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So, I was looking at the relevant page about my employer (those people that keep expecting me to show up EVERY day), and I had the feeling that it had been heavily edited/created by someone within the company. At first blush I was a little bothered, but in fact I think this is good. I'm certainly capable of contributing and editing things that don't seem NPOV (think union/employer relations), and the payoff is a more complete page.
My proposal is a template/note that can be emailed to an appropriate corporate/business person simply stating that they are included in Wikipedia, that there is an interest in having them contribute, and perhaps a short blurb on the nature of editing, NPOV, etc...
I know this can be done on an individual basis, but I was looking for a little consensus and input into an efficient/proper way of doing things.-- Bookandcoffee 23:36, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
We currently have a newly registered user Kuza31 creating trashy articles or vandalising existing ones. We're a small wikipedia and none of the 6 administrators seems to be around. Could someone from here (if he/she has the power to do so)block him please? Otherwise, hours might go by before he stops or an administrator makes his/her appearence. Thanks!-- ca:Usuari:Jahecaigut
I've come across several images in Wikipedia that would be good to move to Commons, and would enhance an existing category / article there. But moving is a lot of hassle — as far as I can see, I'd have to create the Commons version, then AfD the WP version... ? Is there an easier way?
I think it would be really convenient if there was a "move to Commons" button at the top of an image page. This would only appear if the image had an appropriate confirmed licence, and would move the image, adjusting links as necessary, and then put up a reminder to set appropriate Commons categories etc. on the moved image. — Johantheghost 14:37, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
A tool which I hope is implemented in the future would be to require users to view the differences made by the last editor of an article when submitting a new edit. Thus, everyone becomes a member of RC patrol, and much more vandalism will be caught. This could be as simple as sticking in the content that normally appears when you click "diff", above/below the editing box, so that the bright red text can easily be noticed. — BRIAN 0918 • 2005-10-7 11:48
All editors have reverted a vandal, looked up his contributions, and found dozens of other edits. Sometimes not all of the damage has been undone by other editors, forcing a careful checking of the history of all the articles the vandal recently edited. Whenever I follow a link from the a vandal's contributions profile, the instance of vandalism may be the current version or another edit may have follow. Not wanting to allow an instance of vandalism to be buried, perhaps, by legit edits, I click the next edit link just to be sure the edit which follows is a revert. Doing this adds up if I am check 10+ edits. Wouldn't it be great if in the contributions profile, there could be a mark next to any edit that indicates an immediate rollback? lots of issues | leave me a message 23:06, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
The Wikipedia:Requested pictures is too big to be useful. A drawer is just looking for things to draw, just as a mapmaker ( Category:Wikipedia map requests) is looking for things to map, etc. Lumping all of these into "pictures" is no longer a useful way to work. Do others agree that this needs to be split? - St| eve 17:58, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Notability proposal is a proposal to explicitly make "notability" a requirement for Wikipedia articles, and to explicitly include "lack of notability" as a reason for deleting articles. Please visit Wikipedia talk:Notability proposal and express your view on the proposal. DES (talk) 23:12, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
I would love to see a new button to appear on the watch list next to (diff) and (hist), to be able to (unwatch) pages i've lost interest in right from the watchlist. I know i can just go to the page, but with the speed wiki is loading, it'd be nice to manage your watchlist from your actual watchlist page. Shouldnt be hard to add methinks? Good idea? -- The Minister of War 09:38, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
This seems sort of obvious to me, but if this has been said before then I apologize. I've been sorting through the untagged image category, tagging images here and there. This was where I encountered the orphans posted up on Wikipedia. Is it possible for a data dump on all orphan media x number of days old, and set it up as a wiki fixup project for others to sort through and post on Ifd? -- Bash 03:29, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
I've just had the scary idea that one of the least-considered admin powers - viewing deleted pages - may be the most dangerous of all.
Currently, when personal information (address, phone number...) is added to an article, the revisions containing it are deleted. This puts them out of view of most people... but not our 500+ (with more every day - and the number will have to increase even faster as the popularity of Wikipedia does) administrators. So how do we know none of the administrators would want to harrass or stalk someone whose personal information has been added to WP and then deleted? Or, less likely but more scary, how do we know they couldn't be fooled, coerced, or bribed into doing so by a Wikipedia-savvy stalker? Remember, admins are only people we trust not to destroy Wikipedia - RFA doesn't determine trustworthiness in Real Life.
While it is unlikely that this will ever happen, the moral (and potentially legal) weight if it did would be immense. The only solution I can see is to ask the developers to purge these revisions from the database completely. ~~ N ( t/ c) 16:12, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I've modified and reproposed these criteria as possibly too much time passed from the consensus gained at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Speedy category renaming to list them. Comments welcomed. Steve block talk 11:12, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Certain recent events regarding overextension of admin powers have made me think that there needs to be a process for speedy de-adminship - not like ArbCom, but more like RFAdm. (I am not saying Snowspinner should be deadminned, and I'm not even talking about him alone, but that is what started this idea.) In order to help this along, I propose that bureaucrats be given the power to de-sysop users, but not to de-bureaucrat other bureaucrats (because of the potential for Total Wiki Domination by de-bureaucratting everyone else until a steward comes along). ~~ N ( t/ c) 03:46, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Although this isn't such a big thing for me as an admin, it would still be useful - and far more so for non-admins. How about an extra button in the toolbar called something like "revert", so as to roll back the immediately previous edit that you yourself made? Say you've just replied to someone in a talk page and then either realised you've completely missed the point of their original message, or - now that you've calmed down a bit - realised that you could have been a bit less beliggerant in what you said. So you want to erase what you just wrote. At present, you have to re-edit the article, and your initial blunder will be there in the page history for all to see. With a revrt button, you could just click that and remove your previous message (maybe even remove it from the page history - although that might be going too far). Grutness... wha? 00:50, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
You have xxx pages on your watchlist (not including talk pages); you can display and edit the complete list.
You have xxx pages on your watchlist (excluding talk pages); you can display and edit the entire list.
How about having a checkbox in the user preferences for "my watchlist" to "Hide my edits" by default? Urhixidur 15:54, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
function addOnloadFunction (f) { if (window.addEventListener) window.addEventListener("load",f,false); else if (window.attachEvent) window.attachEvent("onload",f); }; function fixWatchlistLink () { for (var i=0; i<document.links.length; ++i) { if (document.links[i].href.indexOf('Special:Watchlist')>0) { document.links[i].href+='?hideOwn=1'; break; } } }; addOnloadFunction(fixWatchlistLink);
I am not sure how it would work, exactly, but i would love to see the wiki idea used in a timeline format.
So, wondering what was going on in the world in the year 800 AD, i could browse world events by year, decade, century, etc.
Does anything like this exist??
I am not an admin but IIRC admins do not have a "rollback" buttonon contrib pages. This can be very usefull IMHO against multi-page vandals which seem to be on the rise. -- Cool Cat Talk 12:09, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
It strikes me that we often leave many important notices about editing an article on top of its talk page, but of course, a user who hits "edit this page" never even notices them. Of course, we don't want them in the article text either, so the only logical place is the edit page. I'd say that if a user sees the notice that there have been polls or prolongued discussions which achieved tha balance in the article, etc., they'll be less likely to be reckless about editing.
So, should we display the top of the talk page (the bit before the first section i.e. comment) above the article's edit box? Zocky 12:17, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
navigation
This is a proposal to address the difficulties many users experience when they try to thematically navigate Wikipedia after they leave the Main Page: add Categorybrowsebar-like wikilinks to every wikipage. This proposal is an update based on feedback for similar proposals at related discussion pages.
Specifically, the current proposal is to include the navigation elements contained in Template:Categorybrowsebar that used to be located on the Main Page (now a template is no longer used - causing "navigation bar drift" ;-) and other high-level pages it links to. In this template, the first line focuses on the main categories while the second line focuses on browse options. Adding the elements to the Mediawiki:Monobook.css style sheet (or wherever it actually needs to go) would allow Wikipedia to have a topical, top-level navigation scheme, based on the primary categorization scheme, that would help users move about logically and quickly from any page. Other benefits of this implementation would be that Template:Categorybrowsebar can be removed from a prominent position on several high-level pages, similar browse links can be removed from the Main Page, and the ever-insidious navigation bar drift can be eliminated.
The proposed basic approach is to use this ( template:eight portals links) across the top of a page. Then add the browse options to the sidebar navigation box. The layout could look something like this. (Keep in mind that the following top-level heading actually is part of this proposal.) — RDF talk 14:45, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
Art | Culture | Geography | History | Mathematics | People | Philosophy | Science | Society | Technology
Quite often an article cannot be found because currently only the first letter of the title is case insensivite (in the sense that if an article is named "Article X", someone may type up "article X" and get it.
However, if someone types "Article x" or "article x", he/she will NOT get the article, because capitals of second, third etc. words are not automatically found.
While it is unrealistic to create alternative redirect pages to EVERY possible combination of letters (say ArTiCLe X), the first letters of each word in an article are the ones most likely to be miscapitalized.
If a software change would be implemented, the matter would be quite straightfoward. If a bot is made to do so, here is the algorithm I propose:
1. Get the dump of all page names in Wikipedia (both "articles" and non-articles, such as redirects)
2. Filter out to those that have at least 2 words (separated by a space), and at least one of those 2nd+ words starts with a letter (Article X will be recorded, Article 12 will not).
3. Compare multiple entries that are left for identical name except capitalization (that should mean that one is the main name of the article, and all other variants are already created alternative capitalization redirects to that article). 2-word entries would have only 1 alternative ("Article X" can only be alternatively spelled under this algorithm as "Article x"). 3-word articles can have maximum of 3 alternative namings ("Article X Y" can also be "Article X y", "Article x Y", and "Article x y".
4. Discard entries that have the maximum number of possible alternatives already made.
5. Compile a list of not-yet-existing alternative capitalizations for articles, tying all variants to their "home" article.
6. Upload all created redirect pages to Wikipedia.
7. Repeat at interval, getting newly created article names from dump. -- unsigned comment left by User:Elvarg 00:49, 27 September 2005 UTC
Long point short, my proposed change will NOT interfere with ANY existing system -- the ONLY way people will notice a change is that they hit a "NO ARTICLE" page before and now they don't.
I'm not quite sure whether this falls under policy or not, maknig a printer friendly option would probably require a structural change to Wikipedia. I just think that the enyclopedia entries would be a bit nicer on the eyes if they could easily be printed out with the blue hyperlinks and such that typify Wikipedia entries. I just thought I'd throw the idea out there and see what the community makes of it. ~ Jared ~ 15:58, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
(moved to Wikipedia_talk:Bots#Kakashi_Bot)
Has anyone considered adding the TCP/UDP ports used by multiplayer computer games to their pages? This information is relatively hard to find reliably (small game publishers often fail to provide it), and is needed by anyone playing games from behind a router/firewall. I understand that wiki is not a technical manual, but this seems like important information to me. — Nimlot 23:32, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
It's probably a perennial proposal, but has anyone considered a way to consolidate many consecutive edits by the same person, either in the actual history or in the way the history is displayed (a checkbox for "hide consecutive edits", while retaining the actual history).
Err.. "fold consecutive edits" might be better, since you could still view them. Just like, if you clicked on a diff while folded, you would see all the consecutive edits by that person as if it were one. Omegatron ( talk) 21:29, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
---------------------Closed-------------------- ----------------------Open---------------------
[+]StuRat[Multiple edits]
[-]StuRat[Multiple edits]
StuRat-Added comma.
StuRat-Spelling fix
I've started a proposal page for a sister project called "Wikitour" that would lend itself directly to Wikipedia. Whereas Commons hosts individual images of places that have articles on Wikipedia, Wikitour would host "virtual tours" of these places, such as castles, museums, galleries, caverns, mountains, college campuses, typical mosques or churches, archaeological sites, etc.
The basic idea is as follows: a user submits numerous photos of a notable place, which are organized into pages/subpages to create a navigable environment similar to that in Myst, Riven, or graphical adventures; the navigation system would be on Wikitour, while the files themselves would be on Commons, with a link in the respective article on WP; Basically, any topic that has an article on Wikipedia has the possibility of its own entry in Wikitour. Users could also submit photos of an object from various sides/angles/distances, rather than a place.
Please leave your impressions/suggestions at Talk:Wikitour. Thanks. — BRIAN 0918 • 2005-10-21 20:14
If you prefer an explanatory anecdote or two to set the stage before diving into the specifications, start here:
On reflection, i think such events call for a project-space page that would have had entries for
Note
These are both intended to make following lks or What-lks-here to the new page
-- Jerzy• t 20:08, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Many times I come to wikipedia to search for something. It would be very nice if the search box had focus automatically without my having to click on it.
What if there could be a spellchecker activated by the preview button? Misspellings would be highlighted in red with alternatives offered at the top. This would save many people a lot of work correcting typos later. Of course, it would be nice if users were required to preview before sending. ;) Purplefeltangel ( talk) 21:06, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
I think the first idea, of a spell check in the edit function, perhaps activated by preview, perhaps in some other way, is worth persuing. Couldn't this run on the client side, and so not impose significant server load. And even if it ran on ther server side, it would run one article at a time, which is very different from a tool to do a mass spell-check on wikipedia. DES (talk) 15:02, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
I have been playing video games for years, the word noob first meant someone that is stupid on the game. Then people started getting the word noob and newb mixed up. Now even google thinks that the word noob means newb. They had the real definition but now it is gone. This website also has it wrong.
I know what I'm talking about aswell :(
Basically, at the moment the only Next 200/Previous 200 links are at the top of a category list. I suggest that it would be logical to have identical links at the bottom as well. - SoM 16:09, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
Please let your opinion be known in regard to the Blocking policy proposal, we are now voting on the issue. thanks! Martin 09:34, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm curious if anyone reading at the Village Pump is interested in helping co-ordinate/organize/flesh out these articles on Wikipedia? (I'm aware of Gherald's new wikicties project, but I have reservations about that format's usefulness -- especially when compared to the EWoT [1], and in any case it doesn't obviate the need for cleanup here on Wikipedia.)
Please respond here or on my talk page, and if we reach 5-10 (currently at 3-4) I'll start a WikiProject page. nae'blis (talk) 01:20, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
I am suprised at the lack of mountain biking information here. For instance, there isn't even an article for FOX Racing Shox, which is one of the top porducers of suspension for mountain bikes. I'm going to start improving some of these articles and creating new ones for non-existent info. If anyone wants to help me on this, feel free to post on my user talk.
Thank you-- Windsamurai 02:09, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
It is proposed that each page be modified such that an individual wishing to transate that page to another language might do so by selecting the language and clicking a button. I was eager to contribute in this way, but found myself clicking aimlessly and in vain. It would also be a real treat to read the a corresponding alternative language wikis a page has.
Implementaion would be could be fairly simple or very complex depending on the level of interconnectedness desired...
I am not sure this is the right place to propose; neither am i sure that nobody ever brought up this topic before. Anyway, wouldn't it be nice to expose the most useful data from Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects as Web Services, so that it may be useful not only to humans but to computers as well? The idea is very fuzzy in my mind at the moment, but I am absolutely sure that a lot of applications would benefit from having XML-style access to various information from Wikipedia. Ivan Memruk 09:05, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
I was thinking of doing something along the lines of Gentoo's Bugday, where on a regularly schedule day, such as every other week, once a month, etc. We get editors to meet in #wikipedia on freenode to work on a cleaning up/adding to a selection of articles.
An example would be a biography stub day, where we editors would work together on finding information on biography stubs and fixing them up.
Another would be wikify day, go through all articles that need to be wikified, one by one, and turn them into a proper article.
