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I originally wrote this to the technical page of the VP... it seems technical considerations have been addressed successfully, so I'm bringing it here to the proposals page. One thing I've run foul of two or three times when deleting pages is forgetting to check whether there was a discussion page... sometimes leaving a lone talk page floating in the void. I propose putting a message in large friendly letters on the "page deletion complete" page which will come up if there's an undeleted talk page that needs dealing with. Grutness... wha? 22:50, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
I propose that the addition of tags such as NPOV tags and cleanup tags or any other tags be also duplicated (by the mediawiki or the wikipedia) in the summary box. This would help in two things, first, to know which version of the article was POV-oriented in order to work with the history more easily ans also, it would allow bots to recognize these tags right in the summary box thus helping with the FA and GA criteria. Lincher 19:15, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
A bot is currently needed to create articles on US Towns and counties on foreign language wikis. Much of North America is absent from these wikis. Policy has already been adopted in order to counter eurocentric and francocentric editing. ADM
I'm shocked at Grutness's take here. We should not add articles about US cities to other pediae? Because their cities aren't here yet? Then maybe they should get off their non-American asses and get cracking, I'd love to see an article here for every city, town, village and hamlet in the whole damn world, but until that happens, that's no reason to not add info about American cities, towns, villages and hamlets to other pediae. Please tell me I misinterpreted something. -- Golbez 20:01, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
I think part of this discussion is academic as what we say and decide here (in this wiki) may not be accepted by other wikis. The only way to do things in other wikis is by abiding to their rules. Yes, as strange as it may sound, they all don't operate by the same rules as this one. Bots that create articles may need to be approved by the community of that wiki. If I remember correctly, that is the case of the Spanish wiki. I tend to remember some time ago someone there proposing a bot to create articles in the Spanish wiki about .... I do not remember, I think it was about French districts or something along those lines. There was a debate about allowing such bot and I think there was even a vote on the matter (do not remember the end result). Summarizing, I think we cannot decide here for the other wikis. Anagnorisis 04:01, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Warning for English users and Administrators :
There exists in Spain a small group of fanatics who think that the Madrid Train Bombing March 11th bombing was done by the current Spanish governement that was at that time the opposition party. They have now landed on English wikipedia and have started to shape the article to fit their madness.
They have many picturesque and bizzarre ways to state this non-sense and some variations involving secret services from France or Basque terrorist organisations (you will get painfully familiar with this crap so it is not needed for me give you details). The only solution is to block them and all their IPs. If you do not do this ASAP you will have all their rambling atrocities written again and again. In the Spanish Wikipedia we are sick of these guys trolling tactics regarding such a sensitive issue. A more soft solution could be to give them a special page for their deliriums as had been done with other conspiranoics. It is up to you. My message is that I cannot double my activity and control these nuts in English Wikipedia and many colleagues in the Spanish wikipedia are in the same situation. So it is up to you what to do between the next given three posibilities.
1-Allow them to publicize their aberrations spoiling the credibility of Wikipedia (currently happening)
2-Give them a page to at least have the damage controlled
3-Block them forever.
The 11-M were Islamic terrorist actions as anyone with a brain can see so I do not thing they will convince anybody but is really anoying to see their dirty lies shown as the truth. If someone wants to do something, please do it understanding that netiquette is used by them as a tool for their trolling. Enjoy.
-- Igor21 16:35, 13 July 2006 (UTC) link added Filceolaire 22:35, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
On various User and Talk pages, for example, GeorgeMoney (in the past) and Moeron (now), I have found fake "You have new messages" boxes. My proposal:
Seems to have come from this: User:Zappa.jake/templates/new_messages Invitatious ( talk) 02:15, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
One time I was on someone's talkpage and they made a what they called a "joke" and it forced me to laugh for several seconds when I could have been using that time to write the encyclopedia, so I'm proposing a NO JOKES AT ALL policy.
Seriously, come on... this is too much. Let it be. If someone you interact with has one, let them know of your displeasure and let peer pressure work its magic... vote against them if they ever come to RfA if you like... but making this a policy issue is overkill. — Bunchofgrapes ( talk) 03:19, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
True, this is annoying, it shouldn't be accepted as WP intends to be a serious project and these childish behaviour add to the non-respect of the encyclopedia. It shouldn't be a stand-alone policy but be added to some existing unaccepted behaviour page. Lincher 17:10, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
When I see the new messages indicator, I always eyeball the destination of the link before I click to it. Not sure if your browser selection doesn't display the link distance if your hover your mouse over it, though. -- Deathphoenix ʕ 18:37, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I see that a lot of the warnings to vandals have been standardised ("Thank you for experimenting..."). I think that including the following sentence in the standard response can further reduce the frequency of vandalism:
"If you feel the need to be funny, try editing on Uncyclopedia. Uncyclopedia is a parody of Wikipedia where anyone can add jokes or funny pictures to articles."
- sYndicate talk 12:50, 09 July 2006 (UTC)
I can't find any vandal templates? - sYndicate talk 23:00, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Found it, thanks Jonathan. - sYndicate talk 03:28, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
The History tab is very daunting for new users; it's very busy and just about everything can be clicked on, so it's confusing as to what one should do. At a minimum, there should be a link to Help:Page history in some obvious place near the top.
Are there any other ways it could be made more usable or intuitive? Could there be a "simple" and "advanced" version of the history tab (chosen in My Preferences) so that new users would see only the most essential information (hiding the "talk|contribs" links for each user, for example)? Could it be redesigned into more of a table format so the columns could be labeled? I know a lot of this would involve a MediaWiki software change, but I thought I'd get some feedback here first. — Jonathan Kovaciny ( talk| contribs) 04:23, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
To view a previous version, click the date for that version.
Legend: (cur) = difference with current version, (last) = difference with preceding version, m = minor edit |
All versions of this article are listed here in reverse-chronological order.
Minor edits are denoted as m. For more help, see Help:Page history. |
What can I say but UGH!. This huge box simply wastes a full third of the space on the history screen. What's more important: the history or the instructions? It should be a small link, or at least a single line (as it was before). I'm not opposed to the idea, just to the amount of space it wastes. For now, I'm reverting to the previous revision, but keeping the link to the help page (which is a good idea). -- cesarb 18:07, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
For help using this page, see Help:Page history. |
Hello! I was amazed by how there is no verification to sign-up. It's pleasant that there is no e-mail hassle but a keyboard verification might be good to keep off the spam. Thanks! — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pawel z Niepolomic ( talk • contribs) .
Hello,
My Question relates to the possibility to add a category such as category:public lectures in Town (replacing public lectures by org. name & town by the real name of the location) and invite user to add their user accounts in it ? (relating them with a main article Template:catmore which shall describe the community as a wikipedia encyclopedic article).
The aim is to give some newbies the feature of registering as members of that group, so that they could meet thereafter.
My point is to add brand new users that share the follow-up of philosophy-related lectures ; those are not the teachers, but they search a place to share the knowledge they acquired throughout a community.
I proposed wikipedia, which I know through another wiki identity. So that I just started this account creation to enhance their initiation to the wiki (people come from the course, and are basically unaware of wikipedia guidelines).
Yours,
-- Lilliputian 12:12, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
NOTE: To avoid my text being interpreted as code, I replaced all curly brackets ({{) with triangular brackets (<<). They really should be curly brackets in the actual implementation.
BACKGROUND:
Many articles have specific dates and times in them. Currently these dates are fixed as simple text, and all users, regardless of their timezones, see the same number.
In many cases this is the way it should be, e.g. historical articles, events where the time of the day is important etc. But in many other cases, mostly in current event and schedule-specific articles, the ultimate objective is to convey the actual time of the event to the reader, as opposed of presenting the perspective of a local time.
For example:
"On January 1, 19XX, at 16:00PM country A declared war on country B."
In this case, the local time is important, to show the historical perspective. This date and time should stay constant to all readers, and not be adjusted for timezone.
But in another example:
"The semi-final is scheduled on August 10, 2006 at 16:00 PST"
The focus is more reader oriented than local oriented. The objective is to let the reader know when exactly the event takes place, for example so they can watch it in real time.
PROPOSAL:
For accomplishing the latter case, have a magicword of the following format:
<<DYNDATETIME|ZONE>>
For example, the article text contains:
<<2006-08-10 16:00|PST>> (Let's not get in a fight over the date format in the tag, it can be MMDD or DDMM or whatever, that's not the point of this suggestion.
What this would do is convert the displayed date and time according the user's timezone settings in Wikipedia (preferences -- time zone). It would then display the date to the user according to their specifications under preferences under "date format" section.
Thus, a user with time zone of -8 and long date preferences would see on the page something like:
August 10, 2006 16:00 GMT-8
A user with the same style but in timezone +3 would see:
August 11, 2006 03:00 GMT+3
And a user with short date preferences and offset 0 would see:
2006-08-11 00:00 GMT
In a nutshell, it would make dates displayed more dynamic, more suitable to user preferences, and most importantly, timezone-adjustable. So next time, for example, I won't have to recalculate all the times on my favorite football match when reading Wikipedia.
Of course, ALL CONVERSIONS WILL BE DONE BY HAND AS APPLICABLE. I am not suggesting that a bot do that, because in many articles the date and time should stay as they are (that is simple text). This is not intended to be a lighting-fast change, but rather gradual introduction in articles which could benefit from dynamically-adjusted times, mostly indended for current events and especially sports and other competitions.
Of course, we could also make a format like <<DYNDATETIME|FIXED>>, where it would adjust the style of date and time, but not adjust it for timezone.
Finally, users should be able to turn autoadjustments on or off in their time/date preference settings. If they turn it off, they will always see date and time for the same zone which was written in the article. And article writers, when writing dates and times using this magicword, should always use local time for the event as the base case.
Elvarg 18:27, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
Special:Allpages was recently added to the side bar. I think this is not a very helpful page to direct people to (less useful than the search box certainly). As a result, I am inclined to remove it, but don't want to start an edit war, so I'd like to hear other opinions. Dragons flight 14:27, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I propose a set of templates, Category:CSD reference templates, that creates references to criteria for speedy deletion, for use in XFD debates. I think it is useful because of newbies who may be looking for the relevant criteria. Examples of use are on the talk page. If you can improve the summaries (should be very concise) of the criteria, you are of course welcome to edit the proposed template. Also: Is this possible to use in edit summaries? Invitatious ( talk) 01:30, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Are there any Wikipedias who wish to spend some time each week making sure that medical articles are up-to-date? Wikipedia has been praised for been up to date, and there are certainly some fields (popular and media culture, current affairs and politics, anything to do with computer software) where it certainly is this, leaving other encyclopaedias (even those online) trailing. However, the medical articles are not always up-to-date. The article on whooping cough has not been updated since June 29 2006, in spite of a recent July survey into whooping cough in Oxford, United Kingdom. My proposal is for medically qualified Wikipedians to ensure that medical articles are updated regularly. ACEO 18:32, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
So I was thinking, the word "admin" seem to bear a very high-and-mighty connotation to it, which might be attributing to the perceived power that admins have in the Wikipedia community.
We could rename them janitors! Not only does the title suit them better, but it also makes them not a big deal. Plus it's funny. :-) -- The Prophet Wiz ard of the Cray on Cake 07:09, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
- I guess the term gods is to much for them then? LOL - don't want to give their ego's too much of a boost! Raven.x16 07:12, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Administrators are Wikipedians who have access to technical features that help with maintenance. Those include protecting and deleting pages, blocking other editors, and undoing these actions as well. Wikipedia practice is to grant this access to anyone who has been an active and regular Wikipedia contributor for a while, is familiar with and respects Wikipedia policy, and is generally a known and trusted member of the community.
