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I don't know whether this has been proposed before, if this is the proper section to propose it in, or if it is even possible, but I'd like to see Wikipedia have a more user friendly search function. With most sites on the web, there is a standard sort of search where a misspelled or uncommon spelling of a parameter still yields results close to what the user was looking for and/or suggestions on the correct spelling of the misspelled word or phrase. In Wikipedia, when a word entered into the search is improperly spelled, the user is simply greeted with an awkward screen stating that no such article exists and left with no real recourse to find the proper name of the article. Moreover, even when it does yield possible results, it often skips over many articles that contain the phrase, and often times I have found the proper article to be missing from the list of results. 66.229.182.113 11:04, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
I had the same problems until I downloaded the free i=Internet explorer spell checker at this site hope that helps Jodywebster 21:11, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I propose that we make page frameworks consistent. If you look at 'User contributions' it says 'Newer' and 'Older' (with capitals). If you look at the same thing in article histories, it says 'previous' and 'next' (without capitals). Some pages have an 'edit' tab and others have an 'edit this page' tab. I am sure that a review would reveal other inconsistencies.
I was told on the Village Pump Technical page that Admins can customise interface text. So it seems that it is possible to make them consistent. What do others think? bobblewik 17:45, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Are there any other consistency-related changes you would like to propose? — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 04:51, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia is a great website, but if there's one thing that I find slightly frustrating it's that the Search feature isn't very smart. I misspell things often, and if I don't know how to spell what I'm looking for on Wikipedia, sometimes it can be a dead end. So I guess I'm proposing a more advanced search feature?
Has a DVD version of the English Wikipedia been considered? It would be very useful to people without internet or if their internet wasn't working. It could also make the Wikipedia a lot of money. 12.201.27.234 17:11, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Just a suggestion: Add an "Article Maturity Rating" to articles so that users can have a quick understanding of the accuracy and therefore maturity of the article they are reading.
The rating can be based on the number of times the article was viewed, appended, edited, and reviewed by Wikipedia administrators, etc..
Keep up the good work.
In the page Stub we have two different definitions of that a stub is.
Either it is "3 to 10 short sentences long". Or it is "an article so incomplete that an editor who knows little or nothing about the topic could improve its content after a superficial Web search or a few minutes in a reference library." A few minutes????? This means that a stub is any page between 3 and 300 sentences long.
I think the first definition is correct. And I propose that the page Stub is corrected, together with related pages like Perfect stub article. A new page Stub_removal is created with guidelines for then a stub should be removed.
Right now we have tens of thousends of incorrect stubs. We need a Stub_removing_project. It exists a stub bot User:Triddle/stubsensor what might help.
Reko 11:45, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
See my proposal at MediaWiki talk:Edittools#Too many characters — M e ts501 ( talk) 13:49, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Most vandalism by anonymous IPs are to wikipedia articles, and vandalism to articles is more problematic than vandalism to other sections of wikipedia, as it involves damage that non-wikipedians see.
Given the above, rather than blocking low-level vandals from wikipedia entirely, how about giving temporary blocks from editing article space (ie "main") only?
Low-level vandals would have little interest in vandalising talk pages and the like, whereas legitimate users may (or may not) be willing to use talk pages to point out errors in an article.
There may be the possibility that this main-space only blocking option would lead to more aggressive blocking, but that'd be a potential pit-fall of any harm-minimisation approach. And, if the vandals decide to vandalise non-article pages, they can be given a full block.
This proposed fix can be done independently of, or combined with, the Wikipedia:Blocking policy proposal being implemented by Robchurch. Andjam 10:17, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
Right now, the default view of Wikipedia is to show the latest article. That's not the only option. Perhaps readers should optionally see a "stable" version, rather than the latest edit.
Deciding the "stable" version is an interesting problem. A reasonable first cut might be this:
This would have the effect of hiding most vandalism from casual readers of Wikipedia, with very little effort. It's a way out of the "The truth was there, three revisions ago" problem.
Comments? -- John Nagle 00:40, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I've had this thought myself. I don't think of the default revision displayed as being any more stable than any other; and I think that, by default, the latest should be displayed. Nor is this a specific against vandalism.
Old, heavily edited pages do often reach a sort of maturity; from that point on, new edits tend to be of decreasing worth. Often this is due to vandalism and unwise newbie editing; often it is due to eternal edit warring. When pages reach such a point it may well be wise to determine, by community consensus, a given good revision of the page. This revision would be the one displayed by default to all readers and editors. The page could still be edited freely by anyone but such edits would accumulate in history; the good revision only would display by default.
If implemented, I hope selection of the good version not be done directly by admins. These have already too many responsibilities and temptations. Some scheme under which all editors vote for good revision is needed.
This would require a nontrivial extension to the MediaWiki engine. I don't know if it will happen any time soon. John Reid 17:47, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
The way I see it is it could be done on articles that have been PR, GAnom, GA, FAnom, FAC, FARC and the ones that have been assessed for CD. This way it would lessen the charge on the admins. Lincher 18:15, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
I like this idea, but what happened to the user patrol idea? I thought that was going to be implemented a long time ago, but I haven't seen it appear as of yet. At any rate, I think this idea definitely deserves extended discussion. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 20:04, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Why don't we put the date on the front page? The only thing relevant to the date is the "On this day..." But I think the main page would just look "more complete" with a full day.month.year sort of date in one of the corners or at least somewhere on the page. If infact there is already a date (i've tried looking), then maybe you can make it a bit more apparent because I can't seem to find it for the life of me. 17:27, 8 May 2006 (UTC)someguy.
And the date would change when it is midnight EDT (where the servers are) or midnight universal time? Either way lots of people would see a date which was not correct for their location. Filceolaire 13:11, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Monday
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21:28, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
I've been wanting this for a while; several other Wikipedias do it. Here's a version I swiped from
Angela:
— BRIAN 0918 • 2006-06-02 14:58
Saw a link to this discussion on Talk:Main Page, and I have to say that I really don't like the idea of having the time. The date I can understand (see the BBC) but the time is silly (though a hidden time code would have to give people the right date for their time zone). But really, I don't rely on the website I am browsing to tell me the time and date. I rely on myself knowing the time! Carcharoth 21:38, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I am looking for 6 coordiators for this new project I started called
WikiProject:US Governors
Wikipedia:WikiProject:US Governors If your interested please respond. --
Zonerocks
06:03, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
I already have it listed. But with an assistant coordinator and 5 other ones that can handle ten states each to help it go faster. -- Zonerocks 17:55, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
There are hundreds of unit discrepancies between Wikipedian articles. For instance, InterCity Express uses kilometers per hour for all velocity measurements; TGV uses kilometers per hour with miles per hour in parentheses; Acela Express uses miles per hour, followed by kilometers per hour in parentheses; and British Rail Class 43 (HST) uses miles per hour—and all four are part of the same WikiProject.
Therefore, I suggest this: Each statistic that requires a non-universal unit (e.g. velocity, distance, acceleration, luminosity, power, etc.) recieves a special markup. For instance, a velocity of 200 kilometers per hour could be formatted as such: {{stat|kmh|200}}. This would register the 200 kilometers as a statistic rather than simple text.
Registered users could then set unit preferences for all measurements, and all statistics would be displayed converted to the user's preference each time they visited a page.
This would require several software changes, such as a unit converter and acceptance of the statistic templates, but I think that's a small price to pay for a solution to the unit discrepancies. C. M. Harris 20:25, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
I think that article-specific edit messages would be a very useful addition. When the user clicked the "edit this page" button, a short, custom message somehow set by previous editors of the article would appear. This could be used to deter link spam, etc. It would only be displayed on the edit page. The article would not need redundant "please cite sources", etc. boxes. As with anything, it could get out of hand, but I think that some in good faith edits that by consensus don't acutally help could be prevented.
As an example, some editors of playstation 3 wanted external confirmation links for each game in the list of launch titles. This content is better suited for the individual game pages, partially because it makes the article messy, and also because the details are more related to the game and its publishers, and may be more complicated than shown in single external links. -- gatoatigrado 05:01, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
I think that the main page should display language links. All of the articles have links to other languages. Google often redirects to the English language, and though most people searching English google would want the English homepage, bilingual people might appreciate the links, and it shows the diversity on Wikipedia. Not a big issue, just a suggestion. -- 69.221.232.135 04:47, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
Lets say I was searching for articles about the sugar substitute "xylitol" but accidently spelled it "zylitol". Wiki doesn't do a THING to help me out with the spelling. Not even a suggestion as to what the correct spelling might be!! Take another sugar substitue: "sorbitol". Well, if I spelled it "sobitol" by mistake, again, Wiki will leave me in the dark. For a site as wonderful as Wikipedia the lack of an autocorrect feature is just startling.
Let me provide you with another search that left me in the dark: BOTH "xylephone" and "xylaphone" turned up NO results in a search for "xylophone"! Ridiculous!
The autocorrect could be much like google.com's. It would ask "did you mean: xylitol, xylophone".
I really think Wiki's search engine needs work, especially in terms of autocorrection. This feature could allow thousands of more acticles to be viewed, and thus make Wiki a better place to learn. A feature like this could help one find an article even if he doesn't know exactly how to spell it. Someone really interested in "Ohsamah Ben Ladin" WOULD FIND AN ARTICLE ON "Osama Bin Laden"!
Please consider this!
Sincerely,
Niklas (faithful Wikipedia user)
Would it be possible for Wikipedia to subsribe to scientific journals (particularly review ones - since these aren't "original research") as an institution so that its member could improve it better? -- Username132 ( talk), UK or Netherlands 12:42, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Hey everybody, I am new to this so if I have posted in the wrong environment, sorry.
I was just writing because I have (well, what I think) is a good for the main page of www.wikipedia.org. This will add more funtionality to this page and, add as publicity for the Wikitionary service.
Somewhere on the ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) main page a "word of the day" should be included. It a word not so common, but one that people could easily pick up on and prononciate. If misunderstood they can click a link that would take them to the word searched with Wiktionary. From there they can also look at synonyms' because of the additional thesaurus services Wiktionary offers (the built in thesaurus).
Anyways just an idea.
Mitchell
Semi-large edit proposal: I want to add the Template:Design Patterns Patterns template that I just created (shiny, yes) to each of the design patterns linked from Design Patterns (the book) (basically all the articles mentioned in the template). Any objections or ideas? -- shadytrees 15:53, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
I propose adding links in articles about people to the LIbrary of Congress Name Authority file. de:Wikipedia has linked to the name authority file of the Deutsche Bibliothek, Germany's national library, since January 2005: see Jakob Voss 'Metadata with Personendata and beyond', a presentation at Wikimania 2005. I have automatically generated some tables matching (currently over 12,000) people in WIkipedia with the LC Name Authority file: these show the feasibility of linking large numbers of en:Wikipedia pages in this way. ( My earlier experimentation suggests these automatic matches are at least 99% accurate, and around 20-25% of the approx. 188,000 biographical articles with name of birth can be automatically matched: this would provide about 40,000 Wikipedia records linked to the LC Name authority.) Dsp13 15:06, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Suggestion: A list of the "Other languages available" in those languages/scripts with the English equivalents (and likewise in non-English language Wikipedias), so we can see what they are. Jackiespeel 13:16, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
What I meant was more of a link to a "list of languages" as a separate article. Could a table be created, and each language wiki merely pulling out the appropriate pair own language:other languages? Jackiespeel 17:30, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Category:Articles lacking sources was deleted. Reasons given for deletion included avoiding self-references, that it was unsightly, not helpful to readers and was confusing them. I do not want to make matters worse, but I would like to point out that Category:Wikipedia cleanup has 17,100 articles in it. Also, if we actually worked on referencing articles, there would have been much fewer articles in the category. The template, {{ unreferenced}}, used to put articles in Category:Articles lacking sources. Now, there is no category for that template. The category was meant to help in the fixing of the articles with no references. There were two problems with this, few or no people were working on fixing the articles and the template was being misused, in my opinion. Some of the articles did have references, but the template placer thought that there were not enough or he or she did not like the references used. In addition, the template was changed so that it could be added to sections as well as articles, which greatly increased the glut. I think removing the section without references would be a better way to go, but that is another discussion. There is a rather big problem with the template not putting the articles into a category. Whereas before there was not much work done on the templates without sources, the lack of a category makes it unlikely that organized work will ever be done. Currently, the only way to work on articles without references is to click on "what links here" on the template's page, which is very awkward to use for this type of work, especially since there are now 16,650 articles (1.28% of all articles) with the template. Therefore, I think that we should either put the articles in a category and get a project started on referencing unreferenced articles and removing the template from inappropriate articles, or we remove the template from every article with a robot. -- Kjkolb 09:03, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
There appears to be a long discussion (now closed) on this at [1] which no one here has linked to yet. That discussion mentioned Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Unreferenced as an alternative to the category for the use cases you describe. — Quarl ( talk) 2006-08-14 07:00Z
(de-indent) What about redirecting {{ unreferenced}} to {{ Not verified}}? It's not as friendly a notice but it would serve the purpose. Or change the category for {{ unreferenced}} to Category:Wikipedia articles needing factual verification.
I agree with the point about maintenance categories detracting from the page for non-editors, but until there is a way to hide these categories from anon browsers we don't have many choices. I don't agrre with robot removing the tag, because it feels like we are saying "it's too hard, so let's just ignore it". Kevin 09:51, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
As an aside, the absense of such categories will neccesarily prevent my category and backlog tracking bot from monitoring them. Dragons flight 14:54, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
I've been increasingly frustrated with the amount of templates that are being addded to article talk pages, e.g. Talk:2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. I don't believe users should have to page down to get a look at what is actually being discussed on the page.
As an experiment in cutting down on template clutter, I took 3 of the 4 templates at Talk:Lord's Resistance Army and tried to covert them using the userbox template. The rough draft is in my sandbox. Before someone accuses me of being a userbox acolyte, I don't use them, but I do think they are a nice size for a streamlined talk page template.