Sure this gets done all the time, but I would believe that editors working together on a single article with realtime collaboration could be much more effective
AppleBoy
Talk
05:52, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Creation of redirects (and their "uncreation") should be logged, displaying the page title and the title of the redirect target:
[[Special:Log/redirect]] would contain lines like:
To be more specific, there should be a log entry any time a page becomes a redirect by editing (initial creation or modification of existing article), and not as the automatic side-effect of a page move.
It would also show up in the Special:Recent changes log, but instead of appearing as an ordinary edit, it would appear in the same way as other log entries there:
Instead of:
it would show up as:
This would help spot cut-and-paste page moves by clueless newbies (or edit warriors), and it would also help spot cut-and-paste pagemove vandalism.
Turning a page into a redirect is fundamentally a different concept than editing it. Actuallly, it's exactly like a page move, except the "page move" target already exists.
-- Curps 04:02, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
I did some poking at it and have a crude prototype of this working, might finish it... — Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 07:29, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
This is impossible to do currently due to Special:Log only working for logged-in users, anonymous users can also create redirects. — Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 03:41, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
It's my view that our systems for co-ordinating both readers and editors are currently poorly organised. I'll describe what each of these things attempt to achieve (as I see it) and then explain why this causes several problems and suggest solutions.
Categories are in theory perfectly simple. Category:English poets, for example lists all our articles on English poets and does nothing else. We also , however, have categories pretending to be portals. Category:Mathematics is the perfect example of this - there is a perfectly good Portal stuck on to the top of a perfectly good Category. The Mathematics Portal actually redirects to it.
We also have straight-forward Portals, which are purely (or almost purely) designed for readers. The Cricket Portal is a good example of one of these. It contains an introduction to the topic, a few pictures and links to some of the more important related articles. The only item which is not aimed solely at readers is an invitation to participate in the associated WikiProject.
We also have WikiPortals. These contain the same sort of stuff as Portals but with extra bits thrown in, aimed at editors. To pick a few examples at random, the Brazil WikiPortal invites people to add information to a list of Brazil-related stubs and contains a little information about when it was made and who runs it, The Physics WikiPortal has a brief 'things you can do' list and the Music WikiPortal links to connected WikiProjects.
WikiProjects aim to "help coordinate and organize article writing". Lots of these are aimed purely at getting articles on the same subject to share a format/layout etc. The mountains WikiProject for example is 90% instructions on how to set out articles on mountains, 8% administration and 2% links to resources for article writing. The only thing in the Archaeology WikiProject is a list of articles that people might like to contribute to.
Finally, there are also Regional Wikipedians' Notice Boards. These contain all sorts of lovely stuff - articles to create, expand, pictures to find, relevant peer reviews, articles for deletion, featured article candidates and so on.
The problem as I see it is that the functions of these things overlap, making the system as a whole overcomplicated. I'll now list the three main problematic areas and suggest solutions.
1. Categories and Portals are essentially coming at the same job from different angles. They both provide topic-based navigation, Categories with the emphasis on being comprehensive and Portals with the emphasis on providing an attractive interface. At the moment our Categories are far more developed than our Portals, but given enough time there probably would (or could) be a portal covering each Category. There are two obvious solutions to this and at the moment we're doing both inconsistently. We should either decide to split the two up completely as is done in Portal:Cricket and Category:Cricket or put them together one one page as at Category:Mathematics. My personal preference is to keep them separate but with prominent links between them, but either solution would be acceptable. The system as it stands, however, is illogical and confusing.
2. Portals and WikiPortals are more or less the same thing. The editor related content in WikiPortals is useful but certainly not the sort of thing we should be presenting to the public. I think we should take all the reader-orientated content from our WikiPortals and transfer it to Portals. One link inviting people to edit is probably acceptable, as at the Cricket Portal, but certainly no more. What is left can be incorporated somewhere else, which leads me to...
3. Our editor-orientated pages. Here we have Noticeboards and WikiProjects doing the more or less the same thing - co-ordinating editors' efforts in a certain field. Regional Wikipedians' Noticeboards I think are a great idea, except for the first word. I see no reason why the Noticeboard concept should be restircted to regions. I think it would be equally applicable to any other topic area. I discussed mountains earlier and I think the content at the Mountains WikiProject could quite easily be incorporated into a Mountains Noticeboard (possibly on a well-marked subpage) which would also allow for the inclusion of information such as that currently on the Regional Noticeboards - requested articles, articles for expansion, up for featured articles etc. These could also include any information left over from the relevant WikiPortal.
Basically, I think we should attempt to simplify the system and organise it along more logical grounds. This would help our readers to navigate the site and find the content they want and also help our editors to create this content.
Comments and criticism etc welcome
(Also posted to the Mailing List)
--
Cherry
blossom
tree
20:04, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
OK, so alotta poeple are complaining about the wikipedia search engine. now that i think about it, yeh, it sucks. someone mentioned that they use google search instead, and disregard wikipedia's own method. I also noticed that when the wikipedia search engines are down wikipedia invites the user to search through google or yahoo. Many websites have boxes that say "powered by google", so why doesn't wikipedia get that too and solve the problem of poor searching ability? -- Ballchef 10:14, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Moved to perennial proposals. Steve block talk 18:44, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Since it is likely that Wikiholism has negatively impacted the personal lives of numerous people in the community, myself included, I propose the creation of Wikipedia:Jobs that will list various jobs or careers that Wikipedians would be good at in real life, such as writing encyclopedia articles for Encyclopædia Britannica (although we probably shouldn't promote something like that). The goal of this would be to encourage people who are currently unemployed, and whose only motivation is their tireless work on Wikipedia, to get jobs. The first goal of this project will be to find me a job. So, Wikipedia community, get to work! — BRIAN 0918 • 2005-10-14 05:08
If you feel that WP is negatively impacting your personal life, maybe it really is time to take a break. Have no fear, it will all be here for you down the road. People whose "only motivation is their tireless work on Wikipedia" may need more than jobs. They may actually benefit from spending time focusing on other aspects of their life.-- Gaff talk 07:19, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
Could it be possible to make static snapshots of the database without histories to download for when you are not connected to the Internet? You could use it from a laptop when you're on a plane, or when the site is down. It would simply be the zipped .sql backup file. Of course, only advanced users would know how to use it, but it could still be worth it. The files could be downloaded as torrents from friendly servers.
Eje211 21:03, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
When you move a page, a handy little button box comes up saying "do you want to move the talk page too?" Very useful, since you almost always do. So why not do the same with deletions? If I delete a page, likely as not I'll forget to check whether there's a talk page that also needs deletion - I often realise a few minutes later then have to hunt for the relevant talk page. A button asking "do you want to delete the talk page too?" would be a wonderful addition to the admin's page deletion options. Grutness... wha? 10:26, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
I have been thinking about a new system for warning vandals. Usually, unless the vandalism is extremely severe, users will get a warning on their talk pages before being blocked (if necessary). However, users might use excuses like "but I didn't notice any messages" and such. Therefore, I am proposing a system that allows "official" warnings by admins. When a warned user requests a page, he or she will get a warning message instead of the requested page. There would be a button that says "I confirm that I have read this message" that must be clicked before the user can continue using Wikipedia. This would make sure that the user has seen the message, and leaves no room for excuses. Still, I'm sure that this is a very controversial idea, and I'm not even sure that I like it myself.
Any thoughts? -- Ixfd64 01:16, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
Would it be possible to allow characters to be entered directly in equations, as they are in plain text. I have got some examples: Susvolans ⇔ 07:52, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
x−y | Failed to parse (syntax error): {\displaystyle x−y} | x-y | |
u×v | Failed to parse (syntax error): {\displaystyle u×v} | u\times v | |
sin 2α | Failed to parse (syntax error): {\displaystyle sin 2α} | sin 2\alpha | |
x² | Failed to parse (syntax error): {\displaystyle x²} | x^2 | |
i₃ | Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "http://localhost:6011/en.wikipedia.org/v1/":): {\displaystyle i₃} | i_3 | |
½ | Failed to parse (syntax error): {\displaystyle ½} | \frac 1 2 |
I believe the math article editors would strongly object to actually using such a capability, they seem to prefer TeX markup and oppose any form of WYSIWYG. My unicodify bot changed γ to literal γ in one math article (not \gamma within <math> but γ in the main article text) and they objected to that. So I don't know if this enhancement will actually be used in practice (it will probably be reverted if used), although enabling the technical capability makes sense (perhaps other wikipedias and other wikis will have a different policy). -- Curps 16:50, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
\codes
for HTML math character entities (for example, Σ
→ \Sigma
) which have different names in
LaTeX." -
Texvc
Omegatron (
talk)
05:57, 17 October 2005 (UTC)Since IP addresses are publically shown, and anonymous proxies are currently not allowed, we are probably scaring off some legit contributers.
So I am suggesting that an alternate (but optional) method of identifying anonymous users. Each anon would have a special ID given to them (for example, Guest user:48388422389), generated by a special algorithm. I've been to a forum that uses such a method, and I don't think it's a bad idea either. -- Ixfd64 22:52, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
Would people consider making a PDA compatible Main Page and Page layout specifically designed for PDA viewing, like Google PDA (www.google.com/pda), although not necessarily as bland...
Also, it could be named wikiPDA, so there'd be no need to resort to adding wiki to a word to invent a new one... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.42.72.223 ( talk • contribs) 22:09, 9 October 2005
I propose that Wikipedia include a new link in its navigation menu to the page Wikipedia:Who writes Wikipedia. My primary concern is the potential for students to assume that all Wikipedia entries are of equally high quality. This MSNBC news article discusses how uncritically the typical student entering college approaches research: Colleges look to test internet IQ. This link documents the popularity of Wikipedia among kids: Alexa's Most Popular in Kids and Teens Category.
There is precedent for adding a new menu item to the toolbox; User:Angela made a proposal within the past few months for a "permanent link" option to be added at the bottom of the toolbox menu. It appears in all main articlespace pages. While users of the MediaWiki software may not make use of a link that says "Who writes wikipedia", I bet they would all appreciate a link called "About this site" or something similar. Ideally, this link would be customized for each installation of the MediaWiki software.
What do others think? Is this worth asking the programmers to do? Mamawrites 11:14, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
Currently, many templates go on the talk page. I think they should go on the article page, because (just as NPOV warning adds important info and so is on the article page) they add useful or important content that one may want to know when reading an article, without having to go to the talk page.
My current list of things that should go on the article, not the talk page, are:
Please feel free to add to the above list, and/or tell me why this proposal is a good or bad idea. Batmanand 09:12, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
The idea of indicating the featured status of a article in the article page, have been brought many times, but I think there was a consensus about leaving the template in the talk page to prevent readers from considering non-FAs low quality articles. As for my opinion, I'm rather for putting some kinf of a FA mark in the article page. An idea taken from the vietnamese Wikipedia, about putting a star right next to the title of a featured article in being discussed at
Wikipedia talk:Featured articles#Featured article icon on vi:.
As for the FA candidate and the Peer revew template, the main reason for putting them in the talk page is that there are "editors" templates, that concerns the ones who are interested in editing the page, and who should check the talk page.
CG
14:15, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to propose having an image template for pictures from the EAS web site. [2] This would be comparable to the {{ PD-USGov-NASA}} template. Could somebody let me know what process I need to go through to make this happen? Here are the EAS site terms of image use:
Thank you. :) — RJH 20:53, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Ach, well then it sounds like ESA pictures are a no-go. I've seen some ESA images on wikipedia already, so they will need to be expunged, alas. — RJH 16:16, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Alright, I bet this subject has already been talked about numerous times, but I think there should be a way to just have one single account for every wiki, instead of having to make a new one for each one. Such as the main wikipedia.org, and then demosphere's wiki, and halo(the video game)'s wiki, and all those other good stuff.
Or am I just crazy?
--
KelticK
Talk
18:22, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
Section transferred to Wikipedia:Blocking policy proposal Steve block talk 13:39, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
To help disseminate knowledge by sharing specific information and increasing Wiki's visability, I propose a "send page" option be added to the toolbox or navigation pane.
The user should have the option of sending the actual page (I suppose an html document?) or just a link to the article.
Thanks. I apologize if this point has already been raised. I did not see it in the perennial proposals discussion.
SG-
The Wikipedia:Article rating competition is a proposal to informally rate articles under given topics chosen every week. Take a look and comment on the talk page. violet/riga (t) 19:20, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
I propose that anyone who edits pages on the wikipedia be forced to log in. This way, there will always be a record of who chaged what, and in some cases, who to kick off. Also, forcing people to log on would allow people to view a full list of their own contributions, providing a way for people to check back on the pages they have worked on. Tell me what you think of that idea. Fresheneesz 15:48 30 October 2005 (US West Coast time)
If somebody wanted to create a wiki about electronics he would be wise to get the experts in sci.electronics.design involved somehow.
These electronics gurus can be asked to solve disagreements, so we get a very good wiki. It doesn't need a "forced login" because a hundred editors keep an eye on what is happening and they decide in each case if the change is to be kept, or revert to earlier version, or use the new material in some other way, like merge it with something else.
If the one who wrote it want to argue about it he has the possibility ultimately to present his case to the gurus in sci.electronics.design
The wiki administrators could have their own forum, also open and unmoderated, where they discuss the development. The editors would have a forum too. A system of forums backing up a wiki.
One of the forums, in this case sci.electronics.design, is used as the highest authority over the content.
What works for electronics works for knowledge in general, and I think these ideas can be used for wikipedia too.
Roger4911 10:47, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
I have participated for years in the newsgroup sci.electronics.design and have thought about the fact that we never create anything together, like a book about electronics, in the form of a wiki, for example.
We would have no problem assigning overall responsibility to a few which have gained respect for their knowledge and/or human insight.
All we write disappear again, like water running by in a river. Old messages are quickly forgotten, and we write new messages every day.
That allows us to get to know each other, know each others competence.
We have what is needed to give correct and optimised replies to questions, we have an hierarchy that is natural and accepted by most regular participators. We can determine what is right and wrong in the field of electronics, we have authority based on a competence order which is rather informal but very clear.
In alt.comp.freeware we have another organisation, an appointed person acts on the behalf of the participators, she organizes the votings each year for the best freeware programs, to go into the list of "Pricelessware" we publish each year, and we have organised a net of voluntary CD burners all over the world.
If you live in Tasmania and want a copy of the Pricelessware CD you write a message to one of the burners, or in the newsgroup. Somebody who lives in Australia replies and offers to burn the PL iso to a CD and send it to the person in Tasmania.
In ACF we have a system based on an informally organised representative democracy which works very well, as long as Susan can keep on taking care of all tasks involved.
In wikipedia there is no problem to get participators to participate, but there is a quality problem instead.
Practical informal anarchy often leads to mob rule in the cultural sector, the writers and singers who shouts loudest wins most media coverage.
Practical informal representative democracy is to appoint some generally trusted persons to handle a web site for a newsgroup, or to having the overall responsibility for section of a wiki.
If we combine the diskussions in a newsgroup with a wiki we get the other half of the creating process, the structuring and remembering of structures and data in the form which is more dynamic, more interactive and more materialized.
For the results to be good we need some type of representative informal democracy in this written medium.
In wikipedia they have a big problem with exactly the same problem, there are no really educated people who can make sound judgements in control, so the content is like the text you can read in the subway, mainly written by angry and arrogant young males, who seem to have immense resources of energy and time. Like very active participators in a newsgroup, who have to get involved in every thread they see, when they are in their speeded mode.
Some people speak because they have to say something, some people speak because they have something to say.
In a newsgroup we quickly find out who are the wise people and who are the less merited.
This results in a social order based solely on each persons written messages, so reason and judgement can easily be seen, separate from the person's body language, his social pondus, his voice and ability to take people emotionally.
So we can find the really intelligent people through using the text medium. We can use the newsgroup to learn to know each other, appoint by democratic votings some responsible and knowledgable persons to have the final decision for a part of the wiki.
