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Yes, I know I can just tee up AWB and use its list-comparer if I want to see what articles can be found in two categories, but I'm thinking of the masses who use Wikipedia on a purely piecemeal basis to research stuff. bd2412 T 04:32, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
A RfC has been request to determine whether the Spoiler guideline ( WP:SPOILER) should be changed to exclude plot details that some consider to be spoilers from the lead section of an article. -- Farix ( Talk) 14:05, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
Requesting comment on a policy decision with Notabiliy (web). -- Kraftlos ( Talk | Contrib) 03:02, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
I propose an anti-blanking rule so that any reduction of a large article to a few lines would be blocked. This blanking (diff) of the main page FA of today should not have had to be manually reverted. Smart people have probably already come up with logic to address the corner cases but if I had to spend 1 minute thinking about a rule, it would be that articles greater than ~10K in size can't be reduced to under ~1K; and such restrictions could be tightened up more for FA articles. Tempshill ( talk) 23:16, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
For the record, a redirect requires an absolute minimum of fourteen characters: # r e d i r e c t [ [ x ] ] . Even the smallest possible template requires five characters: { { x } } . So far as I know, there are no single-character templates that could legitimately constitute the content of a mainspace page. We should at the very least prevent an edit that reduces a mainspace page to four characters or less, because there is simply no legitimate reason why any mainspace page would ever contain fewer than five (and, realistically, fewer than thirteen) characters. This will deter vandals whose mode is to click "select all" and then "delete" and "Save page". bd2412 T 22:20, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
This new book thing seems nice, but I'd quite like to have a play around with it without ruining anything already in place (e.g. accidentally deleting existing Wikipedia:Books/Foo pages or flooding Wikipedia:Books/ with new ones); hence, can a WP:SB-type page be created for assembling, saving and disassembling test books? Thanks! It Is Me Here t / c 18:19, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
This is NOT an idea I am suggesting for all the large number of articles in the English Wikipedia, just an idea which I am suggesting for a select number of articles which get edited frequently. Perhaps we could have a tag to say how often that article has been edited in the past four months or so. The same tag could also say whether these edits are by users who are anonymous editors or users who have confirmed uesrpage names, and how many of these edits are by the former, how many by the latter. There seems to be an unspoken assumption that edits are less likely to be works of Wikipedia: Vandalism if they are done by users with usenames than they are done by those with mere IP addresses, so maybe this would help us to appreciate whether an article is likely to have had recent vandalism edits, or has been edited by reliable and trustworthy users. Certainly the assumption that users with userpages rather than users who just give IP addresses appears to be behind Wikipedia: Protection policy. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 21:07, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
Proposal for a search tweak. I was looking for the legal term "stay" and typed "stay (law)" in the search field and clicked Go. I was brought to the Search page where none of the 20 top search results was what I was looking for. I then went to the stay article, which is a disambig page that did indeed have a link to the article I was looking for: Stay of execution.
My proposal: If someone types "word1 (word2)" in the search field and clicks Go, and there is no "word1 (word2)" article, but there is a "word1" article, then the Search results' first result should be the word1 article. Leave all the other results in the list; just insert the "word1" article as result #1.
I acknowledge this search tweak only benefits users who are already familiar with the Wikipedia convention of using a parenthetical to distinguish topics. Tempshill ( talk) 17:29, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
After looking through WikiNews, I was impressed by the DynamicPageList extension, and it looks like it would be useful here. It is like a "smart" version of the <categorytree> tag, in that it can show articles in one category, but only ones that are not in another, or show a list in a different order, or many other things. It seems like it would be a benefit here. What do others think? X clamation point 17:29, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
I have a new proposal what we might decide to have in Wikipedia: What Wikipedia is not. How about a section here entitled "Wikipedia is not a series of book, television, radio programme, film or music reviews"? We could include something to the effect of "Material on a new film (for example) should be neutral, stating the film's director and cast, but not offering a critique of the film, as this would fail NPOV. We might also add that there could be place somewhere on the web for review-type articles, but Wikipedia is not that place. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 21:35, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
It is proposed to run a trial of Flagged Revisions at Wikipedia:Flagged protection and patrolled revisions. The proposal is divided in two parts:
The proposals are independent but supplement each other. They involve the creation of a 'reviewer' usergroup. This implementation can support secondary trials. The main trial should run for two months, then a community discussion should decide the future of the implementation. Cenarium ( talk) 22:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
I'm proposing adding a google/msn/yahoo translation link to references that are in other languages. Maybe ask for bids from yahoo google and msn about which one would be used for translation. -- Diaa abdelmoneim ( talk) 09:44, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
I'm proposing that any autoconfirmed users be given the File (aka Image) renaming/moving rights. The reasons for this inculde:
{{
Rename media}}
as well, which currently contains about 2509 transclusions.
Peachey88 (
Talk Page |
Contribs) 12:22, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
I would like to propose the above here in the open, because I'm aware that a large number of editors, including some very dedicated to the task, patrol pages and I would like to know what they think. AFAIK, it is within the bounds of bot technology, so what is really needed is good reasons why (or circumstances when) pages shouldn't be tagged as patrolled (which you are more than welcome to list below so I can feel really stupid! ;) ) - Jarry1250 ( t, c) 19:53, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
How about a page where [primary new] users could post their article ideas, and get guidance/seek consensus from members of the community if the subject meets the criteria, and, if so, what to do to prepare reliable, independent sources for the article. This would help to reduce the backlog of speedy deletion candidates by well-meaning writers, and would reduce the backlog at AfD. I'm not sure if this exists or not. Any thoughts? Jd027 talk 02:17, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
(following on from Wikipedia:Help_desk#categories) I would like to request a new category feature - so that a category can appear at the bottom of a page (ie as a link to the category in the 'category box'), but not have the page be added to the category listing.
The reason for this is due to some articles having multiple possible titles - which 'belong' in different categories. Currently the accepted method is to categorise the redirect pages, which works, except the linking is unidirectional - eg the page appears in the category listing but the category does not appear on the readers page.
I see two possibilities as a solution:
(I believe this has been requested before).Thanks very much. FengRail ( talk) 12:58, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
When printing articles, we currently exclude Wikipedia elements such as the sidebar, navigational boxes and the like. Should portal tags be non-printable? --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 14:09, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
{{
portal}}
.
Happy‑
melon 16:15, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
How would it be to have a bot that automatically corrects double-hyphen dashes to correct em dashes? — Jch thys 16:54, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
The book extension being now available, users can create books through Special:Book, currently either in their userspace or in subspace of Wikipedia:Books. As discussed at WP:AN and Wikipedia talk:Books, this system generates inappropriate pages such as attack and spam pages, as it's very easy to create a page through Special:Book, then edit it. So it's proposed that instead of storing community books in subspace of Wikipedia:Books, they are stored in a specific Book: namespace. This would allow to detect and review new books using Special:NewPages, search books, use special system messages... Specific CSDs could also apply to this namespace, see discussion at WT:CSD#G13 Books, and the entire namespace could be noindexed. Cenarium ( talk) 18:50, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
I propose that show preview be enabled when uploading images. The reason for this is, it's very easy to mess up the templates and or FUR for new users. Instead of previewing the uploaded image this image file:Your image here.PNG could be show instead. -- DFS454 ( talk) 14:47, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
..I propose keeping opening paragraphs less that 1 book. There are articles that takes 3 to 5 fat paragraphs to get to contents. -- AaThinker ( talk) 19:55, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
WikiProject Echo, which appears to be inactive (I inquired on the talk page today), has tagged tons of articles with {{ FAOL}}, indicating that there is a foreign language FA from which content might be translated. The problem is, these tags have been applied indiscriminately, with--for instance--it being suggested that we translate United Kingdom from Tamil Wikipedia. It appears that all articles identified as FAs at a certain date were tagged, without consideration as to whether the other article is actually better than ours. We already have a way of tracking whether foreign-language FAs exist - the little interwiki star icon. We also have a system for tagging requested translations (e.g. {{ Expand Spanish}}, which has a fa=yes parameter). Of course, it might be profitable to search for articles that genuinely should be translated, but doing so from scratch would be much faster than analyzing all the currently tagged articles. I propose that these all be removed by bot, but wanted to get others' opinion before placing this at WP:BOTREQ. I'll post a message at WP:ECHO seeking input here. Calliopejen1 ( talk) 01:41, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
Mmm there are a lot of ones that are invalid. I think they need removing, it shouldn't have to be done manually. Dr. Blofeld White cat 13:59, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
Proposal: A noticeboard in WP space is required to report and deal with the overwhelming number of
SPA genre trolls/IPs that make rapid and persistant POV genre changes. I would suggest that such a noticeboard would be modelled on
WP:3RRN for efficiency and "cleanliness".
Problem: There is a major genre troll problem on music articles which I describe in more detail
here.
How would it work: The community would submit mini-reports of users who fit a specific and well defined criteria (e.g. genre changes without discussion, POV edit summaries ("I think they sound like this..."), no sources used or offered etc. etc.), and others in the community would act on it as they see fit.
How would the community deal with the genre trolls: As I outlined in my essay, many of these "trolls" are new users who would perhaps benefit from a gentle note (and a welcome template) to guide them in the right direction. Persistant "offenders" would, just like how we deal with vandals, receive a stronger warning, which would lead to blocking if the situation did not improve.
Existing forms: Myself and a few others already use
User:Utan Vax/Genre troll IPs as a "base of operations" to keep tabs on known genre trolls. This page is only effective up to a point: 1) It needs a wider audience and support from the community. 2) There needs to be more than just one admin (me) going through it and making decisions.
Background reading:
User:Realist2/Genre_Warrior
Any thoughts, suggestions, and/or criticisms are very much welcome. Thanks and kind regards,
Scarian
Call me Pat! 17:50, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
(Outdent) In order of what you wrote, Z-man:
I know this idea may sound silly, but I've had Panic at the Disco on my watchlist since I requested a histmerge (that was denied, sadly enough), and people are constantly deleting the well-referenced "emo" from the infobox. What about creating a tag with the pre-approved genres and having a bot automatically revert them? There'd be a comment telling people not to change it there. It would only be genres that are well-referenced and discussed on the talk page, and they would be listed somewhere un-editable (either a separate list or a .js subpage, if it is a .js it could just be transcluded, but that wouldn't stop people from adding around it). If there is consensus and it is referenced an admin would change the tag.
Users are creating many books on Wikipedia-Books. The books aren't actively integrated with articles on Wikipedia so I wanted to suggest having in the Create a book toolbar an indication that "This page is included in the ... book". This would boost readers awareness of books and include the general topic this page is part of. -- Diaa abdelmoneim ( talk) 11:57, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
(I am surprised this hasn't been raised before, or has it?) G8 is, it seems to me, automatically applied to the talk pages of deleted articles. "Automatically" would then suggest to me that a bot could be created to save everyone time and energy, probably by automatically tagging pages after x minutes from the main article's deletion. - Jarry1250 ( t, c) 07:56, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
Although it does indeed "seem to you", and to me, that this is usually applied automatically; G8 should in principle not be applied automatically, as it contains an exclusion for "pages useful to the project"; a list of examples is provided at WP:CSD. So it's not safe to delete these without human intervention. Happy‑ melon 08:32, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
The problem is that if we want to apply G8, the only serious option is adminbots. There are too few admins to burden them with this sort of massive chore. The same is true for things like unused unfree images. But adminship requests for bots fail pretty much systematically so people are just running "secret adminbots" which are not really that secret. It's not a healthy way of doing things but the opposition to adminbots is philosophical and I think a few people are happy with a don't ask, don't tell situation. Pascal.Tesson ( talk) 00:54, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
I'm finding that the heading system possibly could do with a 'tweak'.
The problem I have is that headings such as ===Sub topic=== is not (to my eyes) sufficiently distinguished from ====minor topic===== - ie in the text they look like identical heading levels.
I'd like to suggest that the 'four equal signs' headings be reduced a point or two in size, or something similar.
(Also what purpose ='god' quality heading= - why is it supported when never used?)
Thanks. FengRail ( talk) 13:58, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
We don't use the sub-subheads often enough to worry about them, in my opinion. Something that gets into that level of splitting shouldn't be listed in the TOC at the top, which is what what differentiates headings from bolding one you get to the subsubheads. DreamGuy ( talk) 17:33, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
I hope this is the right place for this discussion. 2009 Malagasy political crisis is currently on the front page (in the news), and after having looked at the article, a large section of the references are to AFP which is hosted with Google. Google offers this service to news publishers, and I believe others such as Associated Press also use the hosted news service. This is great, however, in terms of our project it is a bad thing, because "Wire service articles hosted on Google pages are available for 30 days from when Google received the article on the wire. After the 30-day period, wire articles will no longer be available on Google News." This has the effect of articles, such as the Madagascar article linked to above, in 30 days of publication of the hosted news being prone to WP:LINKROT; which in this case is massive linkrot. The linkrot has the effect that the article becomes unverifiable in its current state, and then after 30 days from date of publication, searches for live links have to be undertaken; obviously this is a massive waste of editor resources and time. With online sources which I believe may in future go dead, I will use WebCite to archive and provide a link. Unfortunately, this is not possible with Google hosted news, as they have "noarchive" in the meta tags, rendering a service such as WebCite or the Wayback Machine useless to even obtain a copy of the page. Google states that news archive search isn't affected by this service, and that the Google hosted news also will not show up in archive searches. I would guess that most articles hosted by Google are available via other sources, such as this Google hosted news being available at France24.com, except it appears the France24.com link is cacheable. With the WebCiteBOT proposal looking like it will go ahead, if the France24.com link were to go dead in future, we would still be able to view it via WebCite. It is because of this, that I believe we should be blocking linking to Google-hosted news in the interests of long-term verifiability. -- Russavia Dialogue 22:11, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
Sounds like a job for the abuse filter, which can provide a message saying "please use a better link" (and then still accept the edit if save page is clicked again). -- NE2 01:23, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Could someone describe the details of the link pattern that expires? Dragons flight ( talk) 06:44, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Please do not block edits with these links. Then we would lose the text that the user was about to add as well. Sure, they could remove or fix the link and submit again, but probably won't. A bot that retrieves the news title and date, and notifies somewhere would be great. -- Apoc2400 ( talk) 18:38, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
I propose that when a new page is being created that an edit notice should list some basic principles of what and what not to create. I went ahead and created a rough version which you can feel free to change.