But I'm a 'custodian' of Wikipedia. I watch over it, nurture it, undo vandalism, welcome people, etc. But I'm not an admin, as I'm here to write an encyclopedia. I'd be hurt (and in some cases deeply insulted!) by any implication that I'm not as responsible as admins. I think the same would go for 'senior Wikipedian' - I've probably been here longer and made more edits than the pushier folk who can't wait to be admins. JackyR | Talk 11:08, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
One current concern is notifying editors what they are signing up for when they choose to become an admin. Perhaps we should rename the title to be "target". So we have regular editors like me and target editors with blocking powers who draw the enmity of donkey-editors onto themselves. Works for me. WAS 4.250 22:36, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Sorry if this has been proposed before, but wouldn't it be very useful to include a function allowing Wikipedians to watchlist articles in a category they'd like?
Currently the 'watch' button on category pages only adds the category page itself to the user's watchlist and doesn't reflect changes to the pages in the category. This is OK, it is of use to many people, and I'm not advocating this function's substitution. I'd like to have both a 'watch page' and 'watch all pages in the category' (hope someone would come up with a shorter name :)) button on category pages.
I'm very interested in topics related to my native country, Bulgaria, and have often regretted not being able to effectively observe the developments (new articles, major changes to existing articles, article moves, etc.) in Category:Bulgaria, so the idea of such a function crossed my mind.
Now, of course, some more in-depth thinking reveals several problems: if you watchlist all articles in a category, you'd have to automatically watchlist all articles that are being added to it afterwards (there's little sense in the contrary). Also, implementing the removal of pages from the watchlist (when they've been added because they fall in a given category) may be an issue that needs further discussion. And besides, watchlisting very big categories may be troublesome both to the user and the software (not sure about that). Another issue are subcategories — the user should be asked whether to add them to his/her watchlist together with the main category or watch only the main category.
I'd like to hear what you think about it before going to Bugzilla, so we could discuss any suggestions and ideas, and see if it's a good proposal overall. I know the final result would look a bit complex and hard to understand to new users, but I (and I'm sure many other Wikipedians) would find such a function very handy. Todor → Bozhinov 15:41, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't know whether there is processing overhead associated with this, but I think it would be a good idea to only link to real articles from the Random Article link. Currently it links to both deleted pages and disambiguation pages;deleted articles are obviously not useful and returning disambiguation pages looks odd in this context. Maybe there should also be some weighting for featured articles or a Random Featured Article link Yomangani 10:18, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Dab pages need to be looked at too... Septentrionalis 01:57, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I never understood the point of the Random Article thing. -- Macarion 23:50, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
It would be nice if there was an option in My Preferences to modify the function of the Special:Random on a per-user basis. I would love to see checkboxes like the following, with only the first three checked by default, so new users wouldn't bump into pages of little encyclopedic value:
Random article may include:
|
This would obviously require a software change, but I would certainly use the Random article feature more often if this were possible. — Jonathan Kovaciny ( talk| contribs) 16:05, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Blog format or scholar format for lists of works and people - here, applied to the case of the list of past conductors of a major orchestra. A proposal with four formats, various points about them, and a discussion is opened at Talk:Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (but the topic goes beyond this one article, and probably beyond orchestra articles).
(Disclosure: ongoing edit war and associated vandalism on the article.)
-- 62.147.38.70 17:57, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Although Public Domain and SELF seem to be the primary divisions of copyright tag classification it appears that their are many, many more subdivisions which are not readily classified for the user. I propose for this reason that the copyright tags not only be properly classified but that the resulting classification be expressed for the benefit of users in the form of a dichotomous key. ... IMHO ( Talk) 17:04, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I have prepared a major reorganization and substantial revision of Wikipedia:Requests for comment at User:Centrx/Sandbox/Request for comment. It had not been substantially changed since RfCs were split out into subpages and has become a unnavigable and repetitive hodgepodge. This revision cleanly divides the page into subsections relevant to specific kinds of RfCs — articles, policy, user, and responses — with specific instructions, advice, and reference to policies for each.
What should be trimmed down further? What is missing? the section on requestion comment on articles is the most well-developed, but what might be appropriate for the user section in integrating it well with its subpage? Should the policy section be expanded? How about the section on responding? Also, I would like help with formatting of the templates on the right near the introduction, problems which may be visible on higher resolution screens. — Centrx→ talk • 19:44, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Another proposal for senior editors... at least it has nice pictures. The reasoning and details are in the essay... It's just a userpage essay, comments welcome. It's here. Herostratus 19:05, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
I am relatively new, so don't have the technical expertise to sort this. But the coverage of towns and villages in France is very patchy. In the French wikipedia most places that don't have an extended article have a standard stub page with headings and links, as well as a table (infobox?) with statistical information - postcode, number of inhabitants, area and population density, altitude etc. These must have been generated automatically from the French national statistical service database. Is there a way to migrate this information into the English wikipedia, without of course writing over entries that are more complete in the English version? -- Itsmejudith 10:56, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Is it possible to change the login failure message to include a notice that the username and password are case-sensitive? It is not a problem for me, but failed log-in attempts may discourage people from logging in to edit. (I am assuming that account-editing is preferred over "anonymous"-editing, although this may not be the case.) I am accustomed to systems where the username is not case-sensitive, and such "case-insensitive" login systems seem rather widespread, so I expect that this might be a common problem. I apologize if this has already been discussed elsewhere.-- GregRM 23:19, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
I thought it would be neat to include special banners linking articles to google videos. This would allow users to supplement their research with interviews, animations, etc, using already moderated source material. It seems like a logical step to me, so I'm sure someone's already working on it. Just wondering.-- Asherp 20:31, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Hello all;
I don't know if this is quite the proper place, but a feature I think would be of great use for tracking pages and maintaining one's watchlist would be to have any redirect on one's Special:Watchlist/edit page marked as such. I, for one, frequently go back and check for certain redirects and remove others. It is tedious and time-consuming to visit the majority of those pages. Charles 01:41, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
watchlistredir
class. If you want them to look different, add something like .watchlistredir { font-style: italic }
on your user CSS (this is the one I use, and it makes them appear in italic; you can try other styles if it's not different enough). --
cesarb 14:58, 11 July 2006 (UTC)I was thinking about this last night (well, I was bored). I didn't know whether to put it on WP:V or WP:DEL, so I went down the middle route.
There are a heck of a lot of articles on Wikipedia that have absolutely no source information, and they should - it even says at the bottom of the edit box to 'use reliable sources for encyclopedia contend'. And thousands of new pages don't bother. So I thought of a way to resolve this. If an article has no sources (thus currently failing WP:V), and doesn't qualify speedy deletion, or it's been no consensused at AFD), or it's been deprodded, it could be tagged, by a tag that reads along the line of:
This is way more generous then AFD, or PROD, and gives a heck of a long time to sort something out. It also means all that garbage with no references can be deleted (as an incredible number of articles that fail WP:V still seem to get through all the current deletion processes. A bot (if someone is clever with a bot) could then flag the pages that have reached 30 days (or 14 days, or 2 months, or whatever) for speedy deletion, and then an admin would still have the final say on whether the article is kept or goes.
If someone has already suggested something like this, apologies. Any thoughts? Proto/// type 13:04, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't think that this is such a great idea because it would mean removing like 70% of the whole encyclopedia (frustrating a lot of people). Secondly, it is better to have a poorly sourced or unsourced article than no article at all ... this would also be frustrating to find only red links on articles that were formerly well subpaged. Thirdly, as time will go, there will be less and less subjects to work on (I think we can foresee this in about 2 years) and then people will bring the whole project to a better level of quality overall. Thus, removing all these unsourced article would be frustrating, time-consuming and useless for such a project, we should then all take the time to add a book citation per day (maybe this could become a project or something). Lincher 05:30, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Very strong oppose This is a complete overreaction. Good material should not be deleted for being unsourced, and we should assume good faith on the part of contributors. There are plenty of more moderate mechanisms in place already, but like any major aspect of Wikipedia referencing is a never to be completed task. Chicheley 13:36, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Please note that WP:Verifiability#Burden of evidence supports the removal or hiding of ANY unreferenced edit, and an article with no references could easily become an empty article, which can be speedy deleted. Also, there is no way to determine whether material added is "good", unless the sources can be checked. This is policy, and it isn't going to change, so rather than ranting about "good material shouldn't be deleted", work on providing reliable published sources. -- Donald Albury( Talk) 14:45, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
When I'm doing RC patrol, I'll usually put a {{verify}} or {{prod}} on any new article with no citations that I can't verify with less than a minute of work in Google. If I can find one reasonable citation, I'll add a link. See, for example, Caribbean reef shark, which appeared as a one-line article and just needed a link to get it started. On the other hand, Afanti was a one-line article with no cites that was basically wrong, so I gave it a {{prod}}. -- John Nagle 01:45, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
In forums there is a thing that lists how many users are online at any given moment.
I think this would be a good thing for the Wikipedia main page. Usually there is seperate entries for Registered Users, and guests.
There is also usually an option for people to not be counted, on their own user pages etc...
What do you people think?
Cheers. Raven.x16 04:57, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Did anyone think about turning years articles (like 2005) from lists and timeline to prose. These articles could be well-written summaries about what happened during the year in all fields. It will be divided by topic (politics, science, sports...) rather than months. It would be an enthusiatic community work, and relativly simple with very easy-to-find sources and pictures. And imagine that we will conduct a vote about what events should be included in the article, and write the article as the second step. What do you think? CG 19:37, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
I oppose. The German approach doesn't give nearly the same amount of information as ours does. User:Zoe| (talk) 03:54, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Maybe this has been suggested before, but it struck me that we have many more registered users than articles, even if we assume half a million of them to be inactive or irregular users. Therefore would it be possible to assign users an article to 'parent'. The process could begin by each user choosing an article that they are knowlegable about or interested in. Those users who do not choose, or who would rather have the opportunity to research something new to them could be automatically assigned one on their talk page. It would be the parent of each articles job to oversee that article in terms of vandalism, and research the subject and contribute to it themselves to bring it up to a level of accuarcy and detail which could be expected in an expert edited encyclopedia. This would reduce the number of stubs as if each user concentrates solely on one article it would improve, and since we have enough users for every article to have a parent, all articles could be improved, in some cases, beyond recognition. It would also reduce vandalsim and increase factual reliability. Possibly this scheme may be considered unfeasable, but I thought it was an idea worth debating.-- Oli 09:41, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
I think that the number of registered users (1.7 million) that English Wikipedia currently has is enough to support posting two featured articles on the main page every day. Does anyone agree? C. M. Harris 22:21, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
When someone dies, when a band breaks up, etc, all the verbs have to be changed to past tense, but this can take a long time. We should just say "Albert Einstein is a deceased scientist..." or "Blink-182 is a defunct band..." and then leave the rest in present tense. This helps especially if a band reforms, because all you have to do is remove "defunct." Macarion 22:42, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
The community of Wikipedia comprises 1.6 Million members including hundreds of thousands of highly engaged experts in different fields. By this Wikipedia is not only an encyclopedia but also the propably largest expert network worldwide. My idea is about how this potential could be used more effectively. I think that a high absolute number of members would volunteer to answer e-mail requests on topics from their area of expertise. Their already exist ways to ask questions to the community of WP, but every of these have either of the following drawbacks:
My proposal is that every member can voluntarily specify topics on which he is willing to answer e-mail requests. These topics could be portals, categories or single articles. Furthermore every portal, category or article could contain a tab "Experts" linking to a page where the experts on the topic would be listed. This page could include an e-mail link, a link to their userpage and a description of their expertise so that the reader can make the correct choice.
What do you think about my proposal? I want your opinion, ideas and criticism.
