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I didn't check if this idea has already been proposed and discussed somewhere. If it's the case just ignore my post. The idea is proposing some kind of RSS feed for things such as the wikipedia:reference desk, Wikipedia:Village pump or Special:Recentchanges and even others I didn't think of.
The point is to increase flexibility and response of the community by increasing visibility of specific wikipedia updates, it could even save some bandwith too as it won't be needed anymore to fully load/reload whole pages to find out that there is nothing interesting for you there at that particular moment. If possible offering subscription to a limited number of feed should be limited to prevent abuse. Offering that kind of subscription for a few articles per wikipedian would be a nice and useful addition to the watchlist feature.
This is a preliminary idea, and it certainly has to be submitted to devs for review and check to separate what's technically possible from what's not. izwalito
Should there be a project to port the contents of disambigiuation pages to Wictionary terms?
There is now a white background color on all math-elements created as an image. I would like that background-color to be removed so the image is transparent. → A z a Toth 21:50, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Is it possible to create a page called: "The solution to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict"?
The aim for this page is to let people present the conflict and solutions, arriving at some sort of consensus through editing. Using Wikipedia to tackle complex issues of world state could be a interesting exercise in diplomacy and even if not creating a solution, at least it would promote discussion.
Something like this has worked for Abortion debate.
Most articles that give information on how a term is pronounced use IPA. I and probably 98% of the WP audience can't parse IPA easily, and even if you do have the requisite linguistics knowledge it's a pain to remember what all the symbols mean.
What I propose is a Special webpage that works something like WP:ISBN. The WP software recognizes an IPA string (probably with some sort of delimiter) and makes a link to a page that generates a .wav or .ogg of a computer synthesized voice saying the term. As IPA has zero ambiguity as to pronounciation I think this would be relatively techinically feasible, though I certainly don't have the know-how to do it. -- Pyroclastic 04:17, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
I have a long discution with User:Jerzy about the uportunity to rename Pope Stephen III into Pope Stephen II and Pope Stephen IV into Pope Stephen III and so on until Pope Stephen X into Pope Stephen IX (and to keep Pope Stephen X as a redirect to Pope Stephen IX). My reasons and Jerzy's answers are explained in detail in Stephen (ephemeral pope) and in Talk:Pope Stephen.
I'm waiting now for Jerzy's answer or for new arguments for a long time now. And it's a shame that we two only are taking part in this controversy. I wish some oser users showed themselves and expressed their opinion on the subject if they have one.
Švitrigaila 00:44, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
There are language translation engines - one could translate english wikipedia pages to other languages quickly and in high volume. Likewise it can go in other directions. Kevin Baas talk 18:03, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
Alternatively, one could put a "Translate this page" button on the wiki skin, then people speaking only one language can see wikipedias from a variety of languages (and compare articles or what have you) (provided that those wikipedias have this feature). And people from other language wikipedias could easily transfer article content from other language wikipedias as desired. Kevin Baas talk 20:07, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
Language translations are unreadable! Take this example... the first paragraph from the article Wikipedia was translated via Google into German and back. It came out like this... (I removed all the IPA symbols and so on). Wikipedia "the free encyclopedia", is regaled a website, a multilingual free contents knowledge data base, which is editable by everyone. The project caught 15, 2001 on January, when addition of the expert-written (and now deceased) Nupedia on and now functioned by the non-profit basis Wikimedia. Wikipedia has more as 3,700,000 articles in many languages, including more than 1,000,000 in the English-language version. Since its establishment Wikipedia rose constantly in popularity and some sister projects gelaicht. Publishers become lively, a policy "of the zero-criterion" under, which remarkable perspectives are summarized to support without an attempt, objective truth determine. Q.E.D.-- Keycard ( talk) 15:58, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Everyday I get questions about the copyright status of material people want to use in Wikipedia. It's mostly images - users wanting to know which licence to use. For example: "There are few pictures available of St. Laurent class ships, but they're all Department of National Defense, under Canadian Crown Copyright. Under what licence can I upload them?"
I propose Wikipedia:Copyright desk. A place where people can ask these questions. Hopefully it will attract help from those experienced in copyright issues (lawyers etc). So, should I start it up?-- Commander Keane 20:52, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi
This is my first proposal, so I'm not at all sure whether I'm doing this right.
Often when I read an article about a movie, I see that the "discussion" tab is green, meaning that there is content. I therefore reasonably assume that somebody has written something on that page, some question or additional information, or criticism of the article. But very often I'm disappointed. I find no text, instead I just find some kind of box that tells me that "This article is part of WikiProject Films, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to films on Wikipedia"...
Here is one example, [5], the link to the "discussion" page for the movie Ronin.
Such projects are fine, but I don't think they should be under the "discussion" tab. Instead, they ought to have a seperate tab (keep in mind that some articles may be included in more than one project - also keep in mind that the movie project isn't the only one).-- Peter Knutsen 01:48, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
My proposal is that Wiki pedia include the AMA (american medical association)style of citation in the citing Wikipedia Pages. I Am a student an have a teacher insists n this style, ima sure that She is not the only one. if this is done Students all over the world will rejoice.( i think they will at least)
A proposal has been made to close the September 11 Wiki. This is a separate wiki hosted by the WikiMedia Foundation that was spun off from the English Wikipedia in 2001. Kaldari 06:18, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
This page is empty, although de:MediaWiki:Allpages-summary makes me think it should be filled with some content describing Special:Allpages (see de:Special:Allpages). It would be nice if the page could explain the sorting order, link to the naming conventions and explain that redirects are in italics, which is perhaps not totally obvious. I can provide a translation of de:MediaWiki:Allpages-summary if necessary. Kusma (討論) 03:38, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
I really feel this should become an official policy. Collecting one sided votes to achieve an artificial conensus in my view is an obvious problematic behaviour which should be discouraged. -- Cool Cat Talk| @ 09:01, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
There is currently a template:Hebrew which adds <span class="he" dir=rtl style="font-family:SBL Hebrew, Ezra SIL SR, Ezra SIL, Cardo, Chrysanthi Unicode, TITUS Cyberbit Basic, Arial Unicode MS, Narkisim, Times New Roman;font-size:12pt">{{{1}}}</span> to the text. It would probally be better if the css was in the main style sheet not inline. Is there any way to add the <span class="he"> to all hebrew text automaticly and put the css in the main style sheet? Jon513 12:59, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Can I get comments on the merits of this idea: to use WP:AWB or a WP:BOT to link references in article to lines in the Abrahamic Bibles (Old Testament/New Testament), Qur'an or other holy scripture to the appropriate Wikibook chapter. I've tried searching around Wikipedia for any sort of group or policy related to this idea, but I have not found any (please correct me if I'm wrong.) Andrewjuren (talk) 19:50, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to propose a new category, which for want of a better title, I'm calling Body Enigmas and Little Known Facts (Maybe somebody can suggest a better title.)
I'm proposing it here because I don't know how to create a new category. If I can simply go ahead and do it, maybe someone will be so kind as to tell me how.
This new category would be used to list facts which are not widely known or discussed in normal articles. For example, the fact that parsley, which is a diuretic, actually helps reduce the frequency of nocturnal urination, or that eating beets will cause a person's urine to turn red or purple.
I was thinking of adding these facts to the appropriate articles, but then I started thinking about how many other facts of this nature might exists that don't normally appear in traditional articles and where would one look if they wanted to find more of these little gems.
Am I on the right track in thinking about creating such a category? Should I even be discussing this here?
-- Jaxhere 14:59, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps this is more an article than a category. What I had in mind when I put in this proposal was planting a seed that would encourage others to add to the list because I might only come up with a few, but the reason for thinking of a category was my understanding that when an article is placed in a category, it is automatically listed there, whereas if an article is created, then the writer or editor of a new article would have to place a "See Also" link to the List Article which Rick Block mentions. That is to say that it would be somewhat more complicated to encourage the development of such a list.
Re Rspeer's comment, if anyone can verify that beets turn their urine red by eating them and then looking at the result, would it be necessary to cite a "verifiable reference"? This is another aspect of the "little known facts" that I had in mind ... that virtually anyone could verify the fact for themselves by observing their own body. Would we really need some authority to verity these things?
-- Jaxhere 22:45, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
I have seen some articles with code similar to this in the Notes section of the article: <div style="font-size:90%;"><references /></div>. Although I'm indifferent about the font size since I can read it either way, this is what you might call a " shot across the bow" that I will be editing mercilessly to remove the extra div whenever I see this. The ordered list does have a class and it should be modified in the CSS to provide a consistent and standard font size (whatever the community decides that should be). There is no good reason to have it vary from article to article. And if you are one who would prefer the smaller font size, you are welcome to propose it here for discussion. Thank you, — Mike 06:49, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Please comment. John Reid 23:46, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I created a bot to create missing Indian town and city articles based on Census 2001. It is currently waiting for approval. Could you please take a look and comment? Thanks, Ganeshk ( talk) 15:34, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
As per this message left for Jimbo, I am deeply troubled by the "end notes" style of links in certain articles. I am convinced that this style of external links is degrading the quality of the wiki. See Rationale to impeach George W. Bush and Killian documents for example pages with this problem. Merecat 08:29, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
My primary issue with this is that links to web-based articles are being end-noted. This defeats much of the value of the link. Web-based articles ought to use the in-line link style - see for example the new article in The Register which addresses the issue of Wikipedia accuracy and states "[N]ature's reviewers considered trivial errors and serious mistakes as roughly equal...". [6] Simply put, for web-based articles, links of the type we have here are the best - far more to the point than an end-note, much easier to check and less susceptible to gaming towards POV. Merecat 05:03, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a collection of links... in other words, the articles should be basically self contained. In line links should be there for fact checking, not for needed content (possible external links section excepted). If that's the aim, then having a way to check that the material referenced is still the material at the other end of the link is crucial. Indirect linking is much better for this. IMHO Direct linking is positively dangerous and risks being misleading. Mozzerati 21:34, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
It's only 10 days away. Bring out the Charles Chaplin/Lewis Caroll in you, let your imagination run free. Aim to outdo yourself. Recently there has been too much conflict (necessary) about the issue of censorship and freedom of expression, both in general and specifically. To lighten up, we need some good jokes. Last year there were some good ones (like Deletionof the Main Page and Time Travel), let's match that or even outshine. Feel free to use my talk page as coordination zone. Loom91 12:43, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Sure, Wikipedia should be accurate 365 days a year, but only on Leap Years. And I think all responsible Wikipedia editors clean up their mess afterwards, so let your hair down a little. Loom91 08:56, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
see Wikipedia:April Fool's Main Page for more. -- Quiddity 02:32, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
We started a new policy page Wikipedia:Wikiethics and need more input to improve the current text further. I thought somebody here might be interested... Thanks for your contributions in advance. Resid Gulerdem 09:19, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
This is an equation created with Wikipedia's TeX font for math markup:
This is the same equation created using WikiCities' TeX font for the very same math markup:
It is quite obvious that the WikCities TeX font is smaller than the Wikipedia's TeX font. In my opinion, the WikiCities font is also much neater and tidier. What I mean by neater and tidier is that it is much closer to the size of the regular text so that the overall look of an article that uses equations is more balanced.
