This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.
< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212
I was going through the article Progressivism. The external links section of the article has links to a number of websites which are of activist nature. I am sure there are a number of other articles also in wikipedia with the same problem. I was thinking of creating a template which warns users that these websites may be of impartial nature. This template would be a special case of Template:Disputed-section template. The text should be something like
Suggestions on alternate wording is also welcome.
I would also like to know whether any template of this nature exists currently?
I suggest the following for the set:
"Religious orientation" is not the same as "religion", etc. For instance, I have a website with astrophotographs and for each image there is a Bible quote. The site URL deliberately gives no hint that the site has a strong religious orientation. Many people have personal or small-business websites with strong religious orientation even though the site deals with something else.
"Potentially disgusting" would be equivalent to the warning many TV news programs give, "Certain viewers may find these images quite upsetting."
I would not use the title "disturbing" because that is too vague. The criterion for such a tag would be something like, "Many persons of average sensibilities would find the material disgusting or highly objectionable and emotionally quite disturbing. Examples include video clips of major surgery, autopsy images, close-up images of major wounds, severe disfigurements, detailed descriptions of a sexual assault or gruesome crime."
I posted this message on Template_talk:Protected nearly a month ago, and there has been zero comments, so I'm posting it to get some attention.
I propose using a smaller version of this box, which could be placed floating at the right side on the article.
Example:
Bush, a member of the Republican Party, was elected 46th Governor of Texas in 1994 and was re-elected in 1998. From there, he moved on to win the nomination of the Republican Party for the 2000 presidential race and ultimately defeated Democratic Vice President Al Gore in a particularly close and controversial [1] general election. In 2004, Bush was elected to a second term, defeating Democratic Senator John Kerry. This term will expire January 20, 2009. |
The See why link would direct the user to the article's Discussion page, where he or she would find the full explanation box for the article's protection, as well as helpful links on what to do.
What does anyone think about this? Is it preferably to have a little box in the main article, and then the full box in the Talk page? I mean, do we really need this. Comments? — Cantus… ☎ 10:41, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to invite everyone to participate in the Wikipedia:Featured Music Project. The Featured Music Project is an attempt to improve a large number of articles on musicians to make them ready to be a featured article. To sign up, put your name under one (or more) of the eight categories on the status page, such as the discography, format and style or lead section. No more than once a month, you'd be given an article which is getting close to being ready for WP:FAC, and is only deficient in a few categories. You'd do what you can in the section you signed up for (and, of course, anything else you like). If a couple of people specialize in each category, we should be able to take some concrete steps towards improvement on a wide range of articles. In addition, you can sign up as a "shepherd" to take articles that meet all the criteria through a peer review and (hopefully) successful candidacy. If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a note on my talk page, or on the FMP talk page. Tuf-Kat 06:21, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
More than 90% of our articles don't have any references. I'd like to make a new proposal. Wikipedia:Wikiproject Reader. The aim is to help deliver on our promise of verifiability. Right now it's a proposal since I would like to get some feedback, but if you like the idea you can start right away. Mozzerati 15:06, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Certain articles, e.g., Messianic Judaism and Intelligent Design have constant POV problems. (Most involve religion in some way, although that is not relevant.) I am proposing a POV-related template along these lines:
Caution: Despite diligent efforts by various editors and administrators, this article routinely has severe POV problems. The reader is advised to check additional sources for a balanced view. |
RickReinckens 23:54, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
At the moment the order of the "in other languages" on each page is vastly different. We need a standard consistent order of all other languages, in every language wikipedia, which could be as follows:
At the moment as I see it, the order is mainly English alphabetical order of the language name, with non-Latin language names being inserted mainly according to the domain name but not always. This really doesn't make any sense. Any suggestions? 219.77.98.122 10:19, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
This: •Has probably been suggested before, and •Is probably in the wrong place. Nonetheless, I feel that the contributions page needs a new feature, namely a way to check the status of your edits. I at least expected that the "diff" link would show me the diff from my edit to present. It doesn't, and I can't find any better way to do that than to tediously go through the history looking for my name. Ug. The main reason I Watch a page is to see if a) anyone has changed my change or b) anyone has replied to my comment on a Talk page. There should be much easier ways to do these things.
Would it be okay to add the following to MediaWiki:Common.css? –
pre { overflow-x: auto; overflow-y: visible; }
This would keep long lines of code from adding horizontal scrollbars on large pages (for example WP:AN/I on occasion) and would instead add horizontal scrollbars directly to the PRE'd text.
To see this in action for yourself, simply add the line above to your userspace CSS override, then go to User:Locke Cole/Sandbox and scroll down to the "PRE test" section. Please respond at MediaWiki talk:Common.css. — Locke Cole • t • c 06:26, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
A long time ago (February 2004), someone added "Subject to disclaimers" to {{ GFDL}}. Because the GFDL mandates that any disclaimers posted with a copyright notice must be preserved, it has been the considered legal opinion of Wikipedia that this disclaimer notice cannot be removed from any image on which it has been applied. (See for example: Template_talk:GFDL#Subject_to_disclaimers.21.3F).
However, the notice would appear to imply that anyone reusing the image must provide not only a full copy of the GFDL text but also a copy of Wikipedia:General disclaimer and all its subpages. This situation is at best awkward and significantly compounds the amount of material that a print reuser would be required to provide, thus making our GFDL images less free by imposing a greater burden on reusers. Note that neither Commons, nor any other Wikipedia (to my knowledge) has such a disclaimer notice in their copyright template. In particular Commons has been forced to create both Commons:Template:GFDL and Commons:Template:GFDL-en so as to have a special GFDL template that preserves our disclaimer notice, which is just plain dumb and compounds the risk that images migrated to Commons will be incorrectly categorized.
I would like to put an end to the further propogation of this situation.
As such I proposed the following:
Obviously this won't remove the disclaimer text from the bazillion images that already have it, but it should stop that text from propagating any further. In my mind this sort of correction should have happened long ago.
Thoughts?
Dragons flight 18:31, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure if we are allowed to do that. Wikipedia:Copyrights also explicitly mentions these disclaimers. Looks like it's intentional. Lupo 09:12, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
I have gone ahead with the simple part of the plan and created {{ GFDL-no-disclaimers}} and Category:GFDL images without disclaimer to use with newly uploaded images. If I am somehow wrong about all this, then these can be easily reverted/redirected (it is infinitely easier to add disclaimers back then to remove them). But then I am quite confident that it makes sense for this Wikipedia, Commons, and all the others to share the same licensing terms.
Now comes the hard part, there are only ~75000 pages to convert from {{ GFDL}} to {{ GFDL-with-disclaimers}} in order to free up Template:GFDL for the no disclaimers version of the tag. If there are more comments about this, now would be a good time, before the heavy lifting. Dragons flight 03:37, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
I think we need to just go ahead and depreciate the use of {{ GFDL}} on enwiki in favor of getting people over to the commons. As it stand today there is an apalling amount of copyright violations tagged as {{ GFDL}} on enwiki. Any proposal to fix the tagging of GFDL images on enwiki is going to have to deal with the fact that in a large number of cases the tag was added long after the image was uploaded by someone other then the uploader, who probably never even spoke with the uploader. This has happened due to a misguided line of reasoning that goes something like "If the uploader of this untagged image was the copyright holder they agreed to place it under the GFDL based on the text of our upload page, or at least intended to place it in the GFDL because Wikipedia is GFDLed. If the uploader was not the uploader they probably violated copyright law in uploading the image. Since we assume good faith, I must accept the first theory and reject the second. Thus it is okay to slap a GFDL tag on this. Q.E.D.". This has resulted in some pretty outragious violations on enwiki in this category, and any sort of mindless retagging could only make it worse. In other cases the uploader is just wrong, yet no one has called him on it and... sometimes it appears there is just wishful thinking about the identity of the copyright holder. We need a cleanup, but if we're going to do one we might as well move the images over to the commons. Commons suffers from the same kind of nonsense but its far less widespread. -- Gmaxwell 05:22, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
I previously posted this to the help desk, hoping this feature was already available, but it looks like it's not.
Suppose I read a Wikipedia article A. I open a link from A to another article B, in a different browser tab (or window), then I close A. Later, after reading other stuff, I go to the other tab and read article B, and I forgot how and why I got there (especially when a redirect and/or pipe is involved). Is there a way to use the http referer field (or some other means) for giving me a link back to the article where I "came from" (A in this case)?
There are actually two ways I can suggest for accomplishing this. One is actually using the "Referer" http header, possibly checking that it's a Wikipedia article. Another one is adding a reference to the current article in the querystring for every link (e.g. the link from Wikipedia to encyclopedia could use a URL like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia?referer=Wikipedia). I would prefer the first approach.
Either way, I suggest that the link should be placed in the toolbox on the left side on every page.
Aditsu 18:18, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Would it be possible to lock the page of the 1,000,000th page to prevent vandalism? Administrators could do edits and suggestions for improvements could be given on the discussions page? Right now it is being vandalized due to the attention given it. / MoRsΞ 14:36, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
We should have this, because many of the arts articles on Wikipedia need work. Osbus 23:17, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
I am thinking that someone should get the Wikipedia ESBNs. Would it be possible for some kind of adjustment to be made in the code to support ESBN? Anyway, just your thoughts. Thanks! Compu terjoe 19:13, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
I noticed that on articles like Lilium, where one of the other language Wikipedias have a Featured Article about the topic, the FA barnstar appears before the link. This puts the link text out of alignment with the other links in the list; would it be desirable to change the CSS so that the barnstar replaces the list bullet, rather than being added on next to it? Phoenix-forgotten 08:51, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
Just a quick suggestion.. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of people like myself, who having a general interest in everything, enjoy passing the time by using the 'random article' menu option and seeing what fascinating snippets wikipedia will throw at you. The problem however is that 80% of the time it just returns small articles with minimal information (stubs?) or disambiguation pages etc. It would be nice if the pool of articles from which the random feature chooses from was restricted to perhaps a 500 character minimum or some other restriction that increases the chance that the article you are presented with contains something of interest. As a side benefit it may reduce the load on your servers slightly as there might be less consecutive requests for random articles if it returns more interesting results.
The number of articles at Special:Statistics is getting closer and closer to an exciting number that we have less than 13,000 to go before we can reach!
Another number also kept track is not far behind, the number of registered users. It is getting big too quickly, many of which want to register so that they can have the right to move pages by vandalism. I think there needs to be some way to allow this to be altered so that it will not include indefinitely blocked users. Georgia guy 19:53, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Is there any chance of, in the future, login with the same user-name in different languages without having to create a new account for each and every language that I want to login to? As it is, if I want to see whether there is an "orange" message, I would have to log into each language account to see whether there was one. DanielDemaret 17:43, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Ive read in the guidelines, that in addition to wikipedia policy, content is limited by the censorship laws in florida. A summary of these laws could be very helpful to contributors. Crippled Sloth#
1,000,000 articles is coming up fast and IMO it'd be nice to change the logo for this very special occasion. Here is a very rough mockup of an idea I had for the logo:
Noclip 02:13, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
I like this logo Gerard Foley 17:53, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
Soliciting comments on Meta about m:Annotation. Essentially, once implemented, it will be a tool that will let you view the wikitext of any article and see who wrote what and when (on a word by word basis). There are a few crucial interface issues that need to be resolved, no developing experience necessary! Please comment. — Ambush Commander( Talk) 21:32, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
It's an exciting idea, Edward; I look forward to seeing how you work out the details. I don't know how you will decide where to start the annotating process -- not all bits of text will have a clear "starting place" in the revision history. But those details are yours to sort out -- you're asking about input and output
Ideally, I'd want to be able to click-and-drag to select text, then hit a button or choose a command from a right-click menu to submit that text to the tool. Given that there's no other click-and-drag function on Wikipedia (yet), the next best thing would be to be able to copy and paste a selection into a text box -- perhaps something down below the "Save Page" buttons and such, or in a pop-up window or new window or tab.
It's hard to visualize the output (which is why you're asking, I'm sure). I see perhaps three options. The first would break the output into color-coded rows based on editor. The second would be the same, sorted by date of edit instead of order of text (eek, sounds confusing). Something like this:
Text: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
Text | Editor | Date/Time (sort by) | Edit summary |
---|---|---|---|
The | added by User:CatherineMunro | June 14, 2003 | Brevity is wit. |
quick brown | added by User:Ambush Commander | April 15, 2004 | Adjectives are good for the soul. |
fox jumped over the | added by User:CatherineMunro | June 14, 2003 | Brevity is wit. |
lazy | added by User:Ambush Commander | April 22, 2004 | Forgot an adjective |
dog. | added by User:CatherineMunro | June 14, 2003 | Brevity is wit. |
The third option would be more like a sequence of diffs, sorted by date. With a large text this could obviously get quite long and complex. (Having spent the time to lay this out, I like this one better.)
Edit | Editor | Date/Time | Edit summary |
---|---|---|---|
The fox jumped over the dog. | added by User:CatherineMunro | June 14, 2003 | Brevity is wit. |
The quick brown fox jumped over the dog. | added by User:Ambush Commander | April 15, 2004 | Adjectives are good for the soul. |
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. | added by User:Ambush Commander | April 22, 2004 | Forgot an adjective |
I'm sure there are other ways, but that's what I've come up with so far. This doesn't deal with the subtleties of deletions, reversions, spelling corrections and such; it would just show the most recent editor to be responsible for a given word or phrase. Who gets credit/blame for a word if a later editor only adds a missing letter? Would there be any way to tell that there had been a previous editor who inserted that word?
I think it would be a necessity to provide links to the actual revisions or diffs to allow people to explore history more thoroughly, and to explain how the mechanism works so that faulty attributions are harder to make.