-- Falk Lieder 13:42, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
User | Credentials | Usual response time | Sub-specialty |
---|---|---|---|
Fhqwhgads ( talk · contribs · email) |
|
24-48 hours | First-person shooters |
Can I propose that the phrase "Neutral Point of View" is replaced by "Balanced Point of View"? Although I enthuse about Wikipedia, I am skeptical of its claims to operate with a Neutral Point of View, simply because I do not believe one can be entirely neutral. However, there is surely a difference between total neutrality and being able to take cognizance of several conflicting viewpoints, so maybe "Balanced Point of View" (BPOV) would be a more accurate description of Wikipedia policy. ACEO 19:52, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
…9-15-2005 3:47 searched conch first to show wikipedia, early this month i read something of the 17th century about indianc and albany congress and the use of string from a conch shell i beleive all i read in two dealing's of string making are from the conch shell though i heard that the color purple is from the cowhog oops had to find correct spelling two vercions quahaug or quahog so i was just curiuos for the relatively respect of 'atoa bbs'artists talk on art wanted the write repect thank you David George DeLancey 3:56 P.m. 216.195.1.16 19:58, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
We have just recently ended yet another dispute about what the name of the page of the religious organization headed by the Pope should be, and what should be the contents of the page entitled "Catholic Church". If you look in the archives, you will also see that there are at least six archived pages of discussion dealing with this subject exclusively. Considering that somewhere over one-sixth of the population of the planet consider themselves members of this organization/group (possibly much more, depending on the specific definition given the term), I think it can reasonably be argued that this is a question of significant importance to the wikipedia. On that basis, I would suggest that we try to find some way to resolve the matter in such a way that these seemingly endless revert wars, which all seem to be based on the same arguments, end once and for all, at least in regards to the specific arguments put forward to date and allowing for change given significant changes in the "real-world" status quo of these organizations in the future.
One suggestion (mine) is as follows: We are currently in an election to determine who will take a seat on the Board of Trustees of wikipedia. We could allow those parties who have a position on the issue to put forward their reasons for their positions and rationally and civilly discuss them. Then, all those individuals who have voted in the Board of Trustees election could be allowed to indicate their opinions on what article or page should be under which title. Alternately, some other way of selecting these virtual "voters" might be chosen. However, by doing so, we would allow all those individuals who are informed on issues relating to wikipedia to indicate their opinions, not only those who are members of the various Projects involved. For this to be workable, we would probably have to create at least a stub for every disparate organization or church which has the words "Catholic" and "Church" in their names and links to all of them, as well as to a central discussion page. I could probably do create the various pages myself, so that wouldn't cause any additional work for anyone else. I am aware that approval voting is the approved method on wikipedia, for good reason, but I have a feeling that it might not be the right answer here, given the variety of opinions and options. Maybe something like preference voting or some form of run-off voting would be most effective here. Unfortunately, it seems to me that, given the history, some sort of extreme measure of this type may be the only way to end the argument on these issues. Also, as similar revert controversies probably exist in other fields, it might provide a basis for similar actions in the future in other areas. I know I blather on, so I'll shut up here and await any and all responses. Badbilltucker 19:16, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
Dear Fellow Wikipedians,
Can I please make a plea for instructions to how to add one's username to a list of Wikipedians in a certain category to be clear, or else have a simpler method of doing this? Several times now, I have tried to add my username to the category Category:Wikipedians in England. I have tried to type the following at the end of my username page:
[[Category:Wikipedians in England: {{ACEO}}]]
but it does not seem to work. I believe the reason is that I am suppposed to add something prior to my username, but can some one please explain what text I have to type immediately prior to my username? I thought that, once one had done this correctly, one would automatically see one's name added to the Wikipedians in that category list, so that there was no need to edit the category page. ACEO 11:03, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
I was looking at the ARTICLE's page history, but I wanted to go directly to edit the discussion. So there was no way to do so. The only thing I could do was click on discussion, then edit this page. Well, if you think about there should be separate buttons for talk page history and edit this page, & same goes with article, or user page, you know? That way, if people ever need to switch from article history to talk page edit, or article edit to talk page history, that would be possible. 100110100 22:29, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
One may come across various facts, references, articles, or bits of information that could be useful to an editor interested in using the information for an article. Some sort of area for taking and leaving this information could exist, allowing others to leave facts, images, or links, and allow others to delete them when they are to be used or found to be bad references. A page with seperators for each general category would be more convenient than several hundred links to subcategories, and it would have a sandbox feel to it at first as others add and remove entries. Sort of a scrapbook of knowledge.
I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask but:
Would it make sense to add <a name="bottomOfPage"> at the bottom of each Wikipedia page? Right where "this page was last modified", "all text is available under..." etc are. That way I could bookmark or link to things like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29#bottomOfPage and get there without click-wait-scroll. Nice for these long talk pages that are often best followed from the bottom up. Or is there already a way to do this which escapes me at the moment...? Weregerbil 10:12, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
Is there a function out there that can be added to pages that will turn prices in, say, 1880 and note the price in today's dollars on the side? I'm suspecting it would be easy to code given a standard interest rate. I just would like to see if it cost $20 for such and such to buy land at some point in time, how much that would come out in terms of today's dollars. Grazie! Pat 16:00, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Another problem is that costs rise at different rates. As a fraction of income, for instance, travel is considerably less expensive now than in 1880. Durova 18:52, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
I think that it would be useful for readers if, at the beginning of some articles, there was a short "dictionary definition" of the subject. Obviously, the regular extended encyclopedia article would be shown below.
-- Oddmartian 16:50, 18 September 2006 (UTC) Please, respond to this idea on my Talk Page.
I would like to propose that someone else besides myself help clean up the massive year and a half 1500+ article backlog in Wikipedia:Transwiki log. -- Xyzzyplugh 14:49, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Hi. There are a few slang and jargon glossaries on WP, and occasionally we hear they shouldn't be in WP but in Wiktionary (if at all). I found there is http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Appendices which seems to be rapidly becoming the repository for these. (OTOH, many "lists of" seem to appear on WP, so a "glossary" might qualify as a "list.")
The appealing thing about, say, "U.S. Navy slang" is it is a fast-moving and popular page which is not so much about the words and definitions themselves, but an intriguing and up-to-date view of the culture. Not a blog (though it has some elements of that), but a very dynamic article on a segment of our society a couple million people work and live in. (I mean, if there's room in WP for pages and pages about computer games from the '80s, why not for what people are saying in daily life today?)
I fear if all glossaries shuffle off to the obscure appendix, they will be overlooked, and these sorts of things (which some might even argue should be made into some kind of non-pedia Wiki of its own) won't continue to grow.
A solution occurred to me in that if one searches for a term that does not match a WP article but is in Wiktionary, one could be immediately taken there, or at least offered the choice of going to view it.
This way, a casual user (not terribly familiar with WP) would find their way to the right place by means of entering a term from their jargon and being led to the appropriate location. This would keep WP "glossary-free," but still make them easily accessible via the main search box.
(Yes, I know there's a "Wiktionary button" on the bottom of Main, but fear it may be overlooked by most.)
Stubs for glossaries could be maintained in WP pointing to the appropriate Wiktionary appendix, as well; these could grow into proper articles describing the slang/jargon or the culture/population using them, but without the clutter of a same-page list of words.
Thank you. Jeffreykopp 08:54, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
The .dae extension is for the COLLADA format (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COLLADA ). I would like to contribute some 3D models that I have authored using PD, CC:AT, and/or CC:SA:AT licenses. The first 3D model I'd like to submit is publicly available at http://people.redhat.com/tiemann/unitcube.dae and is licensed "Public Domain" by me. It is the unit cube. I hope this will open the floodgates for other modelers to begin adding their own creative 3D works with appropriate Wikipedia licensing. I hope that this proposal will result in the acceptance of .dae files by the wikipedia site rules.
-- Michael Tiemann 11:36, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
AutoCAD DXF was a proprietary format with IP issues that have made open source interchange very difficult--not the kind of thing for building a creative commons! Web3D looks like it's commons-friendly, so that would be an alternative. The challenge of servining over a million high-quality articles is a major effort, but when the right pieces are in place, it can be done. What cannot be done, because the Wikipedia rejects it, is to prime the pump with any 3D content. That's a bug in my book.-- Michael Tiemann 22:48, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
The use of COLLADA is becoming more and more wide spread due to the availability importers/exproters by Softimage (XSI), Autodesk (3DS Max/Maya), and Blender. The specification itself lends so much more than Web3D, VRML, or DXF ever could (e.g. physics simulation and armature support). Having the open .dae format as a Wikipedia standard is nothing less than the best solution for 3D content. -- Eugene Reilly 8 September 2006
COLLADA is in fact gaining popularity and has a number of merits on its behalf including an XML basis, wide 3D product support including Maya, 3dsMax, XSI, Blender, etc., and an open licensing scheme. It would be very useful in the 3D industry as a whole if a single file format became widely supported, perhaps even natively, by every 3d package out there. Such a lingua franca would make interoperability much easier than it is today (think XHTML's portability between IE & FireFox as opposed to Word & WordPerfect's interop). It won't be perfect, but much better than now. The bottom line is that it will take a lot of people committing to COLLADA support to make it into the lingua franca of 3D. I second Michal Tiemann's motion that Wikipedia commit to COLLADA support -- Early Ehlinger President, [ ResPower, Inc] 10 September 2006
I think everyone agrees that 3d models are very useful at illustrating subjects, for some subjects essential. It's true that there have been a lot of so-called "standard" formats before COLLADA, but in my opinion this is irrelevant. What is more relevant is that the format should be viewable by most people. What the COLLADA group have achieved is amazing. I don't think any other format has found such a huge backing in so little time. With both commercial and free tools available. As to the topic that maybe it is too soon to adopt COLLADA because it hasn't been used much yet. The format originates from Sony Entertainment where they use it for game development. So it's been put to the test. And this arguement is probably why all other formats have failed to find enough backing. The format itself is very sound. I think it would be a good step to take and this is the right time. Wybren van Keulen 18:21, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
In the chemical literature there is a lot of information about physical properties of materials e.g. their melting point. In wikipedia quite a bit of that has already been constributed but usually on the page of the pertaining material. What seems to be missing on line (and elsewhere?) is a list of melting points in order of their temperatures. For calibration purposes (just to name an application) such a list could be very useful. Could somebody write a bot, go to the melting point page, use the 'what links here' button to find all these pages, extract the melting points and make a list?
Rob Wilcox, Jaap Folmer NCSU
It is well-known that RfCs tend to become a cesspit, also that they ramble on for ever without ever reaching a conclusion. They are also unusual among Wikipedia debates in having no defined closure mechanism. A couple of times I've introduced a motion to close and move on, which has usually had broad support, so I'd like to formalise this by proposing that once discussion has run its course, as determined by (a) escalation to ArbCom, (b) deletion of any article which forms the locus of the dispute; (c) agreement of the contributors to the RfC that a satisfactory resolution has been reached; (d) no edits to the RfC or Talk for a defined period, say 14 days (and quite possible e and f, other closures I've not yet thought of), we mark the debate as closed, using a clone of one of the usual "debate closed" template pairs (e.g. {{ at}} and {{ ab}}).
Where a clear and obvious conclusion has been reached by a significant number of contributors, community sanctions may be applied. If these are not honoured then we can escalate to ArbCom, or if the case is unambiguous simply enact a community ban. Experience in the Gastrich case ( Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jason Gastrich -> Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Jason Gastrich) the fact of the RfC having reached a conclusion and the problem user failing to abide by that consensus resulted in a rapid turnaround at ArbCom, with less work for all concerned, and (most importantly) a good result for the project, in that much less time was wasted by editors in good standing, admins and ArbCom, than is often the case.
Don't be distracted by this talk about sanctions, mind, because this is not about trying to arrogate ArbCom's role, it's about fixing a problem with one of the dispute resolution mechanisms, one which is currently in my view fundamentally broken in that it offers no form of closure either for the people bringing the RfC or for the editor under discussion. By this method, frivolous disputes which are certified by members of a small group of disgruntled editors can be politely but firmly closed, and substantive disputes can have some kind of endpoint. Just zis Guy you know? 11:50, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Sanctions may be applied by the Arbitration Committee. Decision of the ArbCom is sufficient and essential for any sanctions besides blocks of obvious vandals. However, note that ArbCom makes decisions after at least a month (usually more) of discussion, listening a lot of people, and only by consensus.
Despite that, the election process for ArbCom has extremely high requirements. They are actually as low as affordable for judges. And now you suggest someone would close RfC, with conclusion and sanctions, unilaterally. Just whom exactly do you suggest to do that? Jimbo is quite busy; and, despite being one of the oldest members of WP (and also one of the founders), his decision is not widely accepted as definitely as ArbCom's. So Jimbo doesn't meet the requirements. Who does? -- CP/M comm | Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 13:38, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Sorry about jumping into this discussion kind of late, but I just noticed it.