Also, the smaller TeX font allows for displaying longer equations (within the limited display screen width) than does the Wikipedia font.
I submitted a request to Bugzilla about a month ago asking that Wikipedia make available the smaller WikiCities font as an alternate option ... not to replace the font now used by Wikipedia, but only to offer the smaller WikiCities font as an optional choice to Wikipedians. My request was assigned the bug number 4915. Anyone can vote in favor of proceeding with the bug request at Bugzilla Bug 4915 and thus far I am the only one who has voted to proceed.
If you agree with me that the smaller font should be offered as an alternate, please visit the bugzilla page at Bugzilla Bug 4915 and scroll down to the page bottom where is says "Vote for this bug" and do so. If you are not already registered with bugzilla, it will ask you to do that first ... but it only takes a minute to do so.
If this isn't the correct place for me to lobby for the smaller font, please let me know where I can do so. Thanks and please vote.
mbeychok 23:34, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
This may have been suggested before, or even already be in existance, but there should be a Wiki toolbar, as with the google toolbar for instance, that can be downloaded onto your computer, allowing you to search wiki sites, especially wikipedia quickly.
-- Chris rigby 69 15:51, 2 April 2006 (UTC)Chris
Aggree It would be extremely useful and not that hard to create you can get many programs, like [www.effectivebrand.com this one]. There are some which may be better or Wikimedia could just make one themselves using the base programming. Lcarsdata 16:03, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
There's a toolbar for Firefox. I don't know about one for IE. User:Zoe| (talk) 19:37, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Is there anywhere in Wikipedia which says that neither Wikipedia contributors nor staff take responsibility for the content or implications of any external web-sites mentioned in Wikipedia? If there is not, should there be? ACEO 08:48, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Can I please make a proposal about medical articles on Wikipedia? If the neutrality of an article in Wikipedia is disputed, we do see a very clear warning logo at the head of the article. Can I also suggest that for medical articles in Wikipedia, we have a clear log heading the article which states: "This article should not be used as any substitute for any information you receive from health care professionals". I do appreciate that from what I have read of medical articles in Wikipedia, as far as internet resources go, they are quite informative and reasonably well-informed (at least compared with many internet health resources!) but I do feel that this would be a sensible proposal. Also, should such articles have a "Disclaimer" statement, to clarify that neither Wikpedia contributors nor professional watchdogs take responsibility for the content or implications of any external web-links mentioned in such articles? ACEO 08:43, 2 April 2006 (UTC) April 2 2006
After a few days of watching and edited newly created articles, two things are clear. First, well over half of new articles are candidates for quick deletion. And second, almost all the bad articles are about proper nouns, not general subjects. In fact, almost all the new articles are about proper nouns. Looking at the last 50 new articles right now, 49 of the 50 are about proper nouns, and only one Fabrication and testing (optical components) is a generic subject.
This may be an indication that some policies should be different for proper nouns.
Actually, almost all new article trouble is in the following categories:
Those specific areas deserve special handling.
There's been ongoing debate over restrictions for new users. Perhaps tightening the rules for creation in those areas would help stem the tide of incoming junk. At the very least, it would be a big help if, during the article creation process, the web form offered a menu for some basic categorization. It doesn't have to be complete; just the above categories plus "other" would be enough. Not that many new "other" articles are coming in. Although those are usually the good stuff.
Alternatively, it would be a big help if article creation in those areas was web form driven. Articles in those areas tend to have (or need) a generic format. Certainly movie, song, album, and performer entries could be created via forms.
This could cut the cleanup load way down. -- John Nagle 06:10, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Might these be moved to sit between the checkboxes and page names, please? I imagine the list would then look less cluttered. Regards, David Kernow 11:38, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Looking at today's FA New England Patriots I noticed a discussion on whether or not the current staff of the team should be included or not, and wondered if there was a way to make this sort of thing more consistent where we have groups of similar articles. The idea would be to add them to a category (i.e. Category:Teams in the NFL, which oddly the article isn't in anything like this which surprised me) and on Category pages of this sort of grouping where all the articles are expected to be somewhat similar it could link to a Template for Teams in the NFL.
These templates wouldn't be prohibitive but it would act as guidelines to try and standardise the articles, and the talk page of the template could act as a central point for getting a consensus on the levels of detail that would generally be suggested for articles in the category, i.e. what sort of information is considered encyclopaedic, and what is generally getting too deep into cruft (although there will also be the case of significant exceptions to the general rule of course). The template could also work on incomplete categories to act as a starting point for say the general information a new article might need adding if the information can be found/sourced, and also help standardise the way sections are named, ordered and such if people want to try and keep similar articles uniform.
Some of the above is done already via infoboxes of course, but this would extend that idea to an entire article where it is appropriate, but it would be more flexible than an infobox as it needs to be as outside of certain key elements most articles even on the same category of object has significant variation, but still it might be useful to consider a way to standardise formatting as much as possible.
In case this idea has been brought up many times before and shouted down, well sorry but I couldn't find anything searching in wiki or via google that related to wikipedia, so felt I would throw it out there. Sfnhltb 01:48, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
{{ helpme}} I wrote two articles, Google Groups and Homerun, and am seeking feedback on them. An hour's surfing and repeated {{helpme}} requests were in vain - I couldn't find a page where I could post my article simply for feedback that would help me write better articles. {{peerreview}} is only for very established articles, and Template_talk:Did you know is only for articles less than 5 days old (it took me much longer than that to write the complete articles).
I am going to be bold and create the Wikipedia:Article Feedback Desk for Wikipedians to post their new articles to get feedback on them. Please read the text on that page, post feedback on my articles, post your own articles for feedback, and post feedback about the Article Feedback Desk (paradoxical). I understand that the acronym AFD clashes with Articles For Deletion - perhaps someone could suggest a better name? I hope this becomes an integral feature of Wikipedia that I will become famous for starting.
-- J.L.W.S. The Special One 06:23, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
I think it would be great to have a feature where we could email the link (or maybe the whole article if it didn't get into copyvio territory) to a friend, much like many sites have. A link in the toolboox would be ideal.-- Esprit15d 14:05, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
This is what I'd thought that the proposal further up the page was saying.
The proposal is that, just as new accounts can't be used to up-load images or move articles until after a short probation period, so they shouldn't be usable for creating new articles for some period.
Advantages: it would substantially cut down on the huge problem of one-shot accounts created simply in order to create one vandalistic article (see Special:Newpages), as well as forcing new Users to do smaller-scale editing, learning about Wikipedia, before creating articles (a large number of new pages are un-wikified messes, created by people who have never edited before, and often never edit again. Many more are crude cut-and-paste copyright violations). -- Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης) 17:24, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
The arguments against seem to fall into two main categories:
Alternative -- I'm a content expert, not an admin, so I don't watch for new articles, and only see the vandalism on the ~870 pages I'm watching. Still, the real problem that I've seen is lack of mentoring.
So, I'd be in favor of not allowing new page creation (even on their own talk page) until somebody has given them the welcome message (after that they can edit their talk page), and asked them to read the Introduction and Tutorial. ( WP:YFA really isn't useful, it's all negative with no helpful hints.)
Once the mentor (or coach mentioned above) has helped them, and confirmed that they've read the basics, then a flag could be set and the mentor could help them with their first article. Sure anybody can edit, but it's hard to know what to do without a little help, and builds a sense of community. -- William Allen Simpson 10:13, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
This proposal partially defeats the purpose, as it would require considerable extra work on the part of mentors. There are also technical issues (who chooses a mentor? how would one distinguish between a genuine and a fake mentor adding a flag? etc.). -- Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης) 13:23, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
I hate to clamp down on new users. But, if you want to see how bad the problem is, look at the last 50 new articles at any time. There are times when 80% are candidates for immediate deletion, as out and out junk, self-promotion, insults, and similar trash. It seems to take about three people, full time, 24 hours a day, just to keep up with and delete the incoming junk articles. (The new one-step quick deletion process is a big help.) This is a great way to burn out volunteers.
What might help is a more structured process for creating an article, where the process is form and menu driven. "General subject: person/movie/tv show/book/concept/other?" This should be optional, of course, but it would help newcomers get a reasonable article on the first try, and would give them a sense of what's expected in an article. Many people are terrified of a blank page, too. Giving them a kickstart might draw in more good articles from people afraid of embarassing themselves with format errors. -- Nagle 04:34, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
It has occured to me that Very Flare could be merged with flare (pyrotechnic), because very flares are a type of flare, and the very flare article is a stub anyway. The idea is that just maybe we could have an article about flares, signal, very, and all other types of flare in one article. Erafwiki 17:27, 5 April 2006 (UTC) Erafwiki
Wikipedia serves as all Wiki Projects' highest form of governemnt; I don't think that's right. I think that Wikimedia should be where Help, Reference Desk, Proposals, Policy, etc. should be located. Also, Beer Parlour & Tea Room should be deleted, etc. & if there are any other institutions like as mentioned in this comment, then they should be deleted to. User pages should also be consolidated into 1 central location, namely Wikimedia, or a separate place, but these are draft ideas, but the general idea, would organize Wikimedia & save resources. Taking the point of saving resources, Accounts should be allowed to be deleted.
Please leave one if you'd like more clarification on this issue. You could also contact me <redact> [since they haven't instituted the option to delete your account, made their own licence, or the GNU licence hasn't changed yet, I haven't signed up].
thanks
24.70.95.203 14:23, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Anyone interested in creating a guideline from the following?
We've got a template, {{ Importance}}, which is linked to by quite a few articles, which implies that has consensual approval, yet the page it redirects to is either historical or proposed depending on when you look at it. There needs to be some guideline on how to make a claim of notability or importance, and the value of such a claim. Steve block talk 09:58, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Not sure how possible this would be, it might require code changes, but the idea would be to allow us to embed weights and measures in a template such as {{kg|20.5}}, which by default would do nothing except show 20.5 kg (in some agreed format), however with the extension of allowing users to choose preferred units for items such as weight, length, area, volume, liquid volume etc in one of the tabs of my preferences. This would save having to have articles showing dual units (i.e. the height of mountains in metres and feet), they could just be entered once in whatever the article writer wants and then all users can view the article with whatever units they are most familiar with. Sfnhltb 05:51, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
There is no unified footnote style in Wikipedia, which bothers me. some put external links as footnotes, like this [www.wikipedia.org], while others put all the notes in a seperate section. We need a unified style-- Exir Kamalabadi Join Esperanza! 08:45, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
On Talk and Special pages, could there be a small javascript that checks to see whether the user has typed ~~~~ or clicked the signature button, and, if not, would pop up a confirmation box asking if the ~~~~ should be added? This would reduce the number of unsigned comments significantly, and I don't think it would be that complicated of a script to write. There would need to be an option in user preferences to disable the script, of course. Jonathan Kovaciny 01:22, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
I would like to propose that pronunciations should be provided for all main subject terms, the way a regular dictionary or encyclopedia does. To me this is one of the main characteristics that makes Wikipedia less useful than other online reference sources. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.134.199.130 ( talk • contribs) 22:25, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm curious about the MediaWiki text used to explain to unregistered users that they can't create new articles. This has come up at MfD recently, see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Talk:Hinged handcuffs. User:Rossami feels (and I think they're right) that the talk page in question was created by an anon wishing to create an article, who used the Talk space because the article space was protected.