Let me know what you think. — Catherine\ talk 07:19, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
On the issue of dealing with reverts: how about you add a "reversion to version X" flag to page versions? If someone saved an out-of-date version of a page, the software could check the diff of those two versions, and if it turned out to be zero, the flag would be added. It would also, of course, be added to every admin rollback. This wouldn't be that computationally expensive (you could even drop the diff part, really), and your annotation thingy could just skip any edits that were reverted in figuring out who did what. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 03:44, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
A way to find out the number of views of any individual article would, I think, be interesting and encourage contributions. I don't think it ought to be anything up-front displayed to all users but rather something that an editor could, if he so wanted, could get to on some backend page. I don't know how much stress this would put on the servers. - Centrx 16:34, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
The official vote on the proposed main page redesign, for replacing the current main page, has started and will end at 23:59 UTC, March 18, 2006. - Kmf164 ( talk | contribs) 02:08, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Hello. I think that maybe there should be some censorship for Wikipedia, or at least some sort of icon saying that there might be some inappropriate language or pictures in a specific section or page, because I know a fair amount of children use Wikipedia. Thanks for reading this.
Red Alien | 19:35, March 2 2006
Oh, OK, then. Sorry... I'm just new here...
Red Alien 19:40, March 2 2006
Children grow up fast these days...what age group are you speaking about? Because if you are thinking of the 13+ demographic, I'm not sure some inappropriate language/pictures would affect them much. Osbus 01:53, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm sort of talking about 8-10 year olds. I do know that a lot of 8-10 year olds use Wikipedia. I know that 13+ year olds aren't really affected by language, but 8-10 year olds may be... Red Alien| 19:35, March 3 2006
it strikes me as odd that the games in the hitman series do not have separate pages. i may be wrong, but it seems obvious that more information on these games could be conveyed if they only had individual pages. please donate opinions. 86.135.228.177 16:09, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Is there some sort of way to educate people on when to use italics for movies, books, short stories, and CD titles? I find it really quite irksome when I come to a page and find that things aren't italicized when they should be (it's especially true with CD titles.) Now, obviously this isn't as pressing a matter as formulating a definitive policy on censorship, but I'd still like to see something done about the lack of italicization. Perhaps some sort of bot? Maybe a reference page? I mean, there's obviously always the option of correcting these italicization problems as you come across them, but even then, I don't see any sort of movement to do so. Just a thought (and some bitchin' about a peeve.) -- 66.229.183.101 07:29, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
When inserting thumbnails, sizes should not be used (unless there is a special reason for using them), because otherwise the preferences for them have no effect. The Adept 19:59, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Is anyone interested in a Wikiproject devoted to creating and improving articles related to Austin, Texas? I love this city and would love to have a team to collaborate with on articles about it! There are a lot of places, people, events, and businesses in Austin which are notable but not yet represented in Wikipedia, or whose articles are stubs. Thoughts? I have also mentioned this on Category talk: Austin, Texas. Kit O'Connell ( Todfox: user / talk / contribs) 23:54, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm a little hesitant to point this out, because of the huge mess it has the potential to become, so please try not to create a big clutter over a small issue. Wikipedia's tagline is currently:
Our slogan is "The Free Encyclopedia that anyone can edit", and this is what is listed on the Main Page:
Some have proposed that we change the tagline to match the slogan, to make the source of our articles a little more obvious to newcomers. It's not something to be ashamed of and hide behind links that the casual Google reader won't ever see, etc. Jimbo said:
Another similar proposal is:
Others say we should leave the tagline as it is, for tradition's sake. There is a straw poll about these three variants on MediaWiki talk:Tagline.
A similar proposal got really huge and didn't accomplish anything, so please make your comments brief and don't add 500 alternative taglines that only vary by one word. — Omegatron 15:42, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
There is already a preference to show a certain amount of edits in the Recent Changes special page, so why isn't there such a preference for other special pages, like Contributions and What links here? My proposal is basically to make such an option (in preferences) for as many special pages as possible. -- Y Ynhockey || Talk Y 22:02, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Nevermind, I think that option already does that. I still propose that it be made more clear though. -- Y Ynhockey || Talk Y 20:36, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I find RfCs far too complex and formal. I suggest they are made more like RfAs. I propose for user conduct RfCs a new layout. Depending on your opinions and suggestions on the proposal of simplication, I'd be more than happy to design this. Compu terjoe 20:36, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
I believe Google does something like this. One of the biggest complaints about Wikipedia is that because anyone can edit it, articles could be rife with errors. I do not find this to be a problem with large, high-traffic articles such as World War II or something along those lines. The risk of bias is far higher, however, with more obscure articles created by one person with an axe to grind that may sit up there for a while before an accuracy-conscious editor looks it over.
I think a ranking system would deal with this problem and warn people of dubious articles while reassuring them of articles that are well-kept and accurate. My personal system is to look at an article's discussion page. If it has even a moderately long one, it's a pretty safe article. Those with short or no discussion pages I am wary of and on the lookout for errors. I don't know if the ranking system should follow this pattern or if users who visit the page could vote on it. Maybe an article should have a low ranking for sheer lack of votes.
What do you all think? Wouldn't an article-ranking system dramatically improve the trustability of Wikipedia as a whole? I can't imagine that it would be that difficult of an improvement. Aplomado 02:13, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi I created an entry for the First Earl of Clancarty today and tried to edit the entry for The Second Earl of Clancarty as I have distant connection with this family so I have become familiar with their details. I hope no one minds, I hope I did okay as I'm new to Wikipedia though I heard about the project before and was recommended by a friend from Thenewscentre.com. as an exciting project. Please let me know if you have any grounds for objections. I hope to create a piece on Cambrio-Normans in due course. Newsgirl 22:48, 7 March 2006 (UTC)Newsgirl
Hi there I have done editting on Joseph Ransohoff, who was my grandfather. There is no conflict of interest as long as you keep your edits NPOV. I have had no issues with my article. It definitely helps if you cite your sources though, just like anywhere on the Wikipedia. Welcome to Wikipedia. Kit O'Connell ( Todfox: user / talk / contribs) 23:55, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi. I was just wondering, whenever someone clicks the button to add a new section to a talk page, it always puts spaces between the == and == rather than ==and== which is all that Wikipedia requires to read it anyway, It also puts a line after it, but you don't need that either.
Since it's adding characters Wiki doesn't need to read (or really, to navigate the source), have they considered removing that from the function? Tyciol 03:31, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
A lot of contention is over whether or not topics that are of great interest to a certain, limited geographical area belong in the general Wikipedia. Perhaps a solution to this would be to, in addition to the main Wikipedia, have regional Wikipedias (perhaps per-state in the US, per-province elsewhere, etc.) that are dedicated to content solely of interest to that region.
And a hierarchy could develop--for instance, each US State Wikipedia could have several per-county Wikipedias under it for topics of interest solely to that county.
This could also resolve a lot of the friction over whether or not to include schools--no one can doubt that a given school is notable WITHIN ITS OWN COMMUNITY. So schools that aren't especially notable for some other reason (famous alumnus, originator of some trend that spread nationwide, etc.) and would possibly get deleted in the main article namespace (although lately they haven't, thankfully--I hold that everything that exists deserves an article) could instead be created within the regional Wikipedia.
There's nothing technically stopping me from doing it now, but I'd like some input nonetheless. Kurt Weber 18:38, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
I can understand having the tag on the main page, but is it really necessary in the title? You don't see microsoft putting "Microsoft.com, software maker". on every page they have! -- Naelphin 23:34, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi I editted the 2nd Earl of Clancarty , What happened to it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Newsgirl ( talk • contribs)
I have made a suggestion at WikiProject Science and wonder what the users of this page think. -- Oldak Quill 17:05, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I would like to make a proposal for a new feature in Wikipedia which as far as I have been able to tell is not available yet.
In the past I have often looked up recently deceased public figures to see if any articles about these people were updated yet. So far I have never found an article to be out of date. This proves to me that Wikipedia is kept current enough for an obituary service to be implemented. One could go to Wikipedia on a daily basis and check out what obituaries are posted. If someone has recently died that is not listed, users could then update the wiki themselves. I believe it would be a great service and could create a lot of repeat traffic as people get into the habit of checking the wiki obits on a daily basis.
Of course the biographies on Wikipedia would have to be set up with some identifiable field that denotes dates of birth and if necessary, death. I have no idea if this sort of mechanism is in place as of now.
Michael Selby (MLSelby) - March 9, 2006
-- MLSelby 20:05, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Next to the 12 buttons found above the editor (Bold, Itals, Internal link, etc.), I would like to see a button or dropdown or some similar tool to add common templates. This would allow users to quickly add template messages and the like. Perhaps a dropdown something like the following; clicking on an item would bring up a small window with relevant templates:
-- Jonathan Kovaciny 16:14, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Hey, we have a problem with Template:Future tvshow, the problem arises because thier is no distinction between upcoming tv series, and upcoming tv episodes, this is problematic because the category for said template is currently a mix of upcoming television series and upcoming television episodes. To remedy this I recomend we create Template:Future tvepisode or even Template: Future tvsseries so we can more easily distinguish between the two. Deathawk 14:47, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Hello, first of all, let me thank you for your wonderful Wikipedia! I find it very helpful!
I've got an proposal concerning linking between the wikipedia pages - i find very distractful to read a page with lots of emphasized links, eg. in the text on Microcanonical ensemble: "..is the simplest of the *ensembles* of *statistical mechanics*.."
I thought that it would be easy to add an option on the left bar, which would enable using another stylesheet, which would make the links look like an ordinary text. Technicaly this should not be a problem and it would make life easier for readers sometime.
What do you think?
Petr Danecek
Can a menu item be added that showed the 20 articles that the user has last viewed. It could be part of the top menu bar (with my talk, my watch list...)? And a favourites menu to store the articles that I frequent. Both these menus would work using the logged on user. - Ganeshk ( talk) 23:11, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
We are an international digital community and we must do something to minimize the effect of cultural divide which I feel affects our abilities to interact and communicate. This inability may be gradually sabotaging the Project in various ways. Thanks. -- Bhadani 15:31, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I have suggested adding WP:CORP-like criteria to WP:BIO, which considers being "...the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent..." a sign of notability. Similiar wording is in WP:WEB, and more recently in WP:MUSIC. Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#WP:CORP-like wording. -- Rob 14:57, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
The way it is right now, the english version of Wikipedia has loads and loads more articles than any other, I see this as a problem. Wouldnt it be a good idea if there was a link that said "translate an article for [insert language] wikipedia" or something of the like? What I mean is that if the [insert language] wiki is missing an article on say Alabama or something or other, that text could be translated from another language.
And it wouldnt just benefit the small wiki's, I bet there are articles on romanian phenomena, people, places etc etc that arent on the english one
It would mean that the smaller wiki's would get articles that are more complete and it would, of course increase the number of articles. I know that at least in Sweden, there are a lot of people who are quite prominent in english who would be happy to perform such services for the community
Just a suggestion //bara_bg
PS This could also be a way of rectifying the problem with an english article being 5 000 signs long, and the french one 500 DS
It seems to me that Wikipedia policies or guidelines should include a discussion of how criticisms of topics fits into the Wikipedia articles about those topics. For exmaple Igor Stravinsky contain's a "Criticism" section while the criticisms of Country music where removed from that article and, presumably, some articles have criticism in each appropriate section (hypothetically, criticisms of Stravinsky's rhythmic prodedures could go in the "Rhythmic procedures" section of his article). Anyone else feel this need? Anythoughts on a guideline? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hyacinth ( talk • contribs)
There is Wikipedia:Words to avoid#Article structures which can imply a view. Hyacinth 12:13, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I was just thinking, that when i make edits to a section of a large (and especially frequently edited) article, I add that article to my watchlist, but all i really care about watching is that one section that i edited. I propose that there should be some way to watch just a section of an article, rather than the whole thing, in the same way that you can choose to edit just a section and not the whole thing. For example, after posting this, i will only want to watch this section, to see if someone replies, i don't really care about the rest of the page. If such a thing already exists, and i just havent found it, please let me know. -- Someones life 17:54, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
I vote yes on Someone's Life's proposal...if there isn't a feature like that already available on Wikipedia.
-- JJ
What about selling the Wikipedia written on CDs or DVDs so that everyone who wants, could have his/her own Wikipedia without the need to surf at wikipedia.org {especially now it would be quite needed, because the servers of Wikipedia are overcrowded and it takes several seconds-minutes to upload a page}. Also by selling such DVDs, CDs {with encouragement to copy them and establish on your own servers} could be some money raised. Or even better, such CDs or DVDs would be given to the supporters of Wikipedia or could be sold for symbolic price to the supporters. Of course there is an issue how to make such a CD/DVD, in which languages, which articles should be taken into and which not, how many CDs/DVDs would be needed for 1 000 000 articles {with photos, sound files, etc}.
But on the other hand, I haven't heard about Wikipedia CDs/DVDs so I think it would need some kind of research to get to know if it is commercially realizable {maybe, I alone am in need of such CDs/DVDs :) }.
Why would anyone buy an instantly-out-of-date CD or DVD (which is bound to have bits of frozen vandalism in it). Would you even look at it, or just put it on your shelf? T-shirts or mugs would make more sense. Text ads would make even more sense... nobody boycotts an otherwise indispensible resource just because of a few unobtrusive text ads (how many of you have stopped using Google?). -- Curps 22:25, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Fine then. Put text ads on Wikipedia, which given our Alexa numbers should raise, oh, a million dollars a month. But make it clear upfront that half of the windfall will be spent for third-world charitable purposes. Spend some of the rest on servers and also hire several more developers, so badly needed bug fixes and enhancements can happen a lot quicker. Everybody's happy.
I'm not sure I buy into the third-world story though. For most places in the third world, your CD or DVD will just be a frisbee, due to lack of computers or a reliable electrical power grid. And the places that have the latter two will almost certainly have telecom connectivity for Internet too. In fact, in many places telecom infrastructure is being created before any computing or electrical grid infrastructure: in Africa, cell phones are booming (they get recharged from car batteries). -- Curps 05:14, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
What about an 'ad mirror'? Loads of sites mirror with ads. Why not create a separate foundation whose purpose is to run an ad funded mirror (under the GFDL this is fine) and donating profits to WP? No one would fork, because it wouldn't be Wikipedia doing it. People who hate on it could hate on it. Who cares, it would be legal. And ... 3. Profit! For great justice. 18:38, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
I was just thinking maybe it would be less attractive to actually put ads on Wikimedia pages, but what if Wikimedia sold web hosting--I mean Wiki is hot right now, everyone wants to have their own Wiki site, people would pay for this kind of stuff. Or, you could give it out for free and put ads on people's individual wiki sites. Either way, you'd make tons of money. Sure, you'd need more servers just for the personal wiki pages, but if you could get it to generate enough money to pay for itself and then some, it'd be great. I mean, I'd be willing to pay for my own wiki site, and I definitely wouldn't mind being given one for free, even if it did have ads on it. -- Gandalf 04:58, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
We have CSD:U2 which states to delete stale IP talk pages so they don't confuse potential new users, upon a bot request I had set my bot to add stale (older than 180 days) talk pages in a category for speedy deletion. I let the bot run for an hour and we had some 500 pages, they came faster than admins could delete. I then had a request here at Talk: criteria for speedy deletions which the consensus was to blank the pages to keep the history and to not delete them. After reaching this consensus, the bot ran for a few days until I recieved a message from DropDeadGorgias who asked for where the consensus for the bots operation was, reading it she requested that I stop the bot which I have done.