This is copied from the page where it lists the current user-conduct RFCs.
Closing and archiving
Disputes may be removed from this page and archived under any of the following circumstances:
If no additional complaints are registered for an extended period of time, and the dispute appears to have stopped. The parties to the dispute agree. The dispute proceeds to another method of dispute resolution, such as mediation or arbitration. Remove the link from the list here and add it to the archives at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct/Archive. If the dispute is handled in mediation or arbitration, please make a note of where the dispute resolution process continued.
So, basically, aren't you proposing something that already exists? ~ ONUnicorn ( Talk / Contribs) 18:40, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
i think there should be a tag for boxes that are made poorly or with mistakes, too long, too wide, bad style, maybe cleanup-box see the history of Richmond, California this would have been very useful. Qrc2006 11:11, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
I sometimes patrol the log of the articles I deleted to check for any inappropriate recreations, but a lot of the time, I bump into the {{ deletedpage}} template. I think it would be an excellent idea to somehow alter the color of such links so patrollers can instantly see it's not actually an existing article, but I have no idea of the technical feasibility. Feedback is much appreciated... - Mgm| (talk) 10:02, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Since all registered Wikipedia users have their own user page,talk page, and watchlist, I think that it would make sense if we are each allowed to have our own personal "User To-do List". This way, we could keep track of all of our editing plans, and further. A list would especially be helpful for a frequent, busy Wikipedian. -- Oddmartian 14:04, 20 September 2006 (UTC) Please, respond to this idea on my Talk Page.
-- Oddmartian 15:18, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
-- Oddmartian 15:47, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
P.S. I don't know if you've read it yet, but I left you a message a little earlier.
"All kidding aside, it could just be a little tool that allows some sort of customization of the watchlist page" I've often wished I could customize my watchlist. I'd love to be able to put little reminders as to why I decided to add certian pages to my watchlist in the first place; so that months later it doesn't appear and I'm wondering, "why am I watching that? Have I ever even edited that page?" Maybe add things to watchlist categories? ~ ONUnicorn ( Talk / Contribs) 16:10, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Many projects have a commons ticker (as described here: m:User:Duesentrieb/CommonsTicker) as, for example implemented at wikinews... some of the projects include other language wikipedias. Is there interest in having such a ticker here? I am willing to work with Duesentrieb to get it set up and be the responsible admin as outlined on his page. If there is no significant objection I will implement it. Also posted at the Adminstrator's noticeboard but please discuss here. ++ Lar: t/ c 03:24, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
user:Scott McNay and I worked out a pretty sophisticated template ( template:update after) that can be used as a marker for content that is known to require updating at some future date. For example, this could be used for political officeholders whose term will expire. The template is invisible until the appointed date, and then adds a visible update needed indicator (which links to Wikipedia:Updating information). There is no maintenance required to make the mechanism work. The template has been written. The only thing lacking is a consensus to start broadly using it, presumably instead of the wikipedia:as of technique. Please comment on this proposal at Wikipedia talk:Updating information. -- Rick Block ( talk) 15:25, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
There are a number of problems with template images at the moment;
As such I think that there should be a design of Icon sets, perhaps as an extention of the Vote Symbols. -- Qu e ntin Smith 08:11, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
There should be the option in the Preferences to make a bar similar to the "You have new messages" bar appear when an article in one's watchlist is edited... or is there? -- Gray Porpoise 03:09, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Copying and pasting a proposal made at Bugzilla :
...Infoboxes seem to've become part of the Wikipedia furniture, at least in the English Wikipedia. Hence, rather than the many "Template:Infobox..." pages (with inconsistent capitaliz/sation etc), suggest an "Infobox:..." namespace created.
What do folk think...? Thanks, David Kernow ( talk) 01:13, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Commons gets a lot of images that ultimately, need deleting. Red links on wikis referencing them are ugly. There are 701 different wikis that can get images from Commons. A bot has been created and tested to perform the delinking. But consider if all 701 wikis were asked for bot approval! gaak! So concerned commons admins and 'crats are asking on Meta for an exemption to normal bot rules... See Requests_for_permissions/CommonsDelinker on meta for more details. Your support would be greatly appreciated, I expect. You can also discuss it at the Commons noticeboard at the delinker bot topic (also mentioned on the talk for the bot approval group WP:BAG) ++ Lar: t/ c 19:02, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
i think there should be a type of tutoring setup, maybe self help combined with a quick question and answer area like the one im typing in right now, but with several differant divisions, maybe wikitutoring for adding images a step by step for putting in a picture wiht a Q&A section, also for somthing like wikitutoring for linking to another language wikipedia it could say that you have to put in the code for the language and the articles name in that language after a colon between brackets and at the bottom of the page below the categories, maybe one on creating templates, categories? Qrc2006 11:11, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Its simpler, its a wikipedia for dummies! Qrc2006 02:07, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
i think there should be a tag for articles that you suspect have been vandalised or have indeed been vandalised maybe suspect-vandalism and apparent-vandalism and article-vandalism depending on your suspicions. and maybe a tag you can add to a users page to notify a admin that you suspect they are a vandal or have been vandalism suspect-vandal, apparent-vandal, beleaved-vandal maybe people that are also dealing with this person can 2nd the motion, or even agree and disagree with this, then an admin can make a decision, dialogue with the user/editor and or tag them appropriatly.? Qrc2006 11:11, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
There are a lot of links, especially from templates, where you are invited to "discuss this" or "comment on this", or similar. Unfortunately the links often throw you into a massive page that contains dozens or even hundreds of different topics, and it can be tiresome to try to find the particular discussion you are wanting, or even to establish whether that discussion already exists. Some way to make these links more specific would be good. Matt 13:04, 20 September 2006 (UTC).
Well there's lots, but the two examples that are uppermost in my mind as I recently encountered in them in fairly quick succession are:
Matt 20:14, 20 September 2006 (UTC).
#Merge
anchor.I suggest that the extension DynamicPageList should be installed into wikipedia. Of course it has no use on articles, but it could be a god-giving help for maintenance. → A z a Toth 18:53, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
When I go to sandpeople there it brings me to the tusken riaders. I think there should be an sandpeople disambiguation page. There is a hip hop/ rap group callled the sandpeople. I dont know how to make that page nor is there an article on the group. Id create one but I think that someone with more wiki experience should.
I believe the addition on every military weapon/system of a "cost" thing would be great. Quite simply, how much does each (be it AK-47 or M1 Abrams) cost?
(I've cross posted the below to Wikipedia talk:Featured article review):
Maybe it would be useful to place featured articles on a two or three month probation in cases where the page is not quite up to snuff but editors are responding to FAR/FARC feedback and making improvements.
Reviewers would write Probation in place of keep/remove/comment if they think a good faith effort is underway to improve a weak FA. At the end of 60 or 90 days the article would automatically return to FAR.
If my hunch is right, a featured article probation tag with a specific expiration date could motivate more Wikipedians to raise old FAs to current FA standards. This would give specific projects and task forces time to rally an effort to save the FA. What do people think of this? Durova 17:02, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
I think we need to update and merge these templates together. I suggest something like putting it under a {{ DualLicense}} template with WP:AUM-like paramters stating whether you want SA or not, or what versions it's licensed under. So if I wanted to do an SA, I could write {{DualLicense|SA|1.0|2.0|2.5}} and all three versions would be in the template, or something like that. Because this just looks and feels anchoristic in an era where Parser Functions have made things so easy. Hbdragon88 22:52, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm placing the following image on the Main Page, and would like it to be protected. I'd do it myself if I knew how...
Image:Junichiro Koizumi G8 summit.jpg
Thanks
LordAmeth 07:53, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Now we have only a taxonomic box, and I think it would very useful to create a additional template for every specie which will included (for males and females):
-- Haham hanuka 12:04, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Having a template or even a portal for animals. We need to have a WikiProject on this thing. Animals we are and we should add this infos about them. This needs an action as soon as possible. I support this proposal. Kevin Ray 13:01, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
As a regular editor of Wikipedia, I am obviously aware that Talk Pages have proven to be a useful way to discuss how to improve the site. I myself had some useful discussions. But whenever I post something to say, I have to wait a whole day before I get a reply. Chances are, other people have the same issue.
So I figured, "Why not create an external chatroom where Wikipedians can discuss things quickly and efficiently?" I have not yet done so, for if I create a chatroom, I want Wikipedia to approve of it. What do you think?-- Oddmartian 16:08, 26 September 2006 (UTC)( Talk)
The proposal Wikipedia:Discuss, don't vote (previously WP:VIE - the voting is evil essay) has been changed to a guideline by User:Radiant! with no obvious consensus that I can see. Not to go off topic, but this user seems to think that he knows what "common practice" is and that pages that "document" this common practice are automatic guidelines. Hes done this with a couple other pages.
The proposal directly contradicts the guideline WP:STRAW, which has been guideline for a year - because it discourages the use of straw polls at all while WP:STRAW encourages using *good* straw polls in the right places. Note also that Radiant has inserted contradictory lines into WP:STRAW stating that "we usually don't use straw polls".
Anyway, please comment - i'd appreciate it. Fresheneesz 19:05, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
If I add a category into my watchlist, the 'recent edits' of the pages that I watch shows only the edits that are made to the category page itself but does not show recently added subcategory/page to this category. Adding this feature will help those who are working on better categorization of wikipages and other readers as well who are interested on the pages related to a category but some of which do not exist in wikipedia as of now.
Should I added this request to bugzilla as well, pls suggest.
Vjdchauhan 06:34, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
I originally posted this at Wikipedia talk:Requested moves but did not get much response, so I am reposting it here in the hope it will get more attention:
At the moment most football (soccer) club articles have titles with full stops in their abbreviations - e.g. Arsenal F.C. There's a growing consensus on WikiProject Football that it is desirable to remove full stops from the article titles (e.g. Arsenal FC) to fall into line with standard WP practice on abbreviations. But this is a non-trivial problem - there are thousands of articles, templates and categories in the current format. So I have two questions:
All help and advice much appreciated. Thanks. Qwghlm 15:40, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
While knowing absolutely nothing about Football (US or US), I think that usage of periods in abbreviations is different in the UK and the US--most U.S. practice is to leave the periods in; the almost univeral modern UK practice is to leave them out. Have there been any general discussions here on UK vs. US style? or do we need versions of wikipedia in each? ----
I know this is not as basic as it sounds, but having a spreadsheet-input option for tables would be really nice. Reason: many pages today offer "data sets" - sortable or analyzable data that is currently too static. Example: Comparison_of_webmail_providers - it makes sense to sort a table by "price". I don't think we need something as advanced as Google Spreadsheets. I also don't want to turn Wikipedia into a storage for open databases. However, some dynamic tables would add a whole new dimension to the kinds of information provided in Wikipedia. -- Cryout 07:36, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
I've been monitoring a growing problem, and I'd like to suggest a measure that may help alleviate some of the community pressures and specifically those on WP:AN/I.
The problem: There are a growing number of users who (upon having an article speedy deleted or after being blocked or are the target of some administrative action) feel that they have been the victim of persecution. The current recourse these folks has been a bit disorganized. They can:
In essense, my hope is that this non-binding device may help A: Nip improper accusations in the bud with swift, unified community response and or B: Help otherwise timid or novice users who _have_ identified improper tool use build a solid foundation for getting something solved.