Please take a look at the two pages and feel free to tweak (I know almost nothing about formatting tweaks) and/or comment on my sandbox talk. I would in particular like to hear if people think that matters have reached the point where a widespread switch from the current templates may be accepted, or if I'm the only one annoyed with the mosaic of pastels when I just want to see the TOC. - BT 01:46, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I am new to wikipedia categorization and I mistakenly started several categories regarding the categorization of American actors. I found that the existing policy lists American actors and actresses into one huge category. I worked to categorize this by having two separate categories for "American actresses" and "American actors" because I feel that the current list is just HUGE and disorganized. I feel that the list is too big to the point that it is very intimidating so people will just leave insteading of enjoying the work of other editors to provide that list. I believe categorizing the pages will alleviate the huge burden of overlisting. I also don't know if it is correct to list actresses as actors. Please let me know if I should continue with the following categories or have a vote. I also apologize for starting them but I didnt think anyone would mind. Here are a few categories that I have started on the categorization:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Irish-American_actresses
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:English_American_women
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_silent_film_actresses
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_film_actresses
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_actresses
I hope we can receive a consensus on how to proceed.
Here2fixCategorizations 21:52, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks,
Here2fixCategorizations 22:05, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Please read Wikipedia:Categorization/Gender, race and sexuality. This issue (men & women categories) has been discussed many times in the two plus years since categories were added to the software. Hundreds and hundreds of hours work from many people went into coming up with guidelines for how categorization works. These guidelines can and do change, but they change slowly and only after a good amount of discussion. It is important to learn where the best forum is for discussing things. There is a reason why this is called the "village pump". I think of it as the office water fountain. You cannot decide corporate policy at the water fountain chatting with a few people. You need to go to the office where the policy is discussed. In this case the place to take your concern is probably Wikipedia talk:Categorization. But I can save you the trouble of posting your proposal there. What we would tell you is to read through Wikipedia:Categorization/Gender, race and sexuality and the discussions leading up to those guidelines on its archived talk page and formulate good arguments why the guidelines should be changed. If I have any advice for you and others who are new to Wikipedia it is this: Learn how things are being done before you try to change them, and don't expect change to happen quickly. -- Samuel Wantman 08:32, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
It seems rather inefficient to me to record spoken versions of articles on Wikipedia, since the articles never stop being edited and enhanced. Why don't we get a bot to speak the articles, and update the spoken versions automatically as they are being edited by users? -- Gary Germeil 20:45, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
This is a proposal for a completely new type of award. Please see Wikipedia:Skill badges. Neon Merlin 15:21, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
(Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Skill badge by Neon Merlin 17:17, 11 August 2006 (UTC))
I sent and email to the info coordinators of Wikipedia and they directed me to this page to relay my proposal. The email is as follows:
Dear Wikipedia,
I am writing to you to outline an idea which came to me after Jimmy Wales stated that he hoped the focus of the Wikipedia Project would shift from increasing its scope to increasing its quality (in not so few words). Perhaps at some point you could publish a, "Best of Wikipedia," hard copy of the best content available from the website, and funnel the proceeds back into the project (and likewise sell the hard copy at a low price, since it would not be intended for profit). I beleive this would encourage users to improve current articles, and write new articles of higher quality as was suggested by the founders of your organization. It would also help to give the project a more credible base, as it would display highly reliable information, and critics could not argue that someone had gone and edited the pages of a book. Yet another long term goal could be to expand the text to a full sized, multiple volume encyclopedia (with the updates on the web version appearing in each successive edition) to compete directly with mainstream encyclopedias such as Brittanica. This could also be coupled with an included CD or DVD version so that users could access each editions articles when an internet connection is not available and it is not convenient to use the hard copy. For instance, a user might bring their laptop on vacation to an island resort with no internet, but they could still use Wikipedia to search for notable destinations in the area or even as breakfast reading material. Through its funding potential, usefulness, convenience, and credibility, it is evident that Wikipedia could benefit greatly from publishing a hard copy of its best content, later to be expanded to a full multi-volume encyclopedia and CD/DVD yearly editions. I do hope that you consider this suggestion if you have not already considered something to a similar effect.
Sincerely, Joseph Basile WPI Aerospace Engineering 2008
(Line breaks and differentiation between paragraphs are lacking)
I do not, however, know how wikipedia organizes and dsitributes funds or would make decisions on publications. However, I honestly feel that wikipedia has to potential to become the premier encyclopedia on the planet, effectively eliminating all disputes about credibility, if it takes these steps and perhaps others, as ideas come to the table. Please, everyone involved in this community, take my idea seriously and consider it carefully.
I just put a proposal at Wikipedia:Guidelines for Wikipedian categories. This proposal deals specifically with Wikipedian categories. The current guidelines for categories say very little about Wikipedian categories, and it is implied that they must follow the same stringent requirements as categories in the article namespace. On the other hand, many joke categories and other pointless categories are often created for Wikipedians. This guideline takes a middle ground, stating that the standards for Wikipedian categories are not as high as those for article categories, but there still needs to be some boundaries. Feel free to comment on the proposal and edit it if you have some recommendations. -- Cswrye 00:06, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
For pages that achieve FA status, how about placing some type of clickable tab at the top of the page that can send the view to the archived FA release? That is, the version that met the FA criteria and was not subject to subsequent vandalism or mindless editing. Once that's done, what about a peer-reviewed edit process that can make updates to these archived FA pages? I.e. anybody can propose a set of revisions, and there's an approve/object poll before making the update to the archived release. — RJH ( talk) 22:06, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Conflicts of interest created by User:Eloquence 10 August 2006. WAS 4.250 21:59, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
I know many people use the random article feature to pass time and learn, well, randomly. In doing so though, it is often irritating that so many of the articles that come up are places such as counties and townships, or proper names of obscure people. It would be beneficial if parameters could be selected prior to the request of a random article so that certain catagories of article could be excluded. Or... vice versa, you could request a random article from within a certain field.
Craig
How about a project where we post on Wikipedia diagrams of car interior for all types of cars (Honda, Volkswagen, BMW, etc.) to show where the brakes are, where the suspension is, where the engine is, etc.
This could really help everyone who's into mechanics, or who wants to know what could potentially be wrong when they hear a noise, etc.; we could consult Wikipedia to gather technical information on our own car.
-- Gary Germeil 20:34, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I strongly support the idea of a move towards article stabilization and authentication, but I'm sympathetic to the idea we need to move conservatively. Let me start with some observations:
There are three basic metrics of article quality:
Few editors care equally about all three.
When refining an article in one of these regards, a frustrating eventuality is that another well-meaning editor will come along and negate your work to further one of these ends. This is obviously the case for readability and accuracy: careful fact-checking and careful grammer correction work often gets mauled when someone decides to change the content. To a lesser extent, content can get unfairly negated too: if I add x but don't cite it, someone else is just as likely to come along and just delete it rather than improve the content by finding a citation (which can be understandable, but still frustrating); whole sub-topics can go undeveloped this way because the only person who thought to bring it up got shut down. I would say, though, that the work of readability and accuracy are far more delicate than content development, and they are therefore more fragile to the wiki process. You really can't do those kinds of work well when the content sands shift underneath you.
Ideally, these three aims could be treated in seperate processes to minimize the frustration. In fact, the ideal development goes something like:
The seeming problem with adopting this model is that it would introduce down time for the various factions. For instance, those working on the content will have to wait for the accuracy and readability folks to put their stamp on an article before continuing work. But is this really necessary?
I think it's safe to assume that the majority of Wikipedeans much prefer to work on content, for most people find the minutia of writing and verification to be onerous burdens. If there is to be a stability feature in Wikipedia, it must respect that primary motivation.
Here's what I propose:
I'm going to sidestep the whole issuse of authority selection and just say that the readability- and accuracy- stamps-of-approval will be in the hands of priviledged committees, perhaps divided into subject areas or perhaps not.
I think a key virtue of this system is that it leaves open the question of what stability means, for it is something that is indicated on each particular stable version. The kind of assurance being given can be specified as appropriate.
A problem that arises, though, that users looking for one kind of assurance may not necessarily want the last stable version but rather an earlier stable version. It could be a history option to see only stable versions, but if the assurance semantics are in the page rather than in some tagging system in the software, the reader would have to look at the actual pages to find the one with the best kind of assurance he's looking for. This won't be such a problem, however, if the committees are sure to incorporate the virtues of the last stable version; as long as the stable versions get progressively better on all counts, readers will always want the last one.
Another solution is that, if a committee creates a new stable version that is in some way inferior to a previous stable version, they could note this at the top with a link to that other stable version.
Taking the committee system one step further, there could be a mechanism for committees to authenticate their pages. One idea is to have certain special category-like links for each committee with the restriction that only a member of a committee can add its special link to a page. This would make it easy to browse the category of stable pages given a seal of approval by some particular group. This mechanism would protect the 'this is a stable version' checkbox privilige be not allowing anyone to claim to speak for any particular committee they don't really represent.
Yes. I don't see how you could have a stability/quality/accuracy system in Wikipedia without some kind of privilege. However, the system I propose, I think, creates only a shallow kind of elite, one based on reputation that is not so very different from what already exists with well-known members. Wikipedia, like other free/open projects, does, in fact, have a very definite hierarchical structure, and this is fine as long as they remain open hierarchies. -- Apantomimehorse 14:26, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
For the last month, myself and 1-2 other individuals have been jumpstarting a massive cleanup project as an attempt to bring order to Wikipedia. I think I have the methodology sorted out: now we need participants. There are more details on the project page. Thank you. Cwolfsheep 12:29, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
There are different classes of users, who use Wikipedia differently. The simplest division will create two groups: producers who advance the wiki by adding content and consumers who reference the created content. The problem is that as the wiki grows, it becomes more useful, more trusted and more likely to be used as a consumer's primary reference. As a result, it becomes far more profitable for malicious producers to play pranks, libel or otherwise vandalize the wiki. The will become the biggest challenge facing the wikipedia in its destined path to become a real life Hitchhiker's Guide.
The way to solve this problem is to apply Computer Science's advances in source/content revision control to the human knowledge contained in this wiki. The typical person wants to use software that has been tested and debugged so it runs without crashing on the person's system. Those interested in the bleeding edge version with all the new features (and bugs) will download the beta version or CURRENT build.
The same is true with knowledge. Once an entry has been debated and hashed out by the authoritative producers/authors for awhile, label it as STABLE/COMPLETE/CONSENSUS/FINISHED. When a consumer seeks out a topic, they are given the STABLE version by default. If a producer arrives with a new perspective or new information and breaks the consensus, it can then be flagged as needing to re-reach consensus. The authoritative parties can then hash out their differences until a new consensus is reached and the STABLE version is moved to the new consensus of opinion. If the consumer is interested, they can request the CURRENT version being debated, but all throughout this expert debate, the default version given to consumers will be the most recent consensus reached about the opinion. So an external link on a blog to a congressman will never suddenly become a porn advertisement or a libellous account of his/her person. This will eradicate most vandalism, and go great lengths to answering the concerns about the trustworthiness of the Wiki starting to brew. But at the same time, it will stay true to the (worthwhile) goal of the Wikipedia to allow anyone to advance the state of the wiki by adding their own content.
When the reputability of the wiki is challenged, the response can be, "We give the best of both worlds. By default we give users a version fo the story that experts in the field have debated and come to a conclusion based on the best information at the time. But knowledge is an ever evolving phenomenon, and todays good ideas can become bad quickly. So we still leave the topic open for debate, allowing that person not only to read the consensus, but view the most current and provocative thinking on the subject." Erick Fejta July 8th, 2006
Whether or not Wikipedia articles should have spoiler warnings has come under debate again, despite the issue being recently visited via TfD Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 May 4#Template:Spoiler. Feel free to share your thoughts at Wikipedia talk:Spoiler warning. -- Ned Scott 00:58, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I propose we have a default tag for new articles. I believe this will help wikipedia's credibility and protect from potential hoaxes. The default tag would last for a certain period of time unless an admin removes it or is replaced by an afd or speedy tag. It could say something to the effect of: "This is a new article and may not have been reviewed for following wikipedia guidelines." I know most questionable articles get deleted but some stick around before anyone notices. I am a relatively new wikipedian and do not know the technical issues involved with this but I think this seems to be a good idea. MrMurph101 23:21, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
At Wikipedia:Central_discussions/Apartheid a series of competing proposals have been made on how to deal with various articles on modern uses of the word "apartheid", namely Israeli apartheid, gender apartheid, sexual apartheid, Crime of apartheid and global apartheid and also the articles Apartheid outside of South Africa and Apartheid (disambiguation). The proposals vary from merging various articles (particularly Israeli apartheid) to leaving the articles in their current state. The debate and voting has been dominated by various interests - it would thus be best for the community if a broader cross section of people including disinterested and neutral parties, reviewed the proposals and had their say. Homey 23:17, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
An infobox for file comparison software is needed, and I created one here. It should go on the bottom of each file comparison software article, and several other pages. One anonymous editor is against the idea, I think mainly because one of my own (free, web-based) tools is listed in the infobox. Another editor is supporting him for now because the guidelines say that generally others should decide whether to add a link rather than the person whose website it is. This discussion is taking place mainly here.
Could I get some support for using that infobox? This is especially hard for me because my tool is included and the articles that the infobox belongs in are probably watched mainly by those partial to the tool covered by the article. -Barry- 20:01, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I propose that the name "user" of a Wikimedia foundation participant be changed to "citizen" so as to better characterize user roles, relationships and responsibilities to each other as well as to the Wikipedia Foundation administrative hierarchy. ... IMHO ( Talk) 10:00, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
when the favorites list has many things, it looks unorganized and confusing. it can be setup to make your own folders, and put each favorite in whichever one you desire. for example, you can make a folder, and label it "Flora/Fauna". That folder will be specifically for animals and plants. Get it? its much more convenient and organized. User : PitchBlack
While we have now a rather good method of discussing new awards, in the past quite a few barnstars and awards were added in good faith, but now create a mess, making it hard to distinguish between some awards and barnstars that cover overlapping areas (or don't cover what their name suggests - want to guess what Barnstar of Life is awarded for?). Comments would be appreciated regarding a major overhaul proposal, which would redefine some barnstars and remove a few that are rather pointless.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:00, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
There are currently two ways of objectively evaluating the notability of a Wikipedia article, and both are flawed.
