I don't think I'm in the minority in wanting to go back to the "past", but if there is a consensus on keeping the new names it's okay by me. 172.192.204.47 05:14, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Discussion Moved to: WikiProject Rankings
Oh, may I marry you? r3m0t talk 23:01, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)
It would be great if there were a Wiki.org (or whatever) that just shows all of the icons for all the Wiki sites. There should also be a navigation bar at the top or bottom of the screen that gives easy access to the other Wiki sites.