The question arrises, what do to with the stale IP talk pages. I basically see 3 options a) Keep them as is and do not remove anything (with the disadvantage that this could confuse new users) b) Delete the old pages c) Blank them keeping various templates (including sharedip and it's subst'ed version) and possibly adding a message saying why page was blanked.
Comments? -- Tawker 11:40, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I just saw User:Tawkerbot add a Talk:IP that I watch to Category:IP talk pages for speedy deletion. It refers to WP:CSD#U2 on this page:
Shouldn't irrelevant old messages simply be removed by blanking the page (thus essentially archiving it)?
Femto 12:58, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure where to post this comment, so here it is :-) : I disagree with the blanking of old IP talk pages; besides other reasons, it does send the "new messages" banner to the users. We've already gotten several complaints about the "new messages" banner when a message is removed or substituted. Anyways, just my 2 cents; I don't think that the bot should continue doing this. Thanks! Flcelloguy ( A note?) 17:14, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
I noticed Wikiquote has quite a lenghty list of proverbs from various cultures and languages. I wonder if there is a feature for "Proverb of the day" where subscribers can receive "proverb of the day" emails from Wikiquote's database of proverbs. If not, it would be a nifty feature.
I was wondering if it would be a good idea to create a keyboard shortcut for the admin [Rollback] button, like there is one for random page (alt-x) for example. This would help out on edits like these where you have to scroll to find the rollback button. There are even trickier instances like this where you spend about one minute trying to find the actual button! What does everyone else think? — FireFox • T • 20:06, 5 March 2006
I don't think I should have to read the entire IPA article to figure out how something is pronounced. Even skimming it, I have no idea what that means. Opinions on having approximate translations for proper names without having to record an OGG audio file? For example, to find out the pronounciation of Kauai, I had to google it to find out it's like Hawaii with a K. Ka-WHY-ee. Imperfect, but sufficient for someone just wanting to know how it sounds. TransUtopian 05:26, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
I propose that the line "Printable Version" is changed to "Printerfriendly version" or something simlar. "Printable" assumes that the normal page is theoretically impossible to print. → Aza Toth 01:46, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
We got a whole bunch of tags for bad images (like no license, with permission, no source, etc...). But we don't have a way of telling somebody who's uploaded something that it's ok legally. I propose that admins who are knowledgeable about copyright policy, have a system for marking images to say that they've been reviewed, and they're ok. This gives somebody valuable feedback on uploading. We could then recommend newbies not upload lots of images, until after their first uploads have been marked as "approved" (or whatever term we use). This also prevents duplicate work. It's obviously not possible to tag all images in Wikipedia as approved, but we could at least do it for new uploads, or images that for whatever reason, are subjected to review by admins (we have to check all images anyway). This is particularly needed for fairuse. As it seems you can always be told you're wrong, but you'll never be told you're right, in your understanding/interpretation of what's fairuse (of course an "approve" for fairuse means approved for a specific use, not any use). This could be implemented by putting a tag on the images, or it could be made by producing a huge list(s) of ok images (the advantage of a list, is that it can be protected, so only admins could update it). -- Rob 21:45, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Right now, I feel there is a gap in the WP admin procedures - a user must go through a process and show a high level of support (75-80% minimum) to become an admin, but once they are, unless they perform so egrigiously badly that they end up before the ArbCom, they are effectively forever safe from desysopping.
What I propose is a Requests for continuing adminship (WP:RFCA hereafter) page whereby admin terms would be fixed to one year, but with no limit on the number of consecutive terms they might serve. In every respect other than dealing with existing admins seeking reconfirmation (mostly to avoid swamping RFA), it would be identical to RFA, however, with particular view to maintaining the high threshold of support needed to become an admin (although, clearly, the scrutiny would be on the actual use/abuse of, or failure to use admin powers). The initial batch of RFCA would, of course, have to be staggered, with the earliest admins seeking reconfimation first and the newest last. A bot could be used, if desired, to remind the admistrators in question when their terms were coming to an end.
**EVERY** admin, without exception (another important point), would be required to seek reconfirmation yearly (a few enlightened admins have desysopped themselves to seek reconfirmation @ WP:RFA in the past - this would extend it to all admins as a feature), and any admin who was absent or otherwise refused to go through WP:RFCA would have their adminship automatically end after one year - although, of course, they would be free to go through the otherwise-identical process @ WP:RFA at a later date if they wished to become an admin once more.
Thoughts? - SoM 19:21, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
No. This has been proposed 100 times, I have done experiments with this on RFA, probably pissing off some bureaucrats in the process, I have discussed this with stewards cross project who explained that some wikis actually have this procedure and good admins really DO get voted out earlier while incompetent or inactive admins are kept. Long story short, This Does Not Work (tm). Kim Bruning 20:00, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Although there will be many supporters of a "good" admin, and comparitively few opposers (those who have been blocked or warned by the admin, etc) the threshold for RfA is about 85%, last time I checked. A far smaller group of "bad" users could easily throw the vote. So would the threshold change for confirmation votes? Would a no consensus result mean that the admin is kept, or is desysopped? It doesn't seem like these issues have been addressed. -- bainer ( talk) 00:01, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
On nl.wikipedia, a steward recently got deadminned by an "absolute majority" of around 20-30% :-P (nl.wikipedia does have actual voting, unlike (officially) en.wikipedia ) . Kim Bruning 12:57, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
I think another perennial proposal would be a better option - having a Requests for de-adminship would allow bad admins (who aren't necessarily blantatly violating policy to the extent that would get them to Arbcom, but are still bad nonetheless) to be removed, without having the 800+ reapplications problem that Raul654 mentioned. In other words, an admin would automatically get their adminship renewed every year unless a certain number of people objected (I know voting is evil, but having a specific number is necessary for this first step). If such an objection was lodged, then (and only then) the admin would have to go through RFA (which would guard against malicious nominations, since a good admin would get overwhelming support from the community). Cynical 10:55, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
This discussion might better take place on the Wikipedia:Admin accountability poll talk page? - brenneman {T} {L} 12:53, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
In the past two months I have seen a large number of WP:AFD debates on whether or not professors are notable. There is a proposed policy on criteria for including academics that, unfortunately, has received very little attention lately. I have been working on this recently, and I'd like to work on building a consensus and collecting comments from the community so that this guideline can eventually become an official guideline. So, I am posting here to appeal to the community: if you are interested in this issue, come, check out the guidelines, enter the discussions, et cetera. The guidelines are at Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion of biographies/Academics, with attached talk page. Also check out Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion of biographies/Academics/Precedents for an (incomplete) gathering of academic-related deletion debates. I'd also appreciate if someone could fill me in on how to go about making this guideline official once it's ready. Thanks! (feel free to contribute here if you want, but it would be more useful to contribute at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for inclusion of biographies/Academics.) Mangojuice 19:50, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
First, apologies in advance if this suggestion is a chestnut. I took a quick look through the perennial list, but didn't spot it. Apologies also in advance if the below is possible and I've missed the how-to.
I'd like to be able to set Wikipedia's watchlist function to monitor my user subpages without my having to add every subpage to my watchlist. In other words, I'd like to be able add something like User:David Kernow/* to my watchlist. Is this (easily) possible? Does the idea strike a chord or the like with anyone else?
Best wishes, David Kernow 15:28, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Have now found the above proposed (more or less) as an enhancement at bugzilla.wikipedia.org. David Kernow 18:41, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
is there one already? dunno if this is the place to post is but is there a good reason why there isn't an RSS feed of the main page? seems like it'd be a simple thing to do? does anyone read this? why isn't wikipedia super hooked up with rss feeds?
I'd like to propose the development of a vandalism logger. I imagine this would take the form of a tick box, which an editor can check off if they understand their correction as correcting vandalism. The idea is that we could have statistical archive that logs and ranks which sites are most vandalized. We could then also achieve some concept of how controversial an article is, or how trustworthy the article is. Sholto Maud 04:11, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Would it be possible to change the 'sign in/create account' link to say 'sign in / create account ( why?)' It would make it easier for curious anons to become aware of the advantages to creating an account, apart from being told or trying to create a new page. The more editors we can put a 'face' to, the better, right? -- Sam Blanning (formerly Malthusian) ( T | C | A ) 10:02, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
I think somewhere in the wiki-network, there should be a citation guide, explaining the citations for the different styles, and different media. I realize this would be a lot of work, but I think it's useful. I don't know if we're up to it. Clarkefreak ∞ 00:38, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm stunned on how far we can forget the primary goals when we get immersed into a good project. I've done this several times myself, caught myself going too far into a way because it sounds and look right, but I'm just forgetting what I was supposed to do in that project at first.
I feel like all wikimedia foundation projects are going that way today, specially when considering how difficult it might be to realize that deleting an article is just totally against any of the primary goals. And it happens for obvious reasons: there's no space for every single little thing.
Is that true?
The way wikipedia is done comes to avoid ambiguity in a very logical and simple way: there's a limit of characters, so all that's needed to do to keep it within the limits is calculating how much hardware space is needed to a certain number of total characters for any article. That will bring the theoretically infinite number to a real amount that we can deal with.
The vote for deletion attacks me so deeply in what I believe it's better for this community that I get even disturbed, so I might say things I don't want to, but the idea is just proposing to change the way articles get deleted. There are several things that could be done.
Please, refer to my user page to read the rest. I'm not sure where to put this suggestion (although I believe now the rright place is the Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)), and I'm getting tired of rewriting it. I just hope the right people can read and comment on. Thanks.
-- Cacumer 01:44, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Addressing your specific suggestions:
Sorry, did someone just say that Wikipedia is larger than Google? You have to be kidding. In what sense exactly do you mean "larger"? Dmharvey 02:51, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
I had this idea that instead of hiding article requests for comment, where they do seem a little out of the way, we bring them into the village pump. I'd like to propose Wikipedia:Village pump (articles), where people would post details regarding the dispute. I say this merely because when I've used RFC on articles it hasn't generated much interest, but when I've posted details to the pump I've seen good interest. Steve block talk 20:34, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Could I suggest that, for articles such as render layers, which are scary for newbies, there is simply a template {{overhaul}} to replace all the others? NB - I don't know if the expression overhaul is used in US English, it basically means practically redoing, or checking it in great detail.-- Keycard ( talk) 17:28, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
I think WP:SAND should redirect to Wikipedia:Sandbox, not to some obscure BJAODN page. Agree/disagree? Stephen Turner ( Talk) 10:55, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Currently all the lists of country-related topics at Category:Lists of country-related topics are incredibly disorganized, unkempt, and I would imagine largely unused. As CalJW put it on the talk page back in August last year, "they predate the category system, which was introduced in May 2004. Arguably they should be deleted now, as they do not get much attention." Couldn't every single on of the articles in this category be turned into a category itself, making the whole thing a lot more dynamic? Staxringold 03:30, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Not without going through AfD, and many people, myself included, would object, as categories and lists serve different functions. User:Zoe| (talk) 02:04, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
I was wondering whether there already exists a project that aims to attract professional photographers who can advertise their work by giving a small proportion of it away under an attribution license. And a picture bounty list to complement this? - Samsara ( talk • contribs) 20:24, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I think I have a way to (at least partially) satisfy both the people who are offended at images like the Muhammad cartoons and those who are consider removal of such images to be a violation of WP:NOT.
My idea is to tell users that if they think an image may be offensive to some people, or if they are offended by an image, they should relocate it below the fold -- that is, down far enough into an article so it would not show up immediately upon navigating to the page. The editor would then add a template like the following:
Note: This article contains an image of {{{potentially offensive image}}}. If you wish to read the article without seeing the image, please click here.
Clicking "here" would generate the same page without the image in question. We would need a change to the program that would allow for pages that are identical except for the inclusion or lack thereof of one image.
This would be a significant improvement from the current solution, which requires users to edit their monobook.css file (something most people don't know they have.)
Mwalcoff 04:57, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
This is what was done with Bahaullah, but it was rejected on the Muhammed cartoons controversy, as the cartoons themselves were the subject of the article, whereas the image of Bahaullah was not the subject of the article. User:Zoe| (talk) 17:24, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Similarly, I've been pondering what to do about Brazilfantoo ( talk · contribs) (and various IPs I suspect to be the same user), who has been uploading rafts of pictures of nude celebrities under fair use claims (explicit example: Image:Warrengmagazine5.jpg). I'm pretty firmly in the anti-censorship camp and don't have a problem with the autofellatio pictures and such in the appropriate articles, but I just consider most of these additions to the celebrity articles to be in poor taste. Obviously the "fair use" claims can be challenged for each individual picture, but I hate to look like a "censor" for being the one to pursue it. Does anyone have any suggestions for dealing with the situation overall? — Catherine\ talk 19:50, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Put potentially offensive or upsetting pictures on a subpage linked to the article? Regards, David Kernow 01:03, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Although advertisement is not allowed on Wikipedia, I propose that there is a special area where advertising is allowed. That way, people can advertise on Wikipedia, a popular website, for free. It should be linked to from the Village Pump, and maybe even the Main Page.