I propose an alternative: that we create a script that implements
PageRank, but applies it only within the English Wikipedia, excluding user and user talk namespaces, and updates daily? MediaWiki could report an article's internal PageRank above the article. Would this be possible within Google's patents, the way
[2] is? Even if not, I suspect they'd give permission just because Google and Wikipedia have such a good relationship. Seahen
Neon
Merlin
21:19, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (rockets):
So far I have found 13 different ways of naming them - obviously this is a mess, so they need to be standardised. I have reccomended that the best naming convention would be to use the name, followed by the term rocket in parenthesis. This could be used in conjunction with a name only format where appropriote, for example a page could be located at Titan III, but with a redirect at Titan III (rocket) rather than the other way around. --GW_Simulations |User Page | Talk | Contribs | E-mail 20:56, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy).
It is my firm belief that Wikipedia is abusing the privacy of users around the globe. It uses IP address tracking, and subsequently puts your privte IP onto itself, making your IP avalible to anyone who cares to look. Who would look? Hackers. It is a free ride for them. All they need to do is look at that page, and its a open invatation into your computer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Spazit ( talk • contribs)
Then vote to prohibit anonymous editing on Wikipedia! Revealing your IP address to a website will not compromise your computer security, althoguh it may compromise your privacy (unless you're using a shared IP, like me). -- J.L.W.S. The Special One 02:49, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps this user edited anonymously and found out that his or her IP address is in the history of articles that he or she edited. Others have said that there is not a security risk, but if it really bothers you, there are some things you can do. You can ask your ISP to assign you a new address, if they have more than one available for users. You might be able to get a dynamic or shared IP if you have a static or unshared one currently, too. A drastic step that you could take is to change your ISP, but services are usually not equivalent (same speed, price and reliability) if you have broadband. If you have dialup, you have a lot more choices. -- Kjkolb 10:53, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Create a User id. Then your IP address will only be visible to a select few. User:Zoe| (talk) 03:53, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Recently I visited Wikipedia:Reference desk archive/Science/February 2006, and found that the part I wanted to read had been cut off. Using the edit history and a diff, I found that the most recent edit was responsible for the truncation, so I went to revert it. I received an error message: "ERROR: The text you have submitted is 1,237 kilobytes long, which is longer than the maximum of 1024 kilobytes. It cannot be saved." Then when I went back to read the intact version, my browser crashed!
This led me to the decision:
Shouldn't we have so called "content warnings" on certain pages? What I'm saying is, that on pages with explicit content (eg. f**k, or pornography or certain other pages with a high percentage of profanity), a banner could be displayed at the top saying something like:
This page contains material that some (people) may find offensive
I know Wikipedia dosen't get censored, but this could provide clear information on the article's explicit content. -- 88.107.169.74 19:50, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
I disagree with the arguement its too subjective. One can have objective criteria, such as saying depictions of sex require a standard warning tag specific to that type of content. Decisions may be debated, and mistakes made, but that's what a wiki always has. Also, I disagree with fears that warnings are related to censorship. A great example of hypocracy here, is {{ spoiler}} warnings. Take The Village (film) and Million Dollar Baby as example. The most noteworthy parts of those films can only be discussed after we give a spoiler. Yet, we give the spoiler warning as a couresy to our readers, and the film makers. We wouldn't want somebody to miss out on enjoying a good movie, even if it means the intro of the article fails to explain what the film is truly about (even though a person reading about a movie in an encylclopedia, aught to expect spoilers, as we're not a movie guide). But, in other articles, we have an explicit/offensive image, with no advance warning, with no concern of harm/offense. -- Rob 20:43, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:No disclaimer templates. -- cesarb 03:29, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
I propose that there be something in the page history and user contributions pages that allows you to enter a day or month, and then view the changes to the page or the user's contributions on that specified date. This would allow people to quickly jump to a particular edit that they know happened on a certain day, or a particular activity that occurred during a certain period of time, which would be useful for dispute resolutions, RfAs, and other user-related discussions. SCHZMO ✍ 21:29, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I say we permanently move-protect articles such as cat and dog, because there is no point in moving them. If some sceintist somewhere decides to rename them, then a sysop will probably know in enough time to move it his/herself. -- GeorgeMoney ( talk) ( Help Me Improve!) 21:03, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I propose that we give users the ability to delete their own subpages. If the subpage should not be deleted, then admins can "userdelete protect" them, so only admins can edit them. If an admin creates another users' subpage, it is "userdelete protected" by default. Users can delete anything in their userspace except their talk page, which is by default "userdelete protected". This would be useful, because a user won't have to hassle an admin if they want loads of their subpages deleted (i.e. User:GeorgeMoney/delpage ). Thank you, GeorgeMoney ( talk) ( Help Me Improve!) 21:03, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
Just a thought: If not done so already,it would be a good idea to backup wikipedia every year or so so that future generations can learn from our current news and trends. The internet is a brilliant resource that in the future will be used to learn about us, so making sure that information is kept so that future updates and events do not replace the current information, or it will be lost forever. 88.106.127.189 15:37, 29 June 2006 (UTC)(Not logged in when posted)
I was thinking that Wikipedia should have user levels. I think this would be good, since almost all user-oriented sites have them. I hope you look at some examples I made and consider them (I used userboxes, but the they wouldn't be if this happened). Please take some time to look at them. Also, if you would rather see more of the "meat and bones" rather than the fancy userboxes, I can do that instead. Thank you.
User: Trosk/User Level Suggestions
-- Trosk 14:33, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
An archived AfD discussion ( example) reminds users in bold red text saying "Please do not modify it". And why would anyone need to, as it is a closed discussion no longer open for contributions? -- NicAgent 21:34, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
I think it would be a good idea to implement a feature in Wikimedia that allows a user to be able to list all articles that he/she have created. -- Frap 19:02, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Just list them on your user page. Wikibout- Talk to me! 19:06, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
No article on Wikipedia should contain the word "recently." It is not specific, and the fact that something happened recently isn't important. It also has to be changed when it is outdated, but it is impossible to know when something is no longer recent when you don't know when it happened. -- Macarion 17:32, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
"its use to refer to items recent to the article's writing should be removed" Right, that's what I was was talking about -- Macarion 22:58, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
When an article is split into sections, there's an 'edit' (=edit this section) link at the top right of each section. Wouldn't it be fine and dandy if there was also a 'top of page' link there? MikesPlant 15:11, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
How about having a jury for AfD, RfA, and similar activities? Members will be drawn at random from the community, and will be tasked with examining the nominee's activities. -- Folajimi 19:32, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
One thing we could do very easily is to look at Recent Changes, choose some random people who are editing right now, and solicit their vote on a random current AfD. This ensures us that they're an active user, creates no long-term commitment, and has no apparent bias. There could be a template for this. Deco 01:42, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Here's an example message:
Something like that. Deco 02:03, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't mind the concept, but I have a lot of problems with it. First and foremost is the name - it implies a binding decision. Something clearly needs to be done about de facto vote stacking. Right now, if you create an article that mentions Israel, Star Wars, GOP/Democrat, etc, when that article comes to AFD, hoards of people will show up who couldn't care less about Wikipedia policies, but just want to protect their crufty articles or see articles contrary to their views removed. Administrators do have the technical ability to disregard those votes they feel to be without merit, however, there are obvious problems with this as such administrators are not necessarilly unbiased themselves. (Consider the recent silliness with regard to Be bold after the DRV was concluded.) So I agree that there needs to be some unbiased committee, but I don't know that this is the right solution. What I think would work better is creating a step in between {{ prod}} and AFD. Most of the deletions on AFD are nearly unopposed. If non-controversial (say, snowy deletes) could be kept separate and a new area for controversial deletions could be created, then that itself would be an invitation for unbiased members of the community to offer an opinion and to help to minimize the ability of a fanbase to override a community consensus. BigDT 17:15, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
I strongly disagree with this proposal. The current system works great, and we should not take the "power from the people" unless necessary. We use a set of people to do requests for arbitration, that's where juries belong and nowhere else.
In different words, AfD, RfA, etc. work best in a distributed fashion, and it would take an impossible amount of work to be done by a jury.
This idea has as much merit as asking that wikipedia articles be written by a jury. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 20:54, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
"Wikipedia is not a democracy" -- Macarion 23:52, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
When I open Wikipedia I can't start typing in "search"; I have to click in "search" first. Is there a reason why the prompt isn't automatically in "search", as it is for example when one opens Google? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pmjensen ( talk • contribs) 02:30, 28 June 2006
Fair enough. My mouse has a wheel and I tend to use that for scrolling. Perhaps this is something that could be reconsidered once the mouse-with-wheel becomes the norm?-- Pmjensen 02:52, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
I propose including pronunciation keys for some entries. I often find myself needing to check an online dictionary to find the pronunciation of things I'm looking at on Wikipedia. It would be convenient to have it right at the begining of the entry.
This proposal was originally brought up by User:A Transportation Enthusiast as a result of the long-term dispute with User:RichardHarrold who kept moving the page Train station to Railway station (saying that British English was the "correct" English). See Talk:Train station#A Software Solution?.
Would it be possible (or is it possible today) to add the capability to switch based on locale data? In other words, if a user specifies he (or she) wants US english, "color" is displayed; for UK or Canada, it's "colour".
To do this, it would be necessary to specify alternate versions of words or phrases for different locale settings, while editing. Something like:
"The {US:color|UK:colour} of the {US:train|UK:railway} station's walls is blue."
For common terms like color/colour, a shorthand could be used, i.e. something like {!color} that would look up a database of localized terms for that specific term.
The Chinese Wikipedia has a similar system that automatically converts characters between simplified and traditional Chinese according to the user's preferences. Conversion is done through a set of character conversion tables that may be edited by administrators, and regular editors may override the conversion tables for specific sections using special syntax ( Chinese Wikipedia#Automatic conversion between Traditional and Simplified Chinese). Maybe the same idea can be applied to the English Wikipedia to convert between American and British/Commonwealth English? SCHZMO ✍ 21:40, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
And then there's the vandalism potential. {US:Hello.|UK:Cheerio!|AU:G'day, mate!|NF:KILL ALL NEWFIES}, and unless you saw the diff go by or you edit that article - and with so many, that could be rare - the small percentage of folks set to Newfoundland English would be a bit shocked. Also, and here's another major problem - what about non-logged in people? What's the default, American? British? Do we add another layer of processing by figuring it out through their IP? In other words, no. -- Golbez 22:32, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
What about having something like
$$colour
in the wikisource that would then be converted to either color or colour based on user preferences. The words color/colour etc. could be in a separate list so it wouldn't have to be defined in every article. The articles could stay like they do now, just with $$ added in front of the words, by default it could display the article in whatever it was originally written in, then there could be a link, Display in American English/Commonwealth English, for setting a cookie for default behavior. U195 18:52, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
It might be easy to think about the British and American english for differences but when it actually comes to the real thing there are so many english that it is almost impossible to create a system or to implement the concept in the media wiki software because it doesn't really serve a purpose. I really doubt that british can't read the american english and seriously doubt the contrary. Altough if this process is taken into action there will be requests of other varieties of english and that is not really necessary. Maybe for a printed/static version of the WP it is necessary to have all the types of english but for the evolving encyclopedia that WP is, it needs not to have a user-preference-choice of english since they are intelligible by all the parties concerned. Lincher 20:07, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
We periodically have visitors who stumble across an article just after it has been vandalized, or read a poor stub and walk away disaffected with WP. Even more experienced wikipedians should get more into the habit of checking the history to see if an article is in flux when they consult it. How about automatically adding a little sentence at the top of each article whenever displayed which would read something like
2 edits in the last 10 minutes, 10 in the last 24 hours, 160 in the past year.
That immediately warns readers to look for vandalism/major reverts recently. In contrast,
5 edits in the last 30 days, 40 in the past year
is likely a slowly evolving article, and
2 edits in the past year
may very well be an orphaned stub.
In this, I am assuming we would have a sequence of timeframes (e.g. 10 mins, 24 hours, one week, 30 days, 1 year) and the software would leave out "0 edits in ...". Plus, I think this would actually help motivate readers to join in and fix things, since they would see others are doing it. Thoughts? Martinp 20:13, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
I am reintroducing the topic of an "Email this page" in the toolbox. Many times I've read simply fascinating articles, and would have loved to've been able to quickly share it with a freind. I've also had freinds who were not wikipedians copy and paste the text of a wikipedia article and send it to me. It would be great if there was a link that you could click on and either (1) send a link to the article to someone, (2) send a text version of the article (since some of these articles are gigantuous) or (3) (my faviorite idea) send the lead in HTML, with a More here... link to the rest of the article. Many magazine, reference sites, and newspapers have such a feature, and I think it would be great here.-- Esprit15d 14:42, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
It is regarding this:
I believe the "anyone can edit" should have disclaimer that source must be verifiable, useful, and bunch of other stuff that people usually not read through. Many users and editors do not even read the bottom Content must not violate any copyright and must be based on verifiable sources. You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL. -- Dooly00000 18:32, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
< Scraped from Main article, 23:15, 24 June 2006 (UTC), by Dooly00000
One problem with front page stuff is that 99.999% of new users end up entering and being introduced to the Wikipedia via an article following a Google search using a keyword that gets a Google Wikipedia hit. Once in an article there is no backtrace to the main page through a classification hierarchy shown at the top of the article as there is in disk file folders and most web pages. Consequently you never as a user look for or see the main page. ... IMHO ( Talk) 20:29, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Whoever first recognized the need has probably been long since been obscured but Dewey ended up with the credit for the Dewey Decimal System. What is becoming apparent is that the entire Wikipedia project is in need of a similar classification system. Anyone have any specific ideas of how such a system should be organized or if it would be sufficient just to start with the divisions upon which the reference desks are already based? ... IMHO ( Talk) 12:11, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
I edit a lot of military related articles, and often someone will add "This gun/tank/missile is used by (insert some fictional character) in (some fictional piece of work) to do (something fictional)." I think it's pointless and crufts up factual articles with a load of fictional references that are basically not notable, and not encylopedic. See Colt Python for a good example. I think it would be good to have a policy/guideline in place that basically limited "Popular culture" references for real things or objects to only iconic references - i.e. Dirty Harry. Popular culture articles - video games/films/fiction should link to the objects in question, not the other way round. What do other people think ? Megapixie 09:51, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
There is a still-open Portal:Current events creation proposal and an earlier discussion on Talk:Current events that suggests some support and no opposition for moving Current events to the portal namespace with minimal initial changes in layout and organization. I'm not convinced the proposal has had enough scrutiny so I hope it's appropriate to mention it here as well. Please comment at Wikipedia:Portal/Proposals#Portal:Current events or here as appropriate. Suggestions for other places to make this proposal known would also be welcome. Thanks – kayaker ( talk · contribs) 09:30, 26 June 2006 (UTC).