Should we alter the code so that talk pages cannot be created for nonexistent articles? Should we alter the warning text (wherever it may be) so that it warns users not to do this, or is that going to violate WP:BEANS? (Where is that text?) -- stillnotelf is invisible 22:24, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to see the addition of small icons beside each article title when they appear within search result listings or categories. This is currently being done (hardcoded) in some of the wikibooks to denote their completion status:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro
I think its a great way to add more detail to the listings without being too obtrusive. The existence of status icons would be a great motivator for folks perusing categories to jump in and fix things while they are within an area they're familiar with. For example, I can browse all the listings for {expert} tags but how do I filter out any of the articles for which I'm not an expert? It would be far easier for me to go to the category, i.e. Category:Electronics and view all the articles within and look for the telltale status icons.
icon candidates: wikify, expert, importance, sources, etc.
I would suggest making their appearance on the pages an option that can be toggled in the user preferences, default=off for the first while until the bugs get worked out.
[To implement this I'd encode the status flags as separate bits in a status code byte/word/long that gets updated whenever the article gets edited, fast retrieval & decoding.]
-- Hooperbloob 22:17, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
It would be helpful if the "Special Results" page, listing relevancy, included a little more information to provide a hint as to the page content.
I was thinking of having search displaying all the results of a search query in all the Mediawiki projects;, I'm not sure if because Mediawiki isn't that powerful, or that our\the technology isn't that powerful yet? Please leave 1, & mabye if possible, let me kno, thanks.
24.70.95.203 11:06, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Rationale: Having hit the million mark in both users and articles, now is a good time to concentrate on quality rather than quantity. Having half a million poor quality stubs is nothing much to be proud of - not every blue link leads to a well-written, rounded, somewhat-complete article. Not being able to create new articles (in the main namespace only) will force everyone to work on existing articles only.
Why a month? It's a compromise between nothing and forever. We can try it out and it won't damage WP's up-to-dateness. Perhaps people who are creating articles on everything that happened yesterday can use this time to try out wikinews:.
Actually I don't think gaining consensus on this proposal is the best way to implement it, I think it should just be implemented from above, but let's see how this goes anyway.
(Weaker version: Only allow creation of new pages that already exist as redlinks.)
Inspiration from User:Adam Carr. Is there any good reason we shouldn't give this a try? -- pfctdayelise ( translate?) 03:25, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I wholeheartedly support this proposal. I cannot imagine improving Wikipedia and not being able to create new pages, for example by splitting or moving pages, so I'd have to take a wikibreak. I'd really welcome that. Perhaps I'll even be able to shake off my wiki-addiction in that month. That would do wonders for my spare time. -- Eugene van der Pijll 13:29, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
Oppose. It's a volunteer project. We get the most bang for the buck by allowing people to work on what they want to work on. Also, if someone does a bad job at creating new articles, there is no reason to believe they will do a much better job at editting existing ones. You just shuffle the problems around with no real benefit. Dragons flight 14:56, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
From Peter Knutsen above:
I presume the million articles includes redirects? If yes, then we've probably only got about half a million 'real' articles - MPF 19:17, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
Oppose. We have enough instability and unpredictability from long-term chanages.
--
Jerzy•
t 19:44, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
OK, some further comments:
-- pfctdayelise ( translate?) 03:31, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
When we click on the 'show changes' button, spaces, & returns should be shown as changes; we need to know excatly what has changed, & everything that has changed. If you need ispiration, look @ schorlarly journals-_-
Please leave one if you'd like more clarification on this issue. You could also contact me (Redacted) [since they haven't instituted the option to delete your account, made their own licence, or the GNUL hasn't changed yet, I haven't signed up].
Please fucking reply! Did I have to REALLY use that word?!
thanks
24.70.95.203 19:56, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
If physics has the Nobel, math has the Fields Medal, basketball has the MVP, and bad acting has the Academy Awards, .. why can't we have an award too?
So, I'm willing to donate a new Dell XPS 170 laptop (unless someone comes up with something popular of same ~$2000 price range or a trophy of some sort instead?) to a Most Valuable Wikipedian or Most Valuable Contributor prize (i can't decide on a name either heh) IF we can come up with a way of ensuring we get a positive benefit to wikimedia/wikipedia. I think this prize should be open to everyone who contributes to wikimedia projects (including for example wikibooks). The problem is ..how do we go about ensuring it's fairly awarded without creating infighting, angry persons, portals to hell, or even worse ..overall negative controversy. I wouldn't want someone who worked harder or nearly as hard as the person who wins the prize to get frustrated/jealous etc. and stop contributing. I suppose the same thing applies in other fields but prizes have not prevented people from excelling in those.
Anyway, I'm thinking we can eventually expand it to a few special categories like de-vandalizing, science, math, etc. someday if it works out. What do yall think?
-Johan
Note: I looked in perennial proposals and saw that a wiki-award idea got moved there .. but I still put it on here cause well I am willing to donate something and want to find out the best way of doing things rather than have it shuffled away.
On April 4 in Announcements, it was announced that 2006-Wikipedia-CD-Selection was available. Wikipedia should help ensure the 2007 version has all feature articles by making sure the articles already selected for 2006 are reviewed. Can we have a project page that lists all the articles in '2006-Wikipedia-CD-Selection" so that editors can easily find the selected articles are otherwise categorize/tag those articles? This is effectively a small Wikipedia 1.0. Samw 00:26, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
This is not so much a proposal as an informal request for proposals. :p Basically, a lot of our lengthiest (and many of our best) articles use summary style to keep detail in subarticles and a summary in the main parent article. The problem is ensuring excess detail goes into the subarticles. Let's take a couple of featured articles as our examples. The Beatles' history section often has a lot of new detail added to it, and the History of The Beatles article is completely ignored (despite an HTML comment in The Beatles begging editors to add new content there instead). Theodore Roosevelt also has a subarticle on his presidency, but if my watchlist is not mistaken, new detail is far too often added to the main article instead of the subarticle. To make summary style practical, you either need an article that few people care about enough to add new content to — but such an article often has such a limited scope that it doesn't need summary style — or an article that is watched like a hawk by someone constantly maintaining it. (Not practical.) Should a software modification be made to take into account summary style? Perhaps what we could have is meta-data about each section (which for now would probably consist just of its main article, although I can think of other uses -- such as listing references), and then the software could insert a big bold notice at the top each time a section is edited, giving a form message like "This section has a main page: Foo. This section is meant to summarise that page, and probably doesn't need excessively detailed content added here. You might consider contributing information to that page instead." Thoughts? Johnleemk | Talk 14:53, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
Humanities is so general, it grows fast. I believe Politics and Religion should have their own sections on the Reference Desk. Users will definitely have a lot to ask about them. Please consider. Thanks. -- Shultz IV 22:23, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
I think it would be useful if the links in the "in other languages" box betrayed a little detail on the articles behind them, so as to help the reader decide which languages are worth reading, or translating. The furthest I got in this scheme is: Featured articles on top /horizontal line/ All articles here, bold links for longer articles, italic links for articles that are shorter than the one you are looking at. /hor. line/ Stubs at bottom. Jenda 20:51, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
Maybe something like this could be done by a bot, i.e. create a series of templates like the existing FA one and have a bot occasionally go through articles checking each languages version and assigning them to one of several groups accordingly (i.e FA, Good, Normal, Stub) and then break up the languages box into appropriate sections if more than one type is present in the list. Sfnhltb 02:34, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I think Wikipedia should have its own OpenCyc server. It is free, so there should be no problem. One of my reasons for suggesting this is because it would be nice if you can generate lists (OpenCyc queries) other than creating them manually. A good idea for this would be that every OpenCyc constant could have an associated Wikipedia article. I hope you take this into consideration and carry it out. Thank you very much.
FLaRN2005 19:03, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
Sometimes when I am reading an article, I open several other articles just to read the overview/introduction and continue reading the previous article.
The feature I am proposing :
Hovering the cursor on an internal link gives a quick introduction/definition about the word (instead of just the same word repeated). The target article could contain meta-data that would be displayed with any link to that page on the site. If this meta-data is inexistant, the first few words of the article would be used.
Where do I start to make it happen? -- Alex 15:50, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
I love the articles that people write about villages and towns, unfortunately, they do this and don't quote a postcode. Here in Belgium we have several towns which are spelled the same but are very much different.
I think it would be GREAT if you would recommend people specify a post code (zip code) when writing a story about a town.
For example:
The postcode of the above is 1360 but there is another Perwez, postcode 5352
and there is another pronounced the same but spelled Peruwelz Péruwelz
Quoting postcode would avoid confusion.
(Moved to Wikipedia talk:Maintenance for further discussion.)
In australia recently there has been some media coverage of a young surfer named James Robinson.... I would like to add a page to him as he has recieved several large surfing awards and i have recenetly interviewed him for Australian TV shows.... unfortuanly i cannot edit but would like to help by giving info..... if any1 would like 2 help me with this plz email.... <email address removed - User:Zoe| (talk) 17:28, 10 April 2006 (UTC)> — Preceding unsigned comment added by Robbo james ( talk • contribs)
Google Earth's community is a large resource of knowledge for what it at various places around the world how about a wikipedia version. For big chains e.g. Mc Donald’s you could have addresses for their locations while small shops and restaurants could have reviews sample menus and recommended dishes. If it had a built in function for searching buy area and it was easy to specify where a pace was when the article was made (preformatted address box like when you put your address in on an online store etc) it could quickly become invaluable in finding what was in you local area or what’s worth doing on holiday.
I think that it would be great to have great historical documents available on wikipedia e.g. Magna Carta, doomsday book, American declaration of independence. I'm sure there too old to be copyrighted and it would be a great resource.
Like on all the days we can add: Movies out, Games out, Books out, CD out, etc. For that day. Like births but for movies etc. -- Ac t o w n e 16:51, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
It seems like there's a LOT of Vandalism GOing Onn. Well, we could require all changes made to be made from a logged on Useraccount. Depending on the vandalism though, I acually don't know what the vandalism is like,[since they haven't instituted the option to delete your account, made their own licence, or the GNUL hasn't changed yet, I haven't signed up], but it must be made clear User Accounts have the option to be deleted, & after a certain period of time, they should be deleted; somepoeples personalities are like that they like to have things open ((open ended/no closure)).
Please reply.
Please leave one if you'd like more clarification on this issue. You could also contact me (Redacted) [since they haven't instituted the option to delete your account, made their own licence, or the GNUL hasn't changed yet, I haven't signed up].
Thanks.
24.70.95.203 20:04, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
I noticed that in wikihtml, when we edit, formating has extra space, for example, when we edit a comment, there's a space between the $Subject/headline:$ & the content of the message. Another example is == Extra Space ==$ is also the same as ==Extra Space==$. Does this make comments larging in size as bytewise? Even if not, it could create confusion. So I guess Mediawiki needs to be tweaked/the devlopers\the codes needs a little editing?