Critics may argue (properly) that this is a very focussed element of things that already happen on AN/I, and I agree. I'd like to suggest that perhaps a little focus and structure might reduce frustration and also make AN/I more readable. Please take a moment to review Wikipedia:Administrator Review and participate in the relevant discussions here or on its talk page. I've created the initial templates to support the process, if anyone would like to guinea pig themselves to try it out, it might be of use. Best regards, CHAIRBOY ( ☎) 16:18, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Proposed abbreviating the [citation needed] template. - Roy Boy 800 03:16, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
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I originally wrote this to the technical page of the VP... it seems technical considerations have been addressed successfully, so I'm bringing it here to the proposals page. One thing I've run foul of two or three times when deleting pages is forgetting to check whether there was a discussion page... sometimes leaving a lone talk page floating in the void. I propose putting a message in large friendly letters on the "page deletion complete" page which will come up if there's an undeleted talk page that needs dealing with. Grutness... wha? 22:50, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
I propose that the addition of tags such as NPOV tags and cleanup tags or any other tags be also duplicated (by the mediawiki or the wikipedia) in the summary box. This would help in two things, first, to know which version of the article was POV-oriented in order to work with the history more easily ans also, it would allow bots to recognize these tags right in the summary box thus helping with the FA and GA criteria. Lincher 19:15, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
A bot is currently needed to create articles on US Towns and counties on foreign language wikis. Much of North America is absent from these wikis. Policy has already been adopted in order to counter eurocentric and francocentric editing. ADM
I'm shocked at Grutness's take here. We should not add articles about US cities to other pediae? Because their cities aren't here yet? Then maybe they should get off their non-American asses and get cracking, I'd love to see an article here for every city, town, village and hamlet in the whole damn world, but until that happens, that's no reason to not add info about American cities, towns, villages and hamlets to other pediae. Please tell me I misinterpreted something. -- Golbez 20:01, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
I think part of this discussion is academic as what we say and decide here (in this wiki) may not be accepted by other wikis. The only way to do things in other wikis is by abiding to their rules. Yes, as strange as it may sound, they all don't operate by the same rules as this one. Bots that create articles may need to be approved by the community of that wiki. If I remember correctly, that is the case of the Spanish wiki. I tend to remember some time ago someone there proposing a bot to create articles in the Spanish wiki about .... I do not remember, I think it was about French districts or something along those lines. There was a debate about allowing such bot and I think there was even a vote on the matter (do not remember the end result). Summarizing, I think we cannot decide here for the other wikis. Anagnorisis 04:01, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Warning for English users and Administrators :
There exists in Spain a small group of fanatics who think that the Madrid Train Bombing March 11th bombing was done by the current Spanish governement that was at that time the opposition party. They have now landed on English wikipedia and have started to shape the article to fit their madness.
They have many picturesque and bizzarre ways to state this non-sense and some variations involving secret services from France or Basque terrorist organisations (you will get painfully familiar with this crap so it is not needed for me give you details). The only solution is to block them and all their IPs. If you do not do this ASAP you will have all their rambling atrocities written again and again. In the Spanish Wikipedia we are sick of these guys trolling tactics regarding such a sensitive issue. A more soft solution could be to give them a special page for their deliriums as had been done with other conspiranoics. It is up to you. My message is that I cannot double my activity and control these nuts in English Wikipedia and many colleagues in the Spanish wikipedia are in the same situation. So it is up to you what to do between the next given three posibilities.
1-Allow them to publicize their aberrations spoiling the credibility of Wikipedia (currently happening)
2-Give them a page to at least have the damage controlled
3-Block them forever.
The 11-M were Islamic terrorist actions as anyone with a brain can see so I do not thing they will convince anybody but is really anoying to see their dirty lies shown as the truth. If someone wants to do something, please do it understanding that netiquette is used by them as a tool for their trolling. Enjoy.
-- Igor21 16:35, 13 July 2006 (UTC) link added Filceolaire 22:35, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
On various User and Talk pages, for example, GeorgeMoney (in the past) and Moeron (now), I have found fake "You have new messages" boxes. My proposal:
Seems to have come from this: User:Zappa.jake/templates/new_messages Invitatious ( talk) 02:15, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
One time I was on someone's talkpage and they made a what they called a "joke" and it forced me to laugh for several seconds when I could have been using that time to write the encyclopedia, so I'm proposing a NO JOKES AT ALL policy.
Seriously, come on... this is too much. Let it be. If someone you interact with has one, let them know of your displeasure and let peer pressure work its magic... vote against them if they ever come to RfA if you like... but making this a policy issue is overkill. — Bunchofgrapes ( talk) 03:19, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
True, this is annoying, it shouldn't be accepted as WP intends to be a serious project and these childish behaviour add to the non-respect of the encyclopedia. It shouldn't be a stand-alone policy but be added to some existing unaccepted behaviour page. Lincher 17:10, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
When I see the new messages indicator, I always eyeball the destination of the link before I click to it. Not sure if your browser selection doesn't display the link distance if your hover your mouse over it, though. -- Deathphoenix ʕ 18:37, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I see that a lot of the warnings to vandals have been standardised ("Thank you for experimenting..."). I think that including the following sentence in the standard response can further reduce the frequency of vandalism:
"If you feel the need to be funny, try editing on Uncyclopedia. Uncyclopedia is a parody of Wikipedia where anyone can add jokes or funny pictures to articles."
- sYndicate talk 12:50, 09 July 2006 (UTC)
I can't find any vandal templates? - sYndicate talk 23:00, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Found it, thanks Jonathan. - sYndicate talk 03:28, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
The History tab is very daunting for new users; it's very busy and just about everything can be clicked on, so it's confusing as to what one should do. At a minimum, there should be a link to Help:Page history in some obvious place near the top.
Are there any other ways it could be made more usable or intuitive? Could there be a "simple" and "advanced" version of the history tab (chosen in My Preferences) so that new users would see only the most essential information (hiding the "talk|contribs" links for each user, for example)? Could it be redesigned into more of a table format so the columns could be labeled? I know a lot of this would involve a MediaWiki software change, but I thought I'd get some feedback here first. — Jonathan Kovaciny ( talk| contribs) 04:23, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
To view a previous version, click the date for that version.
Legend: (cur) = difference with current version, (last) = difference with preceding version, m = minor edit |
All versions of this article are listed here in reverse-chronological order.
Minor edits are denoted as m. For more help, see Help:Page history. |
What can I say but UGH!. This huge box simply wastes a full third of the space on the history screen. What's more important: the history or the instructions? It should be a small link, or at least a single line (as it was before). I'm not opposed to the idea, just to the amount of space it wastes. For now, I'm reverting to the previous revision, but keeping the link to the help page (which is a good idea). -- cesarb 18:07, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
For help using this page, see Help:Page history. |
Hello! I was amazed by how there is no verification to sign-up. It's pleasant that there is no e-mail hassle but a keyboard verification might be good to keep off the spam. Thanks! — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pawel z Niepolomic ( talk • contribs) .
Hello,
My Question relates to the possibility to add a category such as category:public lectures in Town (replacing public lectures by org. name & town by the real name of the location) and invite user to add their user accounts in it ? (relating them with a main article Template:catmore which shall describe the community as a wikipedia encyclopedic article).
The aim is to give some newbies the feature of registering as members of that group, so that they could meet thereafter.
My point is to add brand new users that share the follow-up of philosophy-related lectures ; those are not the teachers, but they search a place to share the knowledge they acquired throughout a community.
I proposed wikipedia, which I know through another wiki identity. So that I just started this account creation to enhance their initiation to the wiki (people come from the course, and are basically unaware of wikipedia guidelines).
Yours,
-- Lilliputian 12:12, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
NOTE: To avoid my text being interpreted as code, I replaced all curly brackets ({{) with triangular brackets (<<). They really should be curly brackets in the actual implementation.
BACKGROUND:
Many articles have specific dates and times in them. Currently these dates are fixed as simple text, and all users, regardless of their timezones, see the same number.
In many cases this is the way it should be, e.g. historical articles, events where the time of the day is important etc. But in many other cases, mostly in current event and schedule-specific articles, the ultimate objective is to convey the actual time of the event to the reader, as opposed of presenting the perspective of a local time.
For example:
"On January 1, 19XX, at 16:00PM country A declared war on country B."
In this case, the local time is important, to show the historical perspective. This date and time should stay constant to all readers, and not be adjusted for timezone.
But in another example:
"The semi-final is scheduled on August 10, 2006 at 16:00 PST"
The focus is more reader oriented than local oriented. The objective is to let the reader know when exactly the event takes place, for example so they can watch it in real time.
PROPOSAL:
For accomplishing the latter case, have a magicword of the following format:
<<DYNDATETIME|ZONE>>
For example, the article text contains:
<<2006-08-10 16:00|PST>> (Let's not get in a fight over the date format in the tag, it can be MMDD or DDMM or whatever, that's not the point of this suggestion.
What this would do is convert the displayed date and time according the user's timezone settings in Wikipedia (preferences -- time zone). It would then display the date to the user according to their specifications under preferences under "date format" section.
Thus, a user with time zone of -8 and long date preferences would see on the page something like:
August 10, 2006 16:00 GMT-8
A user with the same style but in timezone +3 would see:
August 11, 2006 03:00 GMT+3
And a user with short date preferences and offset 0 would see:
2006-08-11 00:00 GMT
In a nutshell, it would make dates displayed more dynamic, more suitable to user preferences, and most importantly, timezone-adjustable. So next time, for example, I won't have to recalculate all the times on my favorite football match when reading Wikipedia.
Of course, ALL CONVERSIONS WILL BE DONE BY HAND AS APPLICABLE. I am not suggesting that a bot do that, because in many articles the date and time should stay as they are (that is simple text). This is not intended to be a lighting-fast change, but rather gradual introduction in articles which could benefit from dynamically-adjusted times, mostly indended for current events and especially sports and other competitions.
Of course, we could also make a format like <<DYNDATETIME|FIXED>>, where it would adjust the style of date and time, but not adjust it for timezone.
Finally, users should be able to turn autoadjustments on or off in their time/date preference settings. If they turn it off, they will always see date and time for the same zone which was written in the article. And article writers, when writing dates and times using this magicword, should always use local time for the event as the base case.
Elvarg 18:27, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
Special:Allpages was recently added to the side bar. I think this is not a very helpful page to direct people to (less useful than the search box certainly). As a result, I am inclined to remove it, but don't want to start an edit war, so I'd like to hear other opinions. Dragons flight 14:27, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I propose a set of templates, Category:CSD reference templates, that creates references to criteria for speedy deletion, for use in XFD debates. I think it is useful because of newbies who may be looking for the relevant criteria. Examples of use are on the talk page. If you can improve the summaries (should be very concise) of the criteria, you are of course welcome to edit the proposed template. Also: Is this possible to use in edit summaries? Invitatious ( talk) 01:30, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Are there any Wikipedias who wish to spend some time each week making sure that medical articles are up-to-date? Wikipedia has been praised for been up to date, and there are certainly some fields (popular and media culture, current affairs and politics, anything to do with computer software) where it certainly is this, leaving other encyclopaedias (even those online) trailing. However, the medical articles are not always up-to-date. The article on whooping cough has not been updated since June 29 2006, in spite of a recent July survey into whooping cough in Oxford, United Kingdom. My proposal is for medically qualified Wikipedians to ensure that medical articles are updated regularly. ACEO 18:32, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
So I was thinking, the word "admin" seem to bear a very high-and-mighty connotation to it, which might be attributing to the perceived power that admins have in the Wikipedia community.
We could rename them janitors! Not only does the title suit them better, but it also makes them not a big deal. Plus it's funny. :-) -- The Prophet Wiz ard of the Cray on Cake 07:09, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
- I guess the term gods is to much for them then? LOL - don't want to give their ego's too much of a boost! Raven.x16 07:12, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Administrators are Wikipedians who have access to technical features that help with maintenance. Those include protecting and deleting pages, blocking other editors, and undoing these actions as well. Wikipedia practice is to grant this access to anyone who has been an active and regular Wikipedia contributor for a while, is familiar with and respects Wikipedia policy, and is generally a known and trusted member of the community.