Before creating your page please consider:
|
Any thoughts? -- DFS454 ( talk) 17:27, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
I would not think the above template would be the best one for this. As Jarry1250 says, this one is rather scary - I would certainly concur that the bit about being blocked may scare new users. Also, I think some of this may detract new users because it is too laden with jargon - using terms such as "wikimarkup language", for example. I am not in principle against having a template for new articles, but I certainly think the language needs to be simplified. I am glad that you said, DFS454, that we can feel free to change the above template - surely if we are to have such a template, it should be written in more accessible and less intimidating language. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 21:40, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
WP:Don't bite the newcomers, and don't scare them off with ominous notices. -- Cybercobra ( talk) 01:31, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
Before creating your page please consider:
Requesting its creation by adding a request to
this list; |
This seems a lot better to me (I agree with Jarry1250 that it is an improvement) - far less intimidating, and much less laden with complex Wikipedia-speak. I can only really say here that I wish to agree with Jarry1250's last comment. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 20:46, 17 March 2009 (UTC) I think we have quickly reached consensus that if we are to have such a template, the second would be better than the first suggestion. Perhaps, if technology permits this,we could say it would only be for non-autoconfirmed users.However, what must be decided now is whether people wish to support or oppose this idea. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 22:22, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
{{
editnotice}}
.
Happy‑
melon 08:36, 23 March 2009 (UTC)This already exists and is not an editnotice. See: MediaWiki:Newarticletext. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 09:02, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
Could we please not have more instruction creep? it just makes people not read the instructions at all. -- Apoc2400 ( talk) 18:47, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
Is this necessary? I know CSD is always backlogged, but does that really mean we're being so overwhelmed with bad new articles that we need a notice like this to keep them from making them? Will this solve any problem that can't be solved by speedying blatantly bad articles (and giving the creators the big notice on their talk page)? From my experience, probably at least half (random statistic, I know) of bad articles that get created are by people who are not going to be paying attention to this notice anyway—people who are goofing around, people who want to promote themselves no matter what the rules say, etc. So my question is basically, is there a problem that needs to be solved, that can't be solved by current CSD practices, and that would be solved by this? rʨanaɢ talk/ contribs 21:30, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
The above link leads to a community poll regarding date linking on Wikipedia. The poll has not yet opened, but the community is invited to review the format and make suggestions/comments on the talk page. We need as many neutral comments as we can get so the poll runs as smoothly as possible and is able to give a good idea of the communities expectations regarding date linking on the project. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 19:41, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Note The first phase of this poll will start on 30 March. Dabomb87 ( talk) 03:57, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
There was a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 44#Double redirects in which there was general support for keeping $wgMaxRedirects as at least 2, but it's been changed back to 1. What's up? -- NE2 18:16, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
A discussion is ongoing over renaming WP:Criteria for speedy deletion to WP:Criteria for summary deletion. All contributions welcome. Happy‑ melon 14:28, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
I have created a discussion on the policy village pump about a proposed process called Wikipedia:Mergers for discussion. One of it's goals is to be a complimentary process to AfD, as well as assist in complicated or controversial mergers. Interested editors should comment there, or on the process' talk page. -- Nick Penguin( contribs) 04:57, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
Good idea - I have wondered myself whether, as well as discussing articles which have been suggested as cases of deletion,we should have similar discussions about whether certain articles should be merged (I would not equate deletion with merging). ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 20:00, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
Hi. I've been busy over at en.wikinews, and I noticed that they have an interesting welcome template they send out. I like it, as it is informative, yet doesn't overload the user with too much information at once. The message is available here. Perhaps we should incorporate the layout of their welcome template for use in Wikipedia? ♪Tempo di Valse ♪ 14:07, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
Don't know if it is technically possible but if so, I think it would be a good idea to remove the little v, d and e letters from templates by default. They would appear only when logged in or if changed in the preferences. This makes sense to me as it bears very little relevance to the reader, and although I would still consider the templates confusing it would aid users by removing one place for them to go wrong. Darryl.matheson ( talk) 16:58, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
.navbar {display: none;}
These links should at least be marked as a blatant self-reference. We should not assume that every mirrored copy of an article which containing a navbox will be on an editable web-site, or that any separate page will exist for the template itself, etc. Thus in Template:Navbar
class="noprint plainlinksneverexpand navbar"
should be changed to
class="noprint plainlinksneverexpand navbar selfreference"
to help facilitate automatic removal of the "v•d•e" links on mirror sites, most of which will not want this. — CharlotteWebb 12:26, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
Hello. I think that pages that exist but was deleted in the past, should have deleted versions in the history tab. For example, the list could look like this:
-- Janezdrilc ( talk) 12:59, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
I contribute to several wikipedia language versions. It would be nice if I could have a common watchlist for all of them. Shep ( talk) 14:03, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
The date linking and formatting poll is now open. All users are invited to participate. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 23:00, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
This may well be a frequently-discussed proposal, but I can't think of a good way to search for it (as seen by my own clumsy title here). If it has been discussed before, I'd of course be grateful for a link that would let me see the facts and arguments on both sides.
What I'd often like as an editor is to see the (plain-language) code of a page without wanting to edit it or risking an accidental edit. Sometimes I want to copy a complete reference, the format of a table or the title of an image, or just to see how something was constructed, without having to risk changing the code accidentally or having to go through the steps of opening and closing an unnecessary edit process (perhaps causing a completely-needless edit conflict).
I can see a slight disadvantage in adding an extra "View" tab on page-tops that are already filling up with other tabs, but I think the advantages might be worth the cost. (I don't understand the technology behind Wikipedia, but perhaps it would also be easier on the system to have slightly-fewer prompts to be ready to upload new edits.)
—— Shakescene ( talk) 05:15, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback; it allowed me to clarify the possible reasons better in my own head.
First (if I correctly understand an unspoken implication of at least part of Izno's posting), I think it would definitely be desirable — if such a tab were available (either by default or through User Preferences) — that it resemble the "Watch/Unwatch" tab in being only available to and us[e]able by Registered Users. Clutter and confusion to new readers and editors is certainly one of the possible drawbacks I could see in an extra tab.
Second, I can be a bit more articulate about why I think such a tab might be useful to me even after having done a couple of thousand edits. One reason is a bit abstract, and the other pretty specific.
(A) On the more general level, whenever I (or I presume most people) are on line, there's a certain level of attention and anxiety required to avoid sending or receiving something unintended, just as one is more relaxed composing a hand-written letter than in making a telephone call or sending an e-mail. There's far less chance of a sudden lapse or hasty misunderstanding if one has to go through the steps of writing, revising, folding, addressing, stamping and depositing a letter. Even though (for the technical reasons mentioned above) there's little chance of a serious or irreparable error in editing Wikipedia, every unnecessary doubt or hesitation in the back of one's mind that can be lessened is attention that can be brought to something more important.
(B) The practical situation that makes me wish for a "View" tab is this: When I'm copying a footnote, image, format, colo[u]r code, link or statistic from one article to another (e.g. an election return or the full bibliographic entry for The Encyclopedia of New York City between New York pages), I almost always have more than one browser tab or window open in "Edit" mode, even though (being at least partially sane) I usually want to edit only one of those pages at one time. This can be particularly tricky if (say) one footnote or link seems clearly better than the other, and I'm pasting over previous text. Although it's never got[ten] so far as to cause any noticeable damage, I've sometimes caught myself in the middle of pasting the "bad" footnote or link over the good one, i.e. the exact opposite of my intention. If, in the middle of constant jumping between windows, I could see all the code I need while only being able to edit one page, it would make the process far surer and easier for me. —— Shakescene ( talk) 07:50, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
Eh just use &action=raw. — CharlotteWebb 12:07, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
Here's some code that will give a view tab next to the edit tab. It uses the api so it does have the disadvantage of there being a lot of code you won't understand before and after the source code of the page.
//Tab to view source
addOnloadHook(function() {
if ( document.getElementById( "ca-edit" ) ) {
addPortletLink("p-cactions", "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=revisions&rvprop=content&format=txtfm&titles=" + wgPageName, "View", "ca-view", "View source", "" , document.getElementById( "ca-history" ));
}
});
To use this code, go to Special:MyPage/monobook.js, click the edit tab, copy and paste in the code and save the page. Then press Ctrl + F5 to clear your cache. Tra (Talk) 19:12, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
I was thinking if wikipedia had a complete audio read out of the article i would not have to read it. I know youtube has something similar and thougght it would give wikipedia more appeal.
I'd like to suggest having a noticeboard or a list of sources that can/cannot be used on Wikipedia. This seems urgent with the many sources that get contested on FACs and FLCs where reviewers ask about the reliability of the sources. If there was a list of sources that can be used on Wikipedia it would be easier to check a sources' reliability. This would also make a central hub for sources a user can research to improve his topic. I'd suggest a bot that adds all references an FA or FL has to this list. Users would also add websites they think are reliable, which if contested would go on reliability review. A user posting an FAC or FLC would have the option to check his sources before posting it. The list would of course have a subcategories with each topic like newspapers, magazines, blogs and websites (to be decided on). Official websites of companies don't have to be on these lists as they assert their own reliability. For example: someone doesn't know if www.techradar.com is reliable or not, he goes on the page of websites and finds it to be reliable or not. This would make checking reliability much easier and would have many future uses. I'm not suggesting Wikipedia:VPR/Perennial#Define_reliable_sources but just a list of reliable, already on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard discussed sources to make research and reliability easier.-- Diaa abdelmoneim ( talk) 08:49, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
I think a list could be helpful, but I think we'd have POV pushers and spammers constantly screwing with the list. But then at least the battle over decidin such things would be limited to one plae instead of spread out over countless talk pages. Any bot trying to label reliable sources would be completely impractical and problematic, however. DreamGuy ( talk) 13:56, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
Such a list could still be useful. I remember once almost using The Huffington Post as a source, because I thought it was the local newspaper in some town called Huffington. -- Apoc2400 ( talk) 18:42, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
There have been several proposals to change the favicon in the past, with people seeming unhappy with this basic (and now very old) design. See /Archive_29#Favicon_improvement and /Archive_35#New_favicon, there are also some murmurings in relation the the Wiktionary logo discussion that it'd be nice to have a different favicon from Wikipedia. As the globe is used by most other Wikimedia projects when linking to Wikipedia (see b:Template:Wikipedia-inline), and it is the logo for the project, it seems silly not to use it as a favicon. Conrad. Irwin ( on wikt) 15:47, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
I have put forward a proposal for Featured redirects. Any comments at the proposal's talk page would be welcome. — Tivedshambo ( t/ c) 05:09, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
I have made a proposal at MediaWiki_talk:Revertpage#AES. -- IRP ☎ 02:21, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
I deal oftentimes with the removal of external links that I don't see as meeting our external link guidelines and oftentimes these removals are contested. This oftentimes happens on smaller, out-of-the-spotlight pages in which it's hard to get an outside conversation going. The debate is oftentimes with newer users who don't understand the guidelines, and users with a conflict of interest who want the links up for promotional purposes. When discussions with these users come to a stand-still and edit-warring begins, I find it hard to bring the debate to a larger audience in an attempt to find a consensus. With spam there is WT:WPSPAM, with sources there is WP:RSN, with BLPs there is WP:BLPN, but there is no place for external links in themselves. WP:RFC can be about anything content related, and oftentimes RfCs are slow to develop, when a quick consensus about an application of the guidelines is all that external link problems need.