The newsgroup or forum can also be used by people who have been overruled by higher authority, to defend his views and maybe get support from higher authority on a certain issue.
Using talkpages, wikipages, for discussions doesn't work well at all, we should use tools appropriate for the task, like forums or mailing lists or newsgroups. Wikipedia could set up a discussion forum server, that is the simplest solution.
Keep the discussions open and unmoderated like in usenet. Philosophy and knowledge in general really need freedom of speech.
Roger4911 15:21, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Wasn't taxonomy about classification and name-giving taxa, and systematics the study of organisms' evolutionary relationships? The latter is a research program and the former a practice.
Quoting [4]:
Systematics: the science of organizing the history of organismal evolution the science of ordering Identification: recognizing the place of an organisms in an existing classification Use of dichotomous keys to identify organisms Taxonomy (Nomenclature): assigning scientific names according to legal rules Recall discussion of ICZN Green Book (see also Phylocode homepage) Classification: determining the evolutionary relationships of organisms A "Natural Classification" will accurately reflect phylogeny Classification should be a hypothesis of evolutionary relationships
Shouldn't we divide taxonomy from systematics more clearly? Even in the taxoboxes? I noticed that the French wikipedia put a 'classical classification' (with Linnean categories) in their taxoboxes as well as a 'phylogenetic classification' (without Linnean categories). This seems like a good practice. Maybe we can do the same at other wikipedia's but call these Taxonomy and Systematics respectively. Fedor 09:41, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Possibly a silly suggestion, but possibly not... is there any way of putting a litle box at the top of usertalk pages that indicates whether on not the user is currently logged on to Wikipedia? It would save wondering whether to wait around for a reply to a message, and would also make it easier for people looking for an admin to help them if they knew they weren't talking to one who was offline. Grutness... wha? 02:05, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Some people have been just manually copying one of two images onto their user page to show their status. If they are careful to update it, this should always show their status accurately:
I wonder what a yellow light would mean ? "I'm in, but moving slow ?" StuRat 18:48, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Please could you comment on a previous proposal about a new namespace, the Gallery namespace. It has been marked as an archive before it had even been approved or rejected. Thank you. CG 19:37, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
In the German wikipedia, they have a nice tag (see de:Vorlage:Exzellent) on the Article page to show that it's a featured article; likewise, there is one to show that it's nominated ( de:Vorlage:Kandidat) for featured article status, and that it's nominated for removal ( de:Vorlage:Wiederwahl). Wouldn't it be nice to add these to the English featured articles as well, so readers can appreciate what they are reading, can participate in voting, and new users become more familiar with the system of featured articles? -- Robin.rueth 11:22, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
I've never heard about this rating system. Could you give me more information about it? CG 18:02, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
I see the for me with (no) Norwegian (bokmål) as language, many words are still in English. Is there some way to translate these?
This is a proposal by User:MessedRocker to deal with POV pages. Please visit and comment. R adiant _>|< 21:28, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
it would really help new users confused by the editing and talk page jargon Bwithh 22:13, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
It could be a real world bonus to have a "get a receipt" button for changes done to a page. I was mainly thinking this for students and researchers, or other knowledge societies, that might want to show their work in wikipedia.
A professor might encourage class work on wikipedia articles and demand for "receipts". They should be self contained in a single file to send, and have links to wikipedia "history page" for the article for verifiablility.
More details exist, where to have the button (in the "my contributions"), how exactly display the changes, how to handle others edits inbetween if allowable.
This functionality is already achivable as a simple rightly picked "diff" and packed easyly as an URL. Then maybe I only suggest more visibility to the possibility for less internet savvy users, the existance of the concept, and maybe a different, less powerful, display for the changes but allowing a easy read (that is to say some colouring for the full article). -- Pablo2garcia 13:02, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
Babajobu would like to begin disseminating a new meme: the concept of the Wikipedia Janitors' Union. Copyeditors and other such sloggers are the Rodney Dangerfields of Wikipedia, and our contributions are consistently undervalued. In future this Union will attempt to address this troubling lack of respect. I hope the meme will help lay the groundwork for the birth of the union. Go meme, go! Babajobu 10:08, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
This is just a quick note to say that the WikiSort Project has begun! Come on over and check it out! the1physicist 03:27, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
I've heard that the Chinese government has censored the Chinese Wikipedia a while ago. Would it be a good idea to create alternate URLs for the Chinese Wikipedia? -- Ixfd64 02:04, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
"I think it is wrong to try and 'dodge' the Chinese Government censoring the site, and I'm not sure Wikipedia principles agree either. Anyway, there is no way of hiding the site from the government without hiding it from users. If the Chinese want it censored, then just let them have their way. The only thing I would suggest is Wikipedia co-operating with the Chinese Government over this." --Heebiejeebieclub 19:00, 28 October 2005 (UTC) You think it's wrong to try and dodge the Chinese govenment? I think you are a communist, or atleast a socialist, what about censorship, that's what is the real wrong here. Governments should work for their people, not for the oppression of their people. And if a government is oppressive like the Chinese government, people not only have the right to work against that government, they have the responsibility. This reponsiblity can be fulfilled by armed resistance in extreme cases, or even small, seemingly insignificant acts such as reading banned literature. The government isn't your daddy, and therefore shound not be provideing for you, or telling what to do. As nice as it sounds to have another father in the government, we must remember, some fathers are abusive, and when that father is a government, it always becomes abusive.
16:38, 2 November 2005 (UTC)BAN
I have created a User:Thue/Wikipedia editing permissions reform, which proposes a way to create a web of trust among Wikipedia editors. The proposal limits the editing rights of users who are not yet trusted, but the idea is that it should not be too hard to become a trusted editor (on the order of a few hours quality work on Wikipedia if the editor is competent).
To still allow newbies not yet in the web of trust to contribute, and eventually become part of the web of trust, the proposal suggests a way to place "untrusted" editors' edits on hold until the editor becomes trusted, or until a trusted editor OKs the edit. By always treating anonymous editors as untrusted, the proposed solution also removes most of the problems with anonymous editors, while still allowing anonymous editors to contribute. Far most of the vandalism seen today would be eliminated by this proposal.
Having this big population of trusted editors will make it much easier to design a validation system for Wikipedia 1.0.
Comments appreciated!
Thue | talk 19:05, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
In writing for the Commonwealth School article, several editors (including me) were writing description from personal experience. Another editor came in and started deleting all the portions that were not Verifiable through reputable sources. I've been reading through relevant Wikipedia policy, and I think I have a decent handle now on what is allowed. The problem is, the way I've been treating Wikipedia and the way many others seem to treat it is at odds with official policy. People do write from personal experience. We could just say these people are sloppy and should go read policy, but that seems like it doesn't deal with anything. When people do this they are being useful, and often informative and helpful articles get created. One example might be the Slashdot subculture article, as there are very few if any "reputable" sources for it, but many people who could provide useful information. It seems the problem is with information that is:
Current Wikipedia policy does not make a way to include this information, but people want it included and want to provide it, and so write pages for it. These pages get worked on, and often get to be pretty good. Then someone comes by applying policy and removes anything not verifyable. Grouping all writing from experience in with "origonal research" seems simplistic and not really helpful. Is there a nice solution here? -- Jeff 18:31, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
Everything anybody writes is POV in one way or another. What you decide to write about, how you write about it, what examples you choose, what references you choose, all is your point of view. Everything you write is colored by your personality, your experiences, your view of the world.
Is wikipedia a collection of all that has been written, or all human wisdom and knowledge?
I think the best solution is to allow any POV which the council of the most merited wikipedians allow. If they say "this is good knowledge" it stays. They will allow anything which is accepted knowledge, accepted at least by the most advanced intelligence, by the best educated and experienced readers.
If wikipedia is upsetting to read for a backward fool in a strange part of the world, so what? wikipedia is run by enlightened and modern people :-)
I don't mean we should intentionally upset people anywhere, but if the truth is upsetting to anybody it should't stop wikipedia from publishing it. If we consider it to be important and correct.
Roger4911 19:19, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
(copied from Wikipedia:General complaints):
Normally, if you put a URL: resource address in [brackets] the wiki server side process will properly format a buried link for the browser. However, there are many more URL: resource addresses than just those that begin with "http:". For example, the wiki server side process does not properly format the following [pnm://rm.content.loudeye.com/~a-600111/0676330_0104_07_0002.ra URL: resource], as you can see. If you paste the URL: resource address
pnm://rm.content.loudeye.com/~a-600111/0676330_0104_07_0002.ra
into your browser address window, you will see from the browser reaction how the wiki server side process should format that pnm: URL: resource address as a link in the above examples. Could you please add pnm: to the table of allowed external URL: resource prefixes, such as http:, https:, ftp:, etc.? Thank you. --- Rednblu 20:17, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Hi, I have an idea that would make Wikipdedia even more helpful for me. Often I read interesting articles which I know I'll easily forget about - what if you could create a user account or bookmark these different pages for future reference? Oh wait, I could do that on my browser, but I think that's an ok idea.
Couldn't Wikipedia have an improved Random article option? I use it more or less frequently but I don't like those minimal stubs about local American geography. For example, I could be looking for a random article about computer science or physics.
-- GTubio 22:32, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Could a "First" and "Last" link be added in some special pages (like "What links here") next to "previous" and "next" to make the navigation in these pages faster? CG 21:16, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Has anyone ever proposed making a suite of web services available for wikipedia? Many major web sites (Amazon, Google, etc.) have web service APIs available that allow developers to access the content of the site. The main advantage of having such an API is that it would allow individual developers to create applications that use the information available on Wikipedia, which will in turn allow them to provide features that are not available or are just difficult to do inside of a web browser.
For instance, wouldn't it be nice to have a full-featured wikipedia editor with inline symbol assistance, highlighting, etc (much like an IDE for programming languages)? Also maybe a preview pane. Plus, I'm always afraid when editing an article that I will lose my work - with a standalone local application a copy of the file could be kept on the editor's local filesystem and never be lost. With web services these options could be made available - but it would be up to individual developers (most likely completely unrelated to wikipedia) to decide what those features would be for their specific product.
The great thing about web services is that they are language and platform independent. The most common is SOAP, which is essentially an XML format sent over HTTP. Once the API is defined any language and platform that already provides support for web services (and most do) can interface with it. I can write an application in Java for Linux and someone else can write one in C++ on Windows, and the interface is the same from the server side.
I can envision a number of possible applications for this such as an advanced editor and more advanced content visualization system (i.e. viewing the articles plus having other navigation/search aids). And I'm sure that there are many other people (including many academic organizations) who would love to have programmatic ways to access the wealth of information available from Wikipedia. I think that this can open up whole new ways for people to take advantage of this resource.
I don't know how the process works for this, and who is in charge of developing such a thing. I'm not even sure I'm posting this in the right place... I'm also sure that I'm not the first person to ever dream this up, though I haven't found anybody talking about it. I'm a developer, and I'd love to see this happen - I'd be willing to help in any way I can.
Best regards,
Ben 17:20, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Anyone visiting our college articles understands they have all been overrun by shameless school cheerleaders. Every insignificant acknolwedgement (which only an admissions office or development office could care about) is listed sometimes in the lead. Throughout the text from student activities to athletics, sales pitch prose is employed. Attempts to dislodge the shibboleth of worship is challenged and the outsider doesn't get very far. Take University of Texas for example -- overloaded with marketing in the lead and this is after I fought to tone it down. Entry denizens accusse me of anti-UTexas aggression, so I doubt I'll get any further. Even my own school's entry UCSD is overrun despite my attempts to contain the marketing in one section. But most edits seem directed at expanding that section. I propose the first step of reform will be relegating rankings and ratings to a box, and even banning some rankings as too insignificant (creating country specific approved list). lots of issues | leave me a message 14:48, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm sure that this idea has been suggested before, but there whould be an option for administrators to "white-list" user accounts. In many cases, legit contributors share the same IPs with vandals. When the IPs are blocked, so are all the users using them. However, white-listed accounts, unless specifically blocked, would be able to edit even though their underlying IP addresses are blocked.
Any thoughts on this idea? -- Ixfd64 08:41, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
I was thinking that it might be a good idea, and save some editing time to have a welcome message generated on the talk page of an IP user right after the first edit the user makes. An anonymous user would come across Wikipedia, look it over and make an edit. After the save page button is selected the "New Message" notice would appear and they would have a welcome message that would cover all the topics they do now. Exceptions would be to those talk pages that already have messages (an anonymous user had come through on that IP already) and talk pages that have AOL type notices on them. We could also generate these welcome messages just after a new user account is created. In both cases the user would have an immediate way of accessing common answers new editors have and a quick orientation right off the bat. Thoughts? Rx StrangeLove 07:03, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
Dear administrator, I am curious to know how you would react if people intervened with wikipedias content, by promoting it to groups who may not have heard of it. For example, how would you react if people photocopied 100 fliers saying ‘where is wikipedia.org?’ and stuck them to their cars?
Hi. I will post this here, but feel free to move it to a more appropriate place.
Most screenshots are uploaded only with a "fair use" tag. But the person creating the screenshot (the Creator) of a computer game requires a degree of creativity, albeit including "fair use" material. If the creator does not license his individual creation under a free license, the particular screenshot can probably not be used under the "fair use" clause in other places. So we need to make clear to those uploading screenshots of computer games they also need to license it under a free license. // Fred- Chess 01:36, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
I think a section where you could store some favorite tools/topics of wikipedia, such as templates, would be very helpful. I've noticed that users, myself included, tend to store such links on their personal pages for quick access or reference. I think a system specifically for this purpose would also be very helpful. Ereinion 20:30, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, my english sucks, so you will have to understand what I mean, and not rely on what I say.
Remember Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by language (see also [6]) and how Wikipedia:Babel is much better ? I would like to do the same for the translators.
I would want to make obsolete this page Wikipedia:Translators available which is heavy on Wiki EN, and is basically useless on most user wikipedias. I would like to remplace it with a simple model which would work with the Babel template and in the same spirit, so I just have to put in my homepage :
{{Babel-5|fr|de-3|eo-3|en-2|es-1}} {{ User:Jmfayard/Babylon-2|de|eo}}
I tried to explain everything on my homepage User:Jmfayard.
I'm not often on Wikipedia EN. Feel free to continue the project if you think it's interesting.
Jmfayard 17:07, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
1. See how it says "From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia" at the top of everything? How about having links to Wiktionary/Wikicommons etc. articles on the subject there, instead of the templates we use now? I'm intrested in having all the Wikimedia sites working more in unison. 2.How about having a "No stubs" option next to the Random Article button?-- Occono 16:11, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
For god's sake why do you make the whole thing so complicated? The article creation interface should be simpler... pages and pages and still no easy way to use a template, irrelevant links everywhere... why dont you do something more streamlined?
Recently, one proposed merging circumcision and female genital cutting. The merge is a great idea because both are human genital mutilation. The discussion never got started because it had to happen on two talkpages. The logistics were just bad. I propose a place to discuss mergers. It miht look like this:
I propose that we have had a stable peerreviewed (>⅔ of logined editors bothering to participate in a poll, agree that it is okay) version and a current version (the current state of the article). When searching, one would encounter the current version. A note at the top would stat that this is the latest version, but has not yet been factcheked, but an older out of date peerreviewed version is at the other end of this link .
Anyone can nominate a version of an article to be its new stable version by starting a poll on its talkpage. Within a week, one would know one way or another. The stable version would be protected. — — Ŭalabio‽ 02:37, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
Polls do not work when there are very few persons present, and many of them can be created identities to influence the result. We need a better way to raise the quality level.
All new edits to a page should go through a person responsible for that page. This allows free editing by anybody and it keeps the quality at the highest possible level. Roger4911 14:45, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
I think that photos, which are intended to make a specific point, should not be uploaded to Wikipedia unless they have been previously published by a disinterested, reputable 3rd party.