But I'm a 'custodian' of Wikipedia. I watch over it, nurture it, undo vandalism, welcome people, etc. But I'm not an admin, as I'm here to write an encyclopedia. I'd be hurt (and in some cases deeply insulted!) by any implication that I'm not as responsible as admins. I think the same would go for 'senior Wikipedian' - I've probably been here longer and made more edits than the pushier folk who can't wait to be admins. JackyR | Talk 11:08, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
One current concern is notifying editors what they are signing up for when they choose to become an admin. Perhaps we should rename the title to be "target". So we have regular editors like me and target editors with blocking powers who draw the enmity of donkey-editors onto themselves. Works for me. WAS 4.250 22:36, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Sorry if this has been proposed before, but wouldn't it be very useful to include a function allowing Wikipedians to watchlist articles in a category they'd like?
Currently the 'watch' button on category pages only adds the category page itself to the user's watchlist and doesn't reflect changes to the pages in the category. This is OK, it is of use to many people, and I'm not advocating this function's substitution. I'd like to have both a 'watch page' and 'watch all pages in the category' (hope someone would come up with a shorter name :)) button on category pages.
I'm very interested in topics related to my native country, Bulgaria, and have often regretted not being able to effectively observe the developments (new articles, major changes to existing articles, article moves, etc.) in Category:Bulgaria, so the idea of such a function crossed my mind.
Now, of course, some more in-depth thinking reveals several problems: if you watchlist all articles in a category, you'd have to automatically watchlist all articles that are being added to it afterwards (there's little sense in the contrary). Also, implementing the removal of pages from the watchlist (when they've been added because they fall in a given category) may be an issue that needs further discussion. And besides, watchlisting very big categories may be troublesome both to the user and the software (not sure about that). Another issue are subcategories — the user should be asked whether to add them to his/her watchlist together with the main category or watch only the main category.
I'd like to hear what you think about it before going to Bugzilla, so we could discuss any suggestions and ideas, and see if it's a good proposal overall. I know the final result would look a bit complex and hard to understand to new users, but I (and I'm sure many other Wikipedians) would find such a function very handy. Todor → Bozhinov 15:41, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't know whether there is processing overhead associated with this, but I think it would be a good idea to only link to real articles from the Random Article link. Currently it links to both deleted pages and disambiguation pages;deleted articles are obviously not useful and returning disambiguation pages looks odd in this context. Maybe there should also be some weighting for featured articles or a Random Featured Article link Yomangani 10:18, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Dab pages need to be looked at too... Septentrionalis 01:57, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I never understood the point of the Random Article thing. -- Macarion 23:50, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
It would be nice if there was an option in My Preferences to modify the function of the Special:Random on a per-user basis. I would love to see checkboxes like the following, with only the first three checked by default, so new users wouldn't bump into pages of little encyclopedic value:
Random article may include:
|
This would obviously require a software change, but I would certainly use the Random article feature more often if this were possible. — Jonathan Kovaciny ( talk| contribs) 16:05, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Blog format or scholar format for lists of works and people - here, applied to the case of the list of past conductors of a major orchestra. A proposal with four formats, various points about them, and a discussion is opened at Talk:Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (but the topic goes beyond this one article, and probably beyond orchestra articles).
(Disclosure: ongoing edit war and associated vandalism on the article.)
-- 62.147.38.70 17:57, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Although Public Domain and SELF seem to be the primary divisions of copyright tag classification it appears that their are many, many more subdivisions which are not readily classified for the user. I propose for this reason that the copyright tags not only be properly classified but that the resulting classification be expressed for the benefit of users in the form of a dichotomous key. ... IMHO ( Talk) 17:04, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I have prepared a major reorganization and substantial revision of Wikipedia:Requests for comment at User:Centrx/Sandbox/Request for comment. It had not been substantially changed since RfCs were split out into subpages and has become a unnavigable and repetitive hodgepodge. This revision cleanly divides the page into subsections relevant to specific kinds of RfCs — articles, policy, user, and responses — with specific instructions, advice, and reference to policies for each.
What should be trimmed down further? What is missing? the section on requestion comment on articles is the most well-developed, but what might be appropriate for the user section in integrating it well with its subpage? Should the policy section be expanded? How about the section on responding? Also, I would like help with formatting of the templates on the right near the introduction, problems which may be visible on higher resolution screens. — Centrx→ talk • 19:44, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Another proposal for senior editors... at least it has nice pictures. The reasoning and details are in the essay... It's just a userpage essay, comments welcome. It's here. Herostratus 19:05, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
I am relatively new, so don't have the technical expertise to sort this. But the coverage of towns and villages in France is very patchy. In the French wikipedia most places that don't have an extended article have a standard stub page with headings and links, as well as a table (infobox?) with statistical information - postcode, number of inhabitants, area and population density, altitude etc. These must have been generated automatically from the French national statistical service database. Is there a way to migrate this information into the English wikipedia, without of course writing over entries that are more complete in the English version? -- Itsmejudith 10:56, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Is it possible to change the login failure message to include a notice that the username and password are case-sensitive? It is not a problem for me, but failed log-in attempts may discourage people from logging in to edit. (I am assuming that account-editing is preferred over "anonymous"-editing, although this may not be the case.) I am accustomed to systems where the username is not case-sensitive, and such "case-insensitive" login systems seem rather widespread, so I expect that this might be a common problem. I apologize if this has already been discussed elsewhere.-- GregRM 23:19, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
I thought it would be neat to include special banners linking articles to google videos. This would allow users to supplement their research with interviews, animations, etc, using already moderated source material. It seems like a logical step to me, so I'm sure someone's already working on it. Just wondering.-- Asherp 20:31, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Hello all;
I don't know if this is quite the proper place, but a feature I think would be of great use for tracking pages and maintaining one's watchlist would be to have any redirect on one's Special:Watchlist/edit page marked as such. I, for one, frequently go back and check for certain redirects and remove others. It is tedious and time-consuming to visit the majority of those pages. Charles 01:41, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
watchlistredir
class. If you want them to look different, add something like .watchlistredir { font-style: italic }
on your user CSS (this is the one I use, and it makes them appear in italic; you can try other styles if it's not different enough). --
cesarb 14:58, 11 July 2006 (UTC)I was thinking about this last night (well, I was bored). I didn't know whether to put it on WP:V or WP:DEL, so I went down the middle route.
There are a heck of a lot of articles on Wikipedia that have absolutely no source information, and they should - it even says at the bottom of the edit box to 'use reliable sources for encyclopedia contend'. And thousands of new pages don't bother. So I thought of a way to resolve this. If an article has no sources (thus currently failing WP:V), and doesn't qualify speedy deletion, or it's been no consensused at AFD), or it's been deprodded, it could be tagged, by a tag that reads along the line of:
This is way more generous then AFD, or PROD, and gives a heck of a long time to sort something out. It also means all that garbage with no references can be deleted (as an incredible number of articles that fail WP:V still seem to get through all the current deletion processes. A bot (if someone is clever with a bot) could then flag the pages that have reached 30 days (or 14 days, or 2 months, or whatever) for speedy deletion, and then an admin would still have the final say on whether the article is kept or goes.
If someone has already suggested something like this, apologies. Any thoughts? Proto/// type 13:04, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't think that this is such a great idea because it would mean removing like 70% of the whole encyclopedia (frustrating a lot of people). Secondly, it is better to have a poorly sourced or unsourced article than no article at all ... this would also be frustrating to find only red links on articles that were formerly well subpaged. Thirdly, as time will go, there will be less and less subjects to work on (I think we can foresee this in about 2 years) and then people will bring the whole project to a better level of quality overall. Thus, removing all these unsourced article would be frustrating, time-consuming and useless for such a project, we should then all take the time to add a book citation per day (maybe this could become a project or something). Lincher 05:30, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Very strong oppose This is a complete overreaction. Good material should not be deleted for being unsourced, and we should assume good faith on the part of contributors. There are plenty of more moderate mechanisms in place already, but like any major aspect of Wikipedia referencing is a never to be completed task. Chicheley 13:36, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Please note that WP:Verifiability#Burden of evidence supports the removal or hiding of ANY unreferenced edit, and an article with no references could easily become an empty article, which can be speedy deleted. Also, there is no way to determine whether material added is "good", unless the sources can be checked. This is policy, and it isn't going to change, so rather than ranting about "good material shouldn't be deleted", work on providing reliable published sources. -- Donald Albury( Talk) 14:45, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
When I'm doing RC patrol, I'll usually put a {{verify}} or {{prod}} on any new article with no citations that I can't verify with less than a minute of work in Google. If I can find one reasonable citation, I'll add a link. See, for example, Caribbean reef shark, which appeared as a one-line article and just needed a link to get it started. On the other hand, Afanti was a one-line article with no cites that was basically wrong, so I gave it a {{prod}}. -- John Nagle 01:45, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
In forums there is a thing that lists how many users are online at any given moment.
I think this would be a good thing for the Wikipedia main page. Usually there is seperate entries for Registered Users, and guests.
There is also usually an option for people to not be counted, on their own user pages etc...
What do you people think?
Cheers. Raven.x16 04:57, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Did anyone think about turning years articles (like 2005) from lists and timeline to prose. These articles could be well-written summaries about what happened during the year in all fields. It will be divided by topic (politics, science, sports...) rather than months. It would be an enthusiatic community work, and relativly simple with very easy-to-find sources and pictures. And imagine that we will conduct a vote about what events should be included in the article, and write the article as the second step. What do you think? CG 19:37, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
I oppose. The German approach doesn't give nearly the same amount of information as ours does. User:Zoe| (talk) 03:54, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Maybe this has been suggested before, but it struck me that we have many more registered users than articles, even if we assume half a million of them to be inactive or irregular users. Therefore would it be possible to assign users an article to 'parent'. The process could begin by each user choosing an article that they are knowlegable about or interested in. Those users who do not choose, or who would rather have the opportunity to research something new to them could be automatically assigned one on their talk page. It would be the parent of each articles job to oversee that article in terms of vandalism, and research the subject and contribute to it themselves to bring it up to a level of accuarcy and detail which could be expected in an expert edited encyclopedia. This would reduce the number of stubs as if each user concentrates solely on one article it would improve, and since we have enough users for every article to have a parent, all articles could be improved, in some cases, beyond recognition. It would also reduce vandalsim and increase factual reliability. Possibly this scheme may be considered unfeasable, but I thought it was an idea worth debating.-- Oli 09:41, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
I think that the number of registered users (1.7 million) that English Wikipedia currently has is enough to support posting two featured articles on the main page every day. Does anyone agree? C. M. Harris 22:21, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
When someone dies, when a band breaks up, etc, all the verbs have to be changed to past tense, but this can take a long time. We should just say "Albert Einstein is a deceased scientist..." or "Blink-182 is a defunct band..." and then leave the rest in present tense. This helps especially if a band reforms, because all you have to do is remove "defunct." Macarion 22:42, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
The community of Wikipedia comprises 1.6 Million members including hundreds of thousands of highly engaged experts in different fields. By this Wikipedia is not only an encyclopedia but also the propably largest expert network worldwide. My idea is about how this potential could be used more effectively. I think that a high absolute number of members would volunteer to answer e-mail requests on topics from their area of expertise. Their already exist ways to ask questions to the community of WP, but every of these have either of the following drawbacks:
My proposal is that every member can voluntarily specify topics on which he is willing to answer e-mail requests. These topics could be portals, categories or single articles. Furthermore every portal, category or article could contain a tab "Experts" linking to a page where the experts on the topic would be listed. This page could include an e-mail link, a link to their userpage and a description of their expertise so that the reader can make the correct choice.
What do you think about my proposal? I want your opinion, ideas and criticism.