FLaRN2005 04:56, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Why should advertisers get free adspace in Wikipedia? It would just be unencyclapedic and silly, not to mention that this would severely hurt our credibilty. Deathawk 19:09, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Create a "wikiad" site on wikicities. Don't charge anything for it, and then ads can be ported their, or deleated and a link could be placed on the page to direct recreates to the wikiad site. Would that work?-- Rayc 16:10, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Advertisements would make the use of "fair use" content legally questionable. Also note that the ad content would have to be licensed under the GFDL, or Wikipedia loses its license to use most of its own content. -- Nagle 19:47, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Such an area would endanger Wikipedia's image. Plus, it would waist bandwidth if it were even used. Several good points have also been mentioned above. Thus, not a good idea. ~Linuxerist L / T 07:45, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
New users can't move articles, but they can create them. Often on Special:Newpages you'll see new users accidentally create their first article with a mistaken title, and they're frustrated that they can't then move it to the correct title.
I propose an exception allowing new users to move the pages they create. Melchoir 04:59, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm not an administrator and cannot change the common.css file, but I would like to propose a change. Including the line
span.texhtml { font-family: sans-serif; }
Will cause LaTeX code rendered as HTML to be the same size as code that was written in HTML in the first place. It will make mathematics articles easier to read. What do you think? -- mets501 22:34, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Exactly what problem are we trying to solve here? Ingoolemo talk 22:26, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
OK, let me clarify. Previously, with the old rendering (before the change which just happened), if a mathematical formula was written in LaTeX, but rendered as HTML because of the user's preferences, it was smaller (or a different font which looked smaller) than formulas that were written in HTML in the first place. Implementing this change allows all formulas rendered as HTML to appear the same size to the user no matter if they were written in LaTeX or HTML. Hope this clarifies. -- mets501 22:36, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
So why is math text rendered to look different than html text? On many browsers not only they have different font, but also different size. It does not make sense to me. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 00:41, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm not familiar with the way math is rendered, but this sounds like a workaround for a purpose-built behaviour. The correct action is to determine if there's a good reason for this behaviour, and not, then fix it at the root in the LaTeX rendering engine, rather than overriding it in the style sheet. — Michael Z. 2006-03-15 02:01 Z
Omegatron and I have been discussing this, and we both think it would be a good idea to have browser specific fonts when rendering HTML from LaTeX code. This is because on different browsers the differences between LaTeX rendered as HTML and the rest of the article is drastically different. For example, on Firefox, the current settings look fine. However, on IE the serif fonts which the LaTeX is rendered in look much different and smaller than the rest of the text. What does everyone think? -- Mets501 talk 15:21, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Barely in the start-up phase yet; I've posted a few early suggestions on the talk page. Anyone who's interested is welcome to join and help! =] Cheers, — Nightst a llion (?) 10:36, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
I wish to bring to general attention the problem of the exploding backlog at Wikipedia:Cleanup. Cleanup is broken, and Wikipedia:Cleanup process is too slow. The backlog of articles piling up on [[Category:Cleanup by month]] is threatening the quality of Wikipedia as a whole. To solve this problem, it is proposed that cleanup articles be sent to relevant WikiProjects by a process similar to WikiProject Stub sorting.
Please read the evidence, along with full details of a proposed remedy, at Wikipedia:Cleanup process/Cleanup sorting proposal, and comment or suggest other options. Alba 05:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Hey all! I'm proposing that we insert CSS code that would allow one to add the coordinate link of any location to the header of the article. This is already common place in the German Wikipedia, as shown here: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City. I'm told that the code would be pretty easy to impliment. There are numerous benefits to this tool and I think the German wiki has benefited. Please reply to this if you are in support...and if you're not, please give a reason :) BTW, the template for this ( Template:CoorHeader) was simply transferred from the German wiki to English, so the coding might change. Sean WI 03:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
{{ CoorHeader}} is getting polished and is pretty much ready for use. It doesn't require any changes to the site-wide CSS code. However, I think people will react badly if they start seeing people unilaterally deciding that there's a new standard, especially since it's so visible in the affected articles. So, the proposal is now that this template becomes standard (as it is at de.wikipedia). The question is, can this proposal get enough support to make that happen? — Saxifrage ✎ 08:06, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Just set this up as a project of similar scope to the stub sorting project. Participants welcome. The first task is probably to trawl through the portal space and see what's in there, see Wikipedia Talk:WikiProject Portals for more details. Steve block talk 11:18, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
Please note there is a proposal for portal creation guidelines at Wikipedia:Portal/Proposals. Comments and discussion welcome on the talk page. Steve block talk 19:36, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
I have made a proposal on Category talk:Articles that need to be wikified that the category should be split into seperate month categories like Category:Cleanup by month. I don't think anyone watches that page so I thought I'd mention it here. thanks. Martin 10:44, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
I propose a template {{Reply|User|Header}}:
to be used on talk pages to indicate where a message should be replied (see Wikipedia:Talk_pages) -- Fast e n talk| med 20:30, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
The main complaint against Wikipedia is lack of expertise (see Time article on Wikipedia and Larry Sanger).
To improve this, I suggest that there be a campaign or at least a readily available template which can easily be posted in talk pages which reminds people of the basic NPOV policy: write in proportion to the representation of the experts in the field. Then it should contain the steps to proceed: (a) identify the experts, (b) analyze and rank their expertise (there is also a list of this how to find out the expertise in the NPOV tutorial), (c) proceed in citing more the topmost experts, then the others.
It's a very simple template but with a lot of advantages: this will enormously help end many NPOV disputes. People usually forget these elementary rules. A template is an excellent reminder so people do not waste energy fighting but can work with more harmony using the First Things First habit. And most important of all, Wikipedia will really be of the highest quality, because people are focused on getting the works of the people of the highest expertise. Ran9876 06:34, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
I propose having two versions of the wikipedia page. Include a link in the main page that forwards the user to a version of the whole site with relevant adwords along the top or the side or something. Allow users to bookmark this site so they can use that version of the site all the time if they want to.
This way, people have a choice, ads or no ads. Wikpedia would be funded and everybody would be happy. Danny Beardsley 03:31, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
The thing is why would an adword company want to fund a site with a no ad version? I mean after awhile I suspect they would start to relize what's going on. Deathawk 16:19, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Oppose There are all sorts of "thin edge of the wedge" type of reasons, but in a practical sense, I think ads, and particularly AdWords-style text ads, undermine the encyclopedia using experience. The very fact of contextual, keyword-determined ads is a distraction to readers. They are designed to draw you from the chosen subject matter, to advertiser sites. It sets up an unwanted choice: do you click a wikilink to a related topic, or an ad to a related advertiser site? Some people don't even critically distinguish between AdWords and other links, they're just more possible links off a page. Selling reader attention and interest is not IMO harmonious with the larger goals of a free and open repository of knowledge. -- Tsavage 21:35, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
I really don't like that the citations for an article are scattered about throughout the article's source code. The new footnoting system has a lot of shortcomings:
I think the software should be changed so that the context of each reference is centralized in the actual References section, and the context of each particular fact is near that fact ("this fact is from page 34 of reference 2", etc.)
An additional idea is that when the references are generated, the "fact references" are a sublist of each list reference element:
References
I've written it up (with a more detailed example) here: m:Talk:Cite/Cite.php#A different idea. Please comment. The chief objection so far is that the subreference styling wouldn't be consistent with the Chicago Manual of Style. — Omegatron 18:08, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
My objections to the chicago manual of style objection: 1. wikipedia is not paper. 2. appeal to authority is a logical fallacy, and a sucky one at that. who cares if it's not in a book? is that the point? the question really should be "is it helpful to the reader?" Kevin Baas talk 20:13, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
<ref>Doe, ''My Book'', 57.</ref>
and <ref name="Doe">p. 57.</ref>
. So why exactly is it necessary to force an inflexible, non-standard style on everyone?
Kirill Lok
s
hin 20:15, 25 March 2006 (UTC)Hmm, regarding
Forcing the bulk of citation information to the bottom of the article is not new. There are many pages that already use a slightly different manner of referencing. Since this is not new, it cannot be called an advantage. well if the footnotes are done "properly" in the first place, then how is this even an issue? However, most of the references are not done "properly" in the first place, because as the mechanism works now, it's an obstacle(distraction) to writting prose, which is fairly volatile in the first place. And to be clear, noone is forcing anything. One is simply suggesting to offer a tool that people can use if they want to, and not use if they don't. Tools are by their nature inflexible. That is what makes them usefull. (for instance, a clock tells time because the duration of its seconds are inflexible.) That it is not "standard"? It could very well become standard, depending on how often it is used. But what is neccessarily objectionable about this? With practical matters, we are concerned with practical considerations, not abstract notions. Kevin Baas talk 22:16, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
I don't see any reason why this cannot be retained. Kevin Baas talk 22:32, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
The sky is blue.<ref>Jones, 32.</ref><ref>Smith, 29.</ref><ref>Doe, 238.</ref>
. This produces three superscript numbers at the end of the sentence, which isn't very neat. In the existing system, we can combine the notes (The sky is blue.<ref>Jones, 32; Smith, 29; Doe, 238.</ref>
), but this wouldn't work under the new system, since the note would then need to be triple-filed under each of the three sources.There remains an issue of consistency. It would be nice if users could choose how they want references/notes to be rendered, in their user prefences, like is done for date and time. (this would only work w/new format references) Kevin Baas talk 22:55, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
I know this might require excessive work on WP, but it can be set as a preference to view WP either in US or UK spelling to suit the preferences of some. It can, as always, be set in the Preferences menu, just like the dates. This can remove the need to revert edits of those who change the spelling of an article which is, say, written in USA or countries that use the US system or all about the United States. Do you agree? -- Bruin rrss23 (talk) 02:42, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
Proposal: add random featured article and good article in Navigation Box.
Why?
I went ahead and added a link to Wikipedia:Featured articles to the Navigation bar ( Mediawiki:Sidebar). If we want to use WP:FC (which I had never seen before just now) or some other more complicated option, we can of course change it. Dragons flight 00:28, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
Dear Editors and Administrators,
Often there is an article on a topic in one language but not in another, but Wikipedia does not tell its readers this. e.g., while reading History of Serbia there was a red link to Vlastimir, which means that you do not have an article on it. After some searching, however, I found that you actually have two articles on it, one in German at de:Vlastimir. But in most cases you do not know how to look for an article in another language, because it is usually spelt differently.
My suggestion is this: that for such topics where an article does exist in a different language from the one they are using, that you make this clear, so that when a reader clicks on the red link (or does a search) and is directed to the "Article not found" page, that you add a note on that page saying "however, the article you request IS available in the following languages," and you give a list of the links to those. Because after all, most people using the internet do speak a foreign language.
I hope my suggestion has been of use to you. Thank you for your attention.
Yours,
--Nic (a great fan of Wikipedia) 82.198.250.5 18:20, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
One could translate the article that is being looked for, search for the translation on other wikis. It would be nice if by a red link, there would be superscripts to other language articles, like this fr ge And possibly, in combination with #Port to other languages via google translator or similiar utility, those articles could be run through a translator). Kevin Baas talk 20:33, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
I find that most of these are used to post baseless negative opinions about something. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yngwie_malmsteen#Criticism is largely just a bash towards him. I have seen this in many other entries as well, but this is what seems to be the most blatant example of this. Is this allowed, and if so, why? — Preceding unsigned comment added by The Arch0wl ( talk • contribs)
In addition to Wikipedia:Verifiability see also Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Wikipedia:Words to avoid#Article structures which can imply a view may also address the issue. Hyacinth 09:23, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
It is well known that the en.wikipedia is at this time the best one. Most of articles in other wikipedias are worse written then in English version. Having a link to English wikipedia helps non-English wikipedia users in several cases:
As there exist articles without links to any of other wikipedias (specially to the English one) it would be nice to have a tool for quick finding such articles, moreover it would be convenient to have a list for a requested category. Then each expert would be able to add lasting translations according to its field of interest.
I believe such a tool would improve a work on non-English wikipedias. Do you agree? Please let me know if such stuff exists. kuszi 01:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC).
"Most of articles in other wikipedias are worse written then in English version." A comment like that is very POV and wouldn't be allowed in an article. How can you then say that? Most? No, you have to say what % and say the source. Or else I could just as well say that en.wikipedia is huge, but % of quality articles for each 10,000 articles is higher in the smaller wikipedias. Just a different opinion. No way now to give more weight to your comment over mine now (in the absence of real data). -- Anagnorisis 02:22, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
I started a thread below, before reading this, that I think is an extension of this one: #Port to other languages via google translator or similiar utility. Kevin Baas talk 20:34, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
Would remove the need to manually click there prior to entering text. Another user suggested that this was discussed before but remained as it is so that users 'would not need to have use of a mouse'. Having the cursor default to the search box doesn't discriminate does it?! Bswee 23:46, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
The new References tags are amazing, a godsend even. Is it possible to have a separate tag for footnotes, though? I've seen some articles use the <ref> tags for notes, but then that means that either you can't have references, or notes and references are jumbled together. By making footnoting automatic, it would make some things - like footnoting a huge table ( *cough*) - much easier to handle. Any thoughts? Since we already have <references>, adding <footnotes> (with the corresponding tag being <note>, a la <ref>) shouldn't be too difficult. In fact, I think this is an awesome enough idea to beg for it. Please! ;) I mean, really, what's needed? Copy and paste some code, change ref to note, and voila. Instant HTML tags. Well, not quite, since it should probably do a superscript number without brackets? I dunno, do something to make it look different from footnotes, which are presently superscripted [1], [2], etc. thoughts? Apologies for rambling, it IS 4am and I meant to be in bed 3 hours ago. -- Golbez 09:04, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
On March 26th a Wikipedia appears with a new look: links are underlined, bullets are different, images are placed on different places. Also the navigation/search/toolbox bar is different. Of these - the different format of bullets/image location is making MANY articles to look WORSE than before. Not to mention that blue+underline is giving a much more "overcrowded" look to the links than the original wikipedia-blue-only. Let's revert to the regular style? Alinor 20:22, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
Have anyone have had a thought why you cant enter an edit summary when your are using section=new on submit? → A z a Toth 20:00, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
I've just been glancing through the Manual of Style, and found that it's got at least 100 pages altogether. These, I feel, should be kept separate from the Wikipedia: namespace, since they're really different. Any opinions?-- Keycard ( talk) 08:24, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.
< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212
I was going through the article Progressivism. The external links section of the article has links to a number of websites which are of activist nature. I am sure there are a number of other articles also in wikipedia with the same problem. I was thinking of creating a template which warns users that these websites may be of impartial nature. This template would be a special case of Template:Disputed-section template. The text should be something like
Suggestions on alternate wording is also welcome.
I would also like to know whether any template of this nature exists currently?
I suggest the following for the set:
"Religious orientation" is not the same as "religion", etc. For instance, I have a website with astrophotographs and for each image there is a Bible quote. The site URL deliberately gives no hint that the site has a strong religious orientation. Many people have personal or small-business websites with strong religious orientation even though the site deals with something else.
"Potentially disgusting" would be equivalent to the warning many TV news programs give, "Certain viewers may find these images quite upsetting."
I would not use the title "disturbing" because that is too vague. The criterion for such a tag would be something like, "Many persons of average sensibilities would find the material disgusting or highly objectionable and emotionally quite disturbing. Examples include video clips of major surgery, autopsy images, close-up images of major wounds, severe disfigurements, detailed descriptions of a sexual assault or gruesome crime."
I posted this message on Template_talk:Protected nearly a month ago, and there has been zero comments, so I'm posting it to get some attention.
I propose using a smaller version of this box, which could be placed floating at the right side on the article.
Example:
Bush, a member of the Republican Party, was elected 46th Governor of Texas in 1994 and was re-elected in 1998. From there, he moved on to win the nomination of the Republican Party for the 2000 presidential race and ultimately defeated Democratic Vice President Al Gore in a particularly close and controversial [1] general election. In 2004, Bush was elected to a second term, defeating Democratic Senator John Kerry. This term will expire January 20, 2009. |
The See why link would direct the user to the article's Discussion page, where he or she would find the full explanation box for the article's protection, as well as helpful links on what to do.
What does anyone think about this? Is it preferably to have a little box in the main article, and then the full box in the Talk page? I mean, do we really need this. Comments? — Cantus… ☎ 10:41, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to invite everyone to participate in the Wikipedia:Featured Music Project. The Featured Music Project is an attempt to improve a large number of articles on musicians to make them ready to be a featured article. To sign up, put your name under one (or more) of the eight categories on the status page, such as the discography, format and style or lead section. No more than once a month, you'd be given an article which is getting close to being ready for WP:FAC, and is only deficient in a few categories. You'd do what you can in the section you signed up for (and, of course, anything else you like). If a couple of people specialize in each category, we should be able to take some concrete steps towards improvement on a wide range of articles. In addition, you can sign up as a "shepherd" to take articles that meet all the criteria through a peer review and (hopefully) successful candidacy. If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a note on my talk page, or on the FMP talk page. Tuf-Kat 06:21, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
More than 90% of our articles don't have any references. I'd like to make a new proposal. Wikipedia:Wikiproject Reader. The aim is to help deliver on our promise of verifiability. Right now it's a proposal since I would like to get some feedback, but if you like the idea you can start right away. Mozzerati 15:06, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Certain articles, e.g., Messianic Judaism and Intelligent Design have constant POV problems. (Most involve religion in some way, although that is not relevant.) I am proposing a POV-related template along these lines:
Caution: Despite diligent efforts by various editors and administrators, this article routinely has severe POV problems. The reader is advised to check additional sources for a balanced view. |
RickReinckens 23:54, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
At the moment the order of the "in other languages" on each page is vastly different. We need a standard consistent order of all other languages, in every language wikipedia, which could be as follows:
At the moment as I see it, the order is mainly English alphabetical order of the language name, with non-Latin language names being inserted mainly according to the domain name but not always. This really doesn't make any sense. Any suggestions? 219.77.98.122 10:19, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
This: •Has probably been suggested before, and •Is probably in the wrong place. Nonetheless, I feel that the contributions page needs a new feature, namely a way to check the status of your edits. I at least expected that the "diff" link would show me the diff from my edit to present. It doesn't, and I can't find any better way to do that than to tediously go through the history looking for my name. Ug. The main reason I Watch a page is to see if a) anyone has changed my change or b) anyone has replied to my comment on a Talk page. There should be much easier ways to do these things.
Would it be okay to add the following to MediaWiki:Common.css? –
pre { overflow-x: auto; overflow-y: visible; }
This would keep long lines of code from adding horizontal scrollbars on large pages (for example WP:AN/I on occasion) and would instead add horizontal scrollbars directly to the PRE'd text.
To see this in action for yourself, simply add the line above to your userspace CSS override, then go to User:Locke Cole/Sandbox and scroll down to the "PRE test" section. Please respond at MediaWiki talk:Common.css. — Locke Cole • t • c 06:26, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
A long time ago (February 2004), someone added "Subject to disclaimers" to {{ GFDL}}. Because the GFDL mandates that any disclaimers posted with a copyright notice must be preserved, it has been the considered legal opinion of Wikipedia that this disclaimer notice cannot be removed from any image on which it has been applied. (See for example: Template_talk:GFDL#Subject_to_disclaimers.21.3F).
However, the notice would appear to imply that anyone reusing the image must provide not only a full copy of the GFDL text but also a copy of Wikipedia:General disclaimer and all its subpages. This situation is at best awkward and significantly compounds the amount of material that a print reuser would be required to provide, thus making our GFDL images less free by imposing a greater burden on reusers. Note that neither Commons, nor any other Wikipedia (to my knowledge) has such a disclaimer notice in their copyright template. In particular Commons has been forced to create both Commons:Template:GFDL and Commons:Template:GFDL-en so as to have a special GFDL template that preserves our disclaimer notice, which is just plain dumb and compounds the risk that images migrated to Commons will be incorrectly categorized.
I would like to put an end to the further propogation of this situation.
As such I proposed the following:
Obviously this won't remove the disclaimer text from the bazillion images that already have it, but it should stop that text from propagating any further. In my mind this sort of correction should have happened long ago.
Thoughts?
Dragons flight 18:31, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure if we are allowed to do that. Wikipedia:Copyrights also explicitly mentions these disclaimers. Looks like it's intentional. Lupo 09:12, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
I have gone ahead with the simple part of the plan and created {{ GFDL-no-disclaimers}} and Category:GFDL images without disclaimer to use with newly uploaded images. If I am somehow wrong about all this, then these can be easily reverted/redirected (it is infinitely easier to add disclaimers back then to remove them). But then I am quite confident that it makes sense for this Wikipedia, Commons, and all the others to share the same licensing terms.
Now comes the hard part, there are only ~75000 pages to convert from {{ GFDL}} to {{ GFDL-with-disclaimers}} in order to free up Template:GFDL for the no disclaimers version of the tag. If there are more comments about this, now would be a good time, before the heavy lifting. Dragons flight 03:37, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
I think we need to just go ahead and depreciate the use of {{ GFDL}} on enwiki in favor of getting people over to the commons. As it stand today there is an apalling amount of copyright violations tagged as {{ GFDL}} on enwiki. Any proposal to fix the tagging of GFDL images on enwiki is going to have to deal with the fact that in a large number of cases the tag was added long after the image was uploaded by someone other then the uploader, who probably never even spoke with the uploader. This has happened due to a misguided line of reasoning that goes something like "If the uploader of this untagged image was the copyright holder they agreed to place it under the GFDL based on the text of our upload page, or at least intended to place it in the GFDL because Wikipedia is GFDLed. If the uploader was not the uploader they probably violated copyright law in uploading the image. Since we assume good faith, I must accept the first theory and reject the second. Thus it is okay to slap a GFDL tag on this. Q.E.D.". This has resulted in some pretty outragious violations on enwiki in this category, and any sort of mindless retagging could only make it worse. In other cases the uploader is just wrong, yet no one has called him on it and... sometimes it appears there is just wishful thinking about the identity of the copyright holder. We need a cleanup, but if we're going to do one we might as well move the images over to the commons. Commons suffers from the same kind of nonsense but its far less widespread. -- Gmaxwell 05:22, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
I previously posted this to the help desk, hoping this feature was already available, but it looks like it's not.
Suppose I read a Wikipedia article A. I open a link from A to another article B, in a different browser tab (or window), then I close A. Later, after reading other stuff, I go to the other tab and read article B, and I forgot how and why I got there (especially when a redirect and/or pipe is involved). Is there a way to use the http referer field (or some other means) for giving me a link back to the article where I "came from" (A in this case)?
There are actually two ways I can suggest for accomplishing this. One is actually using the "Referer" http header, possibly checking that it's a Wikipedia article. Another one is adding a reference to the current article in the querystring for every link (e.g. the link from Wikipedia to encyclopedia could use a URL like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia?referer=Wikipedia). I would prefer the first approach.
Either way, I suggest that the link should be placed in the toolbox on the left side on every page.
Aditsu 18:18, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Would it be possible to lock the page of the 1,000,000th page to prevent vandalism? Administrators could do edits and suggestions for improvements could be given on the discussions page? Right now it is being vandalized due to the attention given it. / MoRsΞ 14:36, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
We should have this, because many of the arts articles on Wikipedia need work. Osbus 23:17, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
I am thinking that someone should get the Wikipedia ESBNs. Would it be possible for some kind of adjustment to be made in the code to support ESBN? Anyway, just your thoughts. Thanks! Compu terjoe 19:13, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
I noticed that on articles like Lilium, where one of the other language Wikipedias have a Featured Article about the topic, the FA barnstar appears before the link. This puts the link text out of alignment with the other links in the list; would it be desirable to change the CSS so that the barnstar replaces the list bullet, rather than being added on next to it? Phoenix-forgotten 08:51, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
Just a quick suggestion.. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of people like myself, who having a general interest in everything, enjoy passing the time by using the 'random article' menu option and seeing what fascinating snippets wikipedia will throw at you. The problem however is that 80% of the time it just returns small articles with minimal information (stubs?) or disambiguation pages etc. It would be nice if the pool of articles from which the random feature chooses from was restricted to perhaps a 500 character minimum or some other restriction that increases the chance that the article you are presented with contains something of interest. As a side benefit it may reduce the load on your servers slightly as there might be less consecutive requests for random articles if it returns more interesting results.
The number of articles at Special:Statistics is getting closer and closer to an exciting number that we have less than 13,000 to go before we can reach!
Another number also kept track is not far behind, the number of registered users. It is getting big too quickly, many of which want to register so that they can have the right to move pages by vandalism. I think there needs to be some way to allow this to be altered so that it will not include indefinitely blocked users. Georgia guy 19:53, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Is there any chance of, in the future, login with the same user-name in different languages without having to create a new account for each and every language that I want to login to? As it is, if I want to see whether there is an "orange" message, I would have to log into each language account to see whether there was one. DanielDemaret 17:43, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Ive read in the guidelines, that in addition to wikipedia policy, content is limited by the censorship laws in florida. A summary of these laws could be very helpful to contributors. Crippled Sloth#
1,000,000 articles is coming up fast and IMO it'd be nice to change the logo for this very special occasion. Here is a very rough mockup of an idea I had for the logo:
Noclip 02:13, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
I like this logo Gerard Foley 17:53, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
Soliciting comments on Meta about m:Annotation. Essentially, once implemented, it will be a tool that will let you view the wikitext of any article and see who wrote what and when (on a word by word basis). There are a few crucial interface issues that need to be resolved, no developing experience necessary! Please comment. — Ambush Commander( Talk) 21:32, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
It's an exciting idea, Edward; I look forward to seeing how you work out the details. I don't know how you will decide where to start the annotating process -- not all bits of text will have a clear "starting place" in the revision history. But those details are yours to sort out -- you're asking about input and output
Ideally, I'd want to be able to click-and-drag to select text, then hit a button or choose a command from a right-click menu to submit that text to the tool. Given that there's no other click-and-drag function on Wikipedia (yet), the next best thing would be to be able to copy and paste a selection into a text box -- perhaps something down below the "Save Page" buttons and such, or in a pop-up window or new window or tab.
It's hard to visualize the output (which is why you're asking, I'm sure). I see perhaps three options. The first would break the output into color-coded rows based on editor. The second would be the same, sorted by date of edit instead of order of text (eek, sounds confusing). Something like this:
Text: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
Text | Editor | Date/Time (sort by) | Edit summary |
---|---|---|---|
The | added by User:CatherineMunro | June 14, 2003 | Brevity is wit. |
quick brown | added by User:Ambush Commander | April 15, 2004 | Adjectives are good for the soul. |
fox jumped over the | added by User:CatherineMunro | June 14, 2003 | Brevity is wit. |
lazy | added by User:Ambush Commander | April 22, 2004 | Forgot an adjective |
dog. | added by User:CatherineMunro | June 14, 2003 | Brevity is wit. |
The third option would be more like a sequence of diffs, sorted by date. With a large text this could obviously get quite long and complex. (Having spent the time to lay this out, I like this one better.)
Edit | Editor | Date/Time | Edit summary |
---|---|---|---|
The fox jumped over the dog. | added by User:CatherineMunro | June 14, 2003 | Brevity is wit. |
The quick brown fox jumped over the dog. | added by User:Ambush Commander | April 15, 2004 | Adjectives are good for the soul. |
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. | added by User:Ambush Commander | April 22, 2004 | Forgot an adjective |
I'm sure there are other ways, but that's what I've come up with so far. This doesn't deal with the subtleties of deletions, reversions, spelling corrections and such; it would just show the most recent editor to be responsible for a given word or phrase. Who gets credit/blame for a word if a later editor only adds a missing letter? Would there be any way to tell that there had been a previous editor who inserted that word?
I think it would be a necessity to provide links to the actual revisions or diffs to allow people to explore history more thoroughly, and to explain how the mechanism works so that faulty attributions are harder to make.