Flikr.com, weblogs, partisan political web sites (dailykos, freerepublic, etc) and such are not acceptable, but commercial news organizations and commericial publishers and to a lesser extent, non-profits would be ok. There is simply too much opportunity out there to stage photos, for example:
Supporters of Candidate A take Candidate B's signs and make a big mess in a parking lot with them and leave also a lot of trash like water bottles and sandwich wrappers.... the Wiki caption for this reads, "trash left behind after local rally for B".
Clearly it's a staged photo intended to make a point. If the control parameter of "intended to make a point" is not enforced, the excuse regarding the above scenario would be "I found the trash & signs in the parking lot and merely snapped the photo". Such assertions could not be disproved, opening a pandora's box of scheming opporunities.
Rex071404 216.153.214.94 06:27, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
I dont know if this belongs here or in Assistance. If you feel otherwise move it and let me know. The situation is that we have a very big article with tons of bizzare references ( Kambojas). We cleaned up the references and put them into footnotes format. Now the problem is that everytime the article is modified, the footnotes order need to be modified. which is a pain. (for more about the problem see Talk:Kambojas. If the developers can come up with some kind of markup similiar to # or * to number and order footnotes that will partly solve the problem I guess. May be a ^ sign before the footnotes and it will automatically gets numbered or something like that. More ideas are invited to solve this problem.-- Vyzasatya 20:21, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Just like there is a new message alert box (when your talk page is edited) how about the option to select such a feature for particular articles. It would be nice for me to be alerted to changes to, for example, the ANPR article. It would allow people to monitor particular articles/pages of high interest to them. I know the watchlist is fine in most circumstances but there are some articles I'd like to oversee a little better ( HANS device, for example, has come under vandal attack for weeks and it would be nice to monitor it more easily). violet/riga (t) 14:38, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
One of the first things that struck me when I first became a Wikipedian is the amount of information about editing articles that is scattered all over the place - this is bound to be the case in a free-for-all encyclopedia. What I suggest is one big manual containing everything one needs to know about Contributing as an Editor.
The aim of this would be to:
Obviously the sub-sections can be added to, but I strongly suggest keeping to those five main headings.
Either create it in Wikipedia or in Wikibooks.
Watch this space.
-- Heebiejeebieclub 18:51, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
Some articles have "[[ ]]" feel to them, but I haven't seen an appropriate template to post as a warning. I've used this on a few pages:
Warning: This topic, as currently written, it borders on common sense and nonsense at the same time. It's content has a feel similar to what charlatans and snake oil salesmen concoct. Please take everything you read here with a huge grain of salt.
Perhaps we could have some article rating system, that people can moderate and vote after reading through the article, even if they won't sit down to put in the elbow grease to edit it themselves. If you remember Simcity Classic, it had 3 colored bars showing residential, commercial, and industrial ratings. This would consume very little screen space. Some small section like that on each wiki page that describes overall quality, in depth content, ease of reading, ranking, something similar to what slashdot has as a moderating system would be nice. Of course this too could be abused and hacked around, just like any fence can be jumped, but it may, overall, provide a benefit to the usefulness of wikipedia. You would instantly know from a page ranked 10 out of 10 on each category, with 10,000 unique non-bot votes (just like Ebay ranks), that it's something worth reading, or even citable as a reliable academic reference, and edits to it may need some waiting period to go through, first showing up for those people who have the page in their watchlist, before it hits the full site. It would be something intermediary mechanism between a fully locked page, and a fully open page. When you submit a modification, you'd get the currently accepted page that students doing homework can use, or the currently in-process page, with the timer going on before the edits are commited, or even some sort of selective mechanism of people watching the page voting on some edit going through, or not, for some consensus to be reached. Wiki contributors should be able to get some mojo ranking too, like there is an Elo score in chess, or ranking system in karate or go. The higher the current quality of a page, the longer it would take for edits to go through, and something, say, below a ranking of 5 might get instant updates, but if it crawls over 7 in quality, edits take 1 hr to go through, while over 9 a whole day. Quality 10 pages may require the attention of at least 1 or 5 5-dan ranked editors to approve, before anything happens, even if it takes days. Anything below a quality 1, or even negative quality ratings would automatically be . You might even adapt the kyu-dan system for this, where 40 or 90 kyu means -40, or -90, while 1 kyu is -1, 1 dan is +1, and 9 dan is max. The field is still open for anybody to kick it. Your ranking as a contributor would be topic dependent. Though once articles are sufficiently refined, there isn't much to do to them to get an even higher ranking. Will there be any time when wikipedia will be 'finished' or 'fully completed', and new stuff is only added at the less and less read fringes? Of course there is nothing like a set it completely free wikipedia, and see where it goes. Any control mechanism may simply hinder and squash the wonder that it currently is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sillybilly ( talk • contribs) 22:31, 2005 October 27
Would it be a good idea to have the ability to see what deleted pages a certain user has edited or started? It would really help keep track of vandals who create nonsense pages. -- Ixfd64 22:02, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
I dunno if this has been suggested before or exists, so I'll say it. I think a good article drive would be a list of articles that SHOULD be featured. Not suggestions or anything, just a big long to-do list. Examples of articles on it would be every country article, major political and historical figures, and so on. Important topics we've no excuse not to have at featured standard. I'd be willing to implement it if there's support. Ludraman 21:52, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
We recently had a problem when the "HTML tidy" automated cleanup of incorrect HTML had to be turned off, and it became apparent that a number of sigs (and some templates and other code) had invalid html tags that left font or other changes in effect for subsequent text.
I propose a software modification so that the when a signature is entered into the preferences dialog it is parsed for strict HTML compliance, and any unclosed or improperly nested tags would be detected, and the invalid sig would not be saved. Instead an error msg would be displayed and the user would have to correct the sig before it was saved. DES (talk) 16:12, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
This may well require MediaWiki software updates, but it seems to me that whenever an article, category, template, etc. is nominated for deletion that anyone who ever contributed to the article should be notified somehow, perhaps with an automatic entry in their talk or even an email. I decided this was needed after an article I originally authored (but stopped watching a while back) was submitted to AfD, and I had the strange feeling was being slipped in behind my back (as it was a resubmission after an initial failure to gain consensus). Overall, it just doesn't seem fair that the people who put their efforts into building up an article are not notified when somebody thinks this work should be removed from the Wikipedia. Note: I say all this as a deletionist who believes in removing all unencyclopedic material posthaste. But I also believe in fairness. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 19:12, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Not sure how important it is to notify editors in this way. We already have the Watchlist to keep track of articles we take an active interest in. Not that many watches or edits categories though. I think this is more problematic since you may not notice until a bot is all over your watchlist renaming and removing stuff. When listing categoris for deletion, I think a message should be left on the talk pages to articles using that category. For large categories this could be done with a bot. A decision to delete such a category should not be rushed anyway. Fornadan (t) 00:08, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I like the Special:Log which features block, deletion, undeletion, move... logs for each user. But why isn't there any Creation log, which chows the pages created by each user? CG 18:36, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
I didn't see this in any of the perenial proposals, and I don't see it being implemented, so here is my idea: Have a template or a set of templates like {{US-elect-change-2006}} or just {{change-2010}}. The templates would be left blank and locked by admins. When the date to the side comes around, the templates would be changed to read:
The information in this article might of changed due to the US election of 2006. If the information is correct, please remove this tag.
or
The information in this article might have changed in 2010, please verify and remove this tag.
That way we won't have three articles claiming that so and so is the current mayor of smalltown, U.S.A., and it will be easier to update information that periodically changes. Just place the tag on the article that will need updating in the future, and forget about it. Comments?-- Rayc 17:20, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
I think we should give the rollback tool to regular users, but limit it to three uses per article per day in the software for regular users. — Omegatron 23:39, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
The report at Special:CrossNamespaceLinks shows articles that unfamiliar new users have signed, along with a few non-articles in article space. Is there scope for a fixup project here? Susvolans ⇔ 18:36, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
I hate having to visit every single one of the hundreds of images categorised by this template to find an image that's ready for deletion. We need a better system: categorising them by date of tag. So when a user enters {{no source|~~~~~|11/11}}, the image is automatically placed in a template by day, so when a week expires, all the images in that day subcategory can be deleted without the need to wade through the massive no source category. Ingoolemo talk 07:46, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
(Perhaps this has already been implemented or proposed, but I couldn't find it. For a newcomer like myself, the Wikipedia help system is quite scattered and takes a long time to master. Considering that editing itself is so easy, it would be good if the help system were simplified, and the search facilities improved.)
Anyway, to get to my actual proposal, I noted on viewing the articles Word of faith and Full Gospel that some of the only significant discussion of theological beliefs was presented in the form of a list of Bible references. These references, however, were unlinked, and so, unless one either
such article's content is not very informative. There should be a standardized system of linking Bible references, making use of a site such as Bible Gateway - either manually (as a suggestion in the Manual of Style) or automatically (using some kind of bot that would search for Bible references). Evan Donovan 01:27, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
There's a request for this in Wikimedia Bugzilla: [9]. Someone's even submitted a patch that will do it for the KJV translation. — Matt Crypto 15:04, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Everybody seems to agree that Wikipedia search is completely useless. I propose that it is removed and replaced with a Google-driven site-specific search.
I am suggesting that there is "Wikiforum" or "www.wikipedia.org/forum" or something to make it so Wikipedia members can talk on their own online forum, or make it specially for people that have registered.
I'm not sure if this is possible. I think it is. Could wikipedia enable someone to search for a term within a particular article? I often wish i could do this online rather than copy and paste the article onto word and then search. Just a thought.
And that is the problem, we need to talk to each other to find out who are more suitable as responsible for a page or a branch of wikipedia. Without a responsible person the content will change everytime a spammer edits a page. Roger4911 14:36, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Have you tried Control-F? Under your internet browser? Andrewdt85 08:55, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
A thought related to the current suggestions about blocking only anons from IPs, rather than blanket blocking IPs: Is there any way of creating an (admin-only?) tool in specialpages so that when an anon IP is blockable, an admin can instantly check which users regularly use that IP (perhaps a list of all registered users who have used an IP within the previous three months, plus number of edits from that IP)? That way they could at least get an opportunity of knowing (a) whether a long-term ban is viable, and (b) know whether any editors need warning before a ban is put in place (I'm posting this to VPTech as well, since I'm not sure which page would be the best place for it). Grutness... wha? 23:34, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump it says: "The village pump is not a place to make lasting comments as discussions are removed daily to make room for new ones." This is apparently not true because several discussions I have been involved with here have gone on for days or even weeks. Could someone who knows the actual removal procedure possibly change this text? Matt 20:28, 20 November 2005 (UTC).
Don't really understand. Are you saying that "discussions are removed daily" just means something like "every day we take a look and remove discussions which have been hanging around for a while and seem to be dead"? That's not how I understood it. To me it implies that messages are wiped automatically after 24 hours. If you understand how the procedure works then maybe you could reword to make it clearer? Matt 23:58, 20 November 2005 (UTC).
I changed it to read "The village pump is not a place to make lasting comments as inactive discussions are archived after seven days, and then permanently removed after a further seven days". I am unsure whether referring to the "archiving" section is a good idea because I do not know if this tenplate text is used on other pages where that section may not be present. If you can improve/correct then pls go ahead! Matt 00:27, 21 November 2005 (UTC).
I do not know if this will require a change in the MediaWiki software, but the ability to filter pages by namespace types in special:whatlinkshere would be nice. -- Ixfd64 20:10, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
I use Internet Explorer, and most websites which have sound (or other media) content work just fine. With Wikipedia though, most (all?) media files seem to be in an "ogg" format which I have never heard of and which my PC doesn't recognise. I would like to suggest that the way Wikipedia handles sound is changed to be the same as other sites, so that it will work on standard Windows PCs.
Thanks for the replies. I don't understand why anyone has to "write MP3 playing or encoding software". I thought that this software was already incorporated into Windows Media Player, or Real Player, or whatever player one happens to use. I did actually read the Wikipedia:Media help page, but I overlooked the "Directions on Installing Software" link, which is kind of ... er ... tucked away at the side! I am extremely nervous about downloading any sort of software from the internet unless it's from a company I am very familiar with, such as Microsoft or Adobe, because much of it (esp. free software) is riddled with spyware and other nasties. However, if I find a reputable source for support for ogg files I might do it. Thanks again... Matt 11:08, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
Postscript: I have now repositioned the abovementioned link to make it less easy to miss. Matt 11:16, 20 November 2005 (UTC).
I'm reposting this here from WP:AN (I had originally posted there as this is a protected page, and would need an admin to change it). I've thought for a while that the text on this message ( MediaWiki:Loginend) is misleading. Jeronim has pointed out there that the phrase "We won't reveal your address to anyone" isn't accurate, as we will if we legally need to. Also, I didn't realize at first that my e-mail would be visible to users that I sent mail to, or that it was required in order to send mail (yes, I know how clueless that sounds, but I didn't really think about it until later). I've proposed some changes at MediaWiki talk:Loginend (bolding added to make the changes more visible): essentially, that the phrase "We won't reveal your address to anyone" be changed to "We won't release your e-mail address to anyone unless it's legally required," and the sentence "However, giving your e-mail address allows other users to send you mail without knowing your address, and enables password reminders to be requested" be changed to "However, giving your e-mail address allows you to send mail to others, using this as the reply-to address, other users to send you mail without knowing your address, and enables password reminders to be requested."
I think that this will be helpful, not to mention more honest. It's going to be a little bit longer than before. However, I think that the gain in information and accuracy is worth it. If anyone has better texts, please suggest them—I don't like my "unless it's legally required" addition that much, but I think that that or a phrase like it is mandated to be consistent with our prvacy policy. Sorry to be pedantic, folks. Blackcap | talk 21:26, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
How to name school articles, specifically how to qualify them with their city and province/state name, is being discussed at Wikipedia talk:Schools#Disambiguation - Naming Convention, where there's a straw poll on. -- rob 07:29, 7 November 2005 (UTC) — Wikibarista 07:26, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
More than a month ago already, I got the idea to start congratulating people on their 'wikibirthdays'. A wikibirthday is a Wikipedian's anniversary day of his first edit. Just check out my talk page, I have received nothing but positive replies on them. There was even this guy that said that he would become way more active on Wikipedia since he felt appreciated. Just like company commit themselves to customer relations, we should also commit ourselves to keeping the Wikipedia together. I was thinking, could it be fruitful to turn the Wiki Birthday Balloons into a WikiProject? (See this page for more info on Wiki Birthday Balloons). -- SoothingR( pour) 17:08, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to request a special page that populates itself with a list of random links, as a supplement to Special:Random. Please read more at User:Melchoir/Random links proposal! Thanks, Melchoir 00:53, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Linking to copyright violations is prohibited, but some warez authors use loopholes and technically don't breach that rule. There needs to be a specific rule to outlaw links to illegal websites or programs. -- Tom Edwards 12:21, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Hi,
I have been doing some minor edits to the article on "Tantra." I am a teacher, a published scholar, and a practitioner in an authentic Indian lineage.
The External Links section contained a real grab bag of stuff, from the scholarly to the profane, as you can imagine given the topic.
I organized the links into subsections so people could find what they wanted more easily. I was exceedingly careful not to delete anyone else's link even if it did not especially comport with my concept of the topic.
Within 24 hours, someone else came along and deleted 80% of the links and all of the subcategory headings.
Links that were deleted included general resource sites, schools of Buddhist and Indian Tantra, and a slew of other stuff.
Is this against any Wikipedia policy? Is it merely uncool? Is it acceptable?
I'm just trying to get a sense of the sort of editorial behavior that is acceptable, or not.
Thank you for your assistance.