I'd like to start up an external links noticeboard, to create a forum for the discussions over individual external links on Wikipedia. This would be different than WT:EL, which is about the discussion of the guidelines proper. This would be a board in which editors would try to find consensus in disputes involving external links; what should be linked to, and what shouldn't be linked. I think this would be a quick and efficient way of handling many debates on the far-corners of Wikipedia, as the problems can be brought to a central noticeboard for uninvolved editors to look at. Themfromspace ( talk) 14:12, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I can see the wisdom behind this - having a noticeboard to discuss the disputes about what should be in an external link. I have a question, though. Did you mean that this would be to discuss what should go on the page of external links guidelines, or to discuss the sub-heading under "What Wikipedia is not" which says "Wikipedia is not a repository of external links"? Or is there something on Wikipedia (which I have yet to see myself) to the effect of a category entitled "Pages with disputed utility to their external links"? ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 22:24, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
Please be aware that any organized body of deletionists will require the organization of a body of contributors: This isn't the answer. Discussion is. I'm not sure how many groups of contributors Themfromspace is edit warring with today, so I'll just touch on the conflict that I'm involved with. Attempts at discussion are ongoing at three locations: Themfromspace's talk page, Roguebfl's talk page, and the Reliable Sources Noticeboard. This would be number four. Roguebfl, A Quest For Knowledge, and I have open questions for Themfromspace. I think we deserve answers. BitterGrey ( talk) 04:10, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
Reposting from the previous board where Themfromspace sought to recruit outside support, as opposed to discussing changes... [2] BitterGrey ( talk) 04:10, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
Support. WT:EL isn't at all intended for this. Let's set up a noticeboard and see what happens; if it turns out to be very problematical (can't see why) or redundant (ditto), then it's easy enough to shut it down. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:46, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
Sometimes people become so fanatical into requiring sources to an article that it makes it look ugly and b) it makes you suspect we're talking about politics, people that's just don't like some common sense stuff and become entrenched into a 'sources hunt'. For example, in digg it is sourced that "there is suspicion that some people bury [vote down] articles they don't like politically". Come on, seriously, of course people downvote things they don't like politically, that's more common sense than gravity working on earth. -- AaThinker ( talk) 09:51, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
Please remember that, along with the principles of NPOV and no original research, WP: Verifiability is one of the fundamental principles of Wikipedia. This does not mean that everything on Wikipedia must be capable of being proven (after all, very few statements are); it means that claims should be backed by evidence through source citation, whether through citation of references in journal articles, in books or on the Web. I am not sure why you consider that having a long list of references at the end of an article would make the article "ugly"; after all, academic textbooks, journal articles, undergraduate and Master's level dissertations and indeed, Ph.D. theses would have lists of references appending them. Also, remember that what is common sense to one personl may not be "common sense" to another person - quite often, one might think that something is sense, but not COMMON sense (if by the term one means that the majority of the population will think that way). ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 21:32, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
I hope this isn't a recurrent topic (I don't watch pump discussions that much anymore). In a current RfA, a candidate received criticism for his incorrect marking of edits as minor and I was wondering why we still keep that feature around. I think it's a remnant of the early days of the wiki but here are a few reasons why we should just disable the whole thing. Among the good reasons:
Thoughts anyone? Pascal.Tesson ( talk) 00:42, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
But that would be a complete bureaucratic nightmare, not to mention a big waste of time. I can just imagine the edit wars over the status of an edit! In any case, it only makes sense if everyone is on board which, obviously, will not happen. And that's my argument for removing the feature in the first place: if only a small minority of editors use it then it has no purpose. In my mind, the minor edit checkbox is just a distraction in what's already a fairly non-user-friendly interface. Pascal.Tesson ( talk) 19:17, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
If you go to "Minor edit", you can press on hypertext which says "What's this?" which should explain to any one what a "minor edit" is. Personally, I think the feature is quite useful myself. If one looks at the history of an article, it enables which of the edits are mere minor corrections, such as proof-reading corrections (for example, correcting a word that was formerly spelt wrongly), and which of them represent substantial changes to content. I expect that people are more likely to compare versions of past articles in cases where edits have not been marked as minor. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 19:57, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
This issue comes up anually and I would like to make it this year. This could have been posted on Talk:Main Page, WT:FAC, and WT:DYK, so this is a central discussion. I would like to propose the following:
The following thing will be permitted that would normally be struck down as per WP:POINT or WP:DE:
Like the idea?-- Ipatrol ( talk) 22:56, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
Agreed, lets keep April 1st special .... as usual. Breaking the rules is something that requires that extra effort on April 1st. Luckily we have responsible and fun loving editors. Not sure we need extra guidelines, but dusting them may advertise the event. Victuallers ( talk) 17:26, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
I think April Fools shenanigans are OK as long as it's kept to Wikipedia and User namespaces and it doesn't cause undo insanity. Also, in keeping with our tradition for the last few years, the FA was chosen and written up in such a way that everything in it is true, but hopefully people will write it off as an obvious hoax. Raul654 ( talk) 21:35, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
....hmmm... 192.12.88.7 ( talk) 05:33, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
Download size options on featured pictures seem to be either small (the size it appears on the page) or whoppingly large (17MB on today's FP). It would be useful if one could choose from a range of download sizes after right-clicking. ciao Rotational ( talk) 07:15, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
I propose that superscripted footnote-tags be created for each of the following six scientific classifications, all of them found in Wikipedia: in vitro, in vivo, in situ, ex vivo, in utero, and even in silico.
Need: to uniformly and concisely impart to the reader the specific nature of the experiment being referenced by footnote. Implementing this change would also effect a needed review of references.
Problem to solve: A footnoted statement of fact in an article may imply, for example, an in vivo context, yet the study referenced may actually be strictly an in vitro one. This proposed change would prevent that confusion by means of an identifier in the superscripted footnote itself. Eye.earth ( talk) 13:53, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
In theory. But consider a current problem, from the "Mode of Action" paragraph in the AZT article. At this writing a sentence is in dispute:
"However, AZT has a 100-fold greater affinity for the HIV reverse transcriptase than for the human DNA polymerase alpha, accounting for its selective antiviral activity."
That sentence currently has two supporting footnotes. Both refer to in vitro experiments only. However, only one experiment has in vitro in its title. To ensure that no one assumed an in vivo affinity I changed the sentence to:
"However, in vitro AZT has . . . "
That single 2-word phrase has led to an edit war. With standardized footnote-tags, this kind of dispute could be avoided, as casual readers would immediately see that both footnotes refer to in vitro experiments and could then draw their own conclusions. Basically this suggestion is an attempt to make inferences drawn from references editor-proof.
I think it would be much harder to edit-war over what is essentially a binary distinction: an experiment is likely to be either one classification or another. Experiments that encompassed multiple environments could be labeled with a hybrid tag. There would continue to be arguments over whether results could be assumed for another classification, but probably not over the experiment itself. (Odd thought: would future experimenters, if finding such tags inherently useful, incorporate them into the footnotes of their own references when their experiments are published?) Experiments that couldn't be classified with any of the tags would be conspicuous by the lack of a tag, and that might cause arguments in favor of creating tags for such situations. But that would be good, as it might bring to the fore aspects that if hidden could lead to wrong conclusions on the part of a casual reader. I agree that clutter shouldn't be a factor. What is informative in an efficient way can't be clutter. But clutter could result if the tags became too general. They should be specifically meaningful at a glance.
Why in utero in addition to in vivo? Most studies would probably need only one as appropriate. But citing both classifications could be plausible for experiments of multiple parts with conclusions drawn separately therefrom, especially if those conclusions are referenced in text.
Readers interested in the dispute in question can see my Request for Comments at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Maths,_science,_and_technology listed under Talk: Zidovudine. Eye.earth ( talk) 02:48, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
I would like to suggest adding an extra bit to categories that admins can set to switch on or off the appearance of individual articles (rather than subcats). The category tree tends to get very messy as people often aren't sure which categories or subcats to put their articles in. If we had a bit that admins could set however, it should help the various wikiprojects to set which cats do or don't display articles, and by doing so bring a little more order into what is often a pretty chaotic part of the project. Gatoclass ( talk) 05:55, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
I have been discussing lately with some friends in a private form the need to indicate (and standardize) common abbreviations of popular musical instrument's names and we came at THIS research starting point. I am not a daily contributor of the wikipedia but I would appreciate your opinions on this matter. The idea is to add the gathered information to the basic info of each musical instrument. Do you find it appropriate?-- Florenus ( talk) 20:01, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
Is there a more specific discussion place inside the English wiki (for music matters I mean) for me to post and share opinions on this proposal? -- Florenus ( talk) 20:04, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
-- Florenus ( talk) 07:57, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
Please post your thoughts here. Thanks, Majorly talk 14:09, 1 April 2009 (UTC) Are you serious, or this a belated April Fool's Day joke? I say belated, because I note that the time of this edit was 14: 09, which according to an old tradition, is too late to play April Fool's Day jokes. April Fool's Day only lasts until noon; otherwise, you will risk being greeted with these words:
April Fool's Day passed and gone
You're the fool, for carrying on.
By the way, if this was a serious proposal, and the English Wikipedia were to be closed, bear in mind that it would only get recycled on a website such as Includipedia or AntiWikipedia or at least somewhere on the web. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 19:32, 2 April 2009 (UTC) Well, I suggest that as from today, any one concerned about this should look at the tag which now heads the page! ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 18:46, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
As we're progressing towards an implementation of flagged protection and patrolled revisions, it becomes necessary to decide the requirements for the reviewer usergroup, in particular for autopromotion, please discuss at Wikipedia:Reviewers. Cenarium ( talk) 14:55, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
In the Monomyth article, its 5th citation link says only "Northup, p. 8", and in Comparative mythology the 8th citation is identical. So I researched online and didn't come up with anything, it seems original research being claimed as fact.
To quote from the Monomyth entry: Although well-known in popular culture, the monomyth has fallen out of favor in academia, which currently leans away from comparative mythology (comparativism) and toward particularism.
To quote from the Comparative mythology entry: However, modern-day scholars lean more toward particularism, feeling suspicious of broad statements about myths.
I'd like to highlight the linked citation as weak or too insufficient. "Northup, p. 8" doesn't really help to verify and further research the source. boozerker 18:59, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
<ref>...</ref>
in the body. --——
Gadget850 (Ed)
talk - 21:01, 6 April 2009 (UTC)A proposal has been made at MediaWiki_talk:Revertpage#AES, however, additional discussion is needed. -- IRP ☎ 22:14, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
time stamp at bottom of article fails to provide time zone (current: "This page was last modified on 2 April 2009, at 08:02."). thus, a printed version read by non-wikipedian (and probably many wikipedia users) are clueless that times on wikipedia are in "UTC" (i think it is UTC; somewhere that information is buried within wikipedia; sometimes i stumble upon a usage, but i always have trouble finding it when i want it and i'm sure i'm not the only one).
of course ideally, all time entries (history, discussion, etc.) would indicate which time zone is used.-- 71.183.238.134 ( talk) 08:33, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
I'm not a fan of exceptions, and I love rules. But far too many people on Wikipedia make it their mission to try to remove as many "deficient" articles rather than spend their time creating new ones. Far too many people feel some sort of thrill from having someone's hard work be deleted by slapping them with some rule or criteria. We have too many wiki-cops and too little wiki-artists.
We can say youtube is a site to post videos and Google is a search site. And we can say Wiki is an encyclopedia. But we all know these three are the big e-triumvirate that have grown far past what they were meant to be, to the point that google and wiki have become verbs (even youtube now, "go home and youtube it".
And as much as we have rules for notability, such as having more sources other than let's say Youtube itself. Wiki has to realize that Youtube is a category in itself. Having 17,000,000 views mean at least let's say 50,000 people a year at LEAST (or if you want to be conservative 5,000) will see some reference to Happyslip somewhere online/or hear about it(such as I did), and want to find out more about it. Knowing that even 1,000 people want a reference to it, should be enough. Youtube works more through word of mouth anyway, which is hard to document, who hasn't seen "Charlie Bit me"? I've been in drugstores and heard people talk about it, I've seen mothers put their finger in their children's and say, "ouch Tommy, Tommy bit me!". The beauty about Wiki is that it's not a cut and dry encyclopedia. It also documents e-life, e-phenomenons, and is basically an encyclopedia for us, the surfers. It's an edgier encyclopedia, and while we want to hone our accuracy and dependability, let's not forget that.
We also need to relax and realize that things can be notable now, or have BEEN notable. So for example, when a guy is lost at sea, and the media is buzzing about it. It's everywhere on the news for weeks, and someone adds it here. Three weeks later because the media died down about it does not make it less notable. What happens 5 years from now if the guy is found, and someone wants to see a reference to what they are talking about?
I realize this is not myspace, a forum, or a blog, but I believe there can be a peaceful coexistence between the serious academic and purely entertaining notability. When an article such as the "numa numa" guy faces problems it scares me! As long as an article is unbiased, neat, organized, and facts properly sourced, why work so hard towards deleting it?
I wonder if we could have some sort of view counter on pages, it would certainly help to see just how many people are accessing a page. (I'm hoping at least that would help show how notable something is)
This is just a friendly reminder for us to all take a big breath and care a little less about what grade an article would get. While an A article is beautiful, so is knowing you wrote down a little piece of history.
I sorely apologize if this sounds a bit like ranting. It's not, it's an honest effort to get people to stop a moment and readdress what we want to be, and how to get there. Wiki has matured into something more than just an encyclopedia, and that's a good thing. Pointing to a "WP:whatever" should not be the end of any discussion nor should it be unmalleable. I apologize in advance for my English and I appreciate any feedback. 75.69.233.90 ( talk) 22:49, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
I hope you are correct about Wikipedia being big on the Web (I look at it often, but hardly every look at You Tube myself). What you seem to be concerned about here is that Wikipedia has a number of users who identify themselves as "deletionists" and also that to judge a topic as "notable" is not an all-or-none matter. I agree with you that Wikipedia has now grown beyond something similar to a standard printed encyclopaedia - although we are not Wikinews, the coverage of up-to-date media topics does help it to bridge the gap between newspapers and encyclopaedias. To console you about deletionists, can I point out that there are Websites out there such as Includipedia or Antiwikipedia which seem to exist to recycle deleted Wikipedia articles. However, I am inclined to agree that one must use other methods to determine an article's notability than the number of times it has been viewed - a subject in the news might have had many hits, whereas some obscure topic which is known to be important to experts in the field might have few hits, but still be judged important by experts. Also, I already think Wikipedia has balanced the "seriously academic" and the "purely entertaining" well, as it is well-known that there are many articles on popular media culture in Wikipedia.