The process of article deletion is harrowing enough to then deny or delay the primary author from obtaining a reference copy of the article for continued revision and/or personal use. I propose that upon deletion of an article that a link to a hidden copy of the article be provided to the primary author or to everyone involved in the deletion discussion so as to uphold the Wikipedia civility policy. Otherwise I fear the deletion process will appear to simply be viewed as a mugging carried out by a bunch of ruthless thugs. ... IMHO ( Talk) 00:58, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
What would really help is making it mandatory for admins who delete an article to provide a link from the deletion log summary to the deletion discussion. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to hunt high and low through the archives to find the discussion. Carcharoth 10:52, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Several times I've been starting or expanding a video game article, and I've had to cite a book with an article. Since the book is already cited by several other articles, a copy-and-paste should be possible. But the only way to do this seems to be to go to the Special:Whatlinkshere of the book in question, click on one of the links given, and hope it uses the cite template. There has got to be a better way.
We could just decide that a wikilink to the book was sufficient for citing it. However, this would be inadequate for printouts of the article, and the book article might be deleted, so I don’t think this is a good idea.
What I think would work well would be to associate a set of
Template:Cite book arguments with each book article. This could take the form of a human-readable template on the talk page ({{
citethisbook|title=this|last=that|first=and so on}}
→ "To cite this book in a Wikipedia article, use {{
cite book|title=this|last=that|first=and so on}}
") and could be botted from
Template:Infobox book arguments. Finally, we'd set up a cite template whose sole argument was a wikilink, and a bot to replace it with the completed template fetched from the to-cite-this-book template. Thus, an editor might just type {{
cite bwa|High Score!}}, and save a lot of work. (BWA would stand for Book With Article. Note that
High Score! is a redirect, which the bot would have to deal with.)
Would this work? Maybe it could also be used for sources other than books, when the piece of work is the entire subject of the article. Seahen 20:12, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
I've created page for discussion about creating a standard look and feel for geographical infoboxes, please contribute at Wikipedia:Geographical infoboxes if you're interested. -- Rick Block ( talk) 17:37, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Go to Wiktonary, this is the line you read on the main page. Could we adopt this sort of policy for Wikipedia? (Is this a question better left on Meta?) -- Zanimum 13:09, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
(I don't know if this is considered policy-related or not - I think not.) I think there should be a separate search function for finding items in the guidelines, at the Pump, etc. That is, for finding stuff that is in that part of Wik which is NOT part of the content of articles. I always have a dickens of a time trying to find any-thing, such as copyright, special symbols, etc. It is especially difficult, since so much of the "Help" information is linked, meaning I go through 5 or 6 links before I get whither I want to go. Even with a "fast" connection, this often takes me around ten minutes to find out a simple think such as how to make the won" (Korean currency) sing. I often just give up or ask on a member's page. This seems like a poor set-up to me. Kdammers 09:16, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
I have nominated Category:Wikipedians by politics and all of its subcategories for deletion. Feel free to comment at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 June 19/Wikipedians by politics. Hipocrite - «Talk» 18:58, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
The German Wikipedia has a relatively successful "Web of Trust" scheme to help with continuous rating of users' "trustability". The English equivalent, Wikipedia:Trust network, has been resurrected as a proposal, with a strong basis in the German system. If you want to make a public record of which contributors you find particularly trustworthy, you can follow the instructions given there. TheGrappler 21:54, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Epinions has had a web of trust for many years and I can tell you that it has led to an enormous amount of bruised egos, hurt feelings, backbiting, etc. It can be used as a weapon--removal: "I just don't trust this person anymore" as a revenge tool--spamming pages of other users with "I noticed that you have NAME on your WOT, please see this edit ___, he/she is not trustworthy" and many more scenarios. And it is incredibly cliquish, with members gloating over how many people have trusted them and statements to new members "well you haven't earned enough trust so ____". Even if you build into the guideline proposal language to attempt to insulate against WP:AGF violation, they are bound to clash. We joke about the cabal; this will create it or at least give its appearance great strength. It is stated right up front at Wikipedia:Trust network that the proposal will be "neither a popularity contest nor a measurement or assessment of an editor's trustworthiness or value." The reason this statement is prominently displayed and necessary is because that is how, at least to and by some, it will be used and seen — prescriptive guideline language notwithstanding. I think it sounds useful on paper and will be a disaster if implemented. I would be interested in seeing an experienced German Wikipedia editor's take on these matters.-- Fuhghettaboutit 20:54, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
What i'd like to propose is a list of people, spread across the globe cooperating to get and check facts and spread the news of newly ermerged ones, each member working within his/her own country, speaking the local language and having easy access to monuments, musea and websites in their respective languages. This group of volunteers take requests from a list detailing the request.
The full proposal and rationale can be found here and i'd very much appreciate your input.
Kleuske 19:37, 13 September 2006 (UTC) ( nl:Gebruiker:Kleuske)
Wikipedia is a massive compendium of knowledge, I feel that it could use some security (staff, hardware, finances) and I also think the easiest an best way to secure stable funds is through adbertisement...with monies coming in, THE ENYCLOPEDIA could pay the writers and editors of the most widely viewed articles, or create a prize for the wierdest of articles...on a more serious note, Wikipedia could offer its own Nobel Prize of Wikipedian Literature, it could push the community to produce that which will change society, or societies.
Perhaps, with more cash, Wikipedia could upgrade its site, it could offer ways of implanting software (interactive charts, graphic organizers)...Wikipedia could even afford to stream video into the site, this could transform the encyclopedia into a firsthand, immediate, journalistic tool...Wikipedia could make an addition adding audiobooks of each of the articles, or even full voice animated site that could ease the burden of ignorance from the visually impaired.
I know the greatness that is Wikipedia the free encyclopedia, yet I can also imagine the death of Wikopedia from the current plague or epidemic of apathy (perhaps from the threat of terrorism? I certainly hope not, but noney can supply multiple hard backups of the data). I hope that this is taken in good faith, as it was sent...long live Wikipedia!
Perhaps a seperate wikipedian site could be made and would act as a review site? I am just throwing out ideas, and I hope that you all can add to my whimsical interests in keeping alive human interest in human matters, through the use of Wikipedia.
The above was contributed by User:Cementkilla. I am just copying it here. Melchoir 05:12, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
okay, i read the news all the time online and when something interesting comes up, or say somthing having to do with the coast guard i click the email this article to a friend and send it to my guardsman brother, similarly i think wikipedia should have an option at the bottom of the page or sidebar where u can click, email to a friend provide your email or wikipedia user name and their name and email and send them the article or the link automatically, i think that would be very cool and it would be a great way of word-of-mouth spreading the visibility of wikipedia and i think it would attract for contributors and editors, whatya think? Qrc2006 01:56, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
If this excellent idea is implemented, we will have more ways to encourage our friends to contribute to Wikipedia. For example, after I write an article, I could e-mail it to my friends, asking them to give feedback, and sign up and improve my article. I am a manager in a 1000-member RuneScape community: I could e-mail the RuneScape article and suggest they create accounts and work on the article to improve it to Good Article status. The possibilities are endless. -- J.L.W.S. The Special One 11:53, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
what the hell are you talking about nagle? limit emaiol articles to registered users then, or 10 per hour per IP address or include a identify the charicters image thingy its a great idea your very pessamistic, why should we be denied this great feature bcuz of what some spamholes might do with it, i also fail to see a problem with self promoting wikipedia, do you think promoting this project is a bad thing, that we shoudnt tell people about it? generate spam on demand it will be used that way, what does that even mean? and no they wont be spam, theyll be cool informative and attract people to wikipedia and actually i dont see how its self promotional at all i mean you could send the article about your Virginia if your doing a state report or if u write an article about unagi sushi to your chef friend or an article on Xena to your brother whos a astronomy buff or the article on britney spears or tom brady to a pop or patriots fan. that just makes wikipedia able to be more widely distributed and helps the learning process Qrc2006 00:11, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
if the consensus seems to be do it is there an appropriate discussion page to continue this dialogoue, or what can be done to implement this? Qrc2006 00:11, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
In some of my contributions, I have written things that I felt some people might presume to be original research. I describe three cases of these in my essay Wikipedia:These are not Original Research. Comments welcomed. -- llywrch 21:02, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Interesting. Another thing along these lines that has been troubling me can be seen in a number of the games articles, like Hearts (game), Spades, and Euchre. On the one hand, I like these articles and find them interesting, helpful, and, to the best of my knowledge, accurate. On the other, there are no references. When I come across unreferenced and possibly unreferenceable articles about bands, coroporations, or living people, I'm for swift deletion. But I believe those articles on games should be kept, and are fine as is. This apparent double standard bothers me.
It wasn't until looking recently at some of the articles on big cities that I think there's another sort of reliable source: the introspection of large numbers of editors. Looking at San Francisco, for example, I see a number of statements that are unreferenced and that I wouldn't expect to see in a formal reliable source. But any San Francisco resident could judge the truth of them, and there are enough San Franciscans and San Francisco visitors editing Wikipedia that I'm not afraid that the article would be significantly wrong for significantly long.
Similarly for the card-game articles: Even if no researcher had ever written about Hearts (game), I think that there are enough players that we can have a good article about it. Although this could be seen as original research, I think the material is still verified through wide peer review, and so fits the spirit and goals of Wikipedia. Is this reflected in the policies anywhere? And if not, should it be? Thanks, William Pietri 15:38, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
I maintain quotationsbook.com, a highly comprehensive and usable resource of quotations. It's also the only site with freely available | RSS feeds of all content. Seeing that all this content is public, I thought of asking appropriate people at Wikiquote if WikiQuote collections can be extended to include quotes from my site. There are subsets of data available at quotationsbook that don't exist at Wikiquote, especially in stubs. Data can, of course, be formatted as required, since it's delivered as XML.
Can Wikiquote make use of these feeds to fill out stubs and append content to existing collections, etc.? Who would be in charge of thinking this through and deciding to use the feeds?
I think it would contribute very significantly to WikiQuote content, and reveal many more quotes. My feeds are traffic-ready and being used at answers.com. This topic was posted at WikiQuote | here to no response.
Amit 80.47.24.132 19:37, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
I previously had this discussion a long time ago here - and there was technical feasibility in doing this. Before this topic dies a death, I think it would be a great idea and fill out many stubs in Wikiquote. Can someone make this? Amit 80.47.24.132 07:07, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
One of the big things about talking to other users is to add 4 tildes (~~~~) to identify yourself in a discussion. However, some users manually (I assume) add a link to their talk page in their signature. Why doesn't adding the 4 tildes (adding a sig) to a comment include a link to your talk page? When I click on a person's sig, I most often am more interested in their talk page than I am their userpage, and (again) assume I am not alone in this. Also, when a user who hasn't set up their userpage is referred to, they come up as a red link, making it difficult to access their talk page. For instance, most anonymous ip 's have a red link, but active talk pages. Can't their be a way to more easily access user's (whether registered or not) talk pages. Autopilots 09:53, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
To my great surprise I didn't find anything about this either here or here. Maybe if I checked the history links, but I really couldn't be bothered.
Anyway, I wanted to suggest this: User:TRiG/Suggestion for policy on raunchy pictures. Any thoughts?
That page is in two distinct sections, the second of which is not really realted to the title.
If anyone thinks that this comment should be moved elsewhere, please feel free to cut-and-paste it.
I don't really know what I'm doing here yet. I'm a [h2g2] person.
TRiG 19:15, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Is information of itself bad (or evil or offensive etc)? I dont think so. If Im right, all we need to do is present pure information without connotation.-- Light current 05:02, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Another objection to this approach is that, since this is an open edit site, Wikipedia cannot guarantee that any page will be free of vandalism at any particular moment. Responsible parents ought to understand that intuitively. Specific disclaimers also make it clear. While such damage usually gets undone very quickly, it's a fact of life on any wiki. Durova 19:14, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Another variation on the idea: Whilst the concept has been presented in a well-meant manner, the idea that wikipedia should be opt-out-only uncensored runs contrary to many of the core beliefs. However I see no issue with the idea of opt-out uncensorship. By this I mean that above tags should be added as part of a greater meta-tagging scheme (another common suggestion). Then, a user can select on an account-passworded part of their preferences to display or not display certain tagged content (or content that is not tagged, as vandals are unlikely to bother). By default, all content would be allowed, but this would allow parents and those who find material objectionable to prevent it from being seen. Obviously, this is part of a much bigger set of changes, but it's worth remembering. LinaMishima 21:14, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
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I don't know whether this has been proposed before, if this is the proper section to propose it in, or if it is even possible, but I'd like to see Wikipedia have a more user friendly search function. With most sites on the web, there is a standard sort of search where a misspelled or uncommon spelling of a parameter still yields results close to what the user was looking for and/or suggestions on the correct spelling of the misspelled word or phrase. In Wikipedia, when a word entered into the search is improperly spelled, the user is simply greeted with an awkward screen stating that no such article exists and left with no real recourse to find the proper name of the article. Moreover, even when it does yield possible results, it often skips over many articles that contain the phrase, and often times I have found the proper article to be missing from the list of results. 66.229.182.113 11:04, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
I had the same problems until I downloaded the free i=Internet explorer spell checker at this site hope that helps Jodywebster 21:11, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I propose that we make page frameworks consistent. If you look at 'User contributions' it says 'Newer' and 'Older' (with capitals). If you look at the same thing in article histories, it says 'previous' and 'next' (without capitals). Some pages have an 'edit' tab and others have an 'edit this page' tab. I am sure that a review would reveal other inconsistencies.