Let me know what you think. — Catherine\ talk 07:19, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
On the issue of dealing with reverts: how about you add a "reversion to version X" flag to page versions? If someone saved an out-of-date version of a page, the software could check the diff of those two versions, and if it turned out to be zero, the flag would be added. It would also, of course, be added to every admin rollback. This wouldn't be that computationally expensive (you could even drop the diff part, really), and your annotation thingy could just skip any edits that were reverted in figuring out who did what. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 03:44, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
A way to find out the number of views of any individual article would, I think, be interesting and encourage contributions. I don't think it ought to be anything up-front displayed to all users but rather something that an editor could, if he so wanted, could get to on some backend page. I don't know how much stress this would put on the servers. - Centrx 16:34, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
The official vote on the proposed main page redesign, for replacing the current main page, has started and will end at 23:59 UTC, March 18, 2006. - Kmf164 ( talk | contribs) 02:08, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Hello. I think that maybe there should be some censorship for Wikipedia, or at least some sort of icon saying that there might be some inappropriate language or pictures in a specific section or page, because I know a fair amount of children use Wikipedia. Thanks for reading this.
Red Alien | 19:35, March 2 2006
Oh, OK, then. Sorry... I'm just new here...
Red Alien 19:40, March 2 2006
Children grow up fast these days...what age group are you speaking about? Because if you are thinking of the 13+ demographic, I'm not sure some inappropriate language/pictures would affect them much. Osbus 01:53, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm sort of talking about 8-10 year olds. I do know that a lot of 8-10 year olds use Wikipedia. I know that 13+ year olds aren't really affected by language, but 8-10 year olds may be... Red Alien| 19:35, March 3 2006
it strikes me as odd that the games in the hitman series do not have separate pages. i may be wrong, but it seems obvious that more information on these games could be conveyed if they only had individual pages. please donate opinions. 86.135.228.177 16:09, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Is there some sort of way to educate people on when to use italics for movies, books, short stories, and CD titles? I find it really quite irksome when I come to a page and find that things aren't italicized when they should be (it's especially true with CD titles.) Now, obviously this isn't as pressing a matter as formulating a definitive policy on censorship, but I'd still like to see something done about the lack of italicization. Perhaps some sort of bot? Maybe a reference page? I mean, there's obviously always the option of correcting these italicization problems as you come across them, but even then, I don't see any sort of movement to do so. Just a thought (and some bitchin' about a peeve.) -- 66.229.183.101 07:29, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
When inserting thumbnails, sizes should not be used (unless there is a special reason for using them), because otherwise the preferences for them have no effect. The Adept 19:59, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Is anyone interested in a Wikiproject devoted to creating and improving articles related to Austin, Texas? I love this city and would love to have a team to collaborate with on articles about it! There are a lot of places, people, events, and businesses in Austin which are notable but not yet represented in Wikipedia, or whose articles are stubs. Thoughts? I have also mentioned this on Category talk: Austin, Texas. Kit O'Connell ( Todfox: user / talk / contribs) 23:54, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm a little hesitant to point this out, because of the huge mess it has the potential to become, so please try not to create a big clutter over a small issue. Wikipedia's tagline is currently:
Our slogan is "The Free Encyclopedia that anyone can edit", and this is what is listed on the Main Page:
Some have proposed that we change the tagline to match the slogan, to make the source of our articles a little more obvious to newcomers. It's not something to be ashamed of and hide behind links that the casual Google reader won't ever see, etc. Jimbo said:
Another similar proposal is:
Others say we should leave the tagline as it is, for tradition's sake. There is a straw poll about these three variants on MediaWiki talk:Tagline.
A similar proposal got really huge and didn't accomplish anything, so please make your comments brief and don't add 500 alternative taglines that only vary by one word. — Omegatron 15:42, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
There is already a preference to show a certain amount of edits in the Recent Changes special page, so why isn't there such a preference for other special pages, like Contributions and What links here? My proposal is basically to make such an option (in preferences) for as many special pages as possible. -- Y Ynhockey || Talk Y 22:02, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Nevermind, I think that option already does that. I still propose that it be made more clear though. -- Y Ynhockey || Talk Y 20:36, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I find RfCs far too complex and formal. I suggest they are made more like RfAs. I propose for user conduct RfCs a new layout. Depending on your opinions and suggestions on the proposal of simplication, I'd be more than happy to design this. Compu terjoe 20:36, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
I believe Google does something like this. One of the biggest complaints about Wikipedia is that because anyone can edit it, articles could be rife with errors. I do not find this to be a problem with large, high-traffic articles such as World War II or something along those lines. The risk of bias is far higher, however, with more obscure articles created by one person with an axe to grind that may sit up there for a while before an accuracy-conscious editor looks it over.
I think a ranking system would deal with this problem and warn people of dubious articles while reassuring them of articles that are well-kept and accurate. My personal system is to look at an article's discussion page. If it has even a moderately long one, it's a pretty safe article. Those with short or no discussion pages I am wary of and on the lookout for errors. I don't know if the ranking system should follow this pattern or if users who visit the page could vote on it. Maybe an article should have a low ranking for sheer lack of votes.
What do you all think? Wouldn't an article-ranking system dramatically improve the trustability of Wikipedia as a whole? I can't imagine that it would be that difficult of an improvement. Aplomado 02:13, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi I created an entry for the First Earl of Clancarty today and tried to edit the entry for The Second Earl of Clancarty as I have distant connection with this family so I have become familiar with their details. I hope no one minds, I hope I did okay as I'm new to Wikipedia though I heard about the project before and was recommended by a friend from Thenewscentre.com. as an exciting project. Please let me know if you have any grounds for objections. I hope to create a piece on Cambrio-Normans in due course. Newsgirl 22:48, 7 March 2006 (UTC)Newsgirl
Hi there I have done editting on Joseph Ransohoff, who was my grandfather. There is no conflict of interest as long as you keep your edits NPOV. I have had no issues with my article. It definitely helps if you cite your sources though, just like anywhere on the Wikipedia. Welcome to Wikipedia. Kit O'Connell ( Todfox: user / talk / contribs) 23:55, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi. I was just wondering, whenever someone clicks the button to add a new section to a talk page, it always puts spaces between the == and == rather than ==and== which is all that Wikipedia requires to read it anyway, It also puts a line after it, but you don't need that either.
Since it's adding characters Wiki doesn't need to read (or really, to navigate the source), have they considered removing that from the function? Tyciol 03:31, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
A lot of contention is over whether or not topics that are of great interest to a certain, limited geographical area belong in the general Wikipedia. Perhaps a solution to this would be to, in addition to the main Wikipedia, have regional Wikipedias (perhaps per-state in the US, per-province elsewhere, etc.) that are dedicated to content solely of interest to that region.
And a hierarchy could develop--for instance, each US State Wikipedia could have several per-county Wikipedias under it for topics of interest solely to that county.
This could also resolve a lot of the friction over whether or not to include schools--no one can doubt that a given school is notable WITHIN ITS OWN COMMUNITY. So schools that aren't especially notable for some other reason (famous alumnus, originator of some trend that spread nationwide, etc.) and would possibly get deleted in the main article namespace (although lately they haven't, thankfully--I hold that everything that exists deserves an article) could instead be created within the regional Wikipedia.
There's nothing technically stopping me from doing it now, but I'd like some input nonetheless. Kurt Weber 18:38, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
I can understand having the tag on the main page, but is it really necessary in the title? You don't see microsoft putting "Microsoft.com, software maker". on every page they have! -- Naelphin 23:34, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi I editted the 2nd Earl of Clancarty , What happened to it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Newsgirl ( talk • contribs)
I have made a suggestion at WikiProject Science and wonder what the users of this page think. -- Oldak Quill 17:05, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I would like to make a proposal for a new feature in Wikipedia which as far as I have been able to tell is not available yet.
In the past I have often looked up recently deceased public figures to see if any articles about these people were updated yet. So far I have never found an article to be out of date. This proves to me that Wikipedia is kept current enough for an obituary service to be implemented. One could go to Wikipedia on a daily basis and check out what obituaries are posted. If someone has recently died that is not listed, users could then update the wiki themselves. I believe it would be a great service and could create a lot of repeat traffic as people get into the habit of checking the wiki obits on a daily basis.
Of course the biographies on Wikipedia would have to be set up with some identifiable field that denotes dates of birth and if necessary, death. I have no idea if this sort of mechanism is in place as of now.
Michael Selby (MLSelby) - March 9, 2006
-- MLSelby 20:05, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Next to the 12 buttons found above the editor (Bold, Itals, Internal link, etc.), I would like to see a button or dropdown or some similar tool to add common templates. This would allow users to quickly add template messages and the like. Perhaps a dropdown something like the following; clicking on an item would bring up a small window with relevant templates:
-- Jonathan Kovaciny 16:14, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Hey, we have a problem with Template:Future tvshow, the problem arises because thier is no distinction between upcoming tv series, and upcoming tv episodes, this is problematic because the category for said template is currently a mix of upcoming television series and upcoming television episodes. To remedy this I recomend we create Template:Future tvepisode or even Template: Future tvsseries so we can more easily distinguish between the two. Deathawk 14:47, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Hello, first of all, let me thank you for your wonderful Wikipedia! I find it very helpful!
I've got an proposal concerning linking between the wikipedia pages - i find very distractful to read a page with lots of emphasized links, eg. in the text on Microcanonical ensemble: "..is the simplest of the *ensembles* of *statistical mechanics*.."
I thought that it would be easy to add an option on the left bar, which would enable using another stylesheet, which would make the links look like an ordinary text. Technicaly this should not be a problem and it would make life easier for readers sometime.
What do you think?
Petr Danecek
Can a menu item be added that showed the 20 articles that the user has last viewed. It could be part of the top menu bar (with my talk, my watch list...)? And a favourites menu to store the articles that I frequent. Both these menus would work using the logged on user. - Ganeshk ( talk) 23:11, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
We are an international digital community and we must do something to minimize the effect of cultural divide which I feel affects our abilities to interact and communicate. This inability may be gradually sabotaging the Project in various ways. Thanks. -- Bhadani 15:31, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I have suggested adding WP:CORP-like criteria to WP:BIO, which considers being "...the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent..." a sign of notability. Similiar wording is in WP:WEB, and more recently in WP:MUSIC. Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#WP:CORP-like wording. -- Rob 14:57, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
The way it is right now, the english version of Wikipedia has loads and loads more articles than any other, I see this as a problem. Wouldnt it be a good idea if there was a link that said "translate an article for [insert language] wikipedia" or something of the like? What I mean is that if the [insert language] wiki is missing an article on say Alabama or something or other, that text could be translated from another language.
And it wouldnt just benefit the small wiki's, I bet there are articles on romanian phenomena, people, places etc etc that arent on the english one
It would mean that the smaller wiki's would get articles that are more complete and it would, of course increase the number of articles. I know that at least in Sweden, there are a lot of people who are quite prominent in english who would be happy to perform such services for the community
Just a suggestion //bara_bg
PS This could also be a way of rectifying the problem with an english article being 5 000 signs long, and the french one 500 DS
It seems to me that Wikipedia policies or guidelines should include a discussion of how criticisms of topics fits into the Wikipedia articles about those topics. For exmaple Igor Stravinsky contain's a "Criticism" section while the criticisms of Country music where removed from that article and, presumably, some articles have criticism in each appropriate section (hypothetically, criticisms of Stravinsky's rhythmic prodedures could go in the "Rhythmic procedures" section of his article). Anyone else feel this need? Anythoughts on a guideline? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hyacinth ( talk • contribs)
There is Wikipedia:Words to avoid#Article structures which can imply a view. Hyacinth 12:13, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I was just thinking, that when i make edits to a section of a large (and especially frequently edited) article, I add that article to my watchlist, but all i really care about watching is that one section that i edited. I propose that there should be some way to watch just a section of an article, rather than the whole thing, in the same way that you can choose to edit just a section and not the whole thing. For example, after posting this, i will only want to watch this section, to see if someone replies, i don't really care about the rest of the page. If such a thing already exists, and i just havent found it, please let me know. -- Someones life 17:54, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
I vote yes on Someone's Life's proposal...if there isn't a feature like that already available on Wikipedia.
-- JJ
What about selling the Wikipedia written on CDs or DVDs so that everyone who wants, could have his/her own Wikipedia without the need to surf at wikipedia.org {especially now it would be quite needed, because the servers of Wikipedia are overcrowded and it takes several seconds-minutes to upload a page}. Also by selling such DVDs, CDs {with encouragement to copy them and establish on your own servers} could be some money raised. Or even better, such CDs or DVDs would be given to the supporters of Wikipedia or could be sold for symbolic price to the supporters. Of course there is an issue how to make such a CD/DVD, in which languages, which articles should be taken into and which not, how many CDs/DVDs would be needed for 1 000 000 articles {with photos, sound files, etc}.
But on the other hand, I haven't heard about Wikipedia CDs/DVDs so I think it would need some kind of research to get to know if it is commercially realizable {maybe, I alone am in need of such CDs/DVDs :) }.
Why would anyone buy an instantly-out-of-date CD or DVD (which is bound to have bits of frozen vandalism in it). Would you even look at it, or just put it on your shelf? T-shirts or mugs would make more sense. Text ads would make even more sense... nobody boycotts an otherwise indispensible resource just because of a few unobtrusive text ads (how many of you have stopped using Google?). -- Curps 22:25, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Fine then. Put text ads on Wikipedia, which given our Alexa numbers should raise, oh, a million dollars a month. But make it clear upfront that half of the windfall will be spent for third-world charitable purposes. Spend some of the rest on servers and also hire several more developers, so badly needed bug fixes and enhancements can happen a lot quicker. Everybody's happy.
I'm not sure I buy into the third-world story though. For most places in the third world, your CD or DVD will just be a frisbee, due to lack of computers or a reliable electrical power grid. And the places that have the latter two will almost certainly have telecom connectivity for Internet too. In fact, in many places telecom infrastructure is being created before any computing or electrical grid infrastructure: in Africa, cell phones are booming (they get recharged from car batteries). -- Curps 05:14, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
What about an 'ad mirror'? Loads of sites mirror with ads. Why not create a separate foundation whose purpose is to run an ad funded mirror (under the GFDL this is fine) and donating profits to WP? No one would fork, because it wouldn't be Wikipedia doing it. People who hate on it could hate on it. Who cares, it would be legal. And ... 3. Profit! For great justice. 18:38, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
I was just thinking maybe it would be less attractive to actually put ads on Wikimedia pages, but what if Wikimedia sold web hosting--I mean Wiki is hot right now, everyone wants to have their own Wiki site, people would pay for this kind of stuff. Or, you could give it out for free and put ads on people's individual wiki sites. Either way, you'd make tons of money. Sure, you'd need more servers just for the personal wiki pages, but if you could get it to generate enough money to pay for itself and then some, it'd be great. I mean, I'd be willing to pay for my own wiki site, and I definitely wouldn't mind being given one for free, even if it did have ads on it. -- Gandalf 04:58, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
We have CSD:U2 which states to delete stale IP talk pages so they don't confuse potential new users, upon a bot request I had set my bot to add stale (older than 180 days) talk pages in a category for speedy deletion. I let the bot run for an hour and we had some 500 pages, they came faster than admins could delete. I then had a request here at Talk: criteria for speedy deletions which the consensus was to blank the pages to keep the history and to not delete them. After reaching this consensus, the bot ran for a few days until I recieved a message from DropDeadGorgias who asked for where the consensus for the bots operation was, reading it she requested that I stop the bot which I have done.