These are my own personal reactions to the above comment, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Wikipedia community as a whole. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 18:59, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
Recently on wikien-l Erik Moeller mentioned that on de.wp they have changed the text of their edit summary field to read "Summary and Sources" instead of "edit summary." Apparently lots more new editors started including URLs etc. What do people think of trying this out on en:, as well? Could be an easy way to up sourcing. -- phoebe / ( talk to me) 21:37, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
Often when browsing my watchlist, I find something completely unrelated to my interests. It would be nice to be able to remove articles directly from Special:Watchlist, either through an (diff; hist; unwatch) link or through a checkbox. Headbomb { ταλκ κοντριβς – WP Physics} 08:11, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
The former is a historical category with no pages. I propose a redirect to the proper page. -- DFS454 ( talk) 18:59, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
Can I please suggest that WP: Biographies_of_Living_Persons policy be extended to include the recently deparated, as well as those still living? Recently, I found out (incidentally, from Wikipedia) that the Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama had died on March 25, 2009, and put up the "recent death" tag on his page. As this is now more than a week ago, this tag was removed as from today (April 4, 2009). However, looking at the talk page, I see that this page still has the bit about biographies of living people having policies that need to be adhered to, and I did not remove this for this reason. I have wondered whether we should not merely have a policy to protect privacy of living individuals, but also those who, for example, have died in the past five years.After all, there are privacy laws which do exist, I believe,for 40 years (correct me if I am wrong). If a person has died and is therefore technically not a case for Wikipedia: Biographies_of_Living_Persons, that person could still have (and in many cases, would have) relatives who are still living, so we must be extremely cautious about avoiding contentious statements that could be offensive to relatives of a recently deceased individual. I shall be interested to see whether Wikipedia is going to extend this policy. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 21:29, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
Hi,
I would really appreciate if you could include a function so that you can hide the footnotes in the printable version. It would save me la lot printing paper, and it could be an optional setting, sothat the ones who want the footnotes can keep them. Furthermore you could also include an option to hide the Reference out of the printable version.
Sincerely yours, pascal —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.66.148.198 ( talk • contribs)
ol.references, .references-small *.printonly {display: none;}
--—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 17:03, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
Let me try this again. The previous rule will neither display nor print the references. To display but not print, use this rule:
@media print {
ol.references, a.references-small {display: none;}
}
-- Gadget850 ( talk) 19:48, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
I recently came across this template, as it was tagged on a file in the Special:UncategorizedFiles. While it being picture of the day is worthwhile and all, I don't think this template should be transcluded on the front of images. Like featured article and good article milestones that are accomplished on Wikipedia, I think this template would be best repurposed to the talk page of the image, instead of the actual image itself. Doing this would stop the false leads into finding uncategorized files (since most featured images are on the commons, a lot of uncategorized images tend to be wikipedia file pages with nothing but the potd template on it). — Moe ε 22:27, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia is currently missing a standard of notability for free open source software. I wrote a proposal at Wikipedia:Notability/RFC:Notability of free open source software and would welcome your comments. Thank you, Dandv ( talk) 04:45, 10 April 2009 (UTC).
Not really a proposal, other than we should have better stats regarding quality control. Anyways, at User_talk:Peregrine_Fisher#Referencing_stats one of the nice bot operators has come up with some stats about referencing efforts. Check it out. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 04:54, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
We had some discussions on the ability to grant or remove 'autoconfirmed' status, for example here, but it wasn't conclusive. So I propose to create a usergroup confirmed, with an autopromotion identical to the autoconfirmed requirements. I think it's feasible since the 'editor' usergroup in the extension FlaggedRevs has an autopromotion. So it could be granted and removed by administrators, and would be automatically granted by the software when the user meets the 'autoconfirmed' requirements. Cenarium ( talk) 17:56, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
The usergroup ' uploaders' could also be deprecated as superseded by 'confirmed'. Possible uses could be:
This is a poll/discussion to see if there is support to deprecate the 'autoconfirmed' implicit usergroup and replace it with a usergroup 'confirmed' that is granted automatically to users passing the 'autoconfirmed' requirements and can also be granted and removed by admins. So said otherwise, do you support or oppose a modification of the 'autoconfirmed' permission so that it can also be granted and removed by admins ? Cenarium ( talk) 18:14, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
:::Yes, that's what I meant. I agree with
Gavia immer (
talk ·
contribs).
♪Tempo
di Valse ♪ 21:10, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
I have modified the structure of the poll to make it clearer, move your comment if you wish. Cenarium ( talk) 21:18, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
The gentleman Michael Gibson who operates wikidoc [13] is interested in combining wikidoc with wikipedia. I think that this would be a wonderful idea. They are under the same license as wikipedia but have tighter security with respect to vandalism. They are also written more for a medical audience. Not sure if it would be best to attach it as a sister project or combine much of the information into wikipedia ( as that is were much of the information comes from in the first place ). Anyone have any thoughts?-- Doc James ( talk · contribs · email) 15:58, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
I see this as mainly as a way to increase the number of editors of medicine article. It does sound like a nightmare to combine the two and would be easier to have it as a sister project. This would make the transfer of info back and forth easier. One could write for a medical audience. It would be like have we have simple English as a language. We could have medical English as a language aswell? Just ideas.-- Doc James ( talk · contribs · email) 06:14, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
If the "Edit summary" is left blank then it would be nice if the software would pop-up an intermediate page that gives a little warning and says "You forgot to fill out your edit summary, please fill-out the edit summary to continue." in bold & red letters directly next to the field.
Various online forms do this sort of thing as a reminder. Like when you come across a form that asks you to fill-out your name, address, phone number, email etc. If you forgot a field it will notify you... I must admit sometimes I am flying through something and I click before I realised that I've revised without adding to the edit summary. Because of this I wish the Wikipedia software could pop-up up a warning that the edit summary wasn't filled out. To my mind, I think a LOT of vandalism on WP might also get circumvented this way because if someone has a track record of claiming they are doing something legit (according to the edit summary they posted, but in actuality they aren't) then they will have eventually left a long trail showing they intended to vandalise while making their false edit summary statements claiming they were doing good. Others who are making legit contributions will get a mere small nudge to share what they are changing and will be able to move along thereafter. Would this process add too much load to the WP servers? CaribDigita ( talk) 04:37, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
See proposal: essentially with a bit of CSS we can turn the preview bar into a proper editnotice like all the others we have. Comments appreciated over there. Happy‑ melon 19:57, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
I have often noticed IPs or new users who didn't know how to cite, and messed up with references tags or just didn't format. So we could add a note on sourcing and link to Wikipedia:Citing sources in MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning or MediaWiki:Edittools. Of course, it would also help to improve sourcing. For example:
And/or adding a more detailed note on this below Please note:, although it would be less visible. Cenarium ( talk) 19:28, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
Content that violates any
copyright will be deleted. You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the
GFDL*.
Encyclopedic content must be
verifiable, references are required for most claims, please
cite your sources.
Please discuss at MediaWiki_talk:Copyrightwarning#.22must_cite_sources.22. Cenarium ( talk) 20:39, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
This is to let people know that there is only a day or so left on a poll. The poll is an attempt to end years of argument about autoformatting which has also led to a dispute about date linking. Your votes are welcome at: Wikipedia:Date formatting and linking poll. Regards Lightmouse ( talk) 09:05, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Advertising discussions, a proposal I've made to formalise guidelines on where and how the largest discussions should be advertised around Wikipedia to ensure sufficient input to major discussions. Improvements to the page and input on the talk page would be appreciated. Carcharoth ( talk) 10:33, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
There is currently a poll on the autopromotion of reviewers at Wikipedia talk:Reviewers#Poll on autopromotion, for the trial implementation of flagged protection and patrolled revisions. For information, see general documentation and overview. All users are invited to comment, and to participate in the elaboration of a reviewing guideline as well. Cenarium ( talk) 13:43, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
Despite the importance of the maps, we have very little editorial tools (or control process) over the maps. We have no templates, inline for map citations, or for map pages, to indicate that a map may be inaccurrate or unreferenced. We only have the {{ POV-map}} template for indicating on a map page that it may not be neutral, but we have no inline version for caption. I propose creating the five missing templates, see also threads at Wikipedia talk:Dispute templates#Disputed map, Template_talk:Unreferenced#What_about_maps.3F and Template talk:POV-map#Inline version. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 17:20, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
We are planning to enable the MediaWiki subpage feature on the namespaces Help, Help talk and Category talk. If anyone has any comments to that, see discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Subpage feature. Technical comments are especially welcome, we want to know if anyone knows anything that might break when we turn that on.
-- David Göthberg ( talk) 12:12, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
I have proposed that Citation bot amends pages using a mixture of 'Cite xxx' and 'Citation' templates so that only one family of templates is used. I would welcome comments on this suggestion here. Thanks, Martin ( Smith609 – Talk) 20:01, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
I was considering the issue of BLPs, and not convinced that any of the current proposals (CSD#10, or otherwise) would make sufficient difference. A possible suggestion:
From <date> onwards, all new articles should be of some basic standard, to be added to the wiki. At a minimum:
New articles that do not visibly meet these criteria may be moved by any user to a "Drafts:" namespace as follows:
|
Advantages compared to current processes:
Initial thoughts?
FT2 ( Talk | email) 15:12, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
I propose some automated (bot) cutting-down of this category. All the 6,119 page included have some <ref> issues that result in the loss of information. However, within that there are many distinct causes which a bot (or someone with a lot of spare time on AWB) could sort, leaving the important ones more accessible. The point is that many of these pages - and I wouldn't propose editing anything in article space, don't worry - are now archives, and no-one really cares very much.
Page scope | Solution | Controversial rating |
---|---|---|
AfC declined archives ( example) | If they have an existing == References == or == Sources == section, auto-add a {{ Reflist}} after that. Else, dump a new section in at the bottom. | Uncontroversial |
Handpicked list of general Wikipedia: ARCHIVES ( example) | Add a new {{ Reflist}} catch-all section at the bottom, with a useful note showing it was added later. | Substantial - may goes against 'do not edit the content of this page' |
AfC archives ( example) | Ditto above | Ditto above |
AfD nominations ( example) | Add in a new section, with note, at the bottom, outside of the archive box. Knock on clears logs pages as well. | Moderate. |
FACs ( example) | Ditto above, knock-on archive listing | Highly - goes against 'no futher edits...' |
Templates with built in refs ( example) | Create and transclude a doc page warning about the need to place before a {{ Reflist}} in articles, as well as a 'preview' of what that ref will look like. | Not overly - added value due to documentation. |
That's just a start, but we'll see exactly the community is happy with (editing archives?) before proceeding. - Jarry1250 ( t, c) 10:40, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
What do you mean? That is an argument to do what? Debresser ( talk) 02:02, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
BTW, fixed the first 5 templates from this category. Their only problem is a missing references section. See my talk page for how to fix this. Debresser ( talk) 03:15, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
See my talk page that I fixed all images, all subcategory pages, and all stray templates. Left: templates at letters "I" (from Infobox) and "T" (from Template). Debresser ( talk) 14:31, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
In short: I think we need "Article", "Template" and "Category" namespace, preferably also "Help" and even "Image" namespace, "but not "Talk", "Wikipedia" and "User" namespace. Other namespaces I dont care either way. Debresser ( talk) 15:01, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
That bug was opened almost two years ago and nothing has been done. The proposal has been made again during a discussion at Wikipedia:Abuse filter/Requested#LEPS. -- IRP ☎ 20:21, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Also made the request here. -- IRP ☎ 23:34, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
After the rename of the "image" namespace to the "file" namespace, I propose that we rename links to "images" to be links to "files", if the article is already being edited for some other reason. For example, this can easily be done using AWB while also making other edits, but edits should not be made solely for the change as it is a waste of server energy.
The reason for this proposal is that seeing both "Image" and "File" could be confusing to newer users who aren't aware that there was a change. File is also the more correct term to use after the rename, and being two letters shorter could have some impact on page loading for users with slower connections if there are a lot of files on the page.
Thoughts? – Drilnoth ( T • C) 22:45, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
The change from Image: to File: has not been published very widely, so there are probably quite a few long-term editors who are not aware of it (I wasn't). And then just changing this will actually confuse them even more than new editors, who will simply start using File: to start with. Since there is not any positive effect to be achieved by changing Image: to File, I would still recommend to NOT do combine changes in other edit work. AWB work is often already obscure; please don't make it more obscure. IF the change is necessary/required/decided, then a simply bot can do all the changes throughout WP. Wim van Dorst (talk) 19:30, 9 April 2009 (UTC).
We already had problems with editors thinking that changing Image to File was a good idea. I noticed 1 or 2 editors doing only this. If we add it to AWB we will cause more confusion. I think we are ok the way we are. Changing Image to File is like changing redirects with the original title. No gain, more confusion, more editors are making only non-constructive edits. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 23:42, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
With the Google search engine, you can search for a specific term, found only in the tags, and only show those with tags you like, and not those with tags you don't like. Click here to see a search that reveals all those articles tagged as fancruft. You can have Google filter out all searches that have that also, if you don't want to see any fancruft at all.
If you want only want to find article approved as being of a certain quality level, then you can search for those who have an appropriate rating on the Assessment scale and/or the Importance of topic scale. Additional tags can be made. Just determine what some people want(such as articles for every episode, character, and list of weapons in a series), and others do not, and tag them accordingly, so people never see something they don't want to, while others can still have their fun.