Please leave one if you'd like more clarification on this issue. You could also contact me (Redacted) [since they haven't instituted the option to delete your account, made their own licence, or the GNUL hasn't changed yet, I haven't signed up].
thanks
24.70.95.203 20:22, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
There was actually discussion about standardizing the whitespace in the source code and having Mediawiki add extra space where needed to make it more readable on save. Discussion here. See also Programming style, Indent style. I think it's a great idea. — Omegatron 00:08, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
If you type {{TOCleft}} at the beginning of your article, the table of contents appears to the left of the rest of your article (and the same for {{TOCright}}), instead of the default format with the article introduction at the top, then the table of contents, and then the rest of the article. I think the default format looks ugly, especially in an article with a very long table of contents. But the Wikipedia article about it says that you should only use the TOCleft for just a few articles that really need it. I think lots of articles could use it, but I don't want to go around Wikipedia changing all the articles if someone doesn't like the idea.
Could I propose that most of the articles on Wikipedia be modified so that the table of contents fits in nicely with the text?
I understand that someone looking at the article might want to read the introduction before the table of contents, but it's no trouble to arrange that. You just have to type {{TOCleft}} after the introduction. Jonathan W 00:11, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for all the ideas! Another thing that would help is if I could find a way to shorten the width of the TOC so that it takes up less space. Jonathan W 16:46, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
user:Alanmak has added a template at the top of all united nations-related articles containing the alternative names in 5 languages. This has caused a great deal of controversy. There is a poll being conducted at Talk:United_Nations_Commission_on_Human_Rights#Poll to settle the issue. Raul654 19:08, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
We should be allowed to compare more than 2 versions at 1 time.
Please Reply.
Please leave one if you'd like more clarification on this issue. You could also contact me (Redacted) [since they haven't instituted the option to delete your account, made their own licence, or the GNUL hasn't changed yet, I haven't signed up].
Thanks.
24.70.95.203 20:12, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't know if it happens to others as well, but the recent heavy activity by robots that format articles has given me a lot of extra-work spotting vandalism in the articles I watch by getting extensive watchlists of modified articles that have only been slightly touched by a Bot.
To illustrate the problem, let me show you this edit that added some nonsense, but at the same time removed the chinnese interwiki link (zh:). Hours later to this vandal edit YurikBot restored the interwiki link, leaving the vandalism untouched. The following day I check for the last changes, and saw tha the page has been edited by YurikBot, thus thought that there's no need to check its edits, but luckily checked it anyway.
Since bots produce a huge number of changes in articles that might have not been otherwise modified in months (and therefore there's no need to check them for vandalism), it might be reasonable to give Bots a special status that would later allow us to ignore their edits when requesting your our watchlist. This way watchlists would be much more compact, and we would have less work doing our everyday check.
Another idea would be the display in the watchlists the number of edits to that page since your last log-on, or something like that. Any other ideas? Good wiking, Mariano( t/ c) 05:33, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
I have mentioned this several times to various bot drivers. At last, one of the bots (Tawkerbot2 rider, thank you) implemented what I wanted: its edit summary lists previous editors, see here, so that I can still do eyeball search for red-inked vandals easily in my watchlist. Why not enforce this for all bots? `' mikka (t) 21:59, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
A template for "Further information is needed to determine if this article qualifies for inclusion in Wikipedia. The information needed is: ... If this information is not provided within N days, the article will be deleted." would be useful. Effectively, this would be equivalent to "prod", but nicer in tone.
The intended use is for articles where some minimal information has been posted, but not enough to determine if the article qualifies for inclusion. Typically these are articles with a few lines of text, but with no references. The idea is to give newbies clearer guidance of what's needed in the article. Technically, "prod" works for this, but using it on incomplete articles by newbies comes across as stomping on them. This would be a more positive approach to the problem. -- John Nagle 19:00, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I am considering creating a template to mark inadeqate pages.
This would be placed on the article page. Its primary purpose would be to tidy up the articles that have multiple templates indicating multiple problems. Those templates would go on the talk page.
The "Inadequate" tag could also conceivably be used to indicate other problems of at least moderate import. But any such problems would need to be noted on the talk page.
This could serve as a simple general quality indicator. It could also be used in a way similar to the different stub tags -- such as, hypothetically, "mil-inadequate" to draw the attention weak articles within a given topic area.
Thoughts, anyone? Maurreen 04:00, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
-- James S. 22:57, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Instead of having various awards/recognition for an article (e.g. "used as press source", "featured article", "main page article", etc.) on the talk page, why not have them on the actual article? For one, it'd allow the reader to recognize that an article is particularly well-established and well-researched. It'd also be a nice sort of commendation for editors who worked on the article.
Some counter arguments: it detracts from the page (I don't really think so, nor do I see how a few lines at the top of a page really changes anything); it attracts vandalism (I doubt it'd attract a significant amount more given the vast number of articles {decorated or general}, and it'd equally attract people who'd make the article better -- either out of an adamance to improve what is already considered great or out of a vandal-esque drive to demean a good article by showing it still has flaws); it could just be left on the talk page (but that undermines the aforesaid reasons for putting it on the article page in the first place!, not to mention the fact that one has to almost intuitively know to look on the talk page to confirm suspicions about an articles respectability.)
So there you go... Give it some thought. 66.229.227.145 00:26, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
A star of recognition is good enough for me. So long as it's something that recognizes and rewards the efforts of the page's editors, as well as notifies and encourages the person who stumbles across the page, it meets the same ends as I (on a different IP) originally proposed. I'd still like it if it noted other achievements ("used as press source", "main page article", etc.) as well though. 66.229.227.175 05:13, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Many biographical articles - for e.g. composers, artists, and writers - are made unwieldy by having long lists of their subject's creations. Such lists are of course an appropriate part of encyclopaedic articles - but they are often almost as long - sometimes even longer - than the body of the article. In some cases anomalies appear when editors try to avoid this by creating seaprate, or even partial articles - e.g. the article List of string quartets by Sergei Taneyev (why not 'List of Songs Without Words by Felix Mendelssohn' or 'List of paintings of bridges by Monet' in that case? - this way surely lies madness). So I suggest a page feature 'lists' to be available (like 'discussion', 'history' etc.) with each topic page, on which relevant list(s) can be posted. That way the info can be easily available and referenced without distorting the balance of the main article. -- Smerus 20:39, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
see also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists of works). I've been hoping people will come add to the discussion there, help revive and then implement it is a guideline. I'd would suggest that "List of works" be used, instead of the more ambiguous "Lists". -- Quiddity 02:26, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
Would it be possible to create a {{show/hide}} template so that a long list could be hidden with CSS on pageload, and then displayed inline when the user clicked it? Say there where 3 paragraphs about the composer and then a hidden list of works, with a link List of works by composer which, when clicked, would make the list visible without leaving the current page? That way the article would not be visually cluttered with lists, but everything would stay within the same article for easier maintenance. Jonathan Kovaciny 21:19, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
Another alternative: The lists are often very narrow as well as long. This is easily remedied by placing the info into columns in some way. There might be many methods for achieving this.
I'm against a new top-tab, or show/hide css. Hidden information will not be found by a significant enough proportion of users that it is inadvisable. -- Quiddity 21:38, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
I guess this can already be done in the case of a long enough list of works anyway, i.e. creating a section with the works the artist is well known for, but then with a subarticle for a more exhaustive list. Sfnhltb 02:29, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't think an extra tab would be a good idea, especially because the number of articles that require/benefit from lists is somewhat limited. In the field of life sciences, many entries have lists of subgroups (ex. a genus page will have a list of species). However, these are easily moved to a seperate page which can be linked to prominently in the appropriate section of the text. For example, see Pinguicula. The individual lists should be as exhaustive as possible, and can be divided into sections as needed as has been done here. NoahElhardt 22:31, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm not too keen on this. Sure, lists can be unwieldy, but often they are integral to the sense of the rest of the article. Having them as separate pages will mean toggling back and forth between the two pages. They may make some pages cumbersome, but I'd prefer them to stay as is. Grutness... wha? 01:42, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
While looking around i noticed the Zoological medicine stubs category.
This of course is of great interest to me as i am a current vet student.
However it seemed like most of the subcats pointed solely to human related articles. Is there any way i'd be able to somehow integrate a purely veterinary perspective on existing stubs or create new ones with a veterinary slant?
eg. if i were to go category:animal anatomy and then click on the "subcategories" cardiovascular system, Arteries and finally selecting Radial artery as a layman and inexperienced wiki user (which i am) i would expect to see the radial artery as described in an animal system, however that is not the case
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated Biliskner 22:18, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
As an encylopedia of facts and not fiction I was thinking Wikipedia needs to go on a rempant deletion spree of articles that refer to fictional items. Wikipedia has become a dumping ground for useless fanboy trivia from hundreds of science fiction and animated programs. Take for example the relatively obscure SciFi series Firefly. I'm not opposed to an article on the show or even its major characters. But there are articles for each episode, items, ships, and planets from the show. It's too much. More popular shows like Star Trek or Lost are even worse perpetrators. All of these shows have there own Wikis and fan sites that do a more thorough job of documenting these programs. There is really no reason why Wikipedia should host redundant info when these fan sites can be liked from the main article. No fictional article should need more info than something like Moby Dick.
My suggestion is not just deletion of offending material, but guidelines for works of fiction. The entry for the anime Outlaw Star is a good example, with plot, characters, and important items in the actual article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mark 2000 ( talk • contribs)
I'd like to make another point separate of the other arguments. If you go to Memory-Alpha.org (the Star Trek Wiki) you will find that if a real world item is linked (such as a Black Hole or a dinosaur) it is linked to Wikiepedia. There is no dinosaur entry in Memory-Alpha because the rules say it isn't relavent enough. So why then doesn't Wikipedia link to Mmeory Alpha on specific trek items as opposed to having a selfcontained page? Does Memory-Alpha have higher standards than Wikipedia?-- Mark 2000 06:35, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Fancruft and its talk page. jdb ❋ ( talk) 08:34, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
See the discussion from 2002 at Talk:Mithril. It's far too late. User:Zoe| (talk) 15:50, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
The way I see it, Wikipedia is supposed to be a place where people all over the world can log in and exchange information. So what if you are a fan of Firefly or Ender's Game? Take Calvin and Hobbes for example. If you're a fan of Calvin and Hobbes (like me), this article will give you lots of information you never knew before. In my opinion, if you aren't a fan of science fiction, just leave those artciles alone. Jonathan W 21:00, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
To delete a neutral and verifiable article because it "doesn't belong here" would be a violation of NPOV. -- Sam Blanning (talk) 21:14, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
The Re-addition of Wikifun link to the community portal and other areas where user whether new or not can find it easily. I think this is important due to the fact that it has slowed severely and in addition this comment made by a user on the discussion page: " this participation made me learn several features of WP I didn't yet know". so as you can see there is a large benefit. -- Larsie 16:10, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm looking for the ability to create, maintain, and manage a set of wiki spaces using a cognitive map or graphical interface. I've found a couple of open source tools for creating mind-maps, but they are limited to single paths to the leaves. A wiki space is more appropriately modeled as a 2-D or 3-D network. The idea would be that a user would be given an interactive visualization of the pages (content) and the links to other content. If made flexible and powerful, such a visualization tool could be used to create, manage, and navigate a wiki; brainstorm projects; create complex plans; or map out detailed decision making processes. Of course, the power of the wiki is the ease of use by the community and the openess for adding new content..