The question arrises, what do to with the stale IP talk pages. I basically see 3 options a) Keep them as is and do not remove anything (with the disadvantage that this could confuse new users) b) Delete the old pages c) Blank them keeping various templates (including sharedip and it's subst'ed version) and possibly adding a message saying why page was blanked.
Comments? -- Tawker 11:40, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I just saw User:Tawkerbot add a Talk:IP that I watch to Category:IP talk pages for speedy deletion. It refers to WP:CSD#U2 on this page:
Shouldn't irrelevant old messages simply be removed by blanking the page (thus essentially archiving it)?
Femto 12:58, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure where to post this comment, so here it is :-) : I disagree with the blanking of old IP talk pages; besides other reasons, it does send the "new messages" banner to the users. We've already gotten several complaints about the "new messages" banner when a message is removed or substituted. Anyways, just my 2 cents; I don't think that the bot should continue doing this. Thanks! Flcelloguy ( A note?) 17:14, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
I noticed Wikiquote has quite a lenghty list of proverbs from various cultures and languages. I wonder if there is a feature for "Proverb of the day" where subscribers can receive "proverb of the day" emails from Wikiquote's database of proverbs. If not, it would be a nifty feature.
I was wondering if it would be a good idea to create a keyboard shortcut for the admin [Rollback] button, like there is one for random page (alt-x) for example. This would help out on edits like these where you have to scroll to find the rollback button. There are even trickier instances like this where you spend about one minute trying to find the actual button! What does everyone else think? — FireFox • T • 20:06, 5 March 2006
I don't think I should have to read the entire IPA article to figure out how something is pronounced. Even skimming it, I have no idea what that means. Opinions on having approximate translations for proper names without having to record an OGG audio file? For example, to find out the pronounciation of Kauai, I had to google it to find out it's like Hawaii with a K. Ka-WHY-ee. Imperfect, but sufficient for someone just wanting to know how it sounds. TransUtopian 05:26, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
I propose that the line "Printable Version" is changed to "Printerfriendly version" or something simlar. "Printable" assumes that the normal page is theoretically impossible to print. → Aza Toth 01:46, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
We got a whole bunch of tags for bad images (like no license, with permission, no source, etc...). But we don't have a way of telling somebody who's uploaded something that it's ok legally. I propose that admins who are knowledgeable about copyright policy, have a system for marking images to say that they've been reviewed, and they're ok. This gives somebody valuable feedback on uploading. We could then recommend newbies not upload lots of images, until after their first uploads have been marked as "approved" (or whatever term we use). This also prevents duplicate work. It's obviously not possible to tag all images in Wikipedia as approved, but we could at least do it for new uploads, or images that for whatever reason, are subjected to review by admins (we have to check all images anyway). This is particularly needed for fairuse. As it seems you can always be told you're wrong, but you'll never be told you're right, in your understanding/interpretation of what's fairuse (of course an "approve" for fairuse means approved for a specific use, not any use). This could be implemented by putting a tag on the images, or it could be made by producing a huge list(s) of ok images (the advantage of a list, is that it can be protected, so only admins could update it). -- Rob 21:45, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Right now, I feel there is a gap in the WP admin procedures - a user must go through a process and show a high level of support (75-80% minimum) to become an admin, but once they are, unless they perform so egrigiously badly that they end up before the ArbCom, they are effectively forever safe from desysopping.
What I propose is a Requests for continuing adminship (WP:RFCA hereafter) page whereby admin terms would be fixed to one year, but with no limit on the number of consecutive terms they might serve. In every respect other than dealing with existing admins seeking reconfirmation (mostly to avoid swamping RFA), it would be identical to RFA, however, with particular view to maintaining the high threshold of support needed to become an admin (although, clearly, the scrutiny would be on the actual use/abuse of, or failure to use admin powers). The initial batch of RFCA would, of course, have to be staggered, with the earliest admins seeking reconfimation first and the newest last. A bot could be used, if desired, to remind the admistrators in question when their terms were coming to an end.
**EVERY** admin, without exception (another important point), would be required to seek reconfirmation yearly (a few enlightened admins have desysopped themselves to seek reconfirmation @ WP:RFA in the past - this would extend it to all admins as a feature), and any admin who was absent or otherwise refused to go through WP:RFCA would have their adminship automatically end after one year - although, of course, they would be free to go through the otherwise-identical process @ WP:RFA at a later date if they wished to become an admin once more.
Thoughts? - SoM 19:21, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
No. This has been proposed 100 times, I have done experiments with this on RFA, probably pissing off some bureaucrats in the process, I have discussed this with stewards cross project who explained that some wikis actually have this procedure and good admins really DO get voted out earlier while incompetent or inactive admins are kept. Long story short, This Does Not Work (tm). Kim Bruning 20:00, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Although there will be many supporters of a "good" admin, and comparitively few opposers (those who have been blocked or warned by the admin, etc) the threshold for RfA is about 85%, last time I checked. A far smaller group of "bad" users could easily throw the vote. So would the threshold change for confirmation votes? Would a no consensus result mean that the admin is kept, or is desysopped? It doesn't seem like these issues have been addressed. -- bainer ( talk) 00:01, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
On nl.wikipedia, a steward recently got deadminned by an "absolute majority" of around 20-30% :-P (nl.wikipedia does have actual voting, unlike (officially) en.wikipedia ) . Kim Bruning 12:57, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
I think another perennial proposal would be a better option - having a Requests for de-adminship would allow bad admins (who aren't necessarily blantatly violating policy to the extent that would get them to Arbcom, but are still bad nonetheless) to be removed, without having the 800+ reapplications problem that Raul654 mentioned. In other words, an admin would automatically get their adminship renewed every year unless a certain number of people objected (I know voting is evil, but having a specific number is necessary for this first step). If such an objection was lodged, then (and only then) the admin would have to go through RFA (which would guard against malicious nominations, since a good admin would get overwhelming support from the community). Cynical 10:55, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
This discussion might better take place on the Wikipedia:Admin accountability poll talk page? - brenneman {T} {L} 12:53, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
In the past two months I have seen a large number of WP:AFD debates on whether or not professors are notable. There is a proposed policy on criteria for including academics that, unfortunately, has received very little attention lately. I have been working on this recently, and I'd like to work on building a consensus and collecting comments from the community so that this guideline can eventually become an official guideline. So, I am posting here to appeal to the community: if you are interested in this issue, come, check out the guidelines, enter the discussions, et cetera. The guidelines are at Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion of biographies/Academics, with attached talk page. Also check out Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion of biographies/Academics/Precedents for an (incomplete) gathering of academic-related deletion debates. I'd also appreciate if someone could fill me in on how to go about making this guideline official once it's ready. Thanks! (feel free to contribute here if you want, but it would be more useful to contribute at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for inclusion of biographies/Academics.) Mangojuice 19:50, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
First, apologies in advance if this suggestion is a chestnut. I took a quick look through the perennial list, but didn't spot it. Apologies also in advance if the below is possible and I've missed the how-to.
I'd like to be able to set Wikipedia's watchlist function to monitor my user subpages without my having to add every subpage to my watchlist. In other words, I'd like to be able add something like User:David Kernow/* to my watchlist. Is this (easily) possible? Does the idea strike a chord or the like with anyone else?
Best wishes, David Kernow 15:28, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Have now found the above proposed (more or less) as an enhancement at bugzilla.wikipedia.org. David Kernow 18:41, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
is there one already? dunno if this is the place to post is but is there a good reason why there isn't an RSS feed of the main page? seems like it'd be a simple thing to do? does anyone read this? why isn't wikipedia super hooked up with rss feeds?
I'd like to propose the development of a vandalism logger. I imagine this would take the form of a tick box, which an editor can check off if they understand their correction as correcting vandalism. The idea is that we could have statistical archive that logs and ranks which sites are most vandalized. We could then also achieve some concept of how controversial an article is, or how trustworthy the article is. Sholto Maud 04:11, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Would it be possible to change the 'sign in/create account' link to say 'sign in / create account ( why?)' It would make it easier for curious anons to become aware of the advantages to creating an account, apart from being told or trying to create a new page. The more editors we can put a 'face' to, the better, right? -- Sam Blanning (formerly Malthusian) ( T | C | A ) 10:02, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
I think somewhere in the wiki-network, there should be a citation guide, explaining the citations for the different styles, and different media. I realize this would be a lot of work, but I think it's useful. I don't know if we're up to it. Clarkefreak ∞ 00:38, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm stunned on how far we can forget the primary goals when we get immersed into a good project. I've done this several times myself, caught myself going too far into a way because it sounds and look right, but I'm just forgetting what I was supposed to do in that project at first.
I feel like all wikimedia foundation projects are going that way today, specially when considering how difficult it might be to realize that deleting an article is just totally against any of the primary goals. And it happens for obvious reasons: there's no space for every single little thing.
Is that true?
The way wikipedia is done comes to avoid ambiguity in a very logical and simple way: there's a limit of characters, so all that's needed to do to keep it within the limits is calculating how much hardware space is needed to a certain number of total characters for any article. That will bring the theoretically infinite number to a real amount that we can deal with.
The vote for deletion attacks me so deeply in what I believe it's better for this community that I get even disturbed, so I might say things I don't want to, but the idea is just proposing to change the way articles get deleted. There are several things that could be done.
Please, refer to my user page to read the rest. I'm not sure where to put this suggestion (although I believe now the rright place is the Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)), and I'm getting tired of rewriting it. I just hope the right people can read and comment on. Thanks.
-- Cacumer 01:44, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Addressing your specific suggestions:
Sorry, did someone just say that Wikipedia is larger than Google? You have to be kidding. In what sense exactly do you mean "larger"? Dmharvey 02:51, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
I had this idea that instead of hiding article requests for comment, where they do seem a little out of the way, we bring them into the village pump. I'd like to propose Wikipedia:Village pump (articles), where people would post details regarding the dispute. I say this merely because when I've used RFC on articles it hasn't generated much interest, but when I've posted details to the pump I've seen good interest. Steve block talk 20:34, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Could I suggest that, for articles such as render layers, which are scary for newbies, there is simply a template {{overhaul}} to replace all the others? NB - I don't know if the expression overhaul is used in US English, it basically means practically redoing, or checking it in great detail.-- Keycard ( talk) 17:28, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
I think WP:SAND should redirect to Wikipedia:Sandbox, not to some obscure BJAODN page. Agree/disagree? Stephen Turner ( Talk) 10:55, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Currently all the lists of country-related topics at Category:Lists of country-related topics are incredibly disorganized, unkempt, and I would imagine largely unused. As CalJW put it on the talk page back in August last year, "they predate the category system, which was introduced in May 2004. Arguably they should be deleted now, as they do not get much attention." Couldn't every single on of the articles in this category be turned into a category itself, making the whole thing a lot more dynamic? Staxringold 03:30, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Not without going through AfD, and many people, myself included, would object, as categories and lists serve different functions. User:Zoe| (talk) 02:04, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
I was wondering whether there already exists a project that aims to attract professional photographers who can advertise their work by giving a small proportion of it away under an attribution license. And a picture bounty list to complement this? - Samsara ( talk • contribs) 20:24, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I think I have a way to (at least partially) satisfy both the people who are offended at images like the Muhammad cartoons and those who are consider removal of such images to be a violation of WP:NOT.
My idea is to tell users that if they think an image may be offensive to some people, or if they are offended by an image, they should relocate it below the fold -- that is, down far enough into an article so it would not show up immediately upon navigating to the page. The editor would then add a template like the following:
Note: This article contains an image of {{{potentially offensive image}}}. If you wish to read the article without seeing the image, please click here.
Clicking "here" would generate the same page without the image in question. We would need a change to the program that would allow for pages that are identical except for the inclusion or lack thereof of one image.
This would be a significant improvement from the current solution, which requires users to edit their monobook.css file (something most people don't know they have.)
Mwalcoff 04:57, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
This is what was done with Bahaullah, but it was rejected on the Muhammed cartoons controversy, as the cartoons themselves were the subject of the article, whereas the image of Bahaullah was not the subject of the article. User:Zoe| (talk) 17:24, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Similarly, I've been pondering what to do about Brazilfantoo ( talk · contribs) (and various IPs I suspect to be the same user), who has been uploading rafts of pictures of nude celebrities under fair use claims (explicit example: Image:Warrengmagazine5.jpg). I'm pretty firmly in the anti-censorship camp and don't have a problem with the autofellatio pictures and such in the appropriate articles, but I just consider most of these additions to the celebrity articles to be in poor taste. Obviously the "fair use" claims can be challenged for each individual picture, but I hate to look like a "censor" for being the one to pursue it. Does anyone have any suggestions for dealing with the situation overall? — Catherine\ talk 19:50, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Put potentially offensive or upsetting pictures on a subpage linked to the article? Regards, David Kernow 01:03, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Although advertisement is not allowed on Wikipedia, I propose that there is a special area where advertising is allowed. That way, people can advertise on Wikipedia, a popular website, for free. It should be linked to from the Village Pump, and maybe even the Main Page.