Remember, 99% of wikipedia articles are just entertainment. Even some education ones, listing all species of extinct insects, ancient battles from two thousand years ago, etc, are entertainment only for those who like that sort of thing, there absolutely no practical application for that knowledge. And that's just fine with me.
And for all those people who are complain constantly that fancruft and whatnot give wikipedia a bad reputation, to whatever snotty elitists they believe are out there judging us and care about, you can have the default set to filter fancruft and whatnot out, people only finding it if they click the option under the search button, saying they want to see it. That way, everyone is happy, no legitimate complaints left to argue back and forth on. Dream Focus 21:33, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
To Wiki programmers: could someone add a spell-checker to the edit buttons above? I don't think it'd be a big task, and wiki editors would be forever grateful--would save so much time and hassle. After installation, other wikis could also copy/translate the proceedure, a gain for every Wiki on the planet (I happen to work for hu.wiki). The substitute solutions offered by en.Wiki for having and operating a spell-checker while creating articles are clumsy and troublesome. A spell-check button above would be so much simpler. Please help us out. Thank you,-- 97.112.153.113 ( talk) 00:06, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, but I know about Firefox. I don't have it, and don't want to have it. Why wouldn't the above suggestion work? Should I transfer my request to Bogzilla? -- 168.103.249.30 ( talk) 00:15, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Oh please, gentlemen...I read about it all. Can't you just answer my question: why couldn't Wiki install a spell checker into its edit box? Can it or can't it. I can't believe it can't. -- 97.121.172.3 ( talk) 00:47, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
PS. In addition, what I need is a Hungarian spell checker. ieSpell doesn't have that. (FoxFire does, but as I said above, I don't want FoxFire.) But if enWiki would put the spell checker into its own edit box, all wiki sites could instantly install their own. Why is that so difficult? Please don't ignore the proposal, and the innumerable wiki volunteers, all wishing for an easy access to a checker in the editing box. If you can't help, nobody can.-- 97.121.172.3 ( talk) 01:04, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
-- Ckatz chat spy 02:32, 14 April 2009 (UTC)"No, we will not add a spell-checker, or spell-checking bot. Spell checking has been disabled on the Wikipedia search engine for performance reasons, and also because it is impossible to prevent it 'fixing' legitimate errors (see Teh). You can use search engines like Google to search Wikipedia and correct mistakes in searches: include "site:en.wikipedia.org" with your searches. And for spell-checking what is in the edit box, you can use a web browser like Firefox, which includes such spell checking."
You quote: "Spell checking has ben disabled...for performance reasons...etc." May I ask you this: what about us, i.e. our time? I don't have to elaborate on this, you all know what I'm talking about. All we want is to have a spell checker, that's just a click away, right under our noses; to correct no more than typing errors, as fast as possible. Gentlemen, I want you to know that I wrote to the founder of Wiki, telling him about this problem--for him small, for us fairly big. I hope he will listen and do something about it. Thank you for trying to help. My best regards to you all. -- 97.121.172.3 ( talk) 03:17, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Well, thank you, Peregrine Fisher--at last there's one person who understood my plight. I looked up the link you directed me to. Yes, there are many "non-tech" editors (including myself), otherwise able to do lots of valuable things. It's a pity that the "facelift" is so far away. Greetings,-- 168.103.248.249 ( talk) 15:57, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
There is an ongoing proposal to rename Articles for Deletion to Articles for Discussion. Interested editors are asked to comment and make their thoughts known. -- Nick Penguin( contribs) 04:30, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
I'm proposing to include a favourites section in the members 'taskbar' so members can quickly access aticles they like, and also to take their favourites around with them. It could also help students with their studies as they could quickly find the articles they need. It's just an idea and feel free to shoot it down. JRGregory ( talk) 23:41, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
A watchlist is mainly for watching articles that you have edited, or in the process of editing. I'm talking about being able to use your favourites everywhere, with IE or Firefox you have to reinsert your favourties everytime you get a new computer. A favourites section which is intentionally used for favourites, not edited articles. JRGregory ( talk) 10:55, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
What i'm really trying to explain is practicality. People who will use wikipedia for research will not want to go through the lengthy process of saving bookmarks offline or saving them to a subpage. Most people including myself want to be able to quickly get on a website and get started immediately after registering. People will be put off the fact that they will have to redesign their page using code, just to get a favourites page. JRGregory ( talk) 14:09, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
My solution would be to just edit your user page with the desired links to save the developers from unnecessary work. If that's a problem, you can always create a user subpage specifically designated for these links. I've done this many times in the past.-- penubag ( talk) 07:46, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
This is the slightly revised text of a message that I was directed to post in this forum.
Following my perusal of the discussion regarding whether the British singer Susan Boyle meets notability and BLP criteria, and regardless of either the particular case of that article, or the more general and difficult question of whether brief but massive media attention is always notable, I have come to wonder whether the usage statistics of Wikipedia itself may not be more productively used.
While reported usage statistics from other web services or search engines, (e.g. Google searches, YouTube views), suit me just fine personally to establish how notable a thing is, though certainly not how credible, it may not presently be possible to surmount the problem that most web services, as privately owned or administered, are flatly not credible as the only sources of their unreviewable claims unless their service (and thus methodology), were really, truly completely transparent, which Google is certainly not.
However, what i'd like to emphasize here is that the usage statistics of the Wikipedia itself are *relevant to what people want to find in an encyclopedia* unless one were to propose a rather dubious argument that millions of queries for a phrase or a name, or millions of views of an article, reflect a poor popular understanding of what an encyclopedia is supposed to be.
Although I do not see any obvious solution to the notorious problem that editing seniority has displaced peer review in the Wikipedia project, I think that the Wikipedia does have its merits, and that one of them is an unique opportunity for a definitive encyclopedography, such that is not possible or not worth the effort in a paper encyclopedia.
For the present, I would like to see only a few small changes (that may well be impossible to implement retroactively, but that could still be started later rather than never). I want more usage statistics incorporated into the main article layout; this information is actually valuable to me. I would also like administrators to formulate specific guidelines on the relevance of this type of information for content management. It is as important as a consensus by the editors, or more so, because it is found rather than deliberated.
I'm not in the least suggesting an (accessible) list of current watchers, which, in addition to being unavoidably inefficient, would also in my opinion reflect an inappropriate philosophy for the project. rather, in addition to accessible counts of authors, revisions, and a simple total of views, i would like various subsidary counters describing the actual use of links to an article, links from an article, instances of query entry of the article title, and redirects of alternate titles (so we learn which title is actually more in use!)
I wouldn't necessarily care whether these counters are placed in situ or in an appendix, or tab, or box or whatnot. (links to an article, and the counters for their use, would have to be tabulated in an appendix; links from could have a counter in situ). ideally we can even derive some sort of percentage relevance from these counts. (Isn't that exciting?)
More ambitiously, I would like to know what information is proximal in actual usage, rather than nominally by deliberately creating cross-references. I would like the Wikipedia to sample at random what wikis a given user is looking at before and after the current wiki to whatever distance would probably be relevant. This data could be collected for a good sampling of users without much overhead. The results will have high redundancy with cross referencing, but what we'd get out of this automated process are some new cross references that would not necessarily have occurred to us.
L —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.83.173.203 ( talk • contribs) 09:52, 15 April 2009
Not long before Easter 2009, there was a request from a Wikipedian, who was concerned about articles getting deleted, to have some type of "page view" counter. The answer was - one is already there, if one presses "History" at the top of any article. However, it was pointed out that we should use measures other than how many times a page has been viewed as a measure of notability, and I am inclined to agree. After all, if we were to use these page view statistics as our prime measure of an article's notability, Wikipedia would end up being sadly lampooned as an encyclopeadia of popular media culture. Which of these articles do you think had the most views in early 2009 - Paul Tillich, James Joyce, Ludwig Wittgenstein or Amy Winehouse? Yes, I am afraid it is the answer one might fear. More disturbingly still, did you know that the articles on John Lennon and on Star Wars got more views in March 2009 than the article on the Bible? Well, I think this is evidence that what ever use we attach to page view statistics, they should not be used as either the only or the prime index of an article's notability. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 20:23, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
I agree that giving exclusive or primary importance to a viewing statistic would be an extraordinarily bad idea. I do think there is a place for these numbers in an AfD discussion despite 'page views' being listed as a fallacy in AfD discussions. Of course, one cannot say whether something is notable by referring to page views alone; it is a discrepancy between perceived notability and page views which should prove to be useful when in doubt of notability. There would be nothing wrong with supporting a notability judgement with statistical analysis that predicts how articles in certain categories would be expected to perform, (assuming that existing articles largely pertain to notable instances of that category --if we may thus provisionally reduce the information), compared to the actual performance of the article. (I don't claim to have made such analyses and would hate to try, just to be clear.)
(... also, shame about Wittgenstein; surely the man was unhappy enough to have been just as interesting as Winehouse.)
Irrespectively of relevance to inclusion/deletion debates, applications of query information and views would serve to keep prevalence-sensitive information up to date without any need for sources pertaining to prevalence (esp. of nomenclature; synonyms, metonyms, aliases) --which, *actually*, are quite likely to be inferior to the quantitative data drawn directly from the user base, anyway. (If a poll on the scale in the Wikipedia operates contradicted earlier surveys of prevalence, I would say the earlier surveys were wrong!) E.g., with an extremely simple script & the appropriate database, the most prevalent way of referring to a given subject could always automatically become the title to which all other queries redirect.
The short and skinny of the bigger proposal is that an empirically based, automatically generated proximity map of each wiki in relation to other wikis would be a useful and attainable complement to existing hyperlinks and classificatory elements. The user would be able to look at all 'nearby' wikis whether or not the nearby wikis are 'hard-linked'. It does occur to me that, where the hard links differ from the generated links, the pop culture bias would probably be higher in the latter, but since this scheme would not be intended to replace other ways of framing relationships between wikis, biases, whatever their nature, would actually be desirable. So, how is this different from just using a good search engine cleverly enough? Only in that the contents of the Wikipedia are already selected specifically for expository value.
L
Oh, and one other thought that makes me extremely pleased; if we could classify articles in such a way that their performance (in views/time) may be predicted, we would not merely have an indications that an underperforming article may not have been as notable as we thought, or that a disputed article performs well enough to satisfy skeptics, but also than an *overperforming* article might have been 'gamed'! yay, stats!
Is there any particular reason, technical or otherwise why the move tab has no other tabs at the top, ever other tab does, doesn't make sense for this one not to. I'm guessing this is a bugzilla thing but thought I'd bring it up here first-- Jac16888 Talk 02:52, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
Because my computer isn't working online right now, I'm using my alternate account (meant for use on public computers) instead of my actual one, Nyttend. Each time that I use this account, I have to go to my main account's talk page to see if there are new messages, which I'd like to avoid if possible. Would it be possible somehow to create a system whereby those of us with legitimate multiple accounts could somehow get them "tied" together, so that a message left on one talk page would generate the orange "You have new messages" banner on the other account? Nyttend backup ( talk) 12:44, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
I've realized after installing a wiki for my personal websites - that only I can edit - that some of the 'fun' of wikipedia is to edit stuff even if nobody else contributes. So if some people are so determined to edit and nothing can stop it even everyone else tells them to stop, "why don't you run a wiki" tell them:p -- AaThinker ( talk) 18:06, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.
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Yes, I know I can just tee up AWB and use its list-comparer if I want to see what articles can be found in two categories, but I'm thinking of the masses who use Wikipedia on a purely piecemeal basis to research stuff. bd2412 T 04:32, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
A RfC has been request to determine whether the Spoiler guideline ( WP:SPOILER) should be changed to exclude plot details that some consider to be spoilers from the lead section of an article. -- Farix ( Talk) 14:05, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
Requesting comment on a policy decision with Notabiliy (web). -- Kraftlos ( Talk | Contrib) 03:02, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
I propose an anti-blanking rule so that any reduction of a large article to a few lines would be blocked. This blanking (diff) of the main page FA of today should not have had to be manually reverted. Smart people have probably already come up with logic to address the corner cases but if I had to spend 1 minute thinking about a rule, it would be that articles greater than ~10K in size can't be reduced to under ~1K; and such restrictions could be tightened up more for FA articles. Tempshill ( talk) 23:16, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
For the record, a redirect requires an absolute minimum of fourteen characters: # r e d i r e c t [ [ x ] ] . Even the smallest possible template requires five characters: { { x } } . So far as I know, there are no single-character templates that could legitimately constitute the content of a mainspace page. We should at the very least prevent an edit that reduces a mainspace page to four characters or less, because there is simply no legitimate reason why any mainspace page would ever contain fewer than five (and, realistically, fewer than thirteen) characters. This will deter vandals whose mode is to click "select all" and then "delete" and "Save page". bd2412 T 22:20, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
This new book thing seems nice, but I'd quite like to have a play around with it without ruining anything already in place (e.g. accidentally deleting existing Wikipedia:Books/Foo pages or flooding Wikipedia:Books/ with new ones); hence, can a WP:SB-type page be created for assembling, saving and disassembling test books? Thanks! It Is Me Here t / c 18:19, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
This is NOT an idea I am suggesting for all the large number of articles in the English Wikipedia, just an idea which I am suggesting for a select number of articles which get edited frequently. Perhaps we could have a tag to say how often that article has been edited in the past four months or so. The same tag could also say whether these edits are by users who are anonymous editors or users who have confirmed uesrpage names, and how many of these edits are by the former, how many by the latter. There seems to be an unspoken assumption that edits are less likely to be works of Wikipedia: Vandalism if they are done by users with usenames than they are done by those with mere IP addresses, so maybe this would help us to appreciate whether an article is likely to have had recent vandalism edits, or has been edited by reliable and trustworthy users. Certainly the assumption that users with userpages rather than users who just give IP addresses appears to be behind Wikipedia: Protection policy. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 21:07, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
Proposal for a search tweak. I was looking for the legal term "stay" and typed "stay (law)" in the search field and clicked Go. I was brought to the Search page where none of the 20 top search results was what I was looking for. I then went to the stay article, which is a disambig page that did indeed have a link to the article I was looking for: Stay of execution.