Shambhavi Sarasvati
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So, I was looking at the relevant page about my employer (those people that keep expecting me to show up EVERY day), and I had the feeling that it had been heavily edited/created by someone within the company. At first blush I was a little bothered, but in fact I think this is good. I'm certainly capable of contributing and editing things that don't seem NPOV (think union/employer relations), and the payoff is a more complete page.
My proposal is a template/note that can be emailed to an appropriate corporate/business person simply stating that they are included in Wikipedia, that there is an interest in having them contribute, and perhaps a short blurb on the nature of editing, NPOV, etc...
I know this can be done on an individual basis, but I was looking for a little consensus and input into an efficient/proper way of doing things.-- Bookandcoffee 23:36, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
We currently have a newly registered user Kuza31 creating trashy articles or vandalising existing ones. We're a small wikipedia and none of the 6 administrators seems to be around. Could someone from here (if he/she has the power to do so)block him please? Otherwise, hours might go by before he stops or an administrator makes his/her appearence. Thanks!-- ca:Usuari:Jahecaigut
I've come across several images in Wikipedia that would be good to move to Commons, and would enhance an existing category / article there. But moving is a lot of hassle — as far as I can see, I'd have to create the Commons version, then AfD the WP version... ? Is there an easier way?
I think it would be really convenient if there was a "move to Commons" button at the top of an image page. This would only appear if the image had an appropriate confirmed licence, and would move the image, adjusting links as necessary, and then put up a reminder to set appropriate Commons categories etc. on the moved image. — Johantheghost 14:37, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
A tool which I hope is implemented in the future would be to require users to view the differences made by the last editor of an article when submitting a new edit. Thus, everyone becomes a member of RC patrol, and much more vandalism will be caught. This could be as simple as sticking in the content that normally appears when you click "diff", above/below the editing box, so that the bright red text can easily be noticed. — BRIAN 0918 • 2005-10-7 11:48
All editors have reverted a vandal, looked up his contributions, and found dozens of other edits. Sometimes not all of the damage has been undone by other editors, forcing a careful checking of the history of all the articles the vandal recently edited. Whenever I follow a link from the a vandal's contributions profile, the instance of vandalism may be the current version or another edit may have follow. Not wanting to allow an instance of vandalism to be buried, perhaps, by legit edits, I click the next edit link just to be sure the edit which follows is a revert. Doing this adds up if I am check 10+ edits. Wouldn't it be great if in the contributions profile, there could be a mark next to any edit that indicates an immediate rollback? lots of issues | leave me a message 23:06, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
The Wikipedia:Requested pictures is too big to be useful. A drawer is just looking for things to draw, just as a mapmaker ( Category:Wikipedia map requests) is looking for things to map, etc. Lumping all of these into "pictures" is no longer a useful way to work. Do others agree that this needs to be split? - St| eve 17:58, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Notability proposal is a proposal to explicitly make "notability" a requirement for Wikipedia articles, and to explicitly include "lack of notability" as a reason for deleting articles. Please visit Wikipedia talk:Notability proposal and express your view on the proposal. DES (talk) 23:12, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
I would love to see a new button to appear on the watch list next to (diff) and (hist), to be able to (unwatch) pages i've lost interest in right from the watchlist. I know i can just go to the page, but with the speed wiki is loading, it'd be nice to manage your watchlist from your actual watchlist page. Shouldnt be hard to add methinks? Good idea? -- The Minister of War 09:38, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
This seems sort of obvious to me, but if this has been said before then I apologize. I've been sorting through the untagged image category, tagging images here and there. This was where I encountered the orphans posted up on Wikipedia. Is it possible for a data dump on all orphan media x number of days old, and set it up as a wiki fixup project for others to sort through and post on Ifd? -- Bash 03:29, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
I've just had the scary idea that one of the least-considered admin powers - viewing deleted pages - may be the most dangerous of all.
Currently, when personal information (address, phone number...) is added to an article, the revisions containing it are deleted. This puts them out of view of most people... but not our 500+ (with more every day - and the number will have to increase even faster as the popularity of Wikipedia does) administrators. So how do we know none of the administrators would want to harrass or stalk someone whose personal information has been added to WP and then deleted? Or, less likely but more scary, how do we know they couldn't be fooled, coerced, or bribed into doing so by a Wikipedia-savvy stalker? Remember, admins are only people we trust not to destroy Wikipedia - RFA doesn't determine trustworthiness in Real Life.
While it is unlikely that this will ever happen, the moral (and potentially legal) weight if it did would be immense. The only solution I can see is to ask the developers to purge these revisions from the database completely. ~~ N ( t/ c) 16:12, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I've modified and reproposed these criteria as possibly too much time passed from the consensus gained at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Speedy category renaming to list them. Comments welcomed. Steve block talk 11:12, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Certain recent events regarding overextension of admin powers have made me think that there needs to be a process for speedy de-adminship - not like ArbCom, but more like RFAdm. (I am not saying Snowspinner should be deadminned, and I'm not even talking about him alone, but that is what started this idea.) In order to help this along, I propose that bureaucrats be given the power to de-sysop users, but not to de-bureaucrat other bureaucrats (because of the potential for Total Wiki Domination by de-bureaucratting everyone else until a steward comes along). ~~ N ( t/ c) 03:46, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Although this isn't such a big thing for me as an admin, it would still be useful - and far more so for non-admins. How about an extra button in the toolbar called something like "revert", so as to roll back the immediately previous edit that you yourself made? Say you've just replied to someone in a talk page and then either realised you've completely missed the point of their original message, or - now that you've calmed down a bit - realised that you could have been a bit less beliggerant in what you said. So you want to erase what you just wrote. At present, you have to re-edit the article, and your initial blunder will be there in the page history for all to see. With a revrt button, you could just click that and remove your previous message (maybe even remove it from the page history - although that might be going too far). Grutness... wha? 00:50, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
You have xxx pages on your watchlist (not including talk pages); you can display and edit the complete list.
You have xxx pages on your watchlist (excluding talk pages); you can display and edit the entire list.
How about having a checkbox in the user preferences for "my watchlist" to "Hide my edits" by default? Urhixidur 15:54, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
function addOnloadFunction (f) { if (window.addEventListener) window.addEventListener("load",f,false); else if (window.attachEvent) window.attachEvent("onload",f); }; function fixWatchlistLink () { for (var i=0; i<document.links.length; ++i) { if (document.links[i].href.indexOf('Special:Watchlist')>0) { document.links[i].href+='?hideOwn=1'; break; } } }; addOnloadFunction(fixWatchlistLink);
I am not sure how it would work, exactly, but i would love to see the wiki idea used in a timeline format.
So, wondering what was going on in the world in the year 800 AD, i could browse world events by year, decade, century, etc.
Does anything like this exist??
I am not an admin but IIRC admins do not have a "rollback" buttonon contrib pages. This can be very usefull IMHO against multi-page vandals which seem to be on the rise. -- Cool Cat Talk 12:09, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
It strikes me that we often leave many important notices about editing an article on top of its talk page, but of course, a user who hits "edit this page" never even notices them. Of course, we don't want them in the article text either, so the only logical place is the edit page. I'd say that if a user sees the notice that there have been polls or prolongued discussions which achieved tha balance in the article, etc., they'll be less likely to be reckless about editing.
So, should we display the top of the talk page (the bit before the first section i.e. comment) above the article's edit box? Zocky 12:17, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
navigation
This is a proposal to address the difficulties many users experience when they try to thematically navigate Wikipedia after they leave the Main Page: add Categorybrowsebar-like wikilinks to every wikipage. This proposal is an update based on feedback for similar proposals at related discussion pages.
Specifically, the current proposal is to include the navigation elements contained in Template:Categorybrowsebar that used to be located on the Main Page (now a template is no longer used - causing "navigation bar drift" ;-) and other high-level pages it links to. In this template, the first line focuses on the main categories while the second line focuses on browse options. Adding the elements to the Mediawiki:Monobook.css style sheet (or wherever it actually needs to go) would allow Wikipedia to have a topical, top-level navigation scheme, based on the primary categorization scheme, that would help users move about logically and quickly from any page. Other benefits of this implementation would be that Template:Categorybrowsebar can be removed from a prominent position on several high-level pages, similar browse links can be removed from the Main Page, and the ever-insidious navigation bar drift can be eliminated.
The proposed basic approach is to use this ( template:eight portals links) across the top of a page. Then add the browse options to the sidebar navigation box. The layout could look something like this. (Keep in mind that the following top-level heading actually is part of this proposal.) — RDF talk 14:45, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
Art | Culture | Geography | History | Mathematics | People | Philosophy | Science | Society | Technology
Quite often an article cannot be found because currently only the first letter of the title is case insensivite (in the sense that if an article is named "Article X", someone may type up "article X" and get it.
However, if someone types "Article x" or "article x", he/she will NOT get the article, because capitals of second, third etc. words are not automatically found.
While it is unrealistic to create alternative redirect pages to EVERY possible combination of letters (say ArTiCLe X), the first letters of each word in an article are the ones most likely to be miscapitalized.
If a software change would be implemented, the matter would be quite straightfoward. If a bot is made to do so, here is the algorithm I propose:
1. Get the dump of all page names in Wikipedia (both "articles" and non-articles, such as redirects)
2. Filter out to those that have at least 2 words (separated by a space), and at least one of those 2nd+ words starts with a letter (Article X will be recorded, Article 12 will not).
3. Compare multiple entries that are left for identical name except capitalization (that should mean that one is the main name of the article, and all other variants are already created alternative capitalization redirects to that article). 2-word entries would have only 1 alternative ("Article X" can only be alternatively spelled under this algorithm as "Article x"). 3-word articles can have maximum of 3 alternative namings ("Article X Y" can also be "Article X y", "Article x Y", and "Article x y".
4. Discard entries that have the maximum number of possible alternatives already made.
5. Compile a list of not-yet-existing alternative capitalizations for articles, tying all variants to their "home" article.
6. Upload all created redirect pages to Wikipedia.
7. Repeat at interval, getting newly created article names from dump. -- unsigned comment left by User:Elvarg 00:49, 27 September 2005 UTC
Long point short, my proposed change will NOT interfere with ANY existing system -- the ONLY way people will notice a change is that they hit a "NO ARTICLE" page before and now they don't.
I'm not quite sure whether this falls under policy or not, maknig a printer friendly option would probably require a structural change to Wikipedia. I just think that the enyclopedia entries would be a bit nicer on the eyes if they could easily be printed out with the blue hyperlinks and such that typify Wikipedia entries. I just thought I'd throw the idea out there and see what the community makes of it. ~ Jared ~ 15:58, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
(moved to Wikipedia_talk:Bots#Kakashi_Bot)
Has anyone considered adding the TCP/UDP ports used by multiplayer computer games to their pages? This information is relatively hard to find reliably (small game publishers often fail to provide it), and is needed by anyone playing games from behind a router/firewall. I understand that wiki is not a technical manual, but this seems like important information to me. — Nimlot 23:32, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
It's probably a perennial proposal, but has anyone considered a way to consolidate many consecutive edits by the same person, either in the actual history or in the way the history is displayed (a checkbox for "hide consecutive edits", while retaining the actual history).
Err.. "fold consecutive edits" might be better, since you could still view them. Just like, if you clicked on a diff while folded, you would see all the consecutive edits by that person as if it were one. Omegatron ( talk) 21:29, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
---------------------Closed-------------------- ----------------------Open---------------------
[+]StuRat[Multiple edits]
[-]StuRat[Multiple edits]
StuRat-Added comma.
StuRat-Spelling fix
I've started a proposal page for a sister project called "Wikitour" that would lend itself directly to Wikipedia. Whereas Commons hosts individual images of places that have articles on Wikipedia, Wikitour would host "virtual tours" of these places, such as castles, museums, galleries, caverns, mountains, college campuses, typical mosques or churches, archaeological sites, etc.
The basic idea is as follows: a user submits numerous photos of a notable place, which are organized into pages/subpages to create a navigable environment similar to that in Myst, Riven, or graphical adventures; the navigation system would be on Wikitour, while the files themselves would be on Commons, with a link in the respective article on WP; Basically, any topic that has an article on Wikipedia has the possibility of its own entry in Wikitour. Users could also submit photos of an object from various sides/angles/distances, rather than a place.
Please leave your impressions/suggestions at Talk:Wikitour. Thanks. — BRIAN 0918 • 2005-10-21 20:14
If you prefer an explanatory anecdote or two to set the stage before diving into the specifications, start here:
On reflection, i think such events call for a project-space page that would have had entries for
Note
These are both intended to make following lks or What-lks-here to the new page
-- Jerzy• t 20:08, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Many times I come to wikipedia to search for something. It would be very nice if the search box had focus automatically without my having to click on it.
What if there could be a spellchecker activated by the preview button? Misspellings would be highlighted in red with alternatives offered at the top. This would save many people a lot of work correcting typos later. Of course, it would be nice if users were required to preview before sending. ;) Purplefeltangel ( talk) 21:06, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
I think the first idea, of a spell check in the edit function, perhaps activated by preview, perhaps in some other way, is worth persuing. Couldn't this run on the client side, and so not impose significant server load. And even if it ran on ther server side, it would run one article at a time, which is very different from a tool to do a mass spell-check on wikipedia. DES (talk) 15:02, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
I have been playing video games for years, the word noob first meant someone that is stupid on the game. Then people started getting the word noob and newb mixed up. Now even google thinks that the word noob means newb. They had the real definition but now it is gone. This website also has it wrong.
I know what I'm talking about aswell :(
Basically, at the moment the only Next 200/Previous 200 links are at the top of a category list. I suggest that it would be logical to have identical links at the bottom as well. - SoM 16:09, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
Please let your opinion be known in regard to the Blocking policy proposal, we are now voting on the issue. thanks! Martin 09:34, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm curious if anyone reading at the Village Pump is interested in helping co-ordinate/organize/flesh out these articles on Wikipedia? (I'm aware of Gherald's new wikicties project, but I have reservations about that format's usefulness -- especially when compared to the EWoT [1], and in any case it doesn't obviate the need for cleanup here on Wikipedia.)
Please respond here or on my talk page, and if we reach 5-10 (currently at 3-4) I'll start a WikiProject page. nae'blis (talk) 01:20, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
I am suprised at the lack of mountain biking information here. For instance, there isn't even an article for FOX Racing Shox, which is one of the top porducers of suspension for mountain bikes. I'm going to start improving some of these articles and creating new ones for non-existent info. If anyone wants to help me on this, feel free to post on my user talk.
Thank you-- Windsamurai 02:09, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
It is proposed that each page be modified such that an individual wishing to transate that page to another language might do so by selecting the language and clicking a button. I was eager to contribute in this way, but found myself clicking aimlessly and in vain. It would also be a real treat to read the a corresponding alternative language wikis a page has.
Implementaion would be could be fairly simple or very complex depending on the level of interconnectedness desired...
I am not sure this is the right place to propose; neither am i sure that nobody ever brought up this topic before. Anyway, wouldn't it be nice to expose the most useful data from Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects as Web Services, so that it may be useful not only to humans but to computers as well? The idea is very fuzzy in my mind at the moment, but I am absolutely sure that a lot of applications would benefit from having XML-style access to various information from Wikipedia. Ivan Memruk 09:05, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
I was thinking of doing something along the lines of Gentoo's Bugday, where on a regularly schedule day, such as every other week, once a month, etc. We get editors to meet in #wikipedia on freenode to work on a cleaning up/adding to a selection of articles.
An example would be a biography stub day, where we editors would work together on finding information on biography stubs and fixing them up.
Another would be wikify day, go through all articles that need to be wikified, one by one, and turn them into a proper article.