FLaRN2005 04:56, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Why should advertisers get free adspace in Wikipedia? It would just be unencyclapedic and silly, not to mention that this would severely hurt our credibilty. Deathawk 19:09, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Create a "wikiad" site on wikicities. Don't charge anything for it, and then ads can be ported their, or deleated and a link could be placed on the page to direct recreates to the wikiad site. Would that work?-- Rayc 16:10, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Advertisements would make the use of "fair use" content legally questionable. Also note that the ad content would have to be licensed under the GFDL, or Wikipedia loses its license to use most of its own content. -- Nagle 19:47, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Such an area would endanger Wikipedia's image. Plus, it would waist bandwidth if it were even used. Several good points have also been mentioned above. Thus, not a good idea. ~Linuxerist L / T 07:45, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
New users can't move articles, but they can create them. Often on Special:Newpages you'll see new users accidentally create their first article with a mistaken title, and they're frustrated that they can't then move it to the correct title.
I propose an exception allowing new users to move the pages they create. Melchoir 04:59, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm not an administrator and cannot change the common.css file, but I would like to propose a change. Including the line
span.texhtml { font-family: sans-serif; }
Will cause LaTeX code rendered as HTML to be the same size as code that was written in HTML in the first place. It will make mathematics articles easier to read. What do you think? -- mets501 22:34, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Exactly what problem are we trying to solve here? Ingoolemo talk 22:26, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
OK, let me clarify. Previously, with the old rendering (before the change which just happened), if a mathematical formula was written in LaTeX, but rendered as HTML because of the user's preferences, it was smaller (or a different font which looked smaller) than formulas that were written in HTML in the first place. Implementing this change allows all formulas rendered as HTML to appear the same size to the user no matter if they were written in LaTeX or HTML. Hope this clarifies. -- mets501 22:36, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
So why is math text rendered to look different than html text? On many browsers not only they have different font, but also different size. It does not make sense to me. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 00:41, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm not familiar with the way math is rendered, but this sounds like a workaround for a purpose-built behaviour. The correct action is to determine if there's a good reason for this behaviour, and not, then fix it at the root in the LaTeX rendering engine, rather than overriding it in the style sheet. — Michael Z. 2006-03-15 02:01 Z
Omegatron and I have been discussing this, and we both think it would be a good idea to have browser specific fonts when rendering HTML from LaTeX code. This is because on different browsers the differences between LaTeX rendered as HTML and the rest of the article is drastically different. For example, on Firefox, the current settings look fine. However, on IE the serif fonts which the LaTeX is rendered in look much different and smaller than the rest of the text. What does everyone think? -- Mets501 talk 15:21, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Barely in the start-up phase yet; I've posted a few early suggestions on the talk page. Anyone who's interested is welcome to join and help! =] Cheers, — Nightst a llion (?) 10:36, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
I wish to bring to general attention the problem of the exploding backlog at Wikipedia:Cleanup. Cleanup is broken, and Wikipedia:Cleanup process is too slow. The backlog of articles piling up on [[Category:Cleanup by month]] is threatening the quality of Wikipedia as a whole. To solve this problem, it is proposed that cleanup articles be sent to relevant WikiProjects by a process similar to WikiProject Stub sorting.
Please read the evidence, along with full details of a proposed remedy, at Wikipedia:Cleanup process/Cleanup sorting proposal, and comment or suggest other options. Alba 05:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Hey all! I'm proposing that we insert CSS code that would allow one to add the coordinate link of any location to the header of the article. This is already common place in the German Wikipedia, as shown here: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City. I'm told that the code would be pretty easy to impliment. There are numerous benefits to this tool and I think the German wiki has benefited. Please reply to this if you are in support...and if you're not, please give a reason :) BTW, the template for this ( Template:CoorHeader) was simply transferred from the German wiki to English, so the coding might change. Sean WI 03:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
{{ CoorHeader}} is getting polished and is pretty much ready for use. It doesn't require any changes to the site-wide CSS code. However, I think people will react badly if they start seeing people unilaterally deciding that there's a new standard, especially since it's so visible in the affected articles. So, the proposal is now that this template becomes standard (as it is at de.wikipedia). The question is, can this proposal get enough support to make that happen? — Saxifrage ✎ 08:06, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Just set this up as a project of similar scope to the stub sorting project. Participants welcome. The first task is probably to trawl through the portal space and see what's in there, see Wikipedia Talk:WikiProject Portals for more details. Steve block talk 11:18, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
Please note there is a proposal for portal creation guidelines at Wikipedia:Portal/Proposals. Comments and discussion welcome on the talk page. Steve block talk 19:36, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
I have made a proposal on Category talk:Articles that need to be wikified that the category should be split into seperate month categories like Category:Cleanup by month. I don't think anyone watches that page so I thought I'd mention it here. thanks. Martin 10:44, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
I propose a template {{Reply|User|Header}}:
to be used on talk pages to indicate where a message should be replied (see Wikipedia:Talk_pages) -- Fast e n talk| med 20:30, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
The main complaint against Wikipedia is lack of expertise (see Time article on Wikipedia and Larry Sanger).
To improve this, I suggest that there be a campaign or at least a readily available template which can easily be posted in talk pages which reminds people of the basic NPOV policy: write in proportion to the representation of the experts in the field. Then it should contain the steps to proceed: (a) identify the experts, (b) analyze and rank their expertise (there is also a list of this how to find out the expertise in the NPOV tutorial), (c) proceed in citing more the topmost experts, then the others.
It's a very simple template but with a lot of advantages: this will enormously help end many NPOV disputes. People usually forget these elementary rules. A template is an excellent reminder so people do not waste energy fighting but can work with more harmony using the First Things First habit. And most important of all, Wikipedia will really be of the highest quality, because people are focused on getting the works of the people of the highest expertise. Ran9876 06:34, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
I propose having two versions of the wikipedia page. Include a link in the main page that forwards the user to a version of the whole site with relevant adwords along the top or the side or something. Allow users to bookmark this site so they can use that version of the site all the time if they want to.
This way, people have a choice, ads or no ads. Wikpedia would be funded and everybody would be happy. Danny Beardsley 03:31, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
The thing is why would an adword company want to fund a site with a no ad version? I mean after awhile I suspect they would start to relize what's going on. Deathawk 16:19, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Oppose There are all sorts of "thin edge of the wedge" type of reasons, but in a practical sense, I think ads, and particularly AdWords-style text ads, undermine the encyclopedia using experience. The very fact of contextual, keyword-determined ads is a distraction to readers. They are designed to draw you from the chosen subject matter, to advertiser sites. It sets up an unwanted choice: do you click a wikilink to a related topic, or an ad to a related advertiser site? Some people don't even critically distinguish between AdWords and other links, they're just more possible links off a page. Selling reader attention and interest is not IMO harmonious with the larger goals of a free and open repository of knowledge. -- Tsavage 21:35, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
I really don't like that the citations for an article are scattered about throughout the article's source code. The new footnoting system has a lot of shortcomings:
I think the software should be changed so that the context of each reference is centralized in the actual References section, and the context of each particular fact is near that fact ("this fact is from page 34 of reference 2", etc.)
An additional idea is that when the references are generated, the "fact references" are a sublist of each list reference element:
References
I've written it up (with a more detailed example) here: m:Talk:Cite/Cite.php#A different idea. Please comment. The chief objection so far is that the subreference styling wouldn't be consistent with the Chicago Manual of Style. — Omegatron 18:08, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
My objections to the chicago manual of style objection: 1. wikipedia is not paper. 2. appeal to authority is a logical fallacy, and a sucky one at that. who cares if it's not in a book? is that the point? the question really should be "is it helpful to the reader?" Kevin Baas talk 20:13, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
<ref>Doe, ''My Book'', 57.</ref>
and <ref name="Doe">p. 57.</ref>
. So why exactly is it necessary to force an inflexible, non-standard style on everyone?
Kirill Lok
s
hin 20:15, 25 March 2006 (UTC)Hmm, regarding
Forcing the bulk of citation information to the bottom of the article is not new. There are many pages that already use a slightly different manner of referencing. Since this is not new, it cannot be called an advantage. well if the footnotes are done "properly" in the first place, then how is this even an issue? However, most of the references are not done "properly" in the first place, because as the mechanism works now, it's an obstacle(distraction) to writting prose, which is fairly volatile in the first place. And to be clear, noone is forcing anything. One is simply suggesting to offer a tool that people can use if they want to, and not use if they don't. Tools are by their nature inflexible. That is what makes them usefull. (for instance, a clock tells time because the duration of its seconds are inflexible.) That it is not "standard"? It could very well become standard, depending on how often it is used. But what is neccessarily objectionable about this? With practical matters, we are concerned with practical considerations, not abstract notions. Kevin Baas talk 22:16, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
I don't see any reason why this cannot be retained. Kevin Baas talk 22:32, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
The sky is blue.<ref>Jones, 32.</ref><ref>Smith, 29.</ref><ref>Doe, 238.</ref>
. This produces three superscript numbers at the end of the sentence, which isn't very neat. In the existing system, we can combine the notes (The sky is blue.<ref>Jones, 32; Smith, 29; Doe, 238.</ref>
), but this wouldn't work under the new system, since the note would then need to be triple-filed under each of the three sources.There remains an issue of consistency. It would be nice if users could choose how they want references/notes to be rendered, in their user prefences, like is done for date and time. (this would only work w/new format references) Kevin Baas talk 22:55, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
I know this might require excessive work on WP, but it can be set as a preference to view WP either in US or UK spelling to suit the preferences of some. It can, as always, be set in the Preferences menu, just like the dates. This can remove the need to revert edits of those who change the spelling of an article which is, say, written in USA or countries that use the US system or all about the United States. Do you agree? -- Bruin rrss23 (talk) 02:42, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
Proposal: add random featured article and good article in Navigation Box.
Why?
I went ahead and added a link to Wikipedia:Featured articles to the Navigation bar ( Mediawiki:Sidebar). If we want to use WP:FC (which I had never seen before just now) or some other more complicated option, we can of course change it. Dragons flight 00:28, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
Dear Editors and Administrators,
Often there is an article on a topic in one language but not in another, but Wikipedia does not tell its readers this. e.g., while reading History of Serbia there was a red link to Vlastimir, which means that you do not have an article on it. After some searching, however, I found that you actually have two articles on it, one in German at de:Vlastimir. But in most cases you do not know how to look for an article in another language, because it is usually spelt differently.
My suggestion is this: that for such topics where an article does exist in a different language from the one they are using, that you make this clear, so that when a reader clicks on the red link (or does a search) and is directed to the "Article not found" page, that you add a note on that page saying "however, the article you request IS available in the following languages," and you give a list of the links to those. Because after all, most people using the internet do speak a foreign language.
I hope my suggestion has been of use to you. Thank you for your attention.
Yours,
--Nic (a great fan of Wikipedia) 82.198.250.5 18:20, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
One could translate the article that is being looked for, search for the translation on other wikis. It would be nice if by a red link, there would be superscripts to other language articles, like this fr ge And possibly, in combination with #Port to other languages via google translator or similiar utility, those articles could be run through a translator). Kevin Baas talk 20:33, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
I find that most of these are used to post baseless negative opinions about something. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yngwie_malmsteen#Criticism is largely just a bash towards him. I have seen this in many other entries as well, but this is what seems to be the most blatant example of this. Is this allowed, and if so, why? — Preceding unsigned comment added by The Arch0wl ( talk • contribs)
In addition to Wikipedia:Verifiability see also Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Wikipedia:Words to avoid#Article structures which can imply a view may also address the issue. Hyacinth 09:23, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
It is well known that the en.wikipedia is at this time the best one. Most of articles in other wikipedias are worse written then in English version. Having a link to English wikipedia helps non-English wikipedia users in several cases:
As there exist articles without links to any of other wikipedias (specially to the English one) it would be nice to have a tool for quick finding such articles, moreover it would be convenient to have a list for a requested category. Then each expert would be able to add lasting translations according to its field of interest.
I believe such a tool would improve a work on non-English wikipedias. Do you agree? Please let me know if such stuff exists. kuszi 01:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC).
"Most of articles in other wikipedias are worse written then in English version." A comment like that is very POV and wouldn't be allowed in an article. How can you then say that? Most? No, you have to say what % and say the source. Or else I could just as well say that en.wikipedia is huge, but % of quality articles for each 10,000 articles is higher in the smaller wikipedias. Just a different opinion. No way now to give more weight to your comment over mine now (in the absence of real data). -- Anagnorisis 02:22, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
I started a thread below, before reading this, that I think is an extension of this one: #Port to other languages via google translator or similiar utility. Kevin Baas talk 20:34, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
Would remove the need to manually click there prior to entering text. Another user suggested that this was discussed before but remained as it is so that users 'would not need to have use of a mouse'. Having the cursor default to the search box doesn't discriminate does it?! Bswee 23:46, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
The new References tags are amazing, a godsend even. Is it possible to have a separate tag for footnotes, though? I've seen some articles use the <ref> tags for notes, but then that means that either you can't have references, or notes and references are jumbled together. By making footnoting automatic, it would make some things - like footnoting a huge table ( *cough*) - much easier to handle. Any thoughts? Since we already have <references>, adding <footnotes> (with the corresponding tag being <note>, a la <ref>) shouldn't be too difficult. In fact, I think this is an awesome enough idea to beg for it. Please! ;) I mean, really, what's needed? Copy and paste some code, change ref to note, and voila. Instant HTML tags. Well, not quite, since it should probably do a superscript number without brackets? I dunno, do something to make it look different from footnotes, which are presently superscripted [1], [2], etc. thoughts? Apologies for rambling, it IS 4am and I meant to be in bed 3 hours ago. -- Golbez 09:04, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
On March 26th a Wikipedia appears with a new look: links are underlined, bullets are different, images are placed on different places. Also the navigation/search/toolbox bar is different. Of these - the different format of bullets/image location is making MANY articles to look WORSE than before. Not to mention that blue+underline is giving a much more "overcrowded" look to the links than the original wikipedia-blue-only. Let's revert to the regular style? Alinor 20:22, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
Have anyone have had a thought why you cant enter an edit summary when your are using section=new on submit? → A z a Toth 20:00, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
I've just been glancing through the Manual of Style, and found that it's got at least 100 pages altogether. These, I feel, should be kept separate from the Wikipedia: namespace, since they're really different. Any opinions?-- Keycard ( talk) 08:24, 26 March 2006 (UTC)