My proposal: If someone types "word1 (word2)" in the search field and clicks Go, and there is no "word1 (word2)" article, but there is a "word1" article, then the Search results' first result should be the word1 article. Leave all the other results in the list; just insert the "word1" article as result #1.
I acknowledge this search tweak only benefits users who are already familiar with the Wikipedia convention of using a parenthetical to distinguish topics. Tempshill ( talk) 17:29, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
After looking through WikiNews, I was impressed by the DynamicPageList extension, and it looks like it would be useful here. It is like a "smart" version of the <categorytree> tag, in that it can show articles in one category, but only ones that are not in another, or show a list in a different order, or many other things. It seems like it would be a benefit here. What do others think? X clamation point 17:29, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
I have a new proposal what we might decide to have in Wikipedia: What Wikipedia is not. How about a section here entitled "Wikipedia is not a series of book, television, radio programme, film or music reviews"? We could include something to the effect of "Material on a new film (for example) should be neutral, stating the film's director and cast, but not offering a critique of the film, as this would fail NPOV. We might also add that there could be place somewhere on the web for review-type articles, but Wikipedia is not that place. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 21:35, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
It is proposed to run a trial of Flagged Revisions at Wikipedia:Flagged protection and patrolled revisions. The proposal is divided in two parts:
The proposals are independent but supplement each other. They involve the creation of a 'reviewer' usergroup. This implementation can support secondary trials. The main trial should run for two months, then a community discussion should decide the future of the implementation. Cenarium ( talk) 22:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
I'm proposing adding a google/msn/yahoo translation link to references that are in other languages. Maybe ask for bids from yahoo google and msn about which one would be used for translation. -- Diaa abdelmoneim ( talk) 09:44, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
I'm proposing that any autoconfirmed users be given the File (aka Image) renaming/moving rights. The reasons for this inculde:
{{
Rename media}}
as well, which currently contains about 2509 transclusions.
Peachey88 (
Talk Page |
Contribs) 12:22, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
I would like to propose the above here in the open, because I'm aware that a large number of editors, including some very dedicated to the task, patrol pages and I would like to know what they think. AFAIK, it is within the bounds of bot technology, so what is really needed is good reasons why (or circumstances when) pages shouldn't be tagged as patrolled (which you are more than welcome to list below so I can feel really stupid! ;) ) - Jarry1250 ( t, c) 19:53, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
How about a page where [primary new] users could post their article ideas, and get guidance/seek consensus from members of the community if the subject meets the criteria, and, if so, what to do to prepare reliable, independent sources for the article. This would help to reduce the backlog of speedy deletion candidates by well-meaning writers, and would reduce the backlog at AfD. I'm not sure if this exists or not. Any thoughts? Jd027 talk 02:17, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
(following on from Wikipedia:Help_desk#categories) I would like to request a new category feature - so that a category can appear at the bottom of a page (ie as a link to the category in the 'category box'), but not have the page be added to the category listing.
The reason for this is due to some articles having multiple possible titles - which 'belong' in different categories. Currently the accepted method is to categorise the redirect pages, which works, except the linking is unidirectional - eg the page appears in the category listing but the category does not appear on the readers page.
I see two possibilities as a solution:
(I believe this has been requested before).Thanks very much. FengRail ( talk) 12:58, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
When printing articles, we currently exclude Wikipedia elements such as the sidebar, navigational boxes and the like. Should portal tags be non-printable? --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 14:09, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
{{
portal}}
.
Happy‑
melon 16:15, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
How would it be to have a bot that automatically corrects double-hyphen dashes to correct em dashes? — Jch thys 16:54, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
The book extension being now available, users can create books through Special:Book, currently either in their userspace or in subspace of Wikipedia:Books. As discussed at WP:AN and Wikipedia talk:Books, this system generates inappropriate pages such as attack and spam pages, as it's very easy to create a page through Special:Book, then edit it. So it's proposed that instead of storing community books in subspace of Wikipedia:Books, they are stored in a specific Book: namespace. This would allow to detect and review new books using Special:NewPages, search books, use special system messages... Specific CSDs could also apply to this namespace, see discussion at WT:CSD#G13 Books, and the entire namespace could be noindexed. Cenarium ( talk) 18:50, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
I propose that show preview be enabled when uploading images. The reason for this is, it's very easy to mess up the templates and or FUR for new users. Instead of previewing the uploaded image this image file:Your image here.PNG could be show instead. -- DFS454 ( talk) 14:47, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
..I propose keeping opening paragraphs less that 1 book. There are articles that takes 3 to 5 fat paragraphs to get to contents. -- AaThinker ( talk) 19:55, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
WikiProject Echo, which appears to be inactive (I inquired on the talk page today), has tagged tons of articles with {{ FAOL}}, indicating that there is a foreign language FA from which content might be translated. The problem is, these tags have been applied indiscriminately, with--for instance--it being suggested that we translate United Kingdom from Tamil Wikipedia. It appears that all articles identified as FAs at a certain date were tagged, without consideration as to whether the other article is actually better than ours. We already have a way of tracking whether foreign-language FAs exist - the little interwiki star icon. We also have a system for tagging requested translations (e.g. {{ Expand Spanish}}, which has a fa=yes parameter). Of course, it might be profitable to search for articles that genuinely should be translated, but doing so from scratch would be much faster than analyzing all the currently tagged articles. I propose that these all be removed by bot, but wanted to get others' opinion before placing this at WP:BOTREQ. I'll post a message at WP:ECHO seeking input here. Calliopejen1 ( talk) 01:41, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
Mmm there are a lot of ones that are invalid. I think they need removing, it shouldn't have to be done manually. Dr. Blofeld White cat 13:59, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
Proposal: A noticeboard in WP space is required to report and deal with the overwhelming number of
SPA genre trolls/IPs that make rapid and persistant POV genre changes. I would suggest that such a noticeboard would be modelled on
WP:3RRN for efficiency and "cleanliness".
Problem: There is a major genre troll problem on music articles which I describe in more detail
here.
How would it work: The community would submit mini-reports of users who fit a specific and well defined criteria (e.g. genre changes without discussion, POV edit summaries ("I think they sound like this..."), no sources used or offered etc. etc.), and others in the community would act on it as they see fit.
How would the community deal with the genre trolls: As I outlined in my essay, many of these "trolls" are new users who would perhaps benefit from a gentle note (and a welcome template) to guide them in the right direction. Persistant "offenders" would, just like how we deal with vandals, receive a stronger warning, which would lead to blocking if the situation did not improve.
Existing forms: Myself and a few others already use
User:Utan Vax/Genre troll IPs as a "base of operations" to keep tabs on known genre trolls. This page is only effective up to a point: 1) It needs a wider audience and support from the community. 2) There needs to be more than just one admin (me) going through it and making decisions.
Background reading:
User:Realist2/Genre_Warrior
Any thoughts, suggestions, and/or criticisms are very much welcome. Thanks and kind regards,
Scarian
Call me Pat! 17:50, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
(Outdent) In order of what you wrote, Z-man:
I know this idea may sound silly, but I've had Panic at the Disco on my watchlist since I requested a histmerge (that was denied, sadly enough), and people are constantly deleting the well-referenced "emo" from the infobox. What about creating a tag with the pre-approved genres and having a bot automatically revert them? There'd be a comment telling people not to change it there. It would only be genres that are well-referenced and discussed on the talk page, and they would be listed somewhere un-editable (either a separate list or a .js subpage, if it is a .js it could just be transcluded, but that wouldn't stop people from adding around it). If there is consensus and it is referenced an admin would change the tag.
Users are creating many books on Wikipedia-Books. The books aren't actively integrated with articles on Wikipedia so I wanted to suggest having in the Create a book toolbar an indication that "This page is included in the ... book". This would boost readers awareness of books and include the general topic this page is part of. -- Diaa abdelmoneim ( talk) 11:57, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
(I am surprised this hasn't been raised before, or has it?) G8 is, it seems to me, automatically applied to the talk pages of deleted articles. "Automatically" would then suggest to me that a bot could be created to save everyone time and energy, probably by automatically tagging pages after x minutes from the main article's deletion. - Jarry1250 ( t, c) 07:56, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
Although it does indeed "seem to you", and to me, that this is usually applied automatically; G8 should in principle not be applied automatically, as it contains an exclusion for "pages useful to the project"; a list of examples is provided at WP:CSD. So it's not safe to delete these without human intervention. Happy‑ melon 08:32, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
The problem is that if we want to apply G8, the only serious option is adminbots. There are too few admins to burden them with this sort of massive chore. The same is true for things like unused unfree images. But adminship requests for bots fail pretty much systematically so people are just running "secret adminbots" which are not really that secret. It's not a healthy way of doing things but the opposition to adminbots is philosophical and I think a few people are happy with a don't ask, don't tell situation. Pascal.Tesson ( talk) 00:54, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
I'm finding that the heading system possibly could do with a 'tweak'.
The problem I have is that headings such as ===Sub topic=== is not (to my eyes) sufficiently distinguished from ====minor topic===== - ie in the text they look like identical heading levels.
I'd like to suggest that the 'four equal signs' headings be reduced a point or two in size, or something similar.
(Also what purpose ='god' quality heading= - why is it supported when never used?)
Thanks. FengRail ( talk) 13:58, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
We don't use the sub-subheads often enough to worry about them, in my opinion. Something that gets into that level of splitting shouldn't be listed in the TOC at the top, which is what what differentiates headings from bolding one you get to the subsubheads. DreamGuy ( talk) 17:33, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
I hope this is the right place for this discussion. 2009 Malagasy political crisis is currently on the front page (in the news), and after having looked at the article, a large section of the references are to AFP which is hosted with Google. Google offers this service to news publishers, and I believe others such as Associated Press also use the hosted news service. This is great, however, in terms of our project it is a bad thing, because "Wire service articles hosted on Google pages are available for 30 days from when Google received the article on the wire. After the 30-day period, wire articles will no longer be available on Google News." This has the effect of articles, such as the Madagascar article linked to above, in 30 days of publication of the hosted news being prone to WP:LINKROT; which in this case is massive linkrot. The linkrot has the effect that the article becomes unverifiable in its current state, and then after 30 days from date of publication, searches for live links have to be undertaken; obviously this is a massive waste of editor resources and time. With online sources which I believe may in future go dead, I will use WebCite to archive and provide a link. Unfortunately, this is not possible with Google hosted news, as they have "noarchive" in the meta tags, rendering a service such as WebCite or the Wayback Machine useless to even obtain a copy of the page. Google states that news archive search isn't affected by this service, and that the Google hosted news also will not show up in archive searches. I would guess that most articles hosted by Google are available via other sources, such as this Google hosted news being available at France24.com, except it appears the France24.com link is cacheable. With the WebCiteBOT proposal looking like it will go ahead, if the France24.com link were to go dead in future, we would still be able to view it via WebCite. It is because of this, that I believe we should be blocking linking to Google-hosted news in the interests of long-term verifiability. -- Russavia Dialogue 22:11, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
Sounds like a job for the abuse filter, which can provide a message saying "please use a better link" (and then still accept the edit if save page is clicked again). -- NE2 01:23, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Could someone describe the details of the link pattern that expires? Dragons flight ( talk) 06:44, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Please do not block edits with these links. Then we would lose the text that the user was about to add as well. Sure, they could remove or fix the link and submit again, but probably won't. A bot that retrieves the news title and date, and notifies somewhere would be great. -- Apoc2400 ( talk) 18:38, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
I propose that when a new page is being created that an edit notice should list some basic principles of what and what not to create. I went ahead and created a rough version which you can feel free to change.
Before creating your page please consider:
|
Any thoughts? -- DFS454 ( talk) 17:27, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
I would not think the above template would be the best one for this. As Jarry1250 says, this one is rather scary - I would certainly concur that the bit about being blocked may scare new users. Also, I think some of this may detract new users because it is too laden with jargon - using terms such as "wikimarkup language", for example. I am not in principle against having a template for new articles, but I certainly think the language needs to be simplified. I am glad that you said, DFS454, that we can feel free to change the above template - surely if we are to have such a template, it should be written in more accessible and less intimidating language. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 21:40, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
WP:Don't bite the newcomers, and don't scare them off with ominous notices. -- Cybercobra ( talk) 01:31, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
Before creating your page please consider:
Requesting its creation by adding a request to
this list; |
This seems a lot better to me (I agree with Jarry1250 that it is an improvement) - far less intimidating, and much less laden with complex Wikipedia-speak. I can only really say here that I wish to agree with Jarry1250's last comment. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 20:46, 17 March 2009 (UTC) I think we have quickly reached consensus that if we are to have such a template, the second would be better than the first suggestion. Perhaps, if technology permits this,we could say it would only be for non-autoconfirmed users.However, what must be decided now is whether people wish to support or oppose this idea. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 22:22, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
{{
editnotice}}
.