Sure this gets done all the time, but I would believe that editors working together on a single article with realtime collaboration could be much more effective
AppleBoy
Talk
05:52, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Creation of redirects (and their "uncreation") should be logged, displaying the page title and the title of the redirect target:
[[Special:Log/redirect]] would contain lines like:
To be more specific, there should be a log entry any time a page becomes a redirect by editing (initial creation or modification of existing article), and not as the automatic side-effect of a page move.
It would also show up in the Special:Recent changes log, but instead of appearing as an ordinary edit, it would appear in the same way as other log entries there:
Instead of:
it would show up as:
This would help spot cut-and-paste page moves by clueless newbies (or edit warriors), and it would also help spot cut-and-paste pagemove vandalism.
Turning a page into a redirect is fundamentally a different concept than editing it. Actuallly, it's exactly like a page move, except the "page move" target already exists.
-- Curps 04:02, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
I did some poking at it and have a crude prototype of this working, might finish it... — Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 07:29, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
This is impossible to do currently due to Special:Log only working for logged-in users, anonymous users can also create redirects. — Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 03:41, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
It's my view that our systems for co-ordinating both readers and editors are currently poorly organised. I'll describe what each of these things attempt to achieve (as I see it) and then explain why this causes several problems and suggest solutions.
Categories are in theory perfectly simple. Category:English poets, for example lists all our articles on English poets and does nothing else. We also , however, have categories pretending to be portals. Category:Mathematics is the perfect example of this - there is a perfectly good Portal stuck on to the top of a perfectly good Category. The Mathematics Portal actually redirects to it.
We also have straight-forward Portals, which are purely (or almost purely) designed for readers. The Cricket Portal is a good example of one of these. It contains an introduction to the topic, a few pictures and links to some of the more important related articles. The only item which is not aimed solely at readers is an invitation to participate in the associated WikiProject.
We also have WikiPortals. These contain the same sort of stuff as Portals but with extra bits thrown in, aimed at editors. To pick a few examples at random, the Brazil WikiPortal invites people to add information to a list of Brazil-related stubs and contains a little information about when it was made and who runs it, The Physics WikiPortal has a brief 'things you can do' list and the Music WikiPortal links to connected WikiProjects.
WikiProjects aim to "help coordinate and organize article writing". Lots of these are aimed purely at getting articles on the same subject to share a format/layout etc. The mountains WikiProject for example is 90% instructions on how to set out articles on mountains, 8% administration and 2% links to resources for article writing. The only thing in the Archaeology WikiProject is a list of articles that people might like to contribute to.
Finally, there are also Regional Wikipedians' Notice Boards. These contain all sorts of lovely stuff - articles to create, expand, pictures to find, relevant peer reviews, articles for deletion, featured article candidates and so on.
The problem as I see it is that the functions of these things overlap, making the system as a whole overcomplicated. I'll now list the three main problematic areas and suggest solutions.
1. Categories and Portals are essentially coming at the same job from different angles. They both provide topic-based navigation, Categories with the emphasis on being comprehensive and Portals with the emphasis on providing an attractive interface. At the moment our Categories are far more developed than our Portals, but given enough time there probably would (or could) be a portal covering each Category. There are two obvious solutions to this and at the moment we're doing both inconsistently. We should either decide to split the two up completely as is done in Portal:Cricket and Category:Cricket or put them together one one page as at Category:Mathematics. My personal preference is to keep them separate but with prominent links between them, but either solution would be acceptable. The system as it stands, however, is illogical and confusing.
2. Portals and WikiPortals are more or less the same thing. The editor related content in WikiPortals is useful but certainly not the sort of thing we should be presenting to the public. I think we should take all the reader-orientated content from our WikiPortals and transfer it to Portals. One link inviting people to edit is probably acceptable, as at the Cricket Portal, but certainly no more. What is left can be incorporated somewhere else, which leads me to...
3. Our editor-orientated pages. Here we have Noticeboards and WikiProjects doing the more or less the same thing - co-ordinating editors' efforts in a certain field. Regional Wikipedians' Noticeboards I think are a great idea, except for the first word. I see no reason why the Noticeboard concept should be restircted to regions. I think it would be equally applicable to any other topic area. I discussed mountains earlier and I think the content at the Mountains WikiProject could quite easily be incorporated into a Mountains Noticeboard (possibly on a well-marked subpage) which would also allow for the inclusion of information such as that currently on the Regional Noticeboards - requested articles, articles for expansion, up for featured articles etc. These could also include any information left over from the relevant WikiPortal.
Basically, I think we should attempt to simplify the system and organise it along more logical grounds. This would help our readers to navigate the site and find the content they want and also help our editors to create this content.
Comments and criticism etc welcome
(Also posted to the Mailing List)
--
Cherry
blossom
tree
20:04, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
OK, so alotta poeple are complaining about the wikipedia search engine. now that i think about it, yeh, it sucks. someone mentioned that they use google search instead, and disregard wikipedia's own method. I also noticed that when the wikipedia search engines are down wikipedia invites the user to search through google or yahoo. Many websites have boxes that say "powered by google", so why doesn't wikipedia get that too and solve the problem of poor searching ability? -- Ballchef 10:14, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Moved to perennial proposals. Steve block talk 18:44, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Since it is likely that Wikiholism has negatively impacted the personal lives of numerous people in the community, myself included, I propose the creation of Wikipedia:Jobs that will list various jobs or careers that Wikipedians would be good at in real life, such as writing encyclopedia articles for Encyclopædia Britannica (although we probably shouldn't promote something like that). The goal of this would be to encourage people who are currently unemployed, and whose only motivation is their tireless work on Wikipedia, to get jobs. The first goal of this project will be to find me a job. So, Wikipedia community, get to work! — BRIAN 0918 • 2005-10-14 05:08
If you feel that WP is negatively impacting your personal life, maybe it really is time to take a break. Have no fear, it will all be here for you down the road. People whose "only motivation is their tireless work on Wikipedia" may need more than jobs. They may actually benefit from spending time focusing on other aspects of their life.-- Gaff talk 07:19, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
Could it be possible to make static snapshots of the database without histories to download for when you are not connected to the Internet? You could use it from a laptop when you're on a plane, or when the site is down. It would simply be the zipped .sql backup file. Of course, only advanced users would know how to use it, but it could still be worth it. The files could be downloaded as torrents from friendly servers.
Eje211 21:03, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
When you move a page, a handy little button box comes up saying "do you want to move the talk page too?" Very useful, since you almost always do. So why not do the same with deletions? If I delete a page, likely as not I'll forget to check whether there's a talk page that also needs deletion - I often realise a few minutes later then have to hunt for the relevant talk page. A button asking "do you want to delete the talk page too?" would be a wonderful addition to the admin's page deletion options. Grutness... wha? 10:26, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
I have been thinking about a new system for warning vandals. Usually, unless the vandalism is extremely severe, users will get a warning on their talk pages before being blocked (if necessary). However, users might use excuses like "but I didn't notice any messages" and such. Therefore, I am proposing a system that allows "official" warnings by admins. When a warned user requests a page, he or she will get a warning message instead of the requested page. There would be a button that says "I confirm that I have read this message" that must be clicked before the user can continue using Wikipedia. This would make sure that the user has seen the message, and leaves no room for excuses. Still, I'm sure that this is a very controversial idea, and I'm not even sure that I like it myself.
Any thoughts? -- Ixfd64 01:16, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
Would it be possible to allow characters to be entered directly in equations, as they are in plain text. I have got some examples: Susvolans ⇔ 07:52, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
x−y | Failed to parse (syntax error): {\displaystyle x−y} | x-y | |
u×v | Failed to parse (syntax error): {\displaystyle u×v} | u\times v | |
sin 2α | Failed to parse (syntax error): {\displaystyle sin 2α} | sin 2\alpha | |
x² | Failed to parse (syntax error): {\displaystyle x²} | x^2 | |
i₃ | Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "http://localhost:6011/en.wikipedia.org/v1/":): {\displaystyle i₃} | i_3 | |
½ | Failed to parse (syntax error): {\displaystyle ½} | \frac 1 2 |
I believe the math article editors would strongly object to actually using such a capability, they seem to prefer TeX markup and oppose any form of WYSIWYG. My unicodify bot changed γ to literal γ in one math article (not \gamma within <math> but γ in the main article text) and they objected to that. So I don't know if this enhancement will actually be used in practice (it will probably be reverted if used), although enabling the technical capability makes sense (perhaps other wikipedias and other wikis will have a different policy). -- Curps 16:50, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
\codes
for HTML math character entities (for example, Σ
→ \Sigma
) which have different names in
LaTeX." -
Texvc
Omegatron (
talk)
05:57, 17 October 2005 (UTC)Since IP addresses are publically shown, and anonymous proxies are currently not allowed, we are probably scaring off some legit contributers.
So I am suggesting that an alternate (but optional) method of identifying anonymous users. Each anon would have a special ID given to them (for example, Guest user:48388422389), generated by a special algorithm. I've been to a forum that uses such a method, and I don't think it's a bad idea either. -- Ixfd64 22:52, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
Would people consider making a PDA compatible Main Page and Page layout specifically designed for PDA viewing, like Google PDA (www.google.com/pda), although not necessarily as bland...
Also, it could be named wikiPDA, so there'd be no need to resort to adding wiki to a word to invent a new one... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.42.72.223 ( talk • contribs) 22:09, 9 October 2005
I propose that Wikipedia include a new link in its navigation menu to the page Wikipedia:Who writes Wikipedia. My primary concern is the potential for students to assume that all Wikipedia entries are of equally high quality. This MSNBC news article discusses how uncritically the typical student entering college approaches research: Colleges look to test internet IQ. This link documents the popularity of Wikipedia among kids: Alexa's Most Popular in Kids and Teens Category.
There is precedent for adding a new menu item to the toolbox; User:Angela made a proposal within the past few months for a "permanent link" option to be added at the bottom of the toolbox menu. It appears in all main articlespace pages. While users of the MediaWiki software may not make use of a link that says "Who writes wikipedia", I bet they would all appreciate a link called "About this site" or something similar. Ideally, this link would be customized for each installation of the MediaWiki software.
What do others think? Is this worth asking the programmers to do? Mamawrites 11:14, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
Currently, many templates go on the talk page. I think they should go on the article page, because (just as NPOV warning adds important info and so is on the article page) they add useful or important content that one may want to know when reading an article, without having to go to the talk page.
My current list of things that should go on the article, not the talk page, are:
Please feel free to add to the above list, and/or tell me why this proposal is a good or bad idea. Batmanand 09:12, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
The idea of indicating the featured status of a article in the article page, have been brought many times, but I think there was a consensus about leaving the template in the talk page to prevent readers from considering non-FAs low quality articles. As for my opinion, I'm rather for putting some kinf of a FA mark in the article page. An idea taken from the vietnamese Wikipedia, about putting a star right next to the title of a featured article in being discussed at
Wikipedia talk:Featured articles#Featured article icon on vi:.
As for the FA candidate and the Peer revew template, the main reason for putting them in the talk page is that there are "editors" templates, that concerns the ones who are interested in editing the page, and who should check the talk page.
CG
14:15, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to propose having an image template for pictures from the EAS web site. [2] This would be comparable to the {{ PD-USGov-NASA}} template. Could somebody let me know what process I need to go through to make this happen? Here are the EAS site terms of image use:
Thank you. :) — RJH 20:53, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Ach, well then it sounds like ESA pictures are a no-go. I've seen some ESA images on wikipedia already, so they will need to be expunged, alas. — RJH 16:16, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Alright, I bet this subject has already been talked about numerous times, but I think there should be a way to just have one single account for every wiki, instead of having to make a new one for each one. Such as the main wikipedia.org, and then demosphere's wiki, and halo(the video game)'s wiki, and all those other good stuff.
Or am I just crazy?
--
KelticK
Talk
18:22, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
Section transferred to Wikipedia:Blocking policy proposal Steve block talk 13:39, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
To help disseminate knowledge by sharing specific information and increasing Wiki's visability, I propose a "send page" option be added to the toolbox or navigation pane.
The user should have the option of sending the actual page (I suppose an html document?) or just a link to the article.
Thanks. I apologize if this point has already been raised. I did not see it in the perennial proposals discussion.
SG-
The Wikipedia:Article rating competition is a proposal to informally rate articles under given topics chosen every week. Take a look and comment on the talk page. violet/riga (t) 19:20, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
I propose that anyone who edits pages on the wikipedia be forced to log in. This way, there will always be a record of who chaged what, and in some cases, who to kick off. Also, forcing people to log on would allow people to view a full list of their own contributions, providing a way for people to check back on the pages they have worked on. Tell me what you think of that idea. Fresheneesz 15:48 30 October 2005 (US West Coast time)
If somebody wanted to create a wiki about electronics he would be wise to get the experts in sci.electronics.design involved somehow.
These electronics gurus can be asked to solve disagreements, so we get a very good wiki. It doesn't need a "forced login" because a hundred editors keep an eye on what is happening and they decide in each case if the change is to be kept, or revert to earlier version, or use the new material in some other way, like merge it with something else.
If the one who wrote it want to argue about it he has the possibility ultimately to present his case to the gurus in sci.electronics.design
The wiki administrators could have their own forum, also open and unmoderated, where they discuss the development. The editors would have a forum too. A system of forums backing up a wiki.
One of the forums, in this case sci.electronics.design, is used as the highest authority over the content.
What works for electronics works for knowledge in general, and I think these ideas can be used for wikipedia too.
Roger4911 10:47, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
I have participated for years in the newsgroup sci.electronics.design and have thought about the fact that we never create anything together, like a book about electronics, in the form of a wiki, for example.
We would have no problem assigning overall responsibility to a few which have gained respect for their knowledge and/or human insight.
All we write disappear again, like water running by in a river. Old messages are quickly forgotten, and we write new messages every day.
That allows us to get to know each other, know each others competence.
We have what is needed to give correct and optimised replies to questions, we have an hierarchy that is natural and accepted by most regular participators. We can determine what is right and wrong in the field of electronics, we have authority based on a competence order which is rather informal but very clear.
In alt.comp.freeware we have another organisation, an appointed person acts on the behalf of the participators, she organizes the votings each year for the best freeware programs, to go into the list of "Pricelessware" we publish each year, and we have organised a net of voluntary CD burners all over the world.
If you live in Tasmania and want a copy of the Pricelessware CD you write a message to one of the burners, or in the newsgroup. Somebody who lives in Australia replies and offers to burn the PL iso to a CD and send it to the person in Tasmania.
In ACF we have a system based on an informally organised representative democracy which works very well, as long as Susan can keep on taking care of all tasks involved.
In wikipedia there is no problem to get participators to participate, but there is a quality problem instead.
Practical informal anarchy often leads to mob rule in the cultural sector, the writers and singers who shouts loudest wins most media coverage.
Practical informal representative democracy is to appoint some generally trusted persons to handle a web site for a newsgroup, or to having the overall responsibility for section of a wiki.
If we combine the diskussions in a newsgroup with a wiki we get the other half of the creating process, the structuring and remembering of structures and data in the form which is more dynamic, more interactive and more materialized.
For the results to be good we need some type of representative informal democracy in this written medium.
In wikipedia they have a big problem with exactly the same problem, there are no really educated people who can make sound judgements in control, so the content is like the text you can read in the subway, mainly written by angry and arrogant young males, who seem to have immense resources of energy and time. Like very active participators in a newsgroup, who have to get involved in every thread they see, when they are in their speeded mode.
Some people speak because they have to say something, some people speak because they have something to say.
In a newsgroup we quickly find out who are the wise people and who are the less merited.
This results in a social order based solely on each persons written messages, so reason and judgement can easily be seen, separate from the person's body language, his social pondus, his voice and ability to take people emotionally.
So we can find the really intelligent people through using the text medium. We can use the newsgroup to learn to know each other, appoint by democratic votings some responsible and knowledgable persons to have the final decision for a part of the wiki.