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I didn't check if this idea has already been proposed and discussed somewhere. If it's the case just ignore my post. The idea is proposing some kind of RSS feed for things such as the wikipedia:reference desk, Wikipedia:Village pump or Special:Recentchanges and even others I didn't think of.
The point is to increase flexibility and response of the community by increasing visibility of specific wikipedia updates, it could even save some bandwith too as it won't be needed anymore to fully load/reload whole pages to find out that there is nothing interesting for you there at that particular moment. If possible offering subscription to a limited number of feed should be limited to prevent abuse. Offering that kind of subscription for a few articles per wikipedian would be a nice and useful addition to the watchlist feature.
This is a preliminary idea, and it certainly has to be submitted to devs for review and check to separate what's technically possible from what's not. izwalito
Should there be a project to port the contents of disambigiuation pages to Wictionary terms?
There is now a white background color on all math-elements created as an image. I would like that background-color to be removed so the image is transparent. → A z a Toth 21:50, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Is it possible to create a page called: "The solution to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict"?
The aim for this page is to let people present the conflict and solutions, arriving at some sort of consensus through editing. Using Wikipedia to tackle complex issues of world state could be a interesting exercise in diplomacy and even if not creating a solution, at least it would promote discussion.
Something like this has worked for Abortion debate.
Most articles that give information on how a term is pronounced use IPA. I and probably 98% of the WP audience can't parse IPA easily, and even if you do have the requisite linguistics knowledge it's a pain to remember what all the symbols mean.
What I propose is a Special webpage that works something like WP:ISBN. The WP software recognizes an IPA string (probably with some sort of delimiter) and makes a link to a page that generates a .wav or .ogg of a computer synthesized voice saying the term. As IPA has zero ambiguity as to pronounciation I think this would be relatively techinically feasible, though I certainly don't have the know-how to do it. -- Pyroclastic 04:17, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
I have a long discution with User:Jerzy about the uportunity to rename Pope Stephen III into Pope Stephen II and Pope Stephen IV into Pope Stephen III and so on until Pope Stephen X into Pope Stephen IX (and to keep Pope Stephen X as a redirect to Pope Stephen IX). My reasons and Jerzy's answers are explained in detail in Stephen (ephemeral pope) and in Talk:Pope Stephen.
I'm waiting now for Jerzy's answer or for new arguments for a long time now. And it's a shame that we two only are taking part in this controversy. I wish some oser users showed themselves and expressed their opinion on the subject if they have one.
Švitrigaila 00:44, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
There are language translation engines - one could translate english wikipedia pages to other languages quickly and in high volume. Likewise it can go in other directions. Kevin Baas talk 18:03, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
Alternatively, one could put a "Translate this page" button on the wiki skin, then people speaking only one language can see wikipedias from a variety of languages (and compare articles or what have you) (provided that those wikipedias have this feature). And people from other language wikipedias could easily transfer article content from other language wikipedias as desired. Kevin Baas talk 20:07, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
Language translations are unreadable! Take this example... the first paragraph from the article Wikipedia was translated via Google into German and back. It came out like this... (I removed all the IPA symbols and so on). Wikipedia "the free encyclopedia", is regaled a website, a multilingual free contents knowledge data base, which is editable by everyone. The project caught 15, 2001 on January, when addition of the expert-written (and now deceased) Nupedia on and now functioned by the non-profit basis Wikimedia. Wikipedia has more as 3,700,000 articles in many languages, including more than 1,000,000 in the English-language version. Since its establishment Wikipedia rose constantly in popularity and some sister projects gelaicht. Publishers become lively, a policy "of the zero-criterion" under, which remarkable perspectives are summarized to support without an attempt, objective truth determine. Q.E.D.-- Keycard ( talk) 15:58, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Everyday I get questions about the copyright status of material people want to use in Wikipedia. It's mostly images - users wanting to know which licence to use. For example: "There are few pictures available of St. Laurent class ships, but they're all Department of National Defense, under Canadian Crown Copyright. Under what licence can I upload them?"
I propose Wikipedia:Copyright desk. A place where people can ask these questions. Hopefully it will attract help from those experienced in copyright issues (lawyers etc). So, should I start it up?-- Commander Keane 20:52, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi
This is my first proposal, so I'm not at all sure whether I'm doing this right.
Often when I read an article about a movie, I see that the "discussion" tab is green, meaning that there is content. I therefore reasonably assume that somebody has written something on that page, some question or additional information, or criticism of the article. But very often I'm disappointed. I find no text, instead I just find some kind of box that tells me that "This article is part of WikiProject Films, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to films on Wikipedia"...
Here is one example, [5], the link to the "discussion" page for the movie Ronin.
Such projects are fine, but I don't think they should be under the "discussion" tab. Instead, they ought to have a seperate tab (keep in mind that some articles may be included in more than one project - also keep in mind that the movie project isn't the only one).-- Peter Knutsen 01:48, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
My proposal is that Wiki pedia include the AMA (american medical association)style of citation in the citing Wikipedia Pages. I Am a student an have a teacher insists n this style, ima sure that She is not the only one. if this is done Students all over the world will rejoice.( i think they will at least)
A proposal has been made to close the September 11 Wiki. This is a separate wiki hosted by the WikiMedia Foundation that was spun off from the English Wikipedia in 2001. Kaldari 06:18, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
This page is empty, although de:MediaWiki:Allpages-summary makes me think it should be filled with some content describing Special:Allpages (see de:Special:Allpages). It would be nice if the page could explain the sorting order, link to the naming conventions and explain that redirects are in italics, which is perhaps not totally obvious. I can provide a translation of de:MediaWiki:Allpages-summary if necessary. Kusma (討論) 03:38, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
I really feel this should become an official policy. Collecting one sided votes to achieve an artificial conensus in my view is an obvious problematic behaviour which should be discouraged. -- Cool Cat Talk| @ 09:01, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
There is currently a template:Hebrew which adds <span class="he" dir=rtl style="font-family:SBL Hebrew, Ezra SIL SR, Ezra SIL, Cardo, Chrysanthi Unicode, TITUS Cyberbit Basic, Arial Unicode MS, Narkisim, Times New Roman;font-size:12pt">{{{1}}}</span> to the text. It would probally be better if the css was in the main style sheet not inline. Is there any way to add the <span class="he"> to all hebrew text automaticly and put the css in the main style sheet? Jon513 12:59, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Can I get comments on the merits of this idea: to use WP:AWB or a WP:BOT to link references in article to lines in the Abrahamic Bibles (Old Testament/New Testament), Qur'an or other holy scripture to the appropriate Wikibook chapter. I've tried searching around Wikipedia for any sort of group or policy related to this idea, but I have not found any (please correct me if I'm wrong.) Andrewjuren (talk) 19:50, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to propose a new category, which for want of a better title, I'm calling Body Enigmas and Little Known Facts (Maybe somebody can suggest a better title.)
I'm proposing it here because I don't know how to create a new category. If I can simply go ahead and do it, maybe someone will be so kind as to tell me how.
This new category would be used to list facts which are not widely known or discussed in normal articles. For example, the fact that parsley, which is a diuretic, actually helps reduce the frequency of nocturnal urination, or that eating beets will cause a person's urine to turn red or purple.
I was thinking of adding these facts to the appropriate articles, but then I started thinking about how many other facts of this nature might exists that don't normally appear in traditional articles and where would one look if they wanted to find more of these little gems.
Am I on the right track in thinking about creating such a category? Should I even be discussing this here?
-- Jaxhere 14:59, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps this is more an article than a category. What I had in mind when I put in this proposal was planting a seed that would encourage others to add to the list because I might only come up with a few, but the reason for thinking of a category was my understanding that when an article is placed in a category, it is automatically listed there, whereas if an article is created, then the writer or editor of a new article would have to place a "See Also" link to the List Article which Rick Block mentions. That is to say that it would be somewhat more complicated to encourage the development of such a list.
Re Rspeer's comment, if anyone can verify that beets turn their urine red by eating them and then looking at the result, would it be necessary to cite a "verifiable reference"? This is another aspect of the "little known facts" that I had in mind ... that virtually anyone could verify the fact for themselves by observing their own body. Would we really need some authority to verity these things?
-- Jaxhere 22:45, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
I have seen some articles with code similar to this in the Notes section of the article: <div style="font-size:90%;"><references /></div>. Although I'm indifferent about the font size since I can read it either way, this is what you might call a " shot across the bow" that I will be editing mercilessly to remove the extra div whenever I see this. The ordered list does have a class and it should be modified in the CSS to provide a consistent and standard font size (whatever the community decides that should be). There is no good reason to have it vary from article to article. And if you are one who would prefer the smaller font size, you are welcome to propose it here for discussion. Thank you, — Mike 06:49, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Please comment. John Reid 23:46, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I created a bot to create missing Indian town and city articles based on Census 2001. It is currently waiting for approval. Could you please take a look and comment? Thanks, Ganeshk ( talk) 15:34, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
As per this message left for Jimbo, I am deeply troubled by the "end notes" style of links in certain articles. I am convinced that this style of external links is degrading the quality of the wiki. See Rationale to impeach George W. Bush and Killian documents for example pages with this problem. Merecat 08:29, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
My primary issue with this is that links to web-based articles are being end-noted. This defeats much of the value of the link. Web-based articles ought to use the in-line link style - see for example the new article in The Register which addresses the issue of Wikipedia accuracy and states "[N]ature's reviewers considered trivial errors and serious mistakes as roughly equal...". [6] Simply put, for web-based articles, links of the type we have here are the best - far more to the point than an end-note, much easier to check and less susceptible to gaming towards POV. Merecat 05:03, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a collection of links... in other words, the articles should be basically self contained. In line links should be there for fact checking, not for needed content (possible external links section excepted). If that's the aim, then having a way to check that the material referenced is still the material at the other end of the link is crucial. Indirect linking is much better for this. IMHO Direct linking is positively dangerous and risks being misleading. Mozzerati 21:34, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
It's only 10 days away. Bring out the Charles Chaplin/Lewis Caroll in you, let your imagination run free. Aim to outdo yourself. Recently there has been too much conflict (necessary) about the issue of censorship and freedom of expression, both in general and specifically. To lighten up, we need some good jokes. Last year there were some good ones (like Deletionof the Main Page and Time Travel), let's match that or even outshine. Feel free to use my talk page as coordination zone. Loom91 12:43, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Sure, Wikipedia should be accurate 365 days a year, but only on Leap Years. And I think all responsible Wikipedia editors clean up their mess afterwards, so let your hair down a little. Loom91 08:56, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
see Wikipedia:April Fool's Main Page for more. -- Quiddity 02:32, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
We started a new policy page Wikipedia:Wikiethics and need more input to improve the current text further. I thought somebody here might be interested... Thanks for your contributions in advance. Resid Gulerdem 09:19, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
This is an equation created with Wikipedia's TeX font for math markup:
This is the same equation created using WikiCities' TeX font for the very same math markup:
It is quite obvious that the WikCities TeX font is smaller than the Wikipedia's TeX font. In my opinion, the WikiCities font is also much neater and tidier. What I mean by neater and tidier is that it is much closer to the size of the regular text so that the overall look of an article that uses equations is more balanced.