-- Falk Lieder 13:42, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
User | Credentials | Usual response time | Sub-specialty |
---|---|---|---|
Fhqwhgads ( talk · contribs · email) |
|
24-48 hours | First-person shooters |
Can I propose that the phrase "Neutral Point of View" is replaced by "Balanced Point of View"? Although I enthuse about Wikipedia, I am skeptical of its claims to operate with a Neutral Point of View, simply because I do not believe one can be entirely neutral. However, there is surely a difference between total neutrality and being able to take cognizance of several conflicting viewpoints, so maybe "Balanced Point of View" (BPOV) would be a more accurate description of Wikipedia policy. ACEO 19:52, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
…9-15-2005 3:47 searched conch first to show wikipedia, early this month i read something of the 17th century about indianc and albany congress and the use of string from a conch shell i beleive all i read in two dealing's of string making are from the conch shell though i heard that the color purple is from the cowhog oops had to find correct spelling two vercions quahaug or quahog so i was just curiuos for the relatively respect of 'atoa bbs'artists talk on art wanted the write repect thank you David George DeLancey 3:56 P.m. 216.195.1.16 19:58, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
We have just recently ended yet another dispute about what the name of the page of the religious organization headed by the Pope should be, and what should be the contents of the page entitled "Catholic Church". If you look in the archives, you will also see that there are at least six archived pages of discussion dealing with this subject exclusively. Considering that somewhere over one-sixth of the population of the planet consider themselves members of this organization/group (possibly much more, depending on the specific definition given the term), I think it can reasonably be argued that this is a question of significant importance to the wikipedia. On that basis, I would suggest that we try to find some way to resolve the matter in such a way that these seemingly endless revert wars, which all seem to be based on the same arguments, end once and for all, at least in regards to the specific arguments put forward to date and allowing for change given significant changes in the "real-world" status quo of these organizations in the future.
One suggestion (mine) is as follows: We are currently in an election to determine who will take a seat on the Board of Trustees of wikipedia. We could allow those parties who have a position on the issue to put forward their reasons for their positions and rationally and civilly discuss them. Then, all those individuals who have voted in the Board of Trustees election could be allowed to indicate their opinions on what article or page should be under which title. Alternately, some other way of selecting these virtual "voters" might be chosen. However, by doing so, we would allow all those individuals who are informed on issues relating to wikipedia to indicate their opinions, not only those who are members of the various Projects involved. For this to be workable, we would probably have to create at least a stub for every disparate organization or church which has the words "Catholic" and "Church" in their names and links to all of them, as well as to a central discussion page. I could probably do create the various pages myself, so that wouldn't cause any additional work for anyone else. I am aware that approval voting is the approved method on wikipedia, for good reason, but I have a feeling that it might not be the right answer here, given the variety of opinions and options. Maybe something like preference voting or some form of run-off voting would be most effective here. Unfortunately, it seems to me that, given the history, some sort of extreme measure of this type may be the only way to end the argument on these issues. Also, as similar revert controversies probably exist in other fields, it might provide a basis for similar actions in the future in other areas. I know I blather on, so I'll shut up here and await any and all responses. Badbilltucker 19:16, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
Dear Fellow Wikipedians,
Can I please make a plea for instructions to how to add one's username to a list of Wikipedians in a certain category to be clear, or else have a simpler method of doing this? Several times now, I have tried to add my username to the category Category:Wikipedians in England. I have tried to type the following at the end of my username page:
[[Category:Wikipedians in England: {{ACEO}}]]
but it does not seem to work. I believe the reason is that I am suppposed to add something prior to my username, but can some one please explain what text I have to type immediately prior to my username? I thought that, once one had done this correctly, one would automatically see one's name added to the Wikipedians in that category list, so that there was no need to edit the category page. ACEO 11:03, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
I was looking at the ARTICLE's page history, but I wanted to go directly to edit the discussion. So there was no way to do so. The only thing I could do was click on discussion, then edit this page. Well, if you think about there should be separate buttons for talk page history and edit this page, & same goes with article, or user page, you know? That way, if people ever need to switch from article history to talk page edit, or article edit to talk page history, that would be possible. 100110100 22:29, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
One may come across various facts, references, articles, or bits of information that could be useful to an editor interested in using the information for an article. Some sort of area for taking and leaving this information could exist, allowing others to leave facts, images, or links, and allow others to delete them when they are to be used or found to be bad references. A page with seperators for each general category would be more convenient than several hundred links to subcategories, and it would have a sandbox feel to it at first as others add and remove entries. Sort of a scrapbook of knowledge.
I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask but:
Would it make sense to add <a name="bottomOfPage"> at the bottom of each Wikipedia page? Right where "this page was last modified", "all text is available under..." etc are. That way I could bookmark or link to things like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29#bottomOfPage and get there without click-wait-scroll. Nice for these long talk pages that are often best followed from the bottom up. Or is there already a way to do this which escapes me at the moment...? Weregerbil 10:12, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
Is there a function out there that can be added to pages that will turn prices in, say, 1880 and note the price in today's dollars on the side? I'm suspecting it would be easy to code given a standard interest rate. I just would like to see if it cost $20 for such and such to buy land at some point in time, how much that would come out in terms of today's dollars. Grazie! Pat 16:00, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Another problem is that costs rise at different rates. As a fraction of income, for instance, travel is considerably less expensive now than in 1880. Durova 18:52, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
I think that it would be useful for readers if, at the beginning of some articles, there was a short "dictionary definition" of the subject. Obviously, the regular extended encyclopedia article would be shown below.
-- Oddmartian 16:50, 18 September 2006 (UTC) Please, respond to this idea on my Talk Page.
I would like to propose that someone else besides myself help clean up the massive year and a half 1500+ article backlog in Wikipedia:Transwiki log. -- Xyzzyplugh 14:49, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Hi. There are a few slang and jargon glossaries on WP, and occasionally we hear they shouldn't be in WP but in Wiktionary (if at all). I found there is http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Appendices which seems to be rapidly becoming the repository for these. (OTOH, many "lists of" seem to appear on WP, so a "glossary" might qualify as a "list.")
The appealing thing about, say, "U.S. Navy slang" is it is a fast-moving and popular page which is not so much about the words and definitions themselves, but an intriguing and up-to-date view of the culture. Not a blog (though it has some elements of that), but a very dynamic article on a segment of our society a couple million people work and live in. (I mean, if there's room in WP for pages and pages about computer games from the '80s, why not for what people are saying in daily life today?)
I fear if all glossaries shuffle off to the obscure appendix, they will be overlooked, and these sorts of things (which some might even argue should be made into some kind of non-pedia Wiki of its own) won't continue to grow.
A solution occurred to me in that if one searches for a term that does not match a WP article but is in Wiktionary, one could be immediately taken there, or at least offered the choice of going to view it.
This way, a casual user (not terribly familiar with WP) would find their way to the right place by means of entering a term from their jargon and being led to the appropriate location. This would keep WP "glossary-free," but still make them easily accessible via the main search box.
(Yes, I know there's a "Wiktionary button" on the bottom of Main, but fear it may be overlooked by most.)
Stubs for glossaries could be maintained in WP pointing to the appropriate Wiktionary appendix, as well; these could grow into proper articles describing the slang/jargon or the culture/population using them, but without the clutter of a same-page list of words.
Thank you. Jeffreykopp 08:54, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
The .dae extension is for the COLLADA format (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COLLADA ). I would like to contribute some 3D models that I have authored using PD, CC:AT, and/or CC:SA:AT licenses. The first 3D model I'd like to submit is publicly available at http://people.redhat.com/tiemann/unitcube.dae and is licensed "Public Domain" by me. It is the unit cube. I hope this will open the floodgates for other modelers to begin adding their own creative 3D works with appropriate Wikipedia licensing. I hope that this proposal will result in the acceptance of .dae files by the wikipedia site rules.
-- Michael Tiemann 11:36, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
AutoCAD DXF was a proprietary format with IP issues that have made open source interchange very difficult--not the kind of thing for building a creative commons! Web3D looks like it's commons-friendly, so that would be an alternative. The challenge of servining over a million high-quality articles is a major effort, but when the right pieces are in place, it can be done. What cannot be done, because the Wikipedia rejects it, is to prime the pump with any 3D content. That's a bug in my book.-- Michael Tiemann 22:48, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
The use of COLLADA is becoming more and more wide spread due to the availability importers/exproters by Softimage (XSI), Autodesk (3DS Max/Maya), and Blender. The specification itself lends so much more than Web3D, VRML, or DXF ever could (e.g. physics simulation and armature support). Having the open .dae format as a Wikipedia standard is nothing less than the best solution for 3D content. -- Eugene Reilly 8 September 2006
COLLADA is in fact gaining popularity and has a number of merits on its behalf including an XML basis, wide 3D product support including Maya, 3dsMax, XSI, Blender, etc., and an open licensing scheme. It would be very useful in the 3D industry as a whole if a single file format became widely supported, perhaps even natively, by every 3d package out there. Such a lingua franca would make interoperability much easier than it is today (think XHTML's portability between IE & FireFox as opposed to Word & WordPerfect's interop). It won't be perfect, but much better than now. The bottom line is that it will take a lot of people committing to COLLADA support to make it into the lingua franca of 3D. I second Michal Tiemann's motion that Wikipedia commit to COLLADA support -- Early Ehlinger President, [ ResPower, Inc] 10 September 2006
I think everyone agrees that 3d models are very useful at illustrating subjects, for some subjects essential. It's true that there have been a lot of so-called "standard" formats before COLLADA, but in my opinion this is irrelevant. What is more relevant is that the format should be viewable by most people. What the COLLADA group have achieved is amazing. I don't think any other format has found such a huge backing in so little time. With both commercial and free tools available. As to the topic that maybe it is too soon to adopt COLLADA because it hasn't been used much yet. The format originates from Sony Entertainment where they use it for game development. So it's been put to the test. And this arguement is probably why all other formats have failed to find enough backing. The format itself is very sound. I think it would be a good step to take and this is the right time. Wybren van Keulen 18:21, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
In the chemical literature there is a lot of information about physical properties of materials e.g. their melting point. In wikipedia quite a bit of that has already been constributed but usually on the page of the pertaining material. What seems to be missing on line (and elsewhere?) is a list of melting points in order of their temperatures. For calibration purposes (just to name an application) such a list could be very useful. Could somebody write a bot, go to the melting point page, use the 'what links here' button to find all these pages, extract the melting points and make a list?
Rob Wilcox, Jaap Folmer NCSU
It is well-known that RfCs tend to become a cesspit, also that they ramble on for ever without ever reaching a conclusion. They are also unusual among Wikipedia debates in having no defined closure mechanism. A couple of times I've introduced a motion to close and move on, which has usually had broad support, so I'd like to formalise this by proposing that once discussion has run its course, as determined by (a) escalation to ArbCom, (b) deletion of any article which forms the locus of the dispute; (c) agreement of the contributors to the RfC that a satisfactory resolution has been reached; (d) no edits to the RfC or Talk for a defined period, say 14 days (and quite possible e and f, other closures I've not yet thought of), we mark the debate as closed, using a clone of one of the usual "debate closed" template pairs (e.g. {{ at}} and {{ ab}}).
Where a clear and obvious conclusion has been reached by a significant number of contributors, community sanctions may be applied. If these are not honoured then we can escalate to ArbCom, or if the case is unambiguous simply enact a community ban. Experience in the Gastrich case ( Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jason Gastrich -> Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Jason Gastrich) the fact of the RfC having reached a conclusion and the problem user failing to abide by that consensus resulted in a rapid turnaround at ArbCom, with less work for all concerned, and (most importantly) a good result for the project, in that much less time was wasted by editors in good standing, admins and ArbCom, than is often the case.
Don't be distracted by this talk about sanctions, mind, because this is not about trying to arrogate ArbCom's role, it's about fixing a problem with one of the dispute resolution mechanisms, one which is currently in my view fundamentally broken in that it offers no form of closure either for the people bringing the RfC or for the editor under discussion. By this method, frivolous disputes which are certified by members of a small group of disgruntled editors can be politely but firmly closed, and substantive disputes can have some kind of endpoint. Just zis Guy you know? 11:50, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Sanctions may be applied by the Arbitration Committee. Decision of the ArbCom is sufficient and essential for any sanctions besides blocks of obvious vandals. However, note that ArbCom makes decisions after at least a month (usually more) of discussion, listening a lot of people, and only by consensus.
Despite that, the election process for ArbCom has extremely high requirements. They are actually as low as affordable for judges. And now you suggest someone would close RfC, with conclusion and sanctions, unilaterally. Just whom exactly do you suggest to do that? Jimbo is quite busy; and, despite being one of the oldest members of WP (and also one of the founders), his decision is not widely accepted as definitely as ArbCom's. So Jimbo doesn't meet the requirements. Who does? -- CP/M comm | Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 13:38, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Sorry about jumping into this discussion kind of late, but I just noticed it.