I was told on the Village Pump Technical page that Admins can customise interface text. So it seems that it is possible to make them consistent. What do others think? bobblewik 17:45, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Are there any other consistency-related changes you would like to propose? — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 04:51, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia is a great website, but if there's one thing that I find slightly frustrating it's that the Search feature isn't very smart. I misspell things often, and if I don't know how to spell what I'm looking for on Wikipedia, sometimes it can be a dead end. So I guess I'm proposing a more advanced search feature?
Has a DVD version of the English Wikipedia been considered? It would be very useful to people without internet or if their internet wasn't working. It could also make the Wikipedia a lot of money. 12.201.27.234 17:11, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Just a suggestion: Add an "Article Maturity Rating" to articles so that users can have a quick understanding of the accuracy and therefore maturity of the article they are reading.
The rating can be based on the number of times the article was viewed, appended, edited, and reviewed by Wikipedia administrators, etc..
Keep up the good work.
In the page Stub we have two different definitions of that a stub is.
Either it is "3 to 10 short sentences long". Or it is "an article so incomplete that an editor who knows little or nothing about the topic could improve its content after a superficial Web search or a few minutes in a reference library." A few minutes????? This means that a stub is any page between 3 and 300 sentences long.
I think the first definition is correct. And I propose that the page Stub is corrected, together with related pages like Perfect stub article. A new page Stub_removal is created with guidelines for then a stub should be removed.
Right now we have tens of thousends of incorrect stubs. We need a Stub_removing_project. It exists a stub bot User:Triddle/stubsensor what might help.
Reko 11:45, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
See my proposal at MediaWiki talk:Edittools#Too many characters — M e ts501 ( talk) 13:49, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Most vandalism by anonymous IPs are to wikipedia articles, and vandalism to articles is more problematic than vandalism to other sections of wikipedia, as it involves damage that non-wikipedians see.
Given the above, rather than blocking low-level vandals from wikipedia entirely, how about giving temporary blocks from editing article space (ie "main") only?
Low-level vandals would have little interest in vandalising talk pages and the like, whereas legitimate users may (or may not) be willing to use talk pages to point out errors in an article.
There may be the possibility that this main-space only blocking option would lead to more aggressive blocking, but that'd be a potential pit-fall of any harm-minimisation approach. And, if the vandals decide to vandalise non-article pages, they can be given a full block.
This proposed fix can be done independently of, or combined with, the Wikipedia:Blocking policy proposal being implemented by Robchurch. Andjam 10:17, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
Right now, the default view of Wikipedia is to show the latest article. That's not the only option. Perhaps readers should optionally see a "stable" version, rather than the latest edit.
Deciding the "stable" version is an interesting problem. A reasonable first cut might be this:
This would have the effect of hiding most vandalism from casual readers of Wikipedia, with very little effort. It's a way out of the "The truth was there, three revisions ago" problem.
Comments? -- John Nagle 00:40, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I've had this thought myself. I don't think of the default revision displayed as being any more stable than any other; and I think that, by default, the latest should be displayed. Nor is this a specific against vandalism.
Old, heavily edited pages do often reach a sort of maturity; from that point on, new edits tend to be of decreasing worth. Often this is due to vandalism and unwise newbie editing; often it is due to eternal edit warring. When pages reach such a point it may well be wise to determine, by community consensus, a given good revision of the page. This revision would be the one displayed by default to all readers and editors. The page could still be edited freely by anyone but such edits would accumulate in history; the good revision only would display by default.
If implemented, I hope selection of the good version not be done directly by admins. These have already too many responsibilities and temptations. Some scheme under which all editors vote for good revision is needed.
This would require a nontrivial extension to the MediaWiki engine. I don't know if it will happen any time soon. John Reid 17:47, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
The way I see it is it could be done on articles that have been PR, GAnom, GA, FAnom, FAC, FARC and the ones that have been assessed for CD. This way it would lessen the charge on the admins. Lincher 18:15, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
I like this idea, but what happened to the user patrol idea? I thought that was going to be implemented a long time ago, but I haven't seen it appear as of yet. At any rate, I think this idea definitely deserves extended discussion. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 20:04, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Why don't we put the date on the front page? The only thing relevant to the date is the "On this day..." But I think the main page would just look "more complete" with a full day.month.year sort of date in one of the corners or at least somewhere on the page. If infact there is already a date (i've tried looking), then maybe you can make it a bit more apparent because I can't seem to find it for the life of me. 17:27, 8 May 2006 (UTC)someguy.
And the date would change when it is midnight EDT (where the servers are) or midnight universal time? Either way lots of people would see a date which was not correct for their location. Filceolaire 13:11, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Monday
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ts501
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21:28, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
I've been wanting this for a while; several other Wikipedias do it. Here's a version I swiped from
Angela:
— BRIAN 0918 • 2006-06-02 14:58
Saw a link to this discussion on Talk:Main Page, and I have to say that I really don't like the idea of having the time. The date I can understand (see the BBC) but the time is silly (though a hidden time code would have to give people the right date for their time zone). But really, I don't rely on the website I am browsing to tell me the time and date. I rely on myself knowing the time! Carcharoth 21:38, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I am looking for 6 coordiators for this new project I started called
WikiProject:US Governors
Wikipedia:WikiProject:US Governors If your interested please respond. --
Zonerocks
06:03, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
I already have it listed. But with an assistant coordinator and 5 other ones that can handle ten states each to help it go faster. -- Zonerocks 17:55, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
There are hundreds of unit discrepancies between Wikipedian articles. For instance, InterCity Express uses kilometers per hour for all velocity measurements; TGV uses kilometers per hour with miles per hour in parentheses; Acela Express uses miles per hour, followed by kilometers per hour in parentheses; and British Rail Class 43 (HST) uses miles per hour—and all four are part of the same WikiProject.
Therefore, I suggest this: Each statistic that requires a non-universal unit (e.g. velocity, distance, acceleration, luminosity, power, etc.) recieves a special markup. For instance, a velocity of 200 kilometers per hour could be formatted as such: {{stat|kmh|200}}. This would register the 200 kilometers as a statistic rather than simple text.
Registered users could then set unit preferences for all measurements, and all statistics would be displayed converted to the user's preference each time they visited a page.
This would require several software changes, such as a unit converter and acceptance of the statistic templates, but I think that's a small price to pay for a solution to the unit discrepancies. C. M. Harris 20:25, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
I think that article-specific edit messages would be a very useful addition. When the user clicked the "edit this page" button, a short, custom message somehow set by previous editors of the article would appear. This could be used to deter link spam, etc. It would only be displayed on the edit page. The article would not need redundant "please cite sources", etc. boxes. As with anything, it could get out of hand, but I think that some in good faith edits that by consensus don't acutally help could be prevented.
As an example, some editors of playstation 3 wanted external confirmation links for each game in the list of launch titles. This content is better suited for the individual game pages, partially because it makes the article messy, and also because the details are more related to the game and its publishers, and may be more complicated than shown in single external links. -- gatoatigrado 05:01, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
I think that the main page should display language links. All of the articles have links to other languages. Google often redirects to the English language, and though most people searching English google would want the English homepage, bilingual people might appreciate the links, and it shows the diversity on Wikipedia. Not a big issue, just a suggestion. -- 69.221.232.135 04:47, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
Lets say I was searching for articles about the sugar substitute "xylitol" but accidently spelled it "zylitol". Wiki doesn't do a THING to help me out with the spelling. Not even a suggestion as to what the correct spelling might be!! Take another sugar substitue: "sorbitol". Well, if I spelled it "sobitol" by mistake, again, Wiki will leave me in the dark. For a site as wonderful as Wikipedia the lack of an autocorrect feature is just startling.
Let me provide you with another search that left me in the dark: BOTH "xylephone" and "xylaphone" turned up NO results in a search for "xylophone"! Ridiculous!
The autocorrect could be much like google.com's. It would ask "did you mean: xylitol, xylophone".
I really think Wiki's search engine needs work, especially in terms of autocorrection. This feature could allow thousands of more acticles to be viewed, and thus make Wiki a better place to learn. A feature like this could help one find an article even if he doesn't know exactly how to spell it. Someone really interested in "Ohsamah Ben Ladin" WOULD FIND AN ARTICLE ON "Osama Bin Laden"!
Please consider this!
Sincerely,
Niklas (faithful Wikipedia user)
Would it be possible for Wikipedia to subsribe to scientific journals (particularly review ones - since these aren't "original research") as an institution so that its member could improve it better? -- Username132 ( talk), UK or Netherlands 12:42, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Hey everybody, I am new to this so if I have posted in the wrong environment, sorry.
I was just writing because I have (well, what I think) is a good for the main page of www.wikipedia.org. This will add more funtionality to this page and, add as publicity for the Wikitionary service.
Somewhere on the ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) main page a "word of the day" should be included. It a word not so common, but one that people could easily pick up on and prononciate. If misunderstood they can click a link that would take them to the word searched with Wiktionary. From there they can also look at synonyms' because of the additional thesaurus services Wiktionary offers (the built in thesaurus).
Anyways just an idea.
Mitchell
Semi-large edit proposal: I want to add the Template:Design Patterns Patterns template that I just created (shiny, yes) to each of the design patterns linked from Design Patterns (the book) (basically all the articles mentioned in the template). Any objections or ideas? -- shadytrees 15:53, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
I propose adding links in articles about people to the LIbrary of Congress Name Authority file. de:Wikipedia has linked to the name authority file of the Deutsche Bibliothek, Germany's national library, since January 2005: see Jakob Voss 'Metadata with Personendata and beyond', a presentation at Wikimania 2005. I have automatically generated some tables matching (currently over 12,000) people in WIkipedia with the LC Name Authority file: these show the feasibility of linking large numbers of en:Wikipedia pages in this way. ( My earlier experimentation suggests these automatic matches are at least 99% accurate, and around 20-25% of the approx. 188,000 biographical articles with name of birth can be automatically matched: this would provide about 40,000 Wikipedia records linked to the LC Name authority.) Dsp13 15:06, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Suggestion: A list of the "Other languages available" in those languages/scripts with the English equivalents (and likewise in non-English language Wikipedias), so we can see what they are. Jackiespeel 13:16, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
What I meant was more of a link to a "list of languages" as a separate article. Could a table be created, and each language wiki merely pulling out the appropriate pair own language:other languages? Jackiespeel 17:30, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Category:Articles lacking sources was deleted. Reasons given for deletion included avoiding self-references, that it was unsightly, not helpful to readers and was confusing them. I do not want to make matters worse, but I would like to point out that Category:Wikipedia cleanup has 17,100 articles in it. Also, if we actually worked on referencing articles, there would have been much fewer articles in the category. The template, {{ unreferenced}}, used to put articles in Category:Articles lacking sources. Now, there is no category for that template. The category was meant to help in the fixing of the articles with no references. There were two problems with this, few or no people were working on fixing the articles and the template was being misused, in my opinion. Some of the articles did have references, but the template placer thought that there were not enough or he or she did not like the references used. In addition, the template was changed so that it could be added to sections as well as articles, which greatly increased the glut. I think removing the section without references would be a better way to go, but that is another discussion. There is a rather big problem with the template not putting the articles into a category. Whereas before there was not much work done on the templates without sources, the lack of a category makes it unlikely that organized work will ever be done. Currently, the only way to work on articles without references is to click on "what links here" on the template's page, which is very awkward to use for this type of work, especially since there are now 16,650 articles (1.28% of all articles) with the template. Therefore, I think that we should either put the articles in a category and get a project started on referencing unreferenced articles and removing the template from inappropriate articles, or we remove the template from every article with a robot. -- Kjkolb 09:03, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
There appears to be a long discussion (now closed) on this at [1] which no one here has linked to yet. That discussion mentioned Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Unreferenced as an alternative to the category for the use cases you describe. — Quarl ( talk) 2006-08-14 07:00Z
(de-indent) What about redirecting {{ unreferenced}} to {{ Not verified}}? It's not as friendly a notice but it would serve the purpose. Or change the category for {{ unreferenced}} to Category:Wikipedia articles needing factual verification.
I agree with the point about maintenance categories detracting from the page for non-editors, but until there is a way to hide these categories from anon browsers we don't have many choices. I don't agrre with robot removing the tag, because it feels like we are saying "it's too hard, so let's just ignore it". Kevin 09:51, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
As an aside, the absense of such categories will neccesarily prevent my category and backlog tracking bot from monitoring them. Dragons flight 14:54, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
I've been increasingly frustrated with the amount of templates that are being addded to article talk pages, e.g. Talk:2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. I don't believe users should have to page down to get a look at what is actually being discussed on the page.
As an experiment in cutting down on template clutter, I took 3 of the 4 templates at Talk:Lord's Resistance Army and tried to covert them using the userbox template. The rough draft is in my sandbox. Before someone accuses me of being a userbox acolyte, I don't use them, but I do think they are a nice size for a streamlined talk page template.