Also, the smaller TeX font allows for displaying longer equations (within the limited display screen width) than does the Wikipedia font.
I submitted a request to Bugzilla about a month ago asking that Wikipedia make available the smaller WikiCities font as an alternate option ... not to replace the font now used by Wikipedia, but only to offer the smaller WikiCities font as an optional choice to Wikipedians. My request was assigned the bug number 4915. Anyone can vote in favor of proceeding with the bug request at Bugzilla Bug 4915 and thus far I am the only one who has voted to proceed.
If you agree with me that the smaller font should be offered as an alternate, please visit the bugzilla page at Bugzilla Bug 4915 and scroll down to the page bottom where is says "Vote for this bug" and do so. If you are not already registered with bugzilla, it will ask you to do that first ... but it only takes a minute to do so.
If this isn't the correct place for me to lobby for the smaller font, please let me know where I can do so. Thanks and please vote.
mbeychok 23:34, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
This may have been suggested before, or even already be in existance, but there should be a Wiki toolbar, as with the google toolbar for instance, that can be downloaded onto your computer, allowing you to search wiki sites, especially wikipedia quickly.
-- Chris rigby 69 15:51, 2 April 2006 (UTC)Chris
Aggree It would be extremely useful and not that hard to create you can get many programs, like [www.effectivebrand.com this one]. There are some which may be better or Wikimedia could just make one themselves using the base programming. Lcarsdata 16:03, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
There's a toolbar for Firefox. I don't know about one for IE. User:Zoe| (talk) 19:37, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Is there anywhere in Wikipedia which says that neither Wikipedia contributors nor staff take responsibility for the content or implications of any external web-sites mentioned in Wikipedia? If there is not, should there be? ACEO 08:48, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Can I please make a proposal about medical articles on Wikipedia? If the neutrality of an article in Wikipedia is disputed, we do see a very clear warning logo at the head of the article. Can I also suggest that for medical articles in Wikipedia, we have a clear log heading the article which states: "This article should not be used as any substitute for any information you receive from health care professionals". I do appreciate that from what I have read of medical articles in Wikipedia, as far as internet resources go, they are quite informative and reasonably well-informed (at least compared with many internet health resources!) but I do feel that this would be a sensible proposal. Also, should such articles have a "Disclaimer" statement, to clarify that neither Wikpedia contributors nor professional watchdogs take responsibility for the content or implications of any external web-links mentioned in such articles? ACEO 08:43, 2 April 2006 (UTC) April 2 2006
After a few days of watching and edited newly created articles, two things are clear. First, well over half of new articles are candidates for quick deletion. And second, almost all the bad articles are about proper nouns, not general subjects. In fact, almost all the new articles are about proper nouns. Looking at the last 50 new articles right now, 49 of the 50 are about proper nouns, and only one Fabrication and testing (optical components) is a generic subject.
This may be an indication that some policies should be different for proper nouns.
Actually, almost all new article trouble is in the following categories:
Those specific areas deserve special handling.
There's been ongoing debate over restrictions for new users. Perhaps tightening the rules for creation in those areas would help stem the tide of incoming junk. At the very least, it would be a big help if, during the article creation process, the web form offered a menu for some basic categorization. It doesn't have to be complete; just the above categories plus "other" would be enough. Not that many new "other" articles are coming in. Although those are usually the good stuff.
Alternatively, it would be a big help if article creation in those areas was web form driven. Articles in those areas tend to have (or need) a generic format. Certainly movie, song, album, and performer entries could be created via forms.
This could cut the cleanup load way down. -- John Nagle 06:10, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Might these be moved to sit between the checkboxes and page names, please? I imagine the list would then look less cluttered. Regards, David Kernow 11:38, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Looking at today's FA New England Patriots I noticed a discussion on whether or not the current staff of the team should be included or not, and wondered if there was a way to make this sort of thing more consistent where we have groups of similar articles. The idea would be to add them to a category (i.e. Category:Teams in the NFL, which oddly the article isn't in anything like this which surprised me) and on Category pages of this sort of grouping where all the articles are expected to be somewhat similar it could link to a Template for Teams in the NFL.
These templates wouldn't be prohibitive but it would act as guidelines to try and standardise the articles, and the talk page of the template could act as a central point for getting a consensus on the levels of detail that would generally be suggested for articles in the category, i.e. what sort of information is considered encyclopaedic, and what is generally getting too deep into cruft (although there will also be the case of significant exceptions to the general rule of course). The template could also work on incomplete categories to act as a starting point for say the general information a new article might need adding if the information can be found/sourced, and also help standardise the way sections are named, ordered and such if people want to try and keep similar articles uniform.
Some of the above is done already via infoboxes of course, but this would extend that idea to an entire article where it is appropriate, but it would be more flexible than an infobox as it needs to be as outside of certain key elements most articles even on the same category of object has significant variation, but still it might be useful to consider a way to standardise formatting as much as possible.
In case this idea has been brought up many times before and shouted down, well sorry but I couldn't find anything searching in wiki or via google that related to wikipedia, so felt I would throw it out there. Sfnhltb 01:48, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
{{ helpme}} I wrote two articles, Google Groups and Homerun, and am seeking feedback on them. An hour's surfing and repeated {{helpme}} requests were in vain - I couldn't find a page where I could post my article simply for feedback that would help me write better articles. {{peerreview}} is only for very established articles, and Template_talk:Did you know is only for articles less than 5 days old (it took me much longer than that to write the complete articles).
I am going to be bold and create the Wikipedia:Article Feedback Desk for Wikipedians to post their new articles to get feedback on them. Please read the text on that page, post feedback on my articles, post your own articles for feedback, and post feedback about the Article Feedback Desk (paradoxical). I understand that the acronym AFD clashes with Articles For Deletion - perhaps someone could suggest a better name? I hope this becomes an integral feature of Wikipedia that I will become famous for starting.
-- J.L.W.S. The Special One 06:23, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
I think it would be great to have a feature where we could email the link (or maybe the whole article if it didn't get into copyvio territory) to a friend, much like many sites have. A link in the toolboox would be ideal.-- Esprit15d 14:05, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
This is what I'd thought that the proposal further up the page was saying.
The proposal is that, just as new accounts can't be used to up-load images or move articles until after a short probation period, so they shouldn't be usable for creating new articles for some period.
Advantages: it would substantially cut down on the huge problem of one-shot accounts created simply in order to create one vandalistic article (see Special:Newpages), as well as forcing new Users to do smaller-scale editing, learning about Wikipedia, before creating articles (a large number of new pages are un-wikified messes, created by people who have never edited before, and often never edit again. Many more are crude cut-and-paste copyright violations). -- Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης) 17:24, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
The arguments against seem to fall into two main categories:
Alternative -- I'm a content expert, not an admin, so I don't watch for new articles, and only see the vandalism on the ~870 pages I'm watching. Still, the real problem that I've seen is lack of mentoring.
So, I'd be in favor of not allowing new page creation (even on their own talk page) until somebody has given them the welcome message (after that they can edit their talk page), and asked them to read the Introduction and Tutorial. ( WP:YFA really isn't useful, it's all negative with no helpful hints.)
Once the mentor (or coach mentioned above) has helped them, and confirmed that they've read the basics, then a flag could be set and the mentor could help them with their first article. Sure anybody can edit, but it's hard to know what to do without a little help, and builds a sense of community. -- William Allen Simpson 10:13, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
This proposal partially defeats the purpose, as it would require considerable extra work on the part of mentors. There are also technical issues (who chooses a mentor? how would one distinguish between a genuine and a fake mentor adding a flag? etc.). -- Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης) 13:23, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
I hate to clamp down on new users. But, if you want to see how bad the problem is, look at the last 50 new articles at any time. There are times when 80% are candidates for immediate deletion, as out and out junk, self-promotion, insults, and similar trash. It seems to take about three people, full time, 24 hours a day, just to keep up with and delete the incoming junk articles. (The new one-step quick deletion process is a big help.) This is a great way to burn out volunteers.
What might help is a more structured process for creating an article, where the process is form and menu driven. "General subject: person/movie/tv show/book/concept/other?" This should be optional, of course, but it would help newcomers get a reasonable article on the first try, and would give them a sense of what's expected in an article. Many people are terrified of a blank page, too. Giving them a kickstart might draw in more good articles from people afraid of embarassing themselves with format errors. -- Nagle 04:34, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
It has occured to me that Very Flare could be merged with flare (pyrotechnic), because very flares are a type of flare, and the very flare article is a stub anyway. The idea is that just maybe we could have an article about flares, signal, very, and all other types of flare in one article. Erafwiki 17:27, 5 April 2006 (UTC) Erafwiki
Wikipedia serves as all Wiki Projects' highest form of governemnt; I don't think that's right. I think that Wikimedia should be where Help, Reference Desk, Proposals, Policy, etc. should be located. Also, Beer Parlour & Tea Room should be deleted, etc. & if there are any other institutions like as mentioned in this comment, then they should be deleted to. User pages should also be consolidated into 1 central location, namely Wikimedia, or a separate place, but these are draft ideas, but the general idea, would organize Wikimedia & save resources. Taking the point of saving resources, Accounts should be allowed to be deleted.
Please leave one if you'd like more clarification on this issue. You could also contact me <redact> [since they haven't instituted the option to delete your account, made their own licence, or the GNU licence hasn't changed yet, I haven't signed up].
thanks
24.70.95.203 14:23, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Anyone interested in creating a guideline from the following?
We've got a template, {{ Importance}}, which is linked to by quite a few articles, which implies that has consensual approval, yet the page it redirects to is either historical or proposed depending on when you look at it. There needs to be some guideline on how to make a claim of notability or importance, and the value of such a claim. Steve block talk 09:58, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Not sure how possible this would be, it might require code changes, but the idea would be to allow us to embed weights and measures in a template such as {{kg|20.5}}, which by default would do nothing except show 20.5 kg (in some agreed format), however with the extension of allowing users to choose preferred units for items such as weight, length, area, volume, liquid volume etc in one of the tabs of my preferences. This would save having to have articles showing dual units (i.e. the height of mountains in metres and feet), they could just be entered once in whatever the article writer wants and then all users can view the article with whatever units they are most familiar with. Sfnhltb 05:51, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
There is no unified footnote style in Wikipedia, which bothers me. some put external links as footnotes, like this [www.wikipedia.org], while others put all the notes in a seperate section. We need a unified style-- Exir Kamalabadi Join Esperanza! 08:45, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
On Talk and Special pages, could there be a small javascript that checks to see whether the user has typed ~~~~ or clicked the signature button, and, if not, would pop up a confirmation box asking if the ~~~~ should be added? This would reduce the number of unsigned comments significantly, and I don't think it would be that complicated of a script to write. There would need to be an option in user preferences to disable the script, of course. Jonathan Kovaciny 01:22, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
I would like to propose that pronunciations should be provided for all main subject terms, the way a regular dictionary or encyclopedia does. To me this is one of the main characteristics that makes Wikipedia less useful than other online reference sources. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.134.199.130 ( talk • contribs) 22:25, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm curious about the MediaWiki text used to explain to unregistered users that they can't create new articles. This has come up at MfD recently, see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Talk:Hinged handcuffs. User:Rossami feels (and I think they're right) that the talk page in question was created by an anon wishing to create an article, who used the Talk space because the article space was protected.