Happy‑
melon 08:36, 23 March 2009 (UTC)This already exists and is not an editnotice. See: MediaWiki:Newarticletext. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 09:02, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
Could we please not have more instruction creep? it just makes people not read the instructions at all. -- Apoc2400 ( talk) 18:47, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
Is this necessary? I know CSD is always backlogged, but does that really mean we're being so overwhelmed with bad new articles that we need a notice like this to keep them from making them? Will this solve any problem that can't be solved by speedying blatantly bad articles (and giving the creators the big notice on their talk page)? From my experience, probably at least half (random statistic, I know) of bad articles that get created are by people who are not going to be paying attention to this notice anyway—people who are goofing around, people who want to promote themselves no matter what the rules say, etc. So my question is basically, is there a problem that needs to be solved, that can't be solved by current CSD practices, and that would be solved by this? rʨanaɢ talk/ contribs 21:30, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
The above link leads to a community poll regarding date linking on Wikipedia. The poll has not yet opened, but the community is invited to review the format and make suggestions/comments on the talk page. We need as many neutral comments as we can get so the poll runs as smoothly as possible and is able to give a good idea of the communities expectations regarding date linking on the project. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 19:41, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Note The first phase of this poll will start on 30 March. Dabomb87 ( talk) 03:57, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
There was a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 44#Double redirects in which there was general support for keeping $wgMaxRedirects as at least 2, but it's been changed back to 1. What's up? -- NE2 18:16, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
A discussion is ongoing over renaming WP:Criteria for speedy deletion to WP:Criteria for summary deletion. All contributions welcome. Happy‑ melon 14:28, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
I have created a discussion on the policy village pump about a proposed process called Wikipedia:Mergers for discussion. One of it's goals is to be a complimentary process to AfD, as well as assist in complicated or controversial mergers. Interested editors should comment there, or on the process' talk page. -- Nick Penguin( contribs) 04:57, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
Good idea - I have wondered myself whether, as well as discussing articles which have been suggested as cases of deletion,we should have similar discussions about whether certain articles should be merged (I would not equate deletion with merging). ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 20:00, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
Hi. I've been busy over at en.wikinews, and I noticed that they have an interesting welcome template they send out. I like it, as it is informative, yet doesn't overload the user with too much information at once. The message is available here. Perhaps we should incorporate the layout of their welcome template for use in Wikipedia? ♪Tempo di Valse ♪ 14:07, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
Don't know if it is technically possible but if so, I think it would be a good idea to remove the little v, d and e letters from templates by default. They would appear only when logged in or if changed in the preferences. This makes sense to me as it bears very little relevance to the reader, and although I would still consider the templates confusing it would aid users by removing one place for them to go wrong. Darryl.matheson ( talk) 16:58, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
.navbar {display: none;}
These links should at least be marked as a blatant self-reference. We should not assume that every mirrored copy of an article which containing a navbox will be on an editable web-site, or that any separate page will exist for the template itself, etc. Thus in Template:Navbar
class="noprint plainlinksneverexpand navbar"
should be changed to
class="noprint plainlinksneverexpand navbar selfreference"
to help facilitate automatic removal of the "v•d•e" links on mirror sites, most of which will not want this. — CharlotteWebb 12:26, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
Hello. I think that pages that exist but was deleted in the past, should have deleted versions in the history tab. For example, the list could look like this:
-- Janezdrilc ( talk) 12:59, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
I contribute to several wikipedia language versions. It would be nice if I could have a common watchlist for all of them. Shep ( talk) 14:03, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
The date linking and formatting poll is now open. All users are invited to participate. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 23:00, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
This may well be a frequently-discussed proposal, but I can't think of a good way to search for it (as seen by my own clumsy title here). If it has been discussed before, I'd of course be grateful for a link that would let me see the facts and arguments on both sides.
What I'd often like as an editor is to see the (plain-language) code of a page without wanting to edit it or risking an accidental edit. Sometimes I want to copy a complete reference, the format of a table or the title of an image, or just to see how something was constructed, without having to risk changing the code accidentally or having to go through the steps of opening and closing an unnecessary edit process (perhaps causing a completely-needless edit conflict).
I can see a slight disadvantage in adding an extra "View" tab on page-tops that are already filling up with other tabs, but I think the advantages might be worth the cost. (I don't understand the technology behind Wikipedia, but perhaps it would also be easier on the system to have slightly-fewer prompts to be ready to upload new edits.)
—— Shakescene ( talk) 05:15, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback; it allowed me to clarify the possible reasons better in my own head.
First (if I correctly understand an unspoken implication of at least part of Izno's posting), I think it would definitely be desirable — if such a tab were available (either by default or through User Preferences) — that it resemble the "Watch/Unwatch" tab in being only available to and us[e]able by Registered Users. Clutter and confusion to new readers and editors is certainly one of the possible drawbacks I could see in an extra tab.
Second, I can be a bit more articulate about why I think such a tab might be useful to me even after having done a couple of thousand edits. One reason is a bit abstract, and the other pretty specific.
(A) On the more general level, whenever I (or I presume most people) are on line, there's a certain level of attention and anxiety required to avoid sending or receiving something unintended, just as one is more relaxed composing a hand-written letter than in making a telephone call or sending an e-mail. There's far less chance of a sudden lapse or hasty misunderstanding if one has to go through the steps of writing, revising, folding, addressing, stamping and depositing a letter. Even though (for the technical reasons mentioned above) there's little chance of a serious or irreparable error in editing Wikipedia, every unnecessary doubt or hesitation in the back of one's mind that can be lessened is attention that can be brought to something more important.
(B) The practical situation that makes me wish for a "View" tab is this: When I'm copying a footnote, image, format, colo[u]r code, link or statistic from one article to another (e.g. an election return or the full bibliographic entry for The Encyclopedia of New York City between New York pages), I almost always have more than one browser tab or window open in "Edit" mode, even though (being at least partially sane) I usually want to edit only one of those pages at one time. This can be particularly tricky if (say) one footnote or link seems clearly better than the other, and I'm pasting over previous text. Although it's never got[ten] so far as to cause any noticeable damage, I've sometimes caught myself in the middle of pasting the "bad" footnote or link over the good one, i.e. the exact opposite of my intention. If, in the middle of constant jumping between windows, I could see all the code I need while only being able to edit one page, it would make the process far surer and easier for me. —— Shakescene ( talk) 07:50, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
Eh just use &action=raw. — CharlotteWebb 12:07, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
Here's some code that will give a view tab next to the edit tab. It uses the api so it does have the disadvantage of there being a lot of code you won't understand before and after the source code of the page.
//Tab to view source
addOnloadHook(function() {
if ( document.getElementById( "ca-edit" ) ) {
addPortletLink("p-cactions", "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=revisions&rvprop=content&format=txtfm&titles=" + wgPageName, "View", "ca-view", "View source", "" , document.getElementById( "ca-history" ));
}
});
To use this code, go to Special:MyPage/monobook.js, click the edit tab, copy and paste in the code and save the page. Then press Ctrl + F5 to clear your cache. Tra (Talk) 19:12, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
I was thinking if wikipedia had a complete audio read out of the article i would not have to read it. I know youtube has something similar and thougght it would give wikipedia more appeal.
I'd like to suggest having a noticeboard or a list of sources that can/cannot be used on Wikipedia. This seems urgent with the many sources that get contested on FACs and FLCs where reviewers ask about the reliability of the sources. If there was a list of sources that can be used on Wikipedia it would be easier to check a sources' reliability. This would also make a central hub for sources a user can research to improve his topic. I'd suggest a bot that adds all references an FA or FL has to this list. Users would also add websites they think are reliable, which if contested would go on reliability review. A user posting an FAC or FLC would have the option to check his sources before posting it. The list would of course have a subcategories with each topic like newspapers, magazines, blogs and websites (to be decided on). Official websites of companies don't have to be on these lists as they assert their own reliability. For example: someone doesn't know if www.techradar.com is reliable or not, he goes on the page of websites and finds it to be reliable or not. This would make checking reliability much easier and would have many future uses. I'm not suggesting Wikipedia:VPR/Perennial#Define_reliable_sources but just a list of reliable, already on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard discussed sources to make research and reliability easier.-- Diaa abdelmoneim ( talk) 08:49, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
I think a list could be helpful, but I think we'd have POV pushers and spammers constantly screwing with the list. But then at least the battle over decidin such things would be limited to one plae instead of spread out over countless talk pages. Any bot trying to label reliable sources would be completely impractical and problematic, however. DreamGuy ( talk) 13:56, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
Such a list could still be useful. I remember once almost using The Huffington Post as a source, because I thought it was the local newspaper in some town called Huffington. -- Apoc2400 ( talk) 18:42, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
There have been several proposals to change the favicon in the past, with people seeming unhappy with this basic (and now very old) design. See /Archive_29#Favicon_improvement and /Archive_35#New_favicon, there are also some murmurings in relation the the Wiktionary logo discussion that it'd be nice to have a different favicon from Wikipedia. As the globe is used by most other Wikimedia projects when linking to Wikipedia (see b:Template:Wikipedia-inline), and it is the logo for the project, it seems silly not to use it as a favicon. Conrad. Irwin ( on wikt) 15:47, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
I have put forward a proposal for Featured redirects. Any comments at the proposal's talk page would be welcome. — Tivedshambo ( t/ c) 05:09, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
I have made a proposal at MediaWiki_talk:Revertpage#AES. -- IRP ☎ 02:21, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
I deal oftentimes with the removal of external links that I don't see as meeting our external link guidelines and oftentimes these removals are contested. This oftentimes happens on smaller, out-of-the-spotlight pages in which it's hard to get an outside conversation going. The debate is oftentimes with newer users who don't understand the guidelines, and users with a conflict of interest who want the links up for promotional purposes. When discussions with these users come to a stand-still and edit-warring begins, I find it hard to bring the debate to a larger audience in an attempt to find a consensus. With spam there is WT:WPSPAM, with sources there is WP:RSN, with BLPs there is WP:BLPN, but there is no place for external links in themselves. WP:RFC can be about anything content related, and oftentimes RfCs are slow to develop, when a quick consensus about an application of the guidelines is all that external link problems need.
I'd like to start up an external links noticeboard, to create a forum for the discussions over individual external links on Wikipedia. This would be different than WT:EL, which is about the discussion of the guidelines proper. This would be a board in which editors would try to find consensus in disputes involving external links; what should be linked to, and what shouldn't be linked. I think this would be a quick and efficient way of handling many debates on the far-corners of Wikipedia, as the problems can be brought to a central noticeboard for uninvolved editors to look at. Themfromspace ( talk) 14:12, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I can see the wisdom behind this - having a noticeboard to discuss the disputes about what should be in an external link. I have a question, though. Did you mean that this would be to discuss what should go on the page of external links guidelines, or to discuss the sub-heading under "What Wikipedia is not" which says "Wikipedia is not a repository of external links"? Or is there something on Wikipedia (which I have yet to see myself) to the effect of a category entitled "Pages with disputed utility to their external links"? ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 22:24, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
Please be aware that any organized body of deletionists will require the organization of a body of contributors: This isn't the answer. Discussion is. I'm not sure how many groups of contributors Themfromspace is edit warring with today, so I'll just touch on the conflict that I'm involved with. Attempts at discussion are ongoing at three locations: Themfromspace's talk page, Roguebfl's talk page, and the Reliable Sources Noticeboard. This would be number four. Roguebfl, A Quest For Knowledge, and I have open questions for Themfromspace. I think we deserve answers. BitterGrey ( talk) 04:10, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
Reposting from the previous board where Themfromspace sought to recruit outside support, as opposed to discussing changes... [2] BitterGrey ( talk) 04:10, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
Support. WT:EL isn't at all intended for this. Let's set up a noticeboard and see what happens; if it turns out to be very problematical (can't see why) or redundant (ditto), then it's easy enough to shut it down. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:46, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
Sometimes people become so fanatical into requiring sources to an article that it makes it look ugly and b) it makes you suspect we're talking about politics, people that's just don't like some common sense stuff and become entrenched into a 'sources hunt'. For example, in digg it is sourced that "there is suspicion that some people bury [vote down] articles they don't like politically". Come on, seriously, of course people downvote things they don't like politically, that's more common sense than gravity working on earth. -- AaThinker ( talk) 09:51, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
Please remember that, along with the principles of NPOV and no original research, WP: Verifiability is one of the fundamental principles of Wikipedia. This does not mean that everything on Wikipedia must be capable of being proven (after all, very few statements are); it means that claims should be backed by evidence through source citation, whether through citation of references in journal articles, in books or on the Web. I am not sure why you consider that having a long list of references at the end of an article would make the article "ugly"; after all, academic textbooks, journal articles, undergraduate and Master's level dissertations and indeed, Ph.D. theses would have lists of references appending them. Also, remember that what is common sense to one personl may not be "common sense" to another person - quite often, one might think that something is sense, but not COMMON sense (if by the term one means that the majority of the population will think that way). ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 21:32, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
I hope this isn't a recurrent topic (I don't watch pump discussions that much anymore). In a current RfA, a candidate received criticism for his incorrect marking of edits as minor and I was wondering why we still keep that feature around. I think it's a remnant of the early days of the wiki but here are a few reasons why we should just disable the whole thing. Among the good reasons:
Thoughts anyone? Pascal.Tesson ( talk) 00:42, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
But that would be a complete bureaucratic nightmare, not to mention a big waste of time. I can just imagine the edit wars over the status of an edit! In any case, it only makes sense if everyone is on board which, obviously, will not happen. And that's my argument for removing the feature in the first place: if only a small minority of editors use it then it has no purpose. In my mind, the minor edit checkbox is just a distraction in what's already a fairly non-user-friendly interface. Pascal.Tesson ( talk) 19:17, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
If you go to "Minor edit", you can press on hypertext which says "What's this?" which should explain to any one what a "minor edit" is. Personally, I think the feature is quite useful myself. If one looks at the history of an article, it enables which of the edits are mere minor corrections, such as proof-reading corrections (for example, correcting a word that was formerly spelt wrongly), and which of them represent substantial changes to content. I expect that people are more likely to compare versions of past articles in cases where edits have not been marked as minor. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 19:57, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
This issue comes up anually and I would like to make it this year. This could have been posted on Talk:Main Page, WT:FAC, and WT:DYK, so this is a central discussion. I would like to propose the following:
The following thing will be permitted that would normally be struck down as per WP:POINT or WP:DE:
Like the idea?-- Ipatrol ( talk) 22:56, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
Agreed, lets keep April 1st special .... as usual. Breaking the rules is something that requires that extra effort on April 1st. Luckily we have responsible and fun loving editors. Not sure we need extra guidelines, but dusting them may advertise the event. Victuallers ( talk) 17:26, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
I think April Fools shenanigans are OK as long as it's kept to Wikipedia and User namespaces and it doesn't cause undo insanity. Also, in keeping with our tradition for the last few years, the FA was chosen and written up in such a way that everything in it is true, but hopefully people will write it off as an obvious hoax. Raul654 ( talk) 21:35, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
....hmmm... 192.12.88.7 ( talk) 05:33, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
Download size options on featured pictures seem to be either small (the size it appears on the page) or whoppingly large (17MB on today's FP). It would be useful if one could choose from a range of download sizes after right-clicking. ciao Rotational ( talk) 07:15, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
I propose that superscripted footnote-tags be created for each of the following six scientific classifications, all of them found in Wikipedia: in vitro, in vivo, in situ, ex vivo, in utero, and even in silico.