Please take a look at the two pages and feel free to tweak (I know almost nothing about formatting tweaks) and/or comment on my sandbox talk. I would in particular like to hear if people think that matters have reached the point where a widespread switch from the current templates may be accepted, or if I'm the only one annoyed with the mosaic of pastels when I just want to see the TOC. - BT 01:46, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I am new to wikipedia categorization and I mistakenly started several categories regarding the categorization of American actors. I found that the existing policy lists American actors and actresses into one huge category. I worked to categorize this by having two separate categories for "American actresses" and "American actors" because I feel that the current list is just HUGE and disorganized. I feel that the list is too big to the point that it is very intimidating so people will just leave insteading of enjoying the work of other editors to provide that list. I believe categorizing the pages will alleviate the huge burden of overlisting. I also don't know if it is correct to list actresses as actors. Please let me know if I should continue with the following categories or have a vote. I also apologize for starting them but I didnt think anyone would mind. Here are a few categories that I have started on the categorization:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Irish-American_actresses
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:English_American_women
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_silent_film_actresses
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_film_actresses
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_actresses
I hope we can receive a consensus on how to proceed.
Here2fixCategorizations 21:52, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks,
Here2fixCategorizations 22:05, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Please read Wikipedia:Categorization/Gender, race and sexuality. This issue (men & women categories) has been discussed many times in the two plus years since categories were added to the software. Hundreds and hundreds of hours work from many people went into coming up with guidelines for how categorization works. These guidelines can and do change, but they change slowly and only after a good amount of discussion. It is important to learn where the best forum is for discussing things. There is a reason why this is called the "village pump". I think of it as the office water fountain. You cannot decide corporate policy at the water fountain chatting with a few people. You need to go to the office where the policy is discussed. In this case the place to take your concern is probably Wikipedia talk:Categorization. But I can save you the trouble of posting your proposal there. What we would tell you is to read through Wikipedia:Categorization/Gender, race and sexuality and the discussions leading up to those guidelines on its archived talk page and formulate good arguments why the guidelines should be changed. If I have any advice for you and others who are new to Wikipedia it is this: Learn how things are being done before you try to change them, and don't expect change to happen quickly. -- Samuel Wantman 08:32, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
It seems rather inefficient to me to record spoken versions of articles on Wikipedia, since the articles never stop being edited and enhanced. Why don't we get a bot to speak the articles, and update the spoken versions automatically as they are being edited by users? -- Gary Germeil 20:45, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
This is a proposal for a completely new type of award. Please see Wikipedia:Skill badges. Neon Merlin 15:21, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
(Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Skill badge by Neon Merlin 17:17, 11 August 2006 (UTC))
I sent and email to the info coordinators of Wikipedia and they directed me to this page to relay my proposal. The email is as follows:
Dear Wikipedia,
I am writing to you to outline an idea which came to me after Jimmy Wales stated that he hoped the focus of the Wikipedia Project would shift from increasing its scope to increasing its quality (in not so few words). Perhaps at some point you could publish a, "Best of Wikipedia," hard copy of the best content available from the website, and funnel the proceeds back into the project (and likewise sell the hard copy at a low price, since it would not be intended for profit). I beleive this would encourage users to improve current articles, and write new articles of higher quality as was suggested by the founders of your organization. It would also help to give the project a more credible base, as it would display highly reliable information, and critics could not argue that someone had gone and edited the pages of a book. Yet another long term goal could be to expand the text to a full sized, multiple volume encyclopedia (with the updates on the web version appearing in each successive edition) to compete directly with mainstream encyclopedias such as Brittanica. This could also be coupled with an included CD or DVD version so that users could access each editions articles when an internet connection is not available and it is not convenient to use the hard copy. For instance, a user might bring their laptop on vacation to an island resort with no internet, but they could still use Wikipedia to search for notable destinations in the area or even as breakfast reading material. Through its funding potential, usefulness, convenience, and credibility, it is evident that Wikipedia could benefit greatly from publishing a hard copy of its best content, later to be expanded to a full multi-volume encyclopedia and CD/DVD yearly editions. I do hope that you consider this suggestion if you have not already considered something to a similar effect.
Sincerely, Joseph Basile WPI Aerospace Engineering 2008
(Line breaks and differentiation between paragraphs are lacking)
I do not, however, know how wikipedia organizes and dsitributes funds or would make decisions on publications. However, I honestly feel that wikipedia has to potential to become the premier encyclopedia on the planet, effectively eliminating all disputes about credibility, if it takes these steps and perhaps others, as ideas come to the table. Please, everyone involved in this community, take my idea seriously and consider it carefully.
I just put a proposal at Wikipedia:Guidelines for Wikipedian categories. This proposal deals specifically with Wikipedian categories. The current guidelines for categories say very little about Wikipedian categories, and it is implied that they must follow the same stringent requirements as categories in the article namespace. On the other hand, many joke categories and other pointless categories are often created for Wikipedians. This guideline takes a middle ground, stating that the standards for Wikipedian categories are not as high as those for article categories, but there still needs to be some boundaries. Feel free to comment on the proposal and edit it if you have some recommendations. -- Cswrye 00:06, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
For pages that achieve FA status, how about placing some type of clickable tab at the top of the page that can send the view to the archived FA release? That is, the version that met the FA criteria and was not subject to subsequent vandalism or mindless editing. Once that's done, what about a peer-reviewed edit process that can make updates to these archived FA pages? I.e. anybody can propose a set of revisions, and there's an approve/object poll before making the update to the archived release. — RJH ( talk) 22:06, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Conflicts of interest created by User:Eloquence 10 August 2006. WAS 4.250 21:59, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
I know many people use the random article feature to pass time and learn, well, randomly. In doing so though, it is often irritating that so many of the articles that come up are places such as counties and townships, or proper names of obscure people. It would be beneficial if parameters could be selected prior to the request of a random article so that certain catagories of article could be excluded. Or... vice versa, you could request a random article from within a certain field.
Craig
How about a project where we post on Wikipedia diagrams of car interior for all types of cars (Honda, Volkswagen, BMW, etc.) to show where the brakes are, where the suspension is, where the engine is, etc.
This could really help everyone who's into mechanics, or who wants to know what could potentially be wrong when they hear a noise, etc.; we could consult Wikipedia to gather technical information on our own car.
-- Gary Germeil 20:34, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I strongly support the idea of a move towards article stabilization and authentication, but I'm sympathetic to the idea we need to move conservatively. Let me start with some observations:
There are three basic metrics of article quality:
Few editors care equally about all three.
When refining an article in one of these regards, a frustrating eventuality is that another well-meaning editor will come along and negate your work to further one of these ends. This is obviously the case for readability and accuracy: careful fact-checking and careful grammer correction work often gets mauled when someone decides to change the content. To a lesser extent, content can get unfairly negated too: if I add x but don't cite it, someone else is just as likely to come along and just delete it rather than improve the content by finding a citation (which can be understandable, but still frustrating); whole sub-topics can go undeveloped this way because the only person who thought to bring it up got shut down. I would say, though, that the work of readability and accuracy are far more delicate than content development, and they are therefore more fragile to the wiki process. You really can't do those kinds of work well when the content sands shift underneath you.
Ideally, these three aims could be treated in seperate processes to minimize the frustration. In fact, the ideal development goes something like:
The seeming problem with adopting this model is that it would introduce down time for the various factions. For instance, those working on the content will have to wait for the accuracy and readability folks to put their stamp on an article before continuing work. But is this really necessary?
I think it's safe to assume that the majority of Wikipedeans much prefer to work on content, for most people find the minutia of writing and verification to be onerous burdens. If there is to be a stability feature in Wikipedia, it must respect that primary motivation.
Here's what I propose:
I'm going to sidestep the whole issuse of authority selection and just say that the readability- and accuracy- stamps-of-approval will be in the hands of priviledged committees, perhaps divided into subject areas or perhaps not.
I think a key virtue of this system is that it leaves open the question of what stability means, for it is something that is indicated on each particular stable version. The kind of assurance being given can be specified as appropriate.
A problem that arises, though, that users looking for one kind of assurance may not necessarily want the last stable version but rather an earlier stable version. It could be a history option to see only stable versions, but if the assurance semantics are in the page rather than in some tagging system in the software, the reader would have to look at the actual pages to find the one with the best kind of assurance he's looking for. This won't be such a problem, however, if the committees are sure to incorporate the virtues of the last stable version; as long as the stable versions get progressively better on all counts, readers will always want the last one.
Another solution is that, if a committee creates a new stable version that is in some way inferior to a previous stable version, they could note this at the top with a link to that other stable version.
Taking the committee system one step further, there could be a mechanism for committees to authenticate their pages. One idea is to have certain special category-like links for each committee with the restriction that only a member of a committee can add its special link to a page. This would make it easy to browse the category of stable pages given a seal of approval by some particular group. This mechanism would protect the 'this is a stable version' checkbox privilige be not allowing anyone to claim to speak for any particular committee they don't really represent.
Yes. I don't see how you could have a stability/quality/accuracy system in Wikipedia without some kind of privilege. However, the system I propose, I think, creates only a shallow kind of elite, one based on reputation that is not so very different from what already exists with well-known members. Wikipedia, like other free/open projects, does, in fact, have a very definite hierarchical structure, and this is fine as long as they remain open hierarchies. -- Apantomimehorse 14:26, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
For the last month, myself and 1-2 other individuals have been jumpstarting a massive cleanup project as an attempt to bring order to Wikipedia. I think I have the methodology sorted out: now we need participants. There are more details on the project page. Thank you. Cwolfsheep 12:29, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
There are different classes of users, who use Wikipedia differently. The simplest division will create two groups: producers who advance the wiki by adding content and consumers who reference the created content. The problem is that as the wiki grows, it becomes more useful, more trusted and more likely to be used as a consumer's primary reference. As a result, it becomes far more profitable for malicious producers to play pranks, libel or otherwise vandalize the wiki. The will become the biggest challenge facing the wikipedia in its destined path to become a real life Hitchhiker's Guide.
The way to solve this problem is to apply Computer Science's advances in source/content revision control to the human knowledge contained in this wiki. The typical person wants to use software that has been tested and debugged so it runs without crashing on the person's system. Those interested in the bleeding edge version with all the new features (and bugs) will download the beta version or CURRENT build.
The same is true with knowledge. Once an entry has been debated and hashed out by the authoritative producers/authors for awhile, label it as STABLE/COMPLETE/CONSENSUS/FINISHED. When a consumer seeks out a topic, they are given the STABLE version by default. If a producer arrives with a new perspective or new information and breaks the consensus, it can then be flagged as needing to re-reach consensus. The authoritative parties can then hash out their differences until a new consensus is reached and the STABLE version is moved to the new consensus of opinion. If the consumer is interested, they can request the CURRENT version being debated, but all throughout this expert debate, the default version given to consumers will be the most recent consensus reached about the opinion. So an external link on a blog to a congressman will never suddenly become a porn advertisement or a libellous account of his/her person. This will eradicate most vandalism, and go great lengths to answering the concerns about the trustworthiness of the Wiki starting to brew. But at the same time, it will stay true to the (worthwhile) goal of the Wikipedia to allow anyone to advance the state of the wiki by adding their own content.
When the reputability of the wiki is challenged, the response can be, "We give the best of both worlds. By default we give users a version fo the story that experts in the field have debated and come to a conclusion based on the best information at the time. But knowledge is an ever evolving phenomenon, and todays good ideas can become bad quickly. So we still leave the topic open for debate, allowing that person not only to read the consensus, but view the most current and provocative thinking on the subject." Erick Fejta July 8th, 2006
Whether or not Wikipedia articles should have spoiler warnings has come under debate again, despite the issue being recently visited via TfD Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 May 4#Template:Spoiler. Feel free to share your thoughts at Wikipedia talk:Spoiler warning. -- Ned Scott 00:58, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I propose we have a default tag for new articles. I believe this will help wikipedia's credibility and protect from potential hoaxes. The default tag would last for a certain period of time unless an admin removes it or is replaced by an afd or speedy tag. It could say something to the effect of: "This is a new article and may not have been reviewed for following wikipedia guidelines." I know most questionable articles get deleted but some stick around before anyone notices. I am a relatively new wikipedian and do not know the technical issues involved with this but I think this seems to be a good idea. MrMurph101 23:21, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
At Wikipedia:Central_discussions/Apartheid a series of competing proposals have been made on how to deal with various articles on modern uses of the word "apartheid", namely Israeli apartheid, gender apartheid, sexual apartheid, Crime of apartheid and global apartheid and also the articles Apartheid outside of South Africa and Apartheid (disambiguation). The proposals vary from merging various articles (particularly Israeli apartheid) to leaving the articles in their current state. The debate and voting has been dominated by various interests - it would thus be best for the community if a broader cross section of people including disinterested and neutral parties, reviewed the proposals and had their say. Homey 23:17, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
An infobox for file comparison software is needed, and I created one here. It should go on the bottom of each file comparison software article, and several other pages. One anonymous editor is against the idea, I think mainly because one of my own (free, web-based) tools is listed in the infobox. Another editor is supporting him for now because the guidelines say that generally others should decide whether to add a link rather than the person whose website it is. This discussion is taking place mainly here.
Could I get some support for using that infobox? This is especially hard for me because my tool is included and the articles that the infobox belongs in are probably watched mainly by those partial to the tool covered by the article. -Barry- 20:01, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I propose that the name "user" of a Wikimedia foundation participant be changed to "citizen" so as to better characterize user roles, relationships and responsibilities to each other as well as to the Wikipedia Foundation administrative hierarchy. ... IMHO ( Talk) 10:00, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
when the favorites list has many things, it looks unorganized and confusing. it can be setup to make your own folders, and put each favorite in whichever one you desire. for example, you can make a folder, and label it "Flora/Fauna". That folder will be specifically for animals and plants. Get it? its much more convenient and organized. User : PitchBlack
While we have now a rather good method of discussing new awards, in the past quite a few barnstars and awards were added in good faith, but now create a mess, making it hard to distinguish between some awards and barnstars that cover overlapping areas (or don't cover what their name suggests - want to guess what Barnstar of Life is awarded for?). Comments would be appreciated regarding a major overhaul proposal, which would redefine some barnstars and remove a few that are rather pointless.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:00, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
There are currently two ways of objectively evaluating the notability of a Wikipedia article, and both are flawed.