Should we alter the code so that talk pages cannot be created for nonexistent articles? Should we alter the warning text (wherever it may be) so that it warns users not to do this, or is that going to violate WP:BEANS? (Where is that text?) -- stillnotelf is invisible 22:24, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to see the addition of small icons beside each article title when they appear within search result listings or categories. This is currently being done (hardcoded) in some of the wikibooks to denote their completion status:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro
I think its a great way to add more detail to the listings without being too obtrusive. The existence of status icons would be a great motivator for folks perusing categories to jump in and fix things while they are within an area they're familiar with. For example, I can browse all the listings for {expert} tags but how do I filter out any of the articles for which I'm not an expert? It would be far easier for me to go to the category, i.e. Category:Electronics and view all the articles within and look for the telltale status icons.
icon candidates: wikify, expert, importance, sources, etc.
I would suggest making their appearance on the pages an option that can be toggled in the user preferences, default=off for the first while until the bugs get worked out.
[To implement this I'd encode the status flags as separate bits in a status code byte/word/long that gets updated whenever the article gets edited, fast retrieval & decoding.]
-- Hooperbloob 22:17, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
It would be helpful if the "Special Results" page, listing relevancy, included a little more information to provide a hint as to the page content.
I was thinking of having search displaying all the results of a search query in all the Mediawiki projects;, I'm not sure if because Mediawiki isn't that powerful, or that our\the technology isn't that powerful yet? Please leave 1, & mabye if possible, let me kno, thanks.
24.70.95.203 11:06, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Rationale: Having hit the million mark in both users and articles, now is a good time to concentrate on quality rather than quantity. Having half a million poor quality stubs is nothing much to be proud of - not every blue link leads to a well-written, rounded, somewhat-complete article. Not being able to create new articles (in the main namespace only) will force everyone to work on existing articles only.
Why a month? It's a compromise between nothing and forever. We can try it out and it won't damage WP's up-to-dateness. Perhaps people who are creating articles on everything that happened yesterday can use this time to try out wikinews:.
Actually I don't think gaining consensus on this proposal is the best way to implement it, I think it should just be implemented from above, but let's see how this goes anyway.
(Weaker version: Only allow creation of new pages that already exist as redlinks.)
Inspiration from User:Adam Carr. Is there any good reason we shouldn't give this a try? -- pfctdayelise ( translate?) 03:25, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I wholeheartedly support this proposal. I cannot imagine improving Wikipedia and not being able to create new pages, for example by splitting or moving pages, so I'd have to take a wikibreak. I'd really welcome that. Perhaps I'll even be able to shake off my wiki-addiction in that month. That would do wonders for my spare time. -- Eugene van der Pijll 13:29, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
Oppose. It's a volunteer project. We get the most bang for the buck by allowing people to work on what they want to work on. Also, if someone does a bad job at creating new articles, there is no reason to believe they will do a much better job at editting existing ones. You just shuffle the problems around with no real benefit. Dragons flight 14:56, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
From Peter Knutsen above:
I presume the million articles includes redirects? If yes, then we've probably only got about half a million 'real' articles - MPF 19:17, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
Oppose. We have enough instability and unpredictability from long-term chanages.
--
Jerzy•
t 19:44, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
OK, some further comments:
-- pfctdayelise ( translate?) 03:31, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
When we click on the 'show changes' button, spaces, & returns should be shown as changes; we need to know excatly what has changed, & everything that has changed. If you need ispiration, look @ schorlarly journals-_-
Please leave one if you'd like more clarification on this issue. You could also contact me (Redacted) [since they haven't instituted the option to delete your account, made their own licence, or the GNUL hasn't changed yet, I haven't signed up].
Please fucking reply! Did I have to REALLY use that word?!
thanks
24.70.95.203 19:56, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
If physics has the Nobel, math has the Fields Medal, basketball has the MVP, and bad acting has the Academy Awards, .. why can't we have an award too?
So, I'm willing to donate a new Dell XPS 170 laptop (unless someone comes up with something popular of same ~$2000 price range or a trophy of some sort instead?) to a Most Valuable Wikipedian or Most Valuable Contributor prize (i can't decide on a name either heh) IF we can come up with a way of ensuring we get a positive benefit to wikimedia/wikipedia. I think this prize should be open to everyone who contributes to wikimedia projects (including for example wikibooks). The problem is ..how do we go about ensuring it's fairly awarded without creating infighting, angry persons, portals to hell, or even worse ..overall negative controversy. I wouldn't want someone who worked harder or nearly as hard as the person who wins the prize to get frustrated/jealous etc. and stop contributing. I suppose the same thing applies in other fields but prizes have not prevented people from excelling in those.
Anyway, I'm thinking we can eventually expand it to a few special categories like de-vandalizing, science, math, etc. someday if it works out. What do yall think?
-Johan
Note: I looked in perennial proposals and saw that a wiki-award idea got moved there .. but I still put it on here cause well I am willing to donate something and want to find out the best way of doing things rather than have it shuffled away.
On April 4 in Announcements, it was announced that 2006-Wikipedia-CD-Selection was available. Wikipedia should help ensure the 2007 version has all feature articles by making sure the articles already selected for 2006 are reviewed. Can we have a project page that lists all the articles in '2006-Wikipedia-CD-Selection" so that editors can easily find the selected articles are otherwise categorize/tag those articles? This is effectively a small Wikipedia 1.0. Samw 00:26, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
This is not so much a proposal as an informal request for proposals. :p Basically, a lot of our lengthiest (and many of our best) articles use summary style to keep detail in subarticles and a summary in the main parent article. The problem is ensuring excess detail goes into the subarticles. Let's take a couple of featured articles as our examples. The Beatles' history section often has a lot of new detail added to it, and the History of The Beatles article is completely ignored (despite an HTML comment in The Beatles begging editors to add new content there instead). Theodore Roosevelt also has a subarticle on his presidency, but if my watchlist is not mistaken, new detail is far too often added to the main article instead of the subarticle. To make summary style practical, you either need an article that few people care about enough to add new content to — but such an article often has such a limited scope that it doesn't need summary style — or an article that is watched like a hawk by someone constantly maintaining it. (Not practical.) Should a software modification be made to take into account summary style? Perhaps what we could have is meta-data about each section (which for now would probably consist just of its main article, although I can think of other uses -- such as listing references), and then the software could insert a big bold notice at the top each time a section is edited, giving a form message like "This section has a main page: Foo. This section is meant to summarise that page, and probably doesn't need excessively detailed content added here. You might consider contributing information to that page instead." Thoughts? Johnleemk | Talk 14:53, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
Humanities is so general, it grows fast. I believe Politics and Religion should have their own sections on the Reference Desk. Users will definitely have a lot to ask about them. Please consider. Thanks. -- Shultz IV 22:23, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
I think it would be useful if the links in the "in other languages" box betrayed a little detail on the articles behind them, so as to help the reader decide which languages are worth reading, or translating. The furthest I got in this scheme is: Featured articles on top /horizontal line/ All articles here, bold links for longer articles, italic links for articles that are shorter than the one you are looking at. /hor. line/ Stubs at bottom. Jenda 20:51, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
Maybe something like this could be done by a bot, i.e. create a series of templates like the existing FA one and have a bot occasionally go through articles checking each languages version and assigning them to one of several groups accordingly (i.e FA, Good, Normal, Stub) and then break up the languages box into appropriate sections if more than one type is present in the list. Sfnhltb 02:34, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I think Wikipedia should have its own OpenCyc server. It is free, so there should be no problem. One of my reasons for suggesting this is because it would be nice if you can generate lists (OpenCyc queries) other than creating them manually. A good idea for this would be that every OpenCyc constant could have an associated Wikipedia article. I hope you take this into consideration and carry it out. Thank you very much.
FLaRN2005 19:03, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
Sometimes when I am reading an article, I open several other articles just to read the overview/introduction and continue reading the previous article.
The feature I am proposing :
Hovering the cursor on an internal link gives a quick introduction/definition about the word (instead of just the same word repeated). The target article could contain meta-data that would be displayed with any link to that page on the site. If this meta-data is inexistant, the first few words of the article would be used.
Where do I start to make it happen? -- Alex 15:50, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
I love the articles that people write about villages and towns, unfortunately, they do this and don't quote a postcode. Here in Belgium we have several towns which are spelled the same but are very much different.
I think it would be GREAT if you would recommend people specify a post code (zip code) when writing a story about a town.
For example:
The postcode of the above is 1360 but there is another Perwez, postcode 5352
and there is another pronounced the same but spelled Peruwelz Péruwelz
Quoting postcode would avoid confusion.
(Moved to Wikipedia talk:Maintenance for further discussion.)
In australia recently there has been some media coverage of a young surfer named James Robinson.... I would like to add a page to him as he has recieved several large surfing awards and i have recenetly interviewed him for Australian TV shows.... unfortuanly i cannot edit but would like to help by giving info..... if any1 would like 2 help me with this plz email.... <email address removed - User:Zoe| (talk) 17:28, 10 April 2006 (UTC)> — Preceding unsigned comment added by Robbo james ( talk • contribs)
Google Earth's community is a large resource of knowledge for what it at various places around the world how about a wikipedia version. For big chains e.g. Mc Donald’s you could have addresses for their locations while small shops and restaurants could have reviews sample menus and recommended dishes. If it had a built in function for searching buy area and it was easy to specify where a pace was when the article was made (preformatted address box like when you put your address in on an online store etc) it could quickly become invaluable in finding what was in you local area or what’s worth doing on holiday.
I think that it would be great to have great historical documents available on wikipedia e.g. Magna Carta, doomsday book, American declaration of independence. I'm sure there too old to be copyrighted and it would be a great resource.
Like on all the days we can add: Movies out, Games out, Books out, CD out, etc. For that day. Like births but for movies etc. -- Ac t o w n e 16:51, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
It seems like there's a LOT of Vandalism GOing Onn. Well, we could require all changes made to be made from a logged on Useraccount. Depending on the vandalism though, I acually don't know what the vandalism is like,[since they haven't instituted the option to delete your account, made their own licence, or the GNUL hasn't changed yet, I haven't signed up], but it must be made clear User Accounts have the option to be deleted, & after a certain period of time, they should be deleted; somepoeples personalities are like that they like to have things open ((open ended/no closure)).
Please reply.
Please leave one if you'd like more clarification on this issue. You could also contact me (Redacted) [since they haven't instituted the option to delete your account, made their own licence, or the GNUL hasn't changed yet, I haven't signed up].
Thanks.
24.70.95.203 20:04, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
I noticed that in wikihtml, when we edit, formating has extra space, for example, when we edit a comment, there's a space between the $Subject/headline:$ & the content of the message. Another example is == Extra Space ==$ is also the same as ==Extra Space==$. Does this make comments larging in size as bytewise? Even if not, it could create confusion. So I guess Mediawiki needs to be tweaked/the devlopers\the codes needs a little editing?