This is copied from the page where it lists the current user-conduct RFCs.
Closing and archiving
Disputes may be removed from this page and archived under any of the following circumstances:
If no additional complaints are registered for an extended period of time, and the dispute appears to have stopped. The parties to the dispute agree. The dispute proceeds to another method of dispute resolution, such as mediation or arbitration. Remove the link from the list here and add it to the archives at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct/Archive. If the dispute is handled in mediation or arbitration, please make a note of where the dispute resolution process continued.
So, basically, aren't you proposing something that already exists? ~ ONUnicorn ( Talk / Contribs) 18:40, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
i think there should be a tag for boxes that are made poorly or with mistakes, too long, too wide, bad style, maybe cleanup-box see the history of Richmond, California this would have been very useful. Qrc2006 11:11, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
I sometimes patrol the log of the articles I deleted to check for any inappropriate recreations, but a lot of the time, I bump into the {{ deletedpage}} template. I think it would be an excellent idea to somehow alter the color of such links so patrollers can instantly see it's not actually an existing article, but I have no idea of the technical feasibility. Feedback is much appreciated... - Mgm| (talk) 10:02, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Since all registered Wikipedia users have their own user page,talk page, and watchlist, I think that it would make sense if we are each allowed to have our own personal "User To-do List". This way, we could keep track of all of our editing plans, and further. A list would especially be helpful for a frequent, busy Wikipedian. -- Oddmartian 14:04, 20 September 2006 (UTC) Please, respond to this idea on my Talk Page.
-- Oddmartian 15:18, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
-- Oddmartian 15:47, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
P.S. I don't know if you've read it yet, but I left you a message a little earlier.
"All kidding aside, it could just be a little tool that allows some sort of customization of the watchlist page" I've often wished I could customize my watchlist. I'd love to be able to put little reminders as to why I decided to add certian pages to my watchlist in the first place; so that months later it doesn't appear and I'm wondering, "why am I watching that? Have I ever even edited that page?" Maybe add things to watchlist categories? ~ ONUnicorn ( Talk / Contribs) 16:10, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Many projects have a commons ticker (as described here: m:User:Duesentrieb/CommonsTicker) as, for example implemented at wikinews... some of the projects include other language wikipedias. Is there interest in having such a ticker here? I am willing to work with Duesentrieb to get it set up and be the responsible admin as outlined on his page. If there is no significant objection I will implement it. Also posted at the Adminstrator's noticeboard but please discuss here. ++ Lar: t/ c 03:24, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
user:Scott McNay and I worked out a pretty sophisticated template ( template:update after) that can be used as a marker for content that is known to require updating at some future date. For example, this could be used for political officeholders whose term will expire. The template is invisible until the appointed date, and then adds a visible update needed indicator (which links to Wikipedia:Updating information). There is no maintenance required to make the mechanism work. The template has been written. The only thing lacking is a consensus to start broadly using it, presumably instead of the wikipedia:as of technique. Please comment on this proposal at Wikipedia talk:Updating information. -- Rick Block ( talk) 15:25, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
There are a number of problems with template images at the moment;
As such I think that there should be a design of Icon sets, perhaps as an extention of the Vote Symbols. -- Qu e ntin Smith 08:11, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
There should be the option in the Preferences to make a bar similar to the "You have new messages" bar appear when an article in one's watchlist is edited... or is there? -- Gray Porpoise 03:09, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Copying and pasting a proposal made at Bugzilla :
...Infoboxes seem to've become part of the Wikipedia furniture, at least in the English Wikipedia. Hence, rather than the many "Template:Infobox..." pages (with inconsistent capitaliz/sation etc), suggest an "Infobox:..." namespace created.
What do folk think...? Thanks, David Kernow ( talk) 01:13, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Commons gets a lot of images that ultimately, need deleting. Red links on wikis referencing them are ugly. There are 701 different wikis that can get images from Commons. A bot has been created and tested to perform the delinking. But consider if all 701 wikis were asked for bot approval! gaak! So concerned commons admins and 'crats are asking on Meta for an exemption to normal bot rules... See Requests_for_permissions/CommonsDelinker on meta for more details. Your support would be greatly appreciated, I expect. You can also discuss it at the Commons noticeboard at the delinker bot topic (also mentioned on the talk for the bot approval group WP:BAG) ++ Lar: t/ c 19:02, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
i think there should be a type of tutoring setup, maybe self help combined with a quick question and answer area like the one im typing in right now, but with several differant divisions, maybe wikitutoring for adding images a step by step for putting in a picture wiht a Q&A section, also for somthing like wikitutoring for linking to another language wikipedia it could say that you have to put in the code for the language and the articles name in that language after a colon between brackets and at the bottom of the page below the categories, maybe one on creating templates, categories? Qrc2006 11:11, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Its simpler, its a wikipedia for dummies! Qrc2006 02:07, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
i think there should be a tag for articles that you suspect have been vandalised or have indeed been vandalised maybe suspect-vandalism and apparent-vandalism and article-vandalism depending on your suspicions. and maybe a tag you can add to a users page to notify a admin that you suspect they are a vandal or have been vandalism suspect-vandal, apparent-vandal, beleaved-vandal maybe people that are also dealing with this person can 2nd the motion, or even agree and disagree with this, then an admin can make a decision, dialogue with the user/editor and or tag them appropriatly.? Qrc2006 11:11, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
There are a lot of links, especially from templates, where you are invited to "discuss this" or "comment on this", or similar. Unfortunately the links often throw you into a massive page that contains dozens or even hundreds of different topics, and it can be tiresome to try to find the particular discussion you are wanting, or even to establish whether that discussion already exists. Some way to make these links more specific would be good. Matt 13:04, 20 September 2006 (UTC).
Well there's lots, but the two examples that are uppermost in my mind as I recently encountered in them in fairly quick succession are:
Matt 20:14, 20 September 2006 (UTC).
#Merge
anchor.I suggest that the extension DynamicPageList should be installed into wikipedia. Of course it has no use on articles, but it could be a god-giving help for maintenance. → A z a Toth 18:53, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
When I go to sandpeople there it brings me to the tusken riaders. I think there should be an sandpeople disambiguation page. There is a hip hop/ rap group callled the sandpeople. I dont know how to make that page nor is there an article on the group. Id create one but I think that someone with more wiki experience should.
I believe the addition on every military weapon/system of a "cost" thing would be great. Quite simply, how much does each (be it AK-47 or M1 Abrams) cost?
(I've cross posted the below to Wikipedia talk:Featured article review):
Maybe it would be useful to place featured articles on a two or three month probation in cases where the page is not quite up to snuff but editors are responding to FAR/FARC feedback and making improvements.
Reviewers would write Probation in place of keep/remove/comment if they think a good faith effort is underway to improve a weak FA. At the end of 60 or 90 days the article would automatically return to FAR.
If my hunch is right, a featured article probation tag with a specific expiration date could motivate more Wikipedians to raise old FAs to current FA standards. This would give specific projects and task forces time to rally an effort to save the FA. What do people think of this? Durova 17:02, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
I think we need to update and merge these templates together. I suggest something like putting it under a {{ DualLicense}} template with WP:AUM-like paramters stating whether you want SA or not, or what versions it's licensed under. So if I wanted to do an SA, I could write {{DualLicense|SA|1.0|2.0|2.5}} and all three versions would be in the template, or something like that. Because this just looks and feels anchoristic in an era where Parser Functions have made things so easy. Hbdragon88 22:52, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm placing the following image on the Main Page, and would like it to be protected. I'd do it myself if I knew how...
Image:Junichiro Koizumi G8 summit.jpg
Thanks
LordAmeth 07:53, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Now we have only a taxonomic box, and I think it would very useful to create a additional template for every specie which will included (for males and females):
-- Haham hanuka 12:04, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Having a template or even a portal for animals. We need to have a WikiProject on this thing. Animals we are and we should add this infos about them. This needs an action as soon as possible. I support this proposal. Kevin Ray 13:01, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
As a regular editor of Wikipedia, I am obviously aware that Talk Pages have proven to be a useful way to discuss how to improve the site. I myself had some useful discussions. But whenever I post something to say, I have to wait a whole day before I get a reply. Chances are, other people have the same issue.
So I figured, "Why not create an external chatroom where Wikipedians can discuss things quickly and efficiently?" I have not yet done so, for if I create a chatroom, I want Wikipedia to approve of it. What do you think?-- Oddmartian 16:08, 26 September 2006 (UTC)( Talk)
The proposal Wikipedia:Discuss, don't vote (previously WP:VIE - the voting is evil essay) has been changed to a guideline by User:Radiant! with no obvious consensus that I can see. Not to go off topic, but this user seems to think that he knows what "common practice" is and that pages that "document" this common practice are automatic guidelines. Hes done this with a couple other pages.
The proposal directly contradicts the guideline WP:STRAW, which has been guideline for a year - because it discourages the use of straw polls at all while WP:STRAW encourages using *good* straw polls in the right places. Note also that Radiant has inserted contradictory lines into WP:STRAW stating that "we usually don't use straw polls".
Anyway, please comment - i'd appreciate it. Fresheneesz 19:05, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
If I add a category into my watchlist, the 'recent edits' of the pages that I watch shows only the edits that are made to the category page itself but does not show recently added subcategory/page to this category. Adding this feature will help those who are working on better categorization of wikipages and other readers as well who are interested on the pages related to a category but some of which do not exist in wikipedia as of now.
Should I added this request to bugzilla as well, pls suggest.
Vjdchauhan 06:34, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
I originally posted this at Wikipedia talk:Requested moves but did not get much response, so I am reposting it here in the hope it will get more attention:
At the moment most football (soccer) club articles have titles with full stops in their abbreviations - e.g. Arsenal F.C. There's a growing consensus on WikiProject Football that it is desirable to remove full stops from the article titles (e.g. Arsenal FC) to fall into line with standard WP practice on abbreviations. But this is a non-trivial problem - there are thousands of articles, templates and categories in the current format. So I have two questions:
All help and advice much appreciated. Thanks. Qwghlm 15:40, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
While knowing absolutely nothing about Football (US or US), I think that usage of periods in abbreviations is different in the UK and the US--most U.S. practice is to leave the periods in; the almost univeral modern UK practice is to leave them out. Have there been any general discussions here on UK vs. US style? or do we need versions of wikipedia in each? ----
I know this is not as basic as it sounds, but having a spreadsheet-input option for tables would be really nice. Reason: many pages today offer "data sets" - sortable or analyzable data that is currently too static. Example: Comparison_of_webmail_providers - it makes sense to sort a table by "price". I don't think we need something as advanced as Google Spreadsheets. I also don't want to turn Wikipedia into a storage for open databases. However, some dynamic tables would add a whole new dimension to the kinds of information provided in Wikipedia. -- Cryout 07:36, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
I've been monitoring a growing problem, and I'd like to suggest a measure that may help alleviate some of the community pressures and specifically those on WP:AN/I.
The problem: There are a growing number of users who (upon having an article speedy deleted or after being blocked or are the target of some administrative action) feel that they have been the victim of persecution. The current recourse these folks has been a bit disorganized. They can:
In essense, my hope is that this non-binding device may help A: Nip improper accusations in the bud with swift, unified community response and or B: Help otherwise timid or novice users who _have_ identified improper tool use build a solid foundation for getting something solved.
Critics may argue (properly) that this is a very focussed element of things that already happen on AN/I, and I agree. I'd like to suggest that perhaps a little focus and structure might reduce frustration and also make AN/I more readable. Please take a moment to review Wikipedia:Administrator Review and participate in the relevant discussions here or on its talk page. I've created the initial templates to support the process, if anyone would like to guinea pig themselves to try it out, it might be of use. Best regards, CHAIRBOY ( ☎) 16:18, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Proposed abbreviating the [citation needed] template. - Roy Boy 800 03:16, 28 September 2006 (UTC)