I propose an alternative: that we create a script that implements
PageRank, but applies it only within the English Wikipedia, excluding user and user talk namespaces, and updates daily? MediaWiki could report an article's internal PageRank above the article. Would this be possible within Google's patents, the way
[2] is? Even if not, I suspect they'd give permission just because Google and Wikipedia have such a good relationship. Seahen
Neon
Merlin
21:19, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (rockets):
So far I have found 13 different ways of naming them - obviously this is a mess, so they need to be standardised. I have reccomended that the best naming convention would be to use the name, followed by the term rocket in parenthesis. This could be used in conjunction with a name only format where appropriote, for example a page could be located at Titan III, but with a redirect at Titan III (rocket) rather than the other way around. --GW_Simulations |User Page | Talk | Contribs | E-mail 20:56, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy).
It is my firm belief that Wikipedia is abusing the privacy of users around the globe. It uses IP address tracking, and subsequently puts your privte IP onto itself, making your IP avalible to anyone who cares to look. Who would look? Hackers. It is a free ride for them. All they need to do is look at that page, and its a open invatation into your computer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Spazit ( talk • contribs)
Then vote to prohibit anonymous editing on Wikipedia! Revealing your IP address to a website will not compromise your computer security, althoguh it may compromise your privacy (unless you're using a shared IP, like me). -- J.L.W.S. The Special One 02:49, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps this user edited anonymously and found out that his or her IP address is in the history of articles that he or she edited. Others have said that there is not a security risk, but if it really bothers you, there are some things you can do. You can ask your ISP to assign you a new address, if they have more than one available for users. You might be able to get a dynamic or shared IP if you have a static or unshared one currently, too. A drastic step that you could take is to change your ISP, but services are usually not equivalent (same speed, price and reliability) if you have broadband. If you have dialup, you have a lot more choices. -- Kjkolb 10:53, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Create a User id. Then your IP address will only be visible to a select few. User:Zoe| (talk) 03:53, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Recently I visited Wikipedia:Reference desk archive/Science/February 2006, and found that the part I wanted to read had been cut off. Using the edit history and a diff, I found that the most recent edit was responsible for the truncation, so I went to revert it. I received an error message: "ERROR: The text you have submitted is 1,237 kilobytes long, which is longer than the maximum of 1024 kilobytes. It cannot be saved." Then when I went back to read the intact version, my browser crashed!
This led me to the decision:
Shouldn't we have so called "content warnings" on certain pages? What I'm saying is, that on pages with explicit content (eg. f**k, or pornography or certain other pages with a high percentage of profanity), a banner could be displayed at the top saying something like:
This page contains material that some (people) may find offensive
I know Wikipedia dosen't get censored, but this could provide clear information on the article's explicit content. -- 88.107.169.74 19:50, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
I disagree with the arguement its too subjective. One can have objective criteria, such as saying depictions of sex require a standard warning tag specific to that type of content. Decisions may be debated, and mistakes made, but that's what a wiki always has. Also, I disagree with fears that warnings are related to censorship. A great example of hypocracy here, is {{ spoiler}} warnings. Take The Village (film) and Million Dollar Baby as example. The most noteworthy parts of those films can only be discussed after we give a spoiler. Yet, we give the spoiler warning as a couresy to our readers, and the film makers. We wouldn't want somebody to miss out on enjoying a good movie, even if it means the intro of the article fails to explain what the film is truly about (even though a person reading about a movie in an encylclopedia, aught to expect spoilers, as we're not a movie guide). But, in other articles, we have an explicit/offensive image, with no advance warning, with no concern of harm/offense. -- Rob 20:43, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:No disclaimer templates. -- cesarb 03:29, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
I propose that there be something in the page history and user contributions pages that allows you to enter a day or month, and then view the changes to the page or the user's contributions on that specified date. This would allow people to quickly jump to a particular edit that they know happened on a certain day, or a particular activity that occurred during a certain period of time, which would be useful for dispute resolutions, RfAs, and other user-related discussions. SCHZMO ✍ 21:29, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I say we permanently move-protect articles such as cat and dog, because there is no point in moving them. If some sceintist somewhere decides to rename them, then a sysop will probably know in enough time to move it his/herself. -- GeorgeMoney ( talk) ( Help Me Improve!) 21:03, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I propose that we give users the ability to delete their own subpages. If the subpage should not be deleted, then admins can "userdelete protect" them, so only admins can edit them. If an admin creates another users' subpage, it is "userdelete protected" by default. Users can delete anything in their userspace except their talk page, which is by default "userdelete protected". This would be useful, because a user won't have to hassle an admin if they want loads of their subpages deleted (i.e. User:GeorgeMoney/delpage ). Thank you, GeorgeMoney ( talk) ( Help Me Improve!) 21:03, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
Just a thought: If not done so already,it would be a good idea to backup wikipedia every year or so so that future generations can learn from our current news and trends. The internet is a brilliant resource that in the future will be used to learn about us, so making sure that information is kept so that future updates and events do not replace the current information, or it will be lost forever. 88.106.127.189 15:37, 29 June 2006 (UTC)(Not logged in when posted)
I was thinking that Wikipedia should have user levels. I think this would be good, since almost all user-oriented sites have them. I hope you look at some examples I made and consider them (I used userboxes, but the they wouldn't be if this happened). Please take some time to look at them. Also, if you would rather see more of the "meat and bones" rather than the fancy userboxes, I can do that instead. Thank you.
User: Trosk/User Level Suggestions
-- Trosk 14:33, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
An archived AfD discussion ( example) reminds users in bold red text saying "Please do not modify it". And why would anyone need to, as it is a closed discussion no longer open for contributions? -- NicAgent 21:34, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
I think it would be a good idea to implement a feature in Wikimedia that allows a user to be able to list all articles that he/she have created. -- Frap 19:02, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Just list them on your user page. Wikibout- Talk to me! 19:06, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
No article on Wikipedia should contain the word "recently." It is not specific, and the fact that something happened recently isn't important. It also has to be changed when it is outdated, but it is impossible to know when something is no longer recent when you don't know when it happened. -- Macarion 17:32, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
"its use to refer to items recent to the article's writing should be removed" Right, that's what I was was talking about -- Macarion 22:58, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
When an article is split into sections, there's an 'edit' (=edit this section) link at the top right of each section. Wouldn't it be fine and dandy if there was also a 'top of page' link there? MikesPlant 15:11, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
How about having a jury for AfD, RfA, and similar activities? Members will be drawn at random from the community, and will be tasked with examining the nominee's activities. -- Folajimi 19:32, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
One thing we could do very easily is to look at Recent Changes, choose some random people who are editing right now, and solicit their vote on a random current AfD. This ensures us that they're an active user, creates no long-term commitment, and has no apparent bias. There could be a template for this. Deco 01:42, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Here's an example message:
Something like that. Deco 02:03, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't mind the concept, but I have a lot of problems with it. First and foremost is the name - it implies a binding decision. Something clearly needs to be done about de facto vote stacking. Right now, if you create an article that mentions Israel, Star Wars, GOP/Democrat, etc, when that article comes to AFD, hoards of people will show up who couldn't care less about Wikipedia policies, but just want to protect their crufty articles or see articles contrary to their views removed. Administrators do have the technical ability to disregard those votes they feel to be without merit, however, there are obvious problems with this as such administrators are not necessarilly unbiased themselves. (Consider the recent silliness with regard to Be bold after the DRV was concluded.) So I agree that there needs to be some unbiased committee, but I don't know that this is the right solution. What I think would work better is creating a step in between {{ prod}} and AFD. Most of the deletions on AFD are nearly unopposed. If non-controversial (say, snowy deletes) could be kept separate and a new area for controversial deletions could be created, then that itself would be an invitation for unbiased members of the community to offer an opinion and to help to minimize the ability of a fanbase to override a community consensus. BigDT 17:15, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
I strongly disagree with this proposal. The current system works great, and we should not take the "power from the people" unless necessary. We use a set of people to do requests for arbitration, that's where juries belong and nowhere else.
In different words, AfD, RfA, etc. work best in a distributed fashion, and it would take an impossible amount of work to be done by a jury.
This idea has as much merit as asking that wikipedia articles be written by a jury. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 20:54, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
"Wikipedia is not a democracy" -- Macarion 23:52, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
When I open Wikipedia I can't start typing in "search"; I have to click in "search" first. Is there a reason why the prompt isn't automatically in "search", as it is for example when one opens Google? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pmjensen ( talk • contribs) 02:30, 28 June 2006
Fair enough. My mouse has a wheel and I tend to use that for scrolling. Perhaps this is something that could be reconsidered once the mouse-with-wheel becomes the norm?-- Pmjensen 02:52, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
I propose including pronunciation keys for some entries. I often find myself needing to check an online dictionary to find the pronunciation of things I'm looking at on Wikipedia. It would be convenient to have it right at the begining of the entry.
This proposal was originally brought up by User:A Transportation Enthusiast as a result of the long-term dispute with User:RichardHarrold who kept moving the page Train station to Railway station (saying that British English was the "correct" English). See Talk:Train station#A Software Solution?.
Would it be possible (or is it possible today) to add the capability to switch based on locale data? In other words, if a user specifies he (or she) wants US english, "color" is displayed; for UK or Canada, it's "colour".
To do this, it would be necessary to specify alternate versions of words or phrases for different locale settings, while editing. Something like:
"The {US:color|UK:colour} of the {US:train|UK:railway} station's walls is blue."
For common terms like color/colour, a shorthand could be used, i.e. something like {!color} that would look up a database of localized terms for that specific term.
The Chinese Wikipedia has a similar system that automatically converts characters between simplified and traditional Chinese according to the user's preferences. Conversion is done through a set of character conversion tables that may be edited by administrators, and regular editors may override the conversion tables for specific sections using special syntax ( Chinese Wikipedia#Automatic conversion between Traditional and Simplified Chinese). Maybe the same idea can be applied to the English Wikipedia to convert between American and British/Commonwealth English? SCHZMO ✍ 21:40, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
And then there's the vandalism potential. {US:Hello.|UK:Cheerio!|AU:G'day, mate!|NF:KILL ALL NEWFIES}, and unless you saw the diff go by or you edit that article - and with so many, that could be rare - the small percentage of folks set to Newfoundland English would be a bit shocked. Also, and here's another major problem - what about non-logged in people? What's the default, American? British? Do we add another layer of processing by figuring it out through their IP? In other words, no. -- Golbez 22:32, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
What about having something like
$$colour
in the wikisource that would then be converted to either color or colour based on user preferences. The words color/colour etc. could be in a separate list so it wouldn't have to be defined in every article. The articles could stay like they do now, just with $$ added in front of the words, by default it could display the article in whatever it was originally written in, then there could be a link, Display in American English/Commonwealth English, for setting a cookie for default behavior. U195 18:52, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
It might be easy to think about the British and American english for differences but when it actually comes to the real thing there are so many english that it is almost impossible to create a system or to implement the concept in the media wiki software because it doesn't really serve a purpose. I really doubt that british can't read the american english and seriously doubt the contrary. Altough if this process is taken into action there will be requests of other varieties of english and that is not really necessary. Maybe for a printed/static version of the WP it is necessary to have all the types of english but for the evolving encyclopedia that WP is, it needs not to have a user-preference-choice of english since they are intelligible by all the parties concerned. Lincher 20:07, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
We periodically have visitors who stumble across an article just after it has been vandalized, or read a poor stub and walk away disaffected with WP. Even more experienced wikipedians should get more into the habit of checking the history to see if an article is in flux when they consult it. How about automatically adding a little sentence at the top of each article whenever displayed which would read something like
2 edits in the last 10 minutes, 10 in the last 24 hours, 160 in the past year.
That immediately warns readers to look for vandalism/major reverts recently. In contrast,
5 edits in the last 30 days, 40 in the past year
is likely a slowly evolving article, and
2 edits in the past year
may very well be an orphaned stub.
In this, I am assuming we would have a sequence of timeframes (e.g. 10 mins, 24 hours, one week, 30 days, 1 year) and the software would leave out "0 edits in ...". Plus, I think this would actually help motivate readers to join in and fix things, since they would see others are doing it. Thoughts? Martinp 20:13, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
I am reintroducing the topic of an "Email this page" in the toolbox. Many times I've read simply fascinating articles, and would have loved to've been able to quickly share it with a freind. I've also had freinds who were not wikipedians copy and paste the text of a wikipedia article and send it to me. It would be great if there was a link that you could click on and either (1) send a link to the article to someone, (2) send a text version of the article (since some of these articles are gigantuous) or (3) (my faviorite idea) send the lead in HTML, with a More here... link to the rest of the article. Many magazine, reference sites, and newspapers have such a feature, and I think it would be great here.-- Esprit15d 14:42, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
It is regarding this:
I believe the "anyone can edit" should have disclaimer that source must be verifiable, useful, and bunch of other stuff that people usually not read through. Many users and editors do not even read the bottom Content must not violate any copyright and must be based on verifiable sources. You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL. -- Dooly00000 18:32, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
< Scraped from Main article, 23:15, 24 June 2006 (UTC), by Dooly00000
One problem with front page stuff is that 99.999% of new users end up entering and being introduced to the Wikipedia via an article following a Google search using a keyword that gets a Google Wikipedia hit. Once in an article there is no backtrace to the main page through a classification hierarchy shown at the top of the article as there is in disk file folders and most web pages. Consequently you never as a user look for or see the main page. ... IMHO ( Talk) 20:29, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Whoever first recognized the need has probably been long since been obscured but Dewey ended up with the credit for the Dewey Decimal System. What is becoming apparent is that the entire Wikipedia project is in need of a similar classification system. Anyone have any specific ideas of how such a system should be organized or if it would be sufficient just to start with the divisions upon which the reference desks are already based? ... IMHO ( Talk) 12:11, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
I edit a lot of military related articles, and often someone will add "This gun/tank/missile is used by (insert some fictional character) in (some fictional piece of work) to do (something fictional)." I think it's pointless and crufts up factual articles with a load of fictional references that are basically not notable, and not encylopedic. See Colt Python for a good example. I think it would be good to have a policy/guideline in place that basically limited "Popular culture" references for real things or objects to only iconic references - i.e. Dirty Harry. Popular culture articles - video games/films/fiction should link to the objects in question, not the other way round. What do other people think ? Megapixie 09:51, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
There is a still-open Portal:Current events creation proposal and an earlier discussion on Talk:Current events that suggests some support and no opposition for moving Current events to the portal namespace with minimal initial changes in layout and organization. I'm not convinced the proposal has had enough scrutiny so I hope it's appropriate to mention it here as well. Please comment at Wikipedia:Portal/Proposals#Portal:Current events or here as appropriate. Suggestions for other places to make this proposal known would also be welcome. Thanks – kayaker ( talk · contribs) 09:30, 26 June 2006 (UTC).