The newsgroup or forum can also be used by people who have been overruled by higher authority, to defend his views and maybe get support from higher authority on a certain issue.
Using talkpages, wikipages, for discussions doesn't work well at all, we should use tools appropriate for the task, like forums or mailing lists or newsgroups. Wikipedia could set up a discussion forum server, that is the simplest solution.
Keep the discussions open and unmoderated like in usenet. Philosophy and knowledge in general really need freedom of speech.
Roger4911 15:21, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Wasn't taxonomy about classification and name-giving taxa, and systematics the study of organisms' evolutionary relationships? The latter is a research program and the former a practice.
Quoting [4]:
Systematics: the science of organizing the history of organismal evolution the science of ordering Identification: recognizing the place of an organisms in an existing classification Use of dichotomous keys to identify organisms Taxonomy (Nomenclature): assigning scientific names according to legal rules Recall discussion of ICZN Green Book (see also Phylocode homepage) Classification: determining the evolutionary relationships of organisms A "Natural Classification" will accurately reflect phylogeny Classification should be a hypothesis of evolutionary relationships
Shouldn't we divide taxonomy from systematics more clearly? Even in the taxoboxes? I noticed that the French wikipedia put a 'classical classification' (with Linnean categories) in their taxoboxes as well as a 'phylogenetic classification' (without Linnean categories). This seems like a good practice. Maybe we can do the same at other wikipedia's but call these Taxonomy and Systematics respectively. Fedor 09:41, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Possibly a silly suggestion, but possibly not... is there any way of putting a litle box at the top of usertalk pages that indicates whether on not the user is currently logged on to Wikipedia? It would save wondering whether to wait around for a reply to a message, and would also make it easier for people looking for an admin to help them if they knew they weren't talking to one who was offline. Grutness... wha? 02:05, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Some people have been just manually copying one of two images onto their user page to show their status. If they are careful to update it, this should always show their status accurately:
I wonder what a yellow light would mean ? "I'm in, but moving slow ?" StuRat 18:48, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Please could you comment on a previous proposal about a new namespace, the Gallery namespace. It has been marked as an archive before it had even been approved or rejected. Thank you. CG 19:37, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
In the German wikipedia, they have a nice tag (see de:Vorlage:Exzellent) on the Article page to show that it's a featured article; likewise, there is one to show that it's nominated ( de:Vorlage:Kandidat) for featured article status, and that it's nominated for removal ( de:Vorlage:Wiederwahl). Wouldn't it be nice to add these to the English featured articles as well, so readers can appreciate what they are reading, can participate in voting, and new users become more familiar with the system of featured articles? -- Robin.rueth 11:22, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
I've never heard about this rating system. Could you give me more information about it? CG 18:02, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
I see the for me with (no) Norwegian (bokmål) as language, many words are still in English. Is there some way to translate these?
This is a proposal by User:MessedRocker to deal with POV pages. Please visit and comment. R adiant _>|< 21:28, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
it would really help new users confused by the editing and talk page jargon Bwithh 22:13, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
It could be a real world bonus to have a "get a receipt" button for changes done to a page. I was mainly thinking this for students and researchers, or other knowledge societies, that might want to show their work in wikipedia.
A professor might encourage class work on wikipedia articles and demand for "receipts". They should be self contained in a single file to send, and have links to wikipedia "history page" for the article for verifiablility.
More details exist, where to have the button (in the "my contributions"), how exactly display the changes, how to handle others edits inbetween if allowable.
This functionality is already achivable as a simple rightly picked "diff" and packed easyly as an URL. Then maybe I only suggest more visibility to the possibility for less internet savvy users, the existance of the concept, and maybe a different, less powerful, display for the changes but allowing a easy read (that is to say some colouring for the full article). -- Pablo2garcia 13:02, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
Babajobu would like to begin disseminating a new meme: the concept of the Wikipedia Janitors' Union. Copyeditors and other such sloggers are the Rodney Dangerfields of Wikipedia, and our contributions are consistently undervalued. In future this Union will attempt to address this troubling lack of respect. I hope the meme will help lay the groundwork for the birth of the union. Go meme, go! Babajobu 10:08, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
This is just a quick note to say that the WikiSort Project has begun! Come on over and check it out! the1physicist 03:27, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
I've heard that the Chinese government has censored the Chinese Wikipedia a while ago. Would it be a good idea to create alternate URLs for the Chinese Wikipedia? -- Ixfd64 02:04, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
"I think it is wrong to try and 'dodge' the Chinese Government censoring the site, and I'm not sure Wikipedia principles agree either. Anyway, there is no way of hiding the site from the government without hiding it from users. If the Chinese want it censored, then just let them have their way. The only thing I would suggest is Wikipedia co-operating with the Chinese Government over this." --Heebiejeebieclub 19:00, 28 October 2005 (UTC) You think it's wrong to try and dodge the Chinese govenment? I think you are a communist, or atleast a socialist, what about censorship, that's what is the real wrong here. Governments should work for their people, not for the oppression of their people. And if a government is oppressive like the Chinese government, people not only have the right to work against that government, they have the responsibility. This reponsiblity can be fulfilled by armed resistance in extreme cases, or even small, seemingly insignificant acts such as reading banned literature. The government isn't your daddy, and therefore shound not be provideing for you, or telling what to do. As nice as it sounds to have another father in the government, we must remember, some fathers are abusive, and when that father is a government, it always becomes abusive.
16:38, 2 November 2005 (UTC)BAN
I have created a User:Thue/Wikipedia editing permissions reform, which proposes a way to create a web of trust among Wikipedia editors. The proposal limits the editing rights of users who are not yet trusted, but the idea is that it should not be too hard to become a trusted editor (on the order of a few hours quality work on Wikipedia if the editor is competent).
To still allow newbies not yet in the web of trust to contribute, and eventually become part of the web of trust, the proposal suggests a way to place "untrusted" editors' edits on hold until the editor becomes trusted, or until a trusted editor OKs the edit. By always treating anonymous editors as untrusted, the proposed solution also removes most of the problems with anonymous editors, while still allowing anonymous editors to contribute. Far most of the vandalism seen today would be eliminated by this proposal.
Having this big population of trusted editors will make it much easier to design a validation system for Wikipedia 1.0.
Comments appreciated!
Thue | talk 19:05, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
In writing for the Commonwealth School article, several editors (including me) were writing description from personal experience. Another editor came in and started deleting all the portions that were not Verifiable through reputable sources. I've been reading through relevant Wikipedia policy, and I think I have a decent handle now on what is allowed. The problem is, the way I've been treating Wikipedia and the way many others seem to treat it is at odds with official policy. People do write from personal experience. We could just say these people are sloppy and should go read policy, but that seems like it doesn't deal with anything. When people do this they are being useful, and often informative and helpful articles get created. One example might be the Slashdot subculture article, as there are very few if any "reputable" sources for it, but many people who could provide useful information. It seems the problem is with information that is:
Current Wikipedia policy does not make a way to include this information, but people want it included and want to provide it, and so write pages for it. These pages get worked on, and often get to be pretty good. Then someone comes by applying policy and removes anything not verifyable. Grouping all writing from experience in with "origonal research" seems simplistic and not really helpful. Is there a nice solution here? -- Jeff 18:31, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
Everything anybody writes is POV in one way or another. What you decide to write about, how you write about it, what examples you choose, what references you choose, all is your point of view. Everything you write is colored by your personality, your experiences, your view of the world.
Is wikipedia a collection of all that has been written, or all human wisdom and knowledge?
I think the best solution is to allow any POV which the council of the most merited wikipedians allow. If they say "this is good knowledge" it stays. They will allow anything which is accepted knowledge, accepted at least by the most advanced intelligence, by the best educated and experienced readers.
If wikipedia is upsetting to read for a backward fool in a strange part of the world, so what? wikipedia is run by enlightened and modern people :-)
I don't mean we should intentionally upset people anywhere, but if the truth is upsetting to anybody it should't stop wikipedia from publishing it. If we consider it to be important and correct.
Roger4911 19:19, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
(copied from Wikipedia:General complaints):
Normally, if you put a URL: resource address in [brackets] the wiki server side process will properly format a buried link for the browser. However, there are many more URL: resource addresses than just those that begin with "http:". For example, the wiki server side process does not properly format the following [pnm://rm.content.loudeye.com/~a-600111/0676330_0104_07_0002.ra URL: resource], as you can see. If you paste the URL: resource address
pnm://rm.content.loudeye.com/~a-600111/0676330_0104_07_0002.ra
into your browser address window, you will see from the browser reaction how the wiki server side process should format that pnm: URL: resource address as a link in the above examples. Could you please add pnm: to the table of allowed external URL: resource prefixes, such as http:, https:, ftp:, etc.? Thank you. --- Rednblu 20:17, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Hi, I have an idea that would make Wikipdedia even more helpful for me. Often I read interesting articles which I know I'll easily forget about - what if you could create a user account or bookmark these different pages for future reference? Oh wait, I could do that on my browser, but I think that's an ok idea.
Couldn't Wikipedia have an improved Random article option? I use it more or less frequently but I don't like those minimal stubs about local American geography. For example, I could be looking for a random article about computer science or physics.
-- GTubio 22:32, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Could a "First" and "Last" link be added in some special pages (like "What links here") next to "previous" and "next" to make the navigation in these pages faster? CG 21:16, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Has anyone ever proposed making a suite of web services available for wikipedia? Many major web sites (Amazon, Google, etc.) have web service APIs available that allow developers to access the content of the site. The main advantage of having such an API is that it would allow individual developers to create applications that use the information available on Wikipedia, which will in turn allow them to provide features that are not available or are just difficult to do inside of a web browser.
For instance, wouldn't it be nice to have a full-featured wikipedia editor with inline symbol assistance, highlighting, etc (much like an IDE for programming languages)? Also maybe a preview pane. Plus, I'm always afraid when editing an article that I will lose my work - with a standalone local application a copy of the file could be kept on the editor's local filesystem and never be lost. With web services these options could be made available - but it would be up to individual developers (most likely completely unrelated to wikipedia) to decide what those features would be for their specific product.
The great thing about web services is that they are language and platform independent. The most common is SOAP, which is essentially an XML format sent over HTTP. Once the API is defined any language and platform that already provides support for web services (and most do) can interface with it. I can write an application in Java for Linux and someone else can write one in C++ on Windows, and the interface is the same from the server side.
I can envision a number of possible applications for this such as an advanced editor and more advanced content visualization system (i.e. viewing the articles plus having other navigation/search aids). And I'm sure that there are many other people (including many academic organizations) who would love to have programmatic ways to access the wealth of information available from Wikipedia. I think that this can open up whole new ways for people to take advantage of this resource.
I don't know how the process works for this, and who is in charge of developing such a thing. I'm not even sure I'm posting this in the right place... I'm also sure that I'm not the first person to ever dream this up, though I haven't found anybody talking about it. I'm a developer, and I'd love to see this happen - I'd be willing to help in any way I can.
Best regards,
Ben 17:20, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Anyone visiting our college articles understands they have all been overrun by shameless school cheerleaders. Every insignificant acknolwedgement (which only an admissions office or development office could care about) is listed sometimes in the lead. Throughout the text from student activities to athletics, sales pitch prose is employed. Attempts to dislodge the shibboleth of worship is challenged and the outsider doesn't get very far. Take University of Texas for example -- overloaded with marketing in the lead and this is after I fought to tone it down. Entry denizens accusse me of anti-UTexas aggression, so I doubt I'll get any further. Even my own school's entry UCSD is overrun despite my attempts to contain the marketing in one section. But most edits seem directed at expanding that section. I propose the first step of reform will be relegating rankings and ratings to a box, and even banning some rankings as too insignificant (creating country specific approved list). lots of issues | leave me a message 14:48, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm sure that this idea has been suggested before, but there whould be an option for administrators to "white-list" user accounts. In many cases, legit contributors share the same IPs with vandals. When the IPs are blocked, so are all the users using them. However, white-listed accounts, unless specifically blocked, would be able to edit even though their underlying IP addresses are blocked.
Any thoughts on this idea? -- Ixfd64 08:41, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
I was thinking that it might be a good idea, and save some editing time to have a welcome message generated on the talk page of an IP user right after the first edit the user makes. An anonymous user would come across Wikipedia, look it over and make an edit. After the save page button is selected the "New Message" notice would appear and they would have a welcome message that would cover all the topics they do now. Exceptions would be to those talk pages that already have messages (an anonymous user had come through on that IP already) and talk pages that have AOL type notices on them. We could also generate these welcome messages just after a new user account is created. In both cases the user would have an immediate way of accessing common answers new editors have and a quick orientation right off the bat. Thoughts? Rx StrangeLove 07:03, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
Dear administrator, I am curious to know how you would react if people intervened with wikipedias content, by promoting it to groups who may not have heard of it. For example, how would you react if people photocopied 100 fliers saying ‘where is wikipedia.org?’ and stuck them to their cars?
Hi. I will post this here, but feel free to move it to a more appropriate place.
Most screenshots are uploaded only with a "fair use" tag. But the person creating the screenshot (the Creator) of a computer game requires a degree of creativity, albeit including "fair use" material. If the creator does not license his individual creation under a free license, the particular screenshot can probably not be used under the "fair use" clause in other places. So we need to make clear to those uploading screenshots of computer games they also need to license it under a free license. // Fred- Chess 01:36, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
I think a section where you could store some favorite tools/topics of wikipedia, such as templates, would be very helpful. I've noticed that users, myself included, tend to store such links on their personal pages for quick access or reference. I think a system specifically for this purpose would also be very helpful. Ereinion 20:30, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, my english sucks, so you will have to understand what I mean, and not rely on what I say.
Remember Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by language (see also [6]) and how Wikipedia:Babel is much better ? I would like to do the same for the translators.
I would want to make obsolete this page Wikipedia:Translators available which is heavy on Wiki EN, and is basically useless on most user wikipedias. I would like to remplace it with a simple model which would work with the Babel template and in the same spirit, so I just have to put in my homepage :
{{Babel-5|fr|de-3|eo-3|en-2|es-1}} {{ User:Jmfayard/Babylon-2|de|eo}}
I tried to explain everything on my homepage User:Jmfayard.
I'm not often on Wikipedia EN. Feel free to continue the project if you think it's interesting.
Jmfayard 17:07, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
1. See how it says "From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia" at the top of everything? How about having links to Wiktionary/Wikicommons etc. articles on the subject there, instead of the templates we use now? I'm intrested in having all the Wikimedia sites working more in unison. 2.How about having a "No stubs" option next to the Random Article button?-- Occono 16:11, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
For god's sake why do you make the whole thing so complicated? The article creation interface should be simpler... pages and pages and still no easy way to use a template, irrelevant links everywhere... why dont you do something more streamlined?
Recently, one proposed merging circumcision and female genital cutting. The merge is a great idea because both are human genital mutilation. The discussion never got started because it had to happen on two talkpages. The logistics were just bad. I propose a place to discuss mergers. It miht look like this:
I propose that we have had a stable peerreviewed (>⅔ of logined editors bothering to participate in a poll, agree that it is okay) version and a current version (the current state of the article). When searching, one would encounter the current version. A note at the top would stat that this is the latest version, but has not yet been factcheked, but an older out of date peerreviewed version is at the other end of this link .
Anyone can nominate a version of an article to be its new stable version by starting a poll on its talkpage. Within a week, one would know one way or another. The stable version would be protected. — — Ŭalabio‽ 02:37, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
Polls do not work when there are very few persons present, and many of them can be created identities to influence the result. We need a better way to raise the quality level.
All new edits to a page should go through a person responsible for that page. This allows free editing by anybody and it keeps the quality at the highest possible level. Roger4911 14:45, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
I think that photos, which are intended to make a specific point, should not be uploaded to Wikipedia unless they have been previously published by a disinterested, reputable 3rd party.