Please leave one if you'd like more clarification on this issue. You could also contact me (Redacted) [since they haven't instituted the option to delete your account, made their own licence, or the GNUL hasn't changed yet, I haven't signed up].
thanks
24.70.95.203 20:22, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
There was actually discussion about standardizing the whitespace in the source code and having Mediawiki add extra space where needed to make it more readable on save. Discussion here. See also Programming style, Indent style. I think it's a great idea. — Omegatron 00:08, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
If you type {{TOCleft}} at the beginning of your article, the table of contents appears to the left of the rest of your article (and the same for {{TOCright}}), instead of the default format with the article introduction at the top, then the table of contents, and then the rest of the article. I think the default format looks ugly, especially in an article with a very long table of contents. But the Wikipedia article about it says that you should only use the TOCleft for just a few articles that really need it. I think lots of articles could use it, but I don't want to go around Wikipedia changing all the articles if someone doesn't like the idea.
Could I propose that most of the articles on Wikipedia be modified so that the table of contents fits in nicely with the text?
I understand that someone looking at the article might want to read the introduction before the table of contents, but it's no trouble to arrange that. You just have to type {{TOCleft}} after the introduction. Jonathan W 00:11, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for all the ideas! Another thing that would help is if I could find a way to shorten the width of the TOC so that it takes up less space. Jonathan W 16:46, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
user:Alanmak has added a template at the top of all united nations-related articles containing the alternative names in 5 languages. This has caused a great deal of controversy. There is a poll being conducted at Talk:United_Nations_Commission_on_Human_Rights#Poll to settle the issue. Raul654 19:08, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
We should be allowed to compare more than 2 versions at 1 time.
Please Reply.
Please leave one if you'd like more clarification on this issue. You could also contact me (Redacted) [since they haven't instituted the option to delete your account, made their own licence, or the GNUL hasn't changed yet, I haven't signed up].
Thanks.
24.70.95.203 20:12, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't know if it happens to others as well, but the recent heavy activity by robots that format articles has given me a lot of extra-work spotting vandalism in the articles I watch by getting extensive watchlists of modified articles that have only been slightly touched by a Bot.
To illustrate the problem, let me show you this edit that added some nonsense, but at the same time removed the chinnese interwiki link (zh:). Hours later to this vandal edit YurikBot restored the interwiki link, leaving the vandalism untouched. The following day I check for the last changes, and saw tha the page has been edited by YurikBot, thus thought that there's no need to check its edits, but luckily checked it anyway.
Since bots produce a huge number of changes in articles that might have not been otherwise modified in months (and therefore there's no need to check them for vandalism), it might be reasonable to give Bots a special status that would later allow us to ignore their edits when requesting your our watchlist. This way watchlists would be much more compact, and we would have less work doing our everyday check.
Another idea would be the display in the watchlists the number of edits to that page since your last log-on, or something like that. Any other ideas? Good wiking, Mariano( t/ c) 05:33, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
I have mentioned this several times to various bot drivers. At last, one of the bots (Tawkerbot2 rider, thank you) implemented what I wanted: its edit summary lists previous editors, see here, so that I can still do eyeball search for red-inked vandals easily in my watchlist. Why not enforce this for all bots? `' mikka (t) 21:59, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
A template for "Further information is needed to determine if this article qualifies for inclusion in Wikipedia. The information needed is: ... If this information is not provided within N days, the article will be deleted." would be useful. Effectively, this would be equivalent to "prod", but nicer in tone.
The intended use is for articles where some minimal information has been posted, but not enough to determine if the article qualifies for inclusion. Typically these are articles with a few lines of text, but with no references. The idea is to give newbies clearer guidance of what's needed in the article. Technically, "prod" works for this, but using it on incomplete articles by newbies comes across as stomping on them. This would be a more positive approach to the problem. -- John Nagle 19:00, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I am considering creating a template to mark inadeqate pages.
This would be placed on the article page. Its primary purpose would be to tidy up the articles that have multiple templates indicating multiple problems. Those templates would go on the talk page.
The "Inadequate" tag could also conceivably be used to indicate other problems of at least moderate import. But any such problems would need to be noted on the talk page.
This could serve as a simple general quality indicator. It could also be used in a way similar to the different stub tags -- such as, hypothetically, "mil-inadequate" to draw the attention weak articles within a given topic area.
Thoughts, anyone? Maurreen 04:00, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
-- James S. 22:57, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Instead of having various awards/recognition for an article (e.g. "used as press source", "featured article", "main page article", etc.) on the talk page, why not have them on the actual article? For one, it'd allow the reader to recognize that an article is particularly well-established and well-researched. It'd also be a nice sort of commendation for editors who worked on the article.
Some counter arguments: it detracts from the page (I don't really think so, nor do I see how a few lines at the top of a page really changes anything); it attracts vandalism (I doubt it'd attract a significant amount more given the vast number of articles {decorated or general}, and it'd equally attract people who'd make the article better -- either out of an adamance to improve what is already considered great or out of a vandal-esque drive to demean a good article by showing it still has flaws); it could just be left on the talk page (but that undermines the aforesaid reasons for putting it on the article page in the first place!, not to mention the fact that one has to almost intuitively know to look on the talk page to confirm suspicions about an articles respectability.)
So there you go... Give it some thought. 66.229.227.145 00:26, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
A star of recognition is good enough for me. So long as it's something that recognizes and rewards the efforts of the page's editors, as well as notifies and encourages the person who stumbles across the page, it meets the same ends as I (on a different IP) originally proposed. I'd still like it if it noted other achievements ("used as press source", "main page article", etc.) as well though. 66.229.227.175 05:13, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Many biographical articles - for e.g. composers, artists, and writers - are made unwieldy by having long lists of their subject's creations. Such lists are of course an appropriate part of encyclopaedic articles - but they are often almost as long - sometimes even longer - than the body of the article. In some cases anomalies appear when editors try to avoid this by creating seaprate, or even partial articles - e.g. the article List of string quartets by Sergei Taneyev (why not 'List of Songs Without Words by Felix Mendelssohn' or 'List of paintings of bridges by Monet' in that case? - this way surely lies madness). So I suggest a page feature 'lists' to be available (like 'discussion', 'history' etc.) with each topic page, on which relevant list(s) can be posted. That way the info can be easily available and referenced without distorting the balance of the main article. -- Smerus 20:39, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
see also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists of works). I've been hoping people will come add to the discussion there, help revive and then implement it is a guideline. I'd would suggest that "List of works" be used, instead of the more ambiguous "Lists". -- Quiddity 02:26, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
Would it be possible to create a {{show/hide}} template so that a long list could be hidden with CSS on pageload, and then displayed inline when the user clicked it? Say there where 3 paragraphs about the composer and then a hidden list of works, with a link List of works by composer which, when clicked, would make the list visible without leaving the current page? That way the article would not be visually cluttered with lists, but everything would stay within the same article for easier maintenance. Jonathan Kovaciny 21:19, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
Another alternative: The lists are often very narrow as well as long. This is easily remedied by placing the info into columns in some way. There might be many methods for achieving this.
I'm against a new top-tab, or show/hide css. Hidden information will not be found by a significant enough proportion of users that it is inadvisable. -- Quiddity 21:38, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
I guess this can already be done in the case of a long enough list of works anyway, i.e. creating a section with the works the artist is well known for, but then with a subarticle for a more exhaustive list. Sfnhltb 02:29, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't think an extra tab would be a good idea, especially because the number of articles that require/benefit from lists is somewhat limited. In the field of life sciences, many entries have lists of subgroups (ex. a genus page will have a list of species). However, these are easily moved to a seperate page which can be linked to prominently in the appropriate section of the text. For example, see Pinguicula. The individual lists should be as exhaustive as possible, and can be divided into sections as needed as has been done here. NoahElhardt 22:31, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm not too keen on this. Sure, lists can be unwieldy, but often they are integral to the sense of the rest of the article. Having them as separate pages will mean toggling back and forth between the two pages. They may make some pages cumbersome, but I'd prefer them to stay as is. Grutness... wha? 01:42, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
While looking around i noticed the Zoological medicine stubs category.
This of course is of great interest to me as i am a current vet student.
However it seemed like most of the subcats pointed solely to human related articles. Is there any way i'd be able to somehow integrate a purely veterinary perspective on existing stubs or create new ones with a veterinary slant?
eg. if i were to go category:animal anatomy and then click on the "subcategories" cardiovascular system, Arteries and finally selecting Radial artery as a layman and inexperienced wiki user (which i am) i would expect to see the radial artery as described in an animal system, however that is not the case
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated Biliskner 22:18, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
As an encylopedia of facts and not fiction I was thinking Wikipedia needs to go on a rempant deletion spree of articles that refer to fictional items. Wikipedia has become a dumping ground for useless fanboy trivia from hundreds of science fiction and animated programs. Take for example the relatively obscure SciFi series Firefly. I'm not opposed to an article on the show or even its major characters. But there are articles for each episode, items, ships, and planets from the show. It's too much. More popular shows like Star Trek or Lost are even worse perpetrators. All of these shows have there own Wikis and fan sites that do a more thorough job of documenting these programs. There is really no reason why Wikipedia should host redundant info when these fan sites can be liked from the main article. No fictional article should need more info than something like Moby Dick.
My suggestion is not just deletion of offending material, but guidelines for works of fiction. The entry for the anime Outlaw Star is a good example, with plot, characters, and important items in the actual article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mark 2000 ( talk • contribs)
I'd like to make another point separate of the other arguments. If you go to Memory-Alpha.org (the Star Trek Wiki) you will find that if a real world item is linked (such as a Black Hole or a dinosaur) it is linked to Wikiepedia. There is no dinosaur entry in Memory-Alpha because the rules say it isn't relavent enough. So why then doesn't Wikipedia link to Mmeory Alpha on specific trek items as opposed to having a selfcontained page? Does Memory-Alpha have higher standards than Wikipedia?-- Mark 2000 06:35, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Fancruft and its talk page. jdb ❋ ( talk) 08:34, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
See the discussion from 2002 at Talk:Mithril. It's far too late. User:Zoe| (talk) 15:50, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
The way I see it, Wikipedia is supposed to be a place where people all over the world can log in and exchange information. So what if you are a fan of Firefly or Ender's Game? Take Calvin and Hobbes for example. If you're a fan of Calvin and Hobbes (like me), this article will give you lots of information you never knew before. In my opinion, if you aren't a fan of science fiction, just leave those artciles alone. Jonathan W 21:00, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
To delete a neutral and verifiable article because it "doesn't belong here" would be a violation of NPOV. -- Sam Blanning (talk) 21:14, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
The Re-addition of Wikifun link to the community portal and other areas where user whether new or not can find it easily. I think this is important due to the fact that it has slowed severely and in addition this comment made by a user on the discussion page: " this participation made me learn several features of WP I didn't yet know". so as you can see there is a large benefit. -- Larsie 16:10, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm looking for the ability to create, maintain, and manage a set of wiki spaces using a cognitive map or graphical interface. I've found a couple of open source tools for creating mind-maps, but they are limited to single paths to the leaves. A wiki space is more appropriately modeled as a 2-D or 3-D network. The idea would be that a user would be given an interactive visualization of the pages (content) and the links to other content. If made flexible and powerful, such a visualization tool could be used to create, manage, and navigate a wiki; brainstorm projects; create complex plans; or map out detailed decision making processes. Of course, the power of the wiki is the ease of use by the community and the openess for adding new content..