The process of article deletion is harrowing enough to then deny or delay the primary author from obtaining a reference copy of the article for continued revision and/or personal use. I propose that upon deletion of an article that a link to a hidden copy of the article be provided to the primary author or to everyone involved in the deletion discussion so as to uphold the Wikipedia civility policy. Otherwise I fear the deletion process will appear to simply be viewed as a mugging carried out by a bunch of ruthless thugs. ... IMHO ( Talk) 00:58, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
What would really help is making it mandatory for admins who delete an article to provide a link from the deletion log summary to the deletion discussion. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to hunt high and low through the archives to find the discussion. Carcharoth 10:52, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Several times I've been starting or expanding a video game article, and I've had to cite a book with an article. Since the book is already cited by several other articles, a copy-and-paste should be possible. But the only way to do this seems to be to go to the Special:Whatlinkshere of the book in question, click on one of the links given, and hope it uses the cite template. There has got to be a better way.
We could just decide that a wikilink to the book was sufficient for citing it. However, this would be inadequate for printouts of the article, and the book article might be deleted, so I don’t think this is a good idea.
What I think would work well would be to associate a set of
Template:Cite book arguments with each book article. This could take the form of a human-readable template on the talk page ({{
citethisbook|title=this|last=that|first=and so on}}
→ "To cite this book in a Wikipedia article, use {{
cite book|title=this|last=that|first=and so on}}
") and could be botted from
Template:Infobox book arguments. Finally, we'd set up a cite template whose sole argument was a wikilink, and a bot to replace it with the completed template fetched from the to-cite-this-book template. Thus, an editor might just type {{
cite bwa|High Score!}}, and save a lot of work. (BWA would stand for Book With Article. Note that
High Score! is a redirect, which the bot would have to deal with.)
Would this work? Maybe it could also be used for sources other than books, when the piece of work is the entire subject of the article. Seahen 20:12, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
I've created page for discussion about creating a standard look and feel for geographical infoboxes, please contribute at Wikipedia:Geographical infoboxes if you're interested. -- Rick Block ( talk) 17:37, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Go to Wiktonary, this is the line you read on the main page. Could we adopt this sort of policy for Wikipedia? (Is this a question better left on Meta?) -- Zanimum 13:09, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
(I don't know if this is considered policy-related or not - I think not.) I think there should be a separate search function for finding items in the guidelines, at the Pump, etc. That is, for finding stuff that is in that part of Wik which is NOT part of the content of articles. I always have a dickens of a time trying to find any-thing, such as copyright, special symbols, etc. It is especially difficult, since so much of the "Help" information is linked, meaning I go through 5 or 6 links before I get whither I want to go. Even with a "fast" connection, this often takes me around ten minutes to find out a simple think such as how to make the won" (Korean currency) sing. I often just give up or ask on a member's page. This seems like a poor set-up to me. Kdammers 09:16, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
I have nominated Category:Wikipedians by politics and all of its subcategories for deletion. Feel free to comment at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 June 19/Wikipedians by politics. Hipocrite - «Talk» 18:58, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
The German Wikipedia has a relatively successful "Web of Trust" scheme to help with continuous rating of users' "trustability". The English equivalent, Wikipedia:Trust network, has been resurrected as a proposal, with a strong basis in the German system. If you want to make a public record of which contributors you find particularly trustworthy, you can follow the instructions given there. TheGrappler 21:54, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Epinions has had a web of trust for many years and I can tell you that it has led to an enormous amount of bruised egos, hurt feelings, backbiting, etc. It can be used as a weapon--removal: "I just don't trust this person anymore" as a revenge tool--spamming pages of other users with "I noticed that you have NAME on your WOT, please see this edit ___, he/she is not trustworthy" and many more scenarios. And it is incredibly cliquish, with members gloating over how many people have trusted them and statements to new members "well you haven't earned enough trust so ____". Even if you build into the guideline proposal language to attempt to insulate against WP:AGF violation, they are bound to clash. We joke about the cabal; this will create it or at least give its appearance great strength. It is stated right up front at Wikipedia:Trust network that the proposal will be "neither a popularity contest nor a measurement or assessment of an editor's trustworthiness or value." The reason this statement is prominently displayed and necessary is because that is how, at least to and by some, it will be used and seen — prescriptive guideline language notwithstanding. I think it sounds useful on paper and will be a disaster if implemented. I would be interested in seeing an experienced German Wikipedia editor's take on these matters.-- Fuhghettaboutit 20:54, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
What i'd like to propose is a list of people, spread across the globe cooperating to get and check facts and spread the news of newly ermerged ones, each member working within his/her own country, speaking the local language and having easy access to monuments, musea and websites in their respective languages. This group of volunteers take requests from a list detailing the request.
The full proposal and rationale can be found here and i'd very much appreciate your input.
Kleuske 19:37, 13 September 2006 (UTC) ( nl:Gebruiker:Kleuske)
Wikipedia is a massive compendium of knowledge, I feel that it could use some security (staff, hardware, finances) and I also think the easiest an best way to secure stable funds is through adbertisement...with monies coming in, THE ENYCLOPEDIA could pay the writers and editors of the most widely viewed articles, or create a prize for the wierdest of articles...on a more serious note, Wikipedia could offer its own Nobel Prize of Wikipedian Literature, it could push the community to produce that which will change society, or societies.
Perhaps, with more cash, Wikipedia could upgrade its site, it could offer ways of implanting software (interactive charts, graphic organizers)...Wikipedia could even afford to stream video into the site, this could transform the encyclopedia into a firsthand, immediate, journalistic tool...Wikipedia could make an addition adding audiobooks of each of the articles, or even full voice animated site that could ease the burden of ignorance from the visually impaired.
I know the greatness that is Wikipedia the free encyclopedia, yet I can also imagine the death of Wikopedia from the current plague or epidemic of apathy (perhaps from the threat of terrorism? I certainly hope not, but noney can supply multiple hard backups of the data). I hope that this is taken in good faith, as it was sent...long live Wikipedia!
Perhaps a seperate wikipedian site could be made and would act as a review site? I am just throwing out ideas, and I hope that you all can add to my whimsical interests in keeping alive human interest in human matters, through the use of Wikipedia.
The above was contributed by User:Cementkilla. I am just copying it here. Melchoir 05:12, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
okay, i read the news all the time online and when something interesting comes up, or say somthing having to do with the coast guard i click the email this article to a friend and send it to my guardsman brother, similarly i think wikipedia should have an option at the bottom of the page or sidebar where u can click, email to a friend provide your email or wikipedia user name and their name and email and send them the article or the link automatically, i think that would be very cool and it would be a great way of word-of-mouth spreading the visibility of wikipedia and i think it would attract for contributors and editors, whatya think? Qrc2006 01:56, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
If this excellent idea is implemented, we will have more ways to encourage our friends to contribute to Wikipedia. For example, after I write an article, I could e-mail it to my friends, asking them to give feedback, and sign up and improve my article. I am a manager in a 1000-member RuneScape community: I could e-mail the RuneScape article and suggest they create accounts and work on the article to improve it to Good Article status. The possibilities are endless. -- J.L.W.S. The Special One 11:53, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
what the hell are you talking about nagle? limit emaiol articles to registered users then, or 10 per hour per IP address or include a identify the charicters image thingy its a great idea your very pessamistic, why should we be denied this great feature bcuz of what some spamholes might do with it, i also fail to see a problem with self promoting wikipedia, do you think promoting this project is a bad thing, that we shoudnt tell people about it? generate spam on demand it will be used that way, what does that even mean? and no they wont be spam, theyll be cool informative and attract people to wikipedia and actually i dont see how its self promotional at all i mean you could send the article about your Virginia if your doing a state report or if u write an article about unagi sushi to your chef friend or an article on Xena to your brother whos a astronomy buff or the article on britney spears or tom brady to a pop or patriots fan. that just makes wikipedia able to be more widely distributed and helps the learning process Qrc2006 00:11, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
if the consensus seems to be do it is there an appropriate discussion page to continue this dialogoue, or what can be done to implement this? Qrc2006 00:11, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
In some of my contributions, I have written things that I felt some people might presume to be original research. I describe three cases of these in my essay Wikipedia:These are not Original Research. Comments welcomed. -- llywrch 21:02, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Interesting. Another thing along these lines that has been troubling me can be seen in a number of the games articles, like Hearts (game), Spades, and Euchre. On the one hand, I like these articles and find them interesting, helpful, and, to the best of my knowledge, accurate. On the other, there are no references. When I come across unreferenced and possibly unreferenceable articles about bands, coroporations, or living people, I'm for swift deletion. But I believe those articles on games should be kept, and are fine as is. This apparent double standard bothers me.
It wasn't until looking recently at some of the articles on big cities that I think there's another sort of reliable source: the introspection of large numbers of editors. Looking at San Francisco, for example, I see a number of statements that are unreferenced and that I wouldn't expect to see in a formal reliable source. But any San Francisco resident could judge the truth of them, and there are enough San Franciscans and San Francisco visitors editing Wikipedia that I'm not afraid that the article would be significantly wrong for significantly long.
Similarly for the card-game articles: Even if no researcher had ever written about Hearts (game), I think that there are enough players that we can have a good article about it. Although this could be seen as original research, I think the material is still verified through wide peer review, and so fits the spirit and goals of Wikipedia. Is this reflected in the policies anywhere? And if not, should it be? Thanks, William Pietri 15:38, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
I maintain quotationsbook.com, a highly comprehensive and usable resource of quotations. It's also the only site with freely available | RSS feeds of all content. Seeing that all this content is public, I thought of asking appropriate people at Wikiquote if WikiQuote collections can be extended to include quotes from my site. There are subsets of data available at quotationsbook that don't exist at Wikiquote, especially in stubs. Data can, of course, be formatted as required, since it's delivered as XML.
Can Wikiquote make use of these feeds to fill out stubs and append content to existing collections, etc.? Who would be in charge of thinking this through and deciding to use the feeds?
I think it would contribute very significantly to WikiQuote content, and reveal many more quotes. My feeds are traffic-ready and being used at answers.com. This topic was posted at WikiQuote | here to no response.
Amit 80.47.24.132 19:37, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
I previously had this discussion a long time ago here - and there was technical feasibility in doing this. Before this topic dies a death, I think it would be a great idea and fill out many stubs in Wikiquote. Can someone make this? Amit 80.47.24.132 07:07, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
One of the big things about talking to other users is to add 4 tildes (~~~~) to identify yourself in a discussion. However, some users manually (I assume) add a link to their talk page in their signature. Why doesn't adding the 4 tildes (adding a sig) to a comment include a link to your talk page? When I click on a person's sig, I most often am more interested in their talk page than I am their userpage, and (again) assume I am not alone in this. Also, when a user who hasn't set up their userpage is referred to, they come up as a red link, making it difficult to access their talk page. For instance, most anonymous ip 's have a red link, but active talk pages. Can't their be a way to more easily access user's (whether registered or not) talk pages. Autopilots 09:53, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
To my great surprise I didn't find anything about this either here or here. Maybe if I checked the history links, but I really couldn't be bothered.
Anyway, I wanted to suggest this: User:TRiG/Suggestion for policy on raunchy pictures. Any thoughts?
That page is in two distinct sections, the second of which is not really realted to the title.
If anyone thinks that this comment should be moved elsewhere, please feel free to cut-and-paste it.
I don't really know what I'm doing here yet. I'm a [h2g2] person.
TRiG 19:15, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Is information of itself bad (or evil or offensive etc)? I dont think so. If Im right, all we need to do is present pure information without connotation.-- Light current 05:02, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Another objection to this approach is that, since this is an open edit site, Wikipedia cannot guarantee that any page will be free of vandalism at any particular moment. Responsible parents ought to understand that intuitively. Specific disclaimers also make it clear. While such damage usually gets undone very quickly, it's a fact of life on any wiki. Durova 19:14, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Another variation on the idea: Whilst the concept has been presented in a well-meant manner, the idea that wikipedia should be opt-out-only uncensored runs contrary to many of the core beliefs. However I see no issue with the idea of opt-out uncensorship. By this I mean that above tags should be added as part of a greater meta-tagging scheme (another common suggestion). Then, a user can select on an account-passworded part of their preferences to display or not display certain tagged content (or content that is not tagged, as vandals are unlikely to bother). By default, all content would be allowed, but this would allow parents and those who find material objectionable to prevent it from being seen. Obviously, this is part of a much bigger set of changes, but it's worth remembering. LinaMishima 21:14, 5 September 2006 (UTC)