Flikr.com, weblogs, partisan political web sites (dailykos, freerepublic, etc) and such are not acceptable, but commercial news organizations and commericial publishers and to a lesser extent, non-profits would be ok. There is simply too much opportunity out there to stage photos, for example:
Supporters of Candidate A take Candidate B's signs and make a big mess in a parking lot with them and leave also a lot of trash like water bottles and sandwich wrappers.... the Wiki caption for this reads, "trash left behind after local rally for B".
Clearly it's a staged photo intended to make a point. If the control parameter of "intended to make a point" is not enforced, the excuse regarding the above scenario would be "I found the trash & signs in the parking lot and merely snapped the photo". Such assertions could not be disproved, opening a pandora's box of scheming opporunities.
Rex071404 216.153.214.94 06:27, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
I dont know if this belongs here or in Assistance. If you feel otherwise move it and let me know. The situation is that we have a very big article with tons of bizzare references ( Kambojas). We cleaned up the references and put them into footnotes format. Now the problem is that everytime the article is modified, the footnotes order need to be modified. which is a pain. (for more about the problem see Talk:Kambojas. If the developers can come up with some kind of markup similiar to # or * to number and order footnotes that will partly solve the problem I guess. May be a ^ sign before the footnotes and it will automatically gets numbered or something like that. More ideas are invited to solve this problem.-- Vyzasatya 20:21, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Just like there is a new message alert box (when your talk page is edited) how about the option to select such a feature for particular articles. It would be nice for me to be alerted to changes to, for example, the ANPR article. It would allow people to monitor particular articles/pages of high interest to them. I know the watchlist is fine in most circumstances but there are some articles I'd like to oversee a little better ( HANS device, for example, has come under vandal attack for weeks and it would be nice to monitor it more easily). violet/riga (t) 14:38, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
One of the first things that struck me when I first became a Wikipedian is the amount of information about editing articles that is scattered all over the place - this is bound to be the case in a free-for-all encyclopedia. What I suggest is one big manual containing everything one needs to know about Contributing as an Editor.
The aim of this would be to:
Obviously the sub-sections can be added to, but I strongly suggest keeping to those five main headings.
Either create it in Wikipedia or in Wikibooks.
Watch this space.
-- Heebiejeebieclub 18:51, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
Some articles have "[[ ]]" feel to them, but I haven't seen an appropriate template to post as a warning. I've used this on a few pages:
Warning: This topic, as currently written, it borders on common sense and nonsense at the same time. It's content has a feel similar to what charlatans and snake oil salesmen concoct. Please take everything you read here with a huge grain of salt.
Perhaps we could have some article rating system, that people can moderate and vote after reading through the article, even if they won't sit down to put in the elbow grease to edit it themselves. If you remember Simcity Classic, it had 3 colored bars showing residential, commercial, and industrial ratings. This would consume very little screen space. Some small section like that on each wiki page that describes overall quality, in depth content, ease of reading, ranking, something similar to what slashdot has as a moderating system would be nice. Of course this too could be abused and hacked around, just like any fence can be jumped, but it may, overall, provide a benefit to the usefulness of wikipedia. You would instantly know from a page ranked 10 out of 10 on each category, with 10,000 unique non-bot votes (just like Ebay ranks), that it's something worth reading, or even citable as a reliable academic reference, and edits to it may need some waiting period to go through, first showing up for those people who have the page in their watchlist, before it hits the full site. It would be something intermediary mechanism between a fully locked page, and a fully open page. When you submit a modification, you'd get the currently accepted page that students doing homework can use, or the currently in-process page, with the timer going on before the edits are commited, or even some sort of selective mechanism of people watching the page voting on some edit going through, or not, for some consensus to be reached. Wiki contributors should be able to get some mojo ranking too, like there is an Elo score in chess, or ranking system in karate or go. The higher the current quality of a page, the longer it would take for edits to go through, and something, say, below a ranking of 5 might get instant updates, but if it crawls over 7 in quality, edits take 1 hr to go through, while over 9 a whole day. Quality 10 pages may require the attention of at least 1 or 5 5-dan ranked editors to approve, before anything happens, even if it takes days. Anything below a quality 1, or even negative quality ratings would automatically be . You might even adapt the kyu-dan system for this, where 40 or 90 kyu means -40, or -90, while 1 kyu is -1, 1 dan is +1, and 9 dan is max. The field is still open for anybody to kick it. Your ranking as a contributor would be topic dependent. Though once articles are sufficiently refined, there isn't much to do to them to get an even higher ranking. Will there be any time when wikipedia will be 'finished' or 'fully completed', and new stuff is only added at the less and less read fringes? Of course there is nothing like a set it completely free wikipedia, and see where it goes. Any control mechanism may simply hinder and squash the wonder that it currently is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sillybilly ( talk • contribs) 22:31, 2005 October 27
Would it be a good idea to have the ability to see what deleted pages a certain user has edited or started? It would really help keep track of vandals who create nonsense pages. -- Ixfd64 22:02, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
I dunno if this has been suggested before or exists, so I'll say it. I think a good article drive would be a list of articles that SHOULD be featured. Not suggestions or anything, just a big long to-do list. Examples of articles on it would be every country article, major political and historical figures, and so on. Important topics we've no excuse not to have at featured standard. I'd be willing to implement it if there's support. Ludraman 21:52, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
We recently had a problem when the "HTML tidy" automated cleanup of incorrect HTML had to be turned off, and it became apparent that a number of sigs (and some templates and other code) had invalid html tags that left font or other changes in effect for subsequent text.
I propose a software modification so that the when a signature is entered into the preferences dialog it is parsed for strict HTML compliance, and any unclosed or improperly nested tags would be detected, and the invalid sig would not be saved. Instead an error msg would be displayed and the user would have to correct the sig before it was saved. DES (talk) 16:12, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
This may well require MediaWiki software updates, but it seems to me that whenever an article, category, template, etc. is nominated for deletion that anyone who ever contributed to the article should be notified somehow, perhaps with an automatic entry in their talk or even an email. I decided this was needed after an article I originally authored (but stopped watching a while back) was submitted to AfD, and I had the strange feeling was being slipped in behind my back (as it was a resubmission after an initial failure to gain consensus). Overall, it just doesn't seem fair that the people who put their efforts into building up an article are not notified when somebody thinks this work should be removed from the Wikipedia. Note: I say all this as a deletionist who believes in removing all unencyclopedic material posthaste. But I also believe in fairness. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 19:12, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Not sure how important it is to notify editors in this way. We already have the Watchlist to keep track of articles we take an active interest in. Not that many watches or edits categories though. I think this is more problematic since you may not notice until a bot is all over your watchlist renaming and removing stuff. When listing categoris for deletion, I think a message should be left on the talk pages to articles using that category. For large categories this could be done with a bot. A decision to delete such a category should not be rushed anyway. Fornadan (t) 00:08, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I like the Special:Log which features block, deletion, undeletion, move... logs for each user. But why isn't there any Creation log, which chows the pages created by each user? CG 18:36, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
I didn't see this in any of the perenial proposals, and I don't see it being implemented, so here is my idea: Have a template or a set of templates like {{US-elect-change-2006}} or just {{change-2010}}. The templates would be left blank and locked by admins. When the date to the side comes around, the templates would be changed to read:
The information in this article might of changed due to the US election of 2006. If the information is correct, please remove this tag.
or
The information in this article might have changed in 2010, please verify and remove this tag.
That way we won't have three articles claiming that so and so is the current mayor of smalltown, U.S.A., and it will be easier to update information that periodically changes. Just place the tag on the article that will need updating in the future, and forget about it. Comments?-- Rayc 17:20, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
I think we should give the rollback tool to regular users, but limit it to three uses per article per day in the software for regular users. — Omegatron 23:39, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
The report at Special:CrossNamespaceLinks shows articles that unfamiliar new users have signed, along with a few non-articles in article space. Is there scope for a fixup project here? Susvolans ⇔ 18:36, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
I hate having to visit every single one of the hundreds of images categorised by this template to find an image that's ready for deletion. We need a better system: categorising them by date of tag. So when a user enters {{no source|~~~~~|11/11}}, the image is automatically placed in a template by day, so when a week expires, all the images in that day subcategory can be deleted without the need to wade through the massive no source category. Ingoolemo talk 07:46, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
(Perhaps this has already been implemented or proposed, but I couldn't find it. For a newcomer like myself, the Wikipedia help system is quite scattered and takes a long time to master. Considering that editing itself is so easy, it would be good if the help system were simplified, and the search facilities improved.)
Anyway, to get to my actual proposal, I noted on viewing the articles Word of faith and Full Gospel that some of the only significant discussion of theological beliefs was presented in the form of a list of Bible references. These references, however, were unlinked, and so, unless one either
such article's content is not very informative. There should be a standardized system of linking Bible references, making use of a site such as Bible Gateway - either manually (as a suggestion in the Manual of Style) or automatically (using some kind of bot that would search for Bible references). Evan Donovan 01:27, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
There's a request for this in Wikimedia Bugzilla: [9]. Someone's even submitted a patch that will do it for the KJV translation. — Matt Crypto 15:04, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Everybody seems to agree that Wikipedia search is completely useless. I propose that it is removed and replaced with a Google-driven site-specific search.
I am suggesting that there is "Wikiforum" or "www.wikipedia.org/forum" or something to make it so Wikipedia members can talk on their own online forum, or make it specially for people that have registered.
I'm not sure if this is possible. I think it is. Could wikipedia enable someone to search for a term within a particular article? I often wish i could do this online rather than copy and paste the article onto word and then search. Just a thought.
And that is the problem, we need to talk to each other to find out who are more suitable as responsible for a page or a branch of wikipedia. Without a responsible person the content will change everytime a spammer edits a page. Roger4911 14:36, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Have you tried Control-F? Under your internet browser? Andrewdt85 08:55, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
A thought related to the current suggestions about blocking only anons from IPs, rather than blanket blocking IPs: Is there any way of creating an (admin-only?) tool in specialpages so that when an anon IP is blockable, an admin can instantly check which users regularly use that IP (perhaps a list of all registered users who have used an IP within the previous three months, plus number of edits from that IP)? That way they could at least get an opportunity of knowing (a) whether a long-term ban is viable, and (b) know whether any editors need warning before a ban is put in place (I'm posting this to VPTech as well, since I'm not sure which page would be the best place for it). Grutness... wha? 23:34, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump it says: "The village pump is not a place to make lasting comments as discussions are removed daily to make room for new ones." This is apparently not true because several discussions I have been involved with here have gone on for days or even weeks. Could someone who knows the actual removal procedure possibly change this text? Matt 20:28, 20 November 2005 (UTC).
Don't really understand. Are you saying that "discussions are removed daily" just means something like "every day we take a look and remove discussions which have been hanging around for a while and seem to be dead"? That's not how I understood it. To me it implies that messages are wiped automatically after 24 hours. If you understand how the procedure works then maybe you could reword to make it clearer? Matt 23:58, 20 November 2005 (UTC).
I changed it to read "The village pump is not a place to make lasting comments as inactive discussions are archived after seven days, and then permanently removed after a further seven days". I am unsure whether referring to the "archiving" section is a good idea because I do not know if this tenplate text is used on other pages where that section may not be present. If you can improve/correct then pls go ahead! Matt 00:27, 21 November 2005 (UTC).
I do not know if this will require a change in the MediaWiki software, but the ability to filter pages by namespace types in special:whatlinkshere would be nice. -- Ixfd64 20:10, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
I use Internet Explorer, and most websites which have sound (or other media) content work just fine. With Wikipedia though, most (all?) media files seem to be in an "ogg" format which I have never heard of and which my PC doesn't recognise. I would like to suggest that the way Wikipedia handles sound is changed to be the same as other sites, so that it will work on standard Windows PCs.
Thanks for the replies. I don't understand why anyone has to "write MP3 playing or encoding software". I thought that this software was already incorporated into Windows Media Player, or Real Player, or whatever player one happens to use. I did actually read the Wikipedia:Media help page, but I overlooked the "Directions on Installing Software" link, which is kind of ... er ... tucked away at the side! I am extremely nervous about downloading any sort of software from the internet unless it's from a company I am very familiar with, such as Microsoft or Adobe, because much of it (esp. free software) is riddled with spyware and other nasties. However, if I find a reputable source for support for ogg files I might do it. Thanks again... Matt 11:08, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
Postscript: I have now repositioned the abovementioned link to make it less easy to miss. Matt 11:16, 20 November 2005 (UTC).
I'm reposting this here from WP:AN (I had originally posted there as this is a protected page, and would need an admin to change it). I've thought for a while that the text on this message ( MediaWiki:Loginend) is misleading. Jeronim has pointed out there that the phrase "We won't reveal your address to anyone" isn't accurate, as we will if we legally need to. Also, I didn't realize at first that my e-mail would be visible to users that I sent mail to, or that it was required in order to send mail (yes, I know how clueless that sounds, but I didn't really think about it until later). I've proposed some changes at MediaWiki talk:Loginend (bolding added to make the changes more visible): essentially, that the phrase "We won't reveal your address to anyone" be changed to "We won't release your e-mail address to anyone unless it's legally required," and the sentence "However, giving your e-mail address allows other users to send you mail without knowing your address, and enables password reminders to be requested" be changed to "However, giving your e-mail address allows you to send mail to others, using this as the reply-to address, other users to send you mail without knowing your address, and enables password reminders to be requested."
I think that this will be helpful, not to mention more honest. It's going to be a little bit longer than before. However, I think that the gain in information and accuracy is worth it. If anyone has better texts, please suggest them—I don't like my "unless it's legally required" addition that much, but I think that that or a phrase like it is mandated to be consistent with our prvacy policy. Sorry to be pedantic, folks. Blackcap | talk 21:26, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
How to name school articles, specifically how to qualify them with their city and province/state name, is being discussed at Wikipedia talk:Schools#Disambiguation - Naming Convention, where there's a straw poll on. -- rob 07:29, 7 November 2005 (UTC) — Wikibarista 07:26, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
More than a month ago already, I got the idea to start congratulating people on their 'wikibirthdays'. A wikibirthday is a Wikipedian's anniversary day of his first edit. Just check out my talk page, I have received nothing but positive replies on them. There was even this guy that said that he would become way more active on Wikipedia since he felt appreciated. Just like company commit themselves to customer relations, we should also commit ourselves to keeping the Wikipedia together. I was thinking, could it be fruitful to turn the Wiki Birthday Balloons into a WikiProject? (See this page for more info on Wiki Birthday Balloons). -- SoothingR( pour) 17:08, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to request a special page that populates itself with a list of random links, as a supplement to Special:Random. Please read more at User:Melchoir/Random links proposal! Thanks, Melchoir 00:53, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Linking to copyright violations is prohibited, but some warez authors use loopholes and technically don't breach that rule. There needs to be a specific rule to outlaw links to illegal websites or programs. -- Tom Edwards 12:21, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Hi,
I have been doing some minor edits to the article on "Tantra." I am a teacher, a published scholar, and a practitioner in an authentic Indian lineage.
The External Links section contained a real grab bag of stuff, from the scholarly to the profane, as you can imagine given the topic.
I organized the links into subsections so people could find what they wanted more easily. I was exceedingly careful not to delete anyone else's link even if it did not especially comport with my concept of the topic.
Within 24 hours, someone else came along and deleted 80% of the links and all of the subcategory headings.
Links that were deleted included general resource sites, schools of Buddhist and Indian Tantra, and a slew of other stuff.
Is this against any Wikipedia policy? Is it merely uncool? Is it acceptable?
I'm just trying to get a sense of the sort of editorial behavior that is acceptable, or not.
Thank you for your assistance.
Shambhavi Sarasvati