Need: to uniformly and concisely impart to the reader the specific nature of the experiment being referenced by footnote. Implementing this change would also effect a needed review of references.
Problem to solve: A footnoted statement of fact in an article may imply, for example, an in vivo context, yet the study referenced may actually be strictly an in vitro one. This proposed change would prevent that confusion by means of an identifier in the superscripted footnote itself. Eye.earth ( talk) 13:53, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
In theory. But consider a current problem, from the "Mode of Action" paragraph in the AZT article. At this writing a sentence is in dispute:
"However, AZT has a 100-fold greater affinity for the HIV reverse transcriptase than for the human DNA polymerase alpha, accounting for its selective antiviral activity."
That sentence currently has two supporting footnotes. Both refer to in vitro experiments only. However, only one experiment has in vitro in its title. To ensure that no one assumed an in vivo affinity I changed the sentence to:
"However, in vitro AZT has . . . "
That single 2-word phrase has led to an edit war. With standardized footnote-tags, this kind of dispute could be avoided, as casual readers would immediately see that both footnotes refer to in vitro experiments and could then draw their own conclusions. Basically this suggestion is an attempt to make inferences drawn from references editor-proof.
I think it would be much harder to edit-war over what is essentially a binary distinction: an experiment is likely to be either one classification or another. Experiments that encompassed multiple environments could be labeled with a hybrid tag. There would continue to be arguments over whether results could be assumed for another classification, but probably not over the experiment itself. (Odd thought: would future experimenters, if finding such tags inherently useful, incorporate them into the footnotes of their own references when their experiments are published?) Experiments that couldn't be classified with any of the tags would be conspicuous by the lack of a tag, and that might cause arguments in favor of creating tags for such situations. But that would be good, as it might bring to the fore aspects that if hidden could lead to wrong conclusions on the part of a casual reader. I agree that clutter shouldn't be a factor. What is informative in an efficient way can't be clutter. But clutter could result if the tags became too general. They should be specifically meaningful at a glance.
Why in utero in addition to in vivo? Most studies would probably need only one as appropriate. But citing both classifications could be plausible for experiments of multiple parts with conclusions drawn separately therefrom, especially if those conclusions are referenced in text.
Readers interested in the dispute in question can see my Request for Comments at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Maths,_science,_and_technology listed under Talk: Zidovudine. Eye.earth ( talk) 02:48, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
I would like to suggest adding an extra bit to categories that admins can set to switch on or off the appearance of individual articles (rather than subcats). The category tree tends to get very messy as people often aren't sure which categories or subcats to put their articles in. If we had a bit that admins could set however, it should help the various wikiprojects to set which cats do or don't display articles, and by doing so bring a little more order into what is often a pretty chaotic part of the project. Gatoclass ( talk) 05:55, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
I have been discussing lately with some friends in a private form the need to indicate (and standardize) common abbreviations of popular musical instrument's names and we came at THIS research starting point. I am not a daily contributor of the wikipedia but I would appreciate your opinions on this matter. The idea is to add the gathered information to the basic info of each musical instrument. Do you find it appropriate?-- Florenus ( talk) 20:01, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
Is there a more specific discussion place inside the English wiki (for music matters I mean) for me to post and share opinions on this proposal? -- Florenus ( talk) 20:04, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
-- Florenus ( talk) 07:57, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
Please post your thoughts here. Thanks, Majorly talk 14:09, 1 April 2009 (UTC) Are you serious, or this a belated April Fool's Day joke? I say belated, because I note that the time of this edit was 14: 09, which according to an old tradition, is too late to play April Fool's Day jokes. April Fool's Day only lasts until noon; otherwise, you will risk being greeted with these words:
April Fool's Day passed and gone
You're the fool, for carrying on.
By the way, if this was a serious proposal, and the English Wikipedia were to be closed, bear in mind that it would only get recycled on a website such as Includipedia or AntiWikipedia or at least somewhere on the web. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 19:32, 2 April 2009 (UTC) Well, I suggest that as from today, any one concerned about this should look at the tag which now heads the page! ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 18:46, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
As we're progressing towards an implementation of flagged protection and patrolled revisions, it becomes necessary to decide the requirements for the reviewer usergroup, in particular for autopromotion, please discuss at Wikipedia:Reviewers. Cenarium ( talk) 14:55, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
In the Monomyth article, its 5th citation link says only "Northup, p. 8", and in Comparative mythology the 8th citation is identical. So I researched online and didn't come up with anything, it seems original research being claimed as fact.
To quote from the Monomyth entry: Although well-known in popular culture, the monomyth has fallen out of favor in academia, which currently leans away from comparative mythology (comparativism) and toward particularism.
To quote from the Comparative mythology entry: However, modern-day scholars lean more toward particularism, feeling suspicious of broad statements about myths.
I'd like to highlight the linked citation as weak or too insufficient. "Northup, p. 8" doesn't really help to verify and further research the source. boozerker 18:59, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
<ref>...</ref>
in the body. --——
Gadget850 (Ed)
talk - 21:01, 6 April 2009 (UTC)A proposal has been made at MediaWiki_talk:Revertpage#AES, however, additional discussion is needed. -- IRP ☎ 22:14, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
time stamp at bottom of article fails to provide time zone (current: "This page was last modified on 2 April 2009, at 08:02."). thus, a printed version read by non-wikipedian (and probably many wikipedia users) are clueless that times on wikipedia are in "UTC" (i think it is UTC; somewhere that information is buried within wikipedia; sometimes i stumble upon a usage, but i always have trouble finding it when i want it and i'm sure i'm not the only one).
of course ideally, all time entries (history, discussion, etc.) would indicate which time zone is used.-- 71.183.238.134 ( talk) 08:33, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
I'm not a fan of exceptions, and I love rules. But far too many people on Wikipedia make it their mission to try to remove as many "deficient" articles rather than spend their time creating new ones. Far too many people feel some sort of thrill from having someone's hard work be deleted by slapping them with some rule or criteria. We have too many wiki-cops and too little wiki-artists.
We can say youtube is a site to post videos and Google is a search site. And we can say Wiki is an encyclopedia. But we all know these three are the big e-triumvirate that have grown far past what they were meant to be, to the point that google and wiki have become verbs (even youtube now, "go home and youtube it".
And as much as we have rules for notability, such as having more sources other than let's say Youtube itself. Wiki has to realize that Youtube is a category in itself. Having 17,000,000 views mean at least let's say 50,000 people a year at LEAST (or if you want to be conservative 5,000) will see some reference to Happyslip somewhere online/or hear about it(such as I did), and want to find out more about it. Knowing that even 1,000 people want a reference to it, should be enough. Youtube works more through word of mouth anyway, which is hard to document, who hasn't seen "Charlie Bit me"? I've been in drugstores and heard people talk about it, I've seen mothers put their finger in their children's and say, "ouch Tommy, Tommy bit me!". The beauty about Wiki is that it's not a cut and dry encyclopedia. It also documents e-life, e-phenomenons, and is basically an encyclopedia for us, the surfers. It's an edgier encyclopedia, and while we want to hone our accuracy and dependability, let's not forget that.
We also need to relax and realize that things can be notable now, or have BEEN notable. So for example, when a guy is lost at sea, and the media is buzzing about it. It's everywhere on the news for weeks, and someone adds it here. Three weeks later because the media died down about it does not make it less notable. What happens 5 years from now if the guy is found, and someone wants to see a reference to what they are talking about?
I realize this is not myspace, a forum, or a blog, but I believe there can be a peaceful coexistence between the serious academic and purely entertaining notability. When an article such as the "numa numa" guy faces problems it scares me! As long as an article is unbiased, neat, organized, and facts properly sourced, why work so hard towards deleting it?
I wonder if we could have some sort of view counter on pages, it would certainly help to see just how many people are accessing a page. (I'm hoping at least that would help show how notable something is)
This is just a friendly reminder for us to all take a big breath and care a little less about what grade an article would get. While an A article is beautiful, so is knowing you wrote down a little piece of history.
I sorely apologize if this sounds a bit like ranting. It's not, it's an honest effort to get people to stop a moment and readdress what we want to be, and how to get there. Wiki has matured into something more than just an encyclopedia, and that's a good thing. Pointing to a "WP:whatever" should not be the end of any discussion nor should it be unmalleable. I apologize in advance for my English and I appreciate any feedback. 75.69.233.90 ( talk) 22:49, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
I hope you are correct about Wikipedia being big on the Web (I look at it often, but hardly every look at You Tube myself). What you seem to be concerned about here is that Wikipedia has a number of users who identify themselves as "deletionists" and also that to judge a topic as "notable" is not an all-or-none matter. I agree with you that Wikipedia has now grown beyond something similar to a standard printed encyclopaedia - although we are not Wikinews, the coverage of up-to-date media topics does help it to bridge the gap between newspapers and encyclopaedias. To console you about deletionists, can I point out that there are Websites out there such as Includipedia or Antiwikipedia which seem to exist to recycle deleted Wikipedia articles. However, I am inclined to agree that one must use other methods to determine an article's notability than the number of times it has been viewed - a subject in the news might have had many hits, whereas some obscure topic which is known to be important to experts in the field might have few hits, but still be judged important by experts. Also, I already think Wikipedia has balanced the "seriously academic" and the "purely entertaining" well, as it is well-known that there are many articles on popular media culture in Wikipedia.
These are my own personal reactions to the above comment, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Wikipedia community as a whole. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 18:59, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
Recently on wikien-l Erik Moeller mentioned that on de.wp they have changed the text of their edit summary field to read "Summary and Sources" instead of "edit summary." Apparently lots more new editors started including URLs etc. What do people think of trying this out on en:, as well? Could be an easy way to up sourcing. -- phoebe / ( talk to me) 21:37, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
Often when browsing my watchlist, I find something completely unrelated to my interests. It would be nice to be able to remove articles directly from Special:Watchlist, either through an (diff; hist; unwatch) link or through a checkbox. Headbomb { ταλκ κοντριβς – WP Physics} 08:11, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
The former is a historical category with no pages. I propose a redirect to the proper page. -- DFS454 ( talk) 18:59, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
Can I please suggest that WP: Biographies_of_Living_Persons policy be extended to include the recently deparated, as well as those still living? Recently, I found out (incidentally, from Wikipedia) that the Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama had died on March 25, 2009, and put up the "recent death" tag on his page. As this is now more than a week ago, this tag was removed as from today (April 4, 2009). However, looking at the talk page, I see that this page still has the bit about biographies of living people having policies that need to be adhered to, and I did not remove this for this reason. I have wondered whether we should not merely have a policy to protect privacy of living individuals, but also those who, for example, have died in the past five years.After all, there are privacy laws which do exist, I believe,for 40 years (correct me if I am wrong). If a person has died and is therefore technically not a case for Wikipedia: Biographies_of_Living_Persons, that person could still have (and in many cases, would have) relatives who are still living, so we must be extremely cautious about avoiding contentious statements that could be offensive to relatives of a recently deceased individual. I shall be interested to see whether Wikipedia is going to extend this policy. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 21:29, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
Hi,
I would really appreciate if you could include a function so that you can hide the footnotes in the printable version. It would save me la lot printing paper, and it could be an optional setting, sothat the ones who want the footnotes can keep them. Furthermore you could also include an option to hide the Reference out of the printable version.
Sincerely yours, pascal —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.66.148.198 ( talk • contribs)
ol.references, .references-small *.printonly {display: none;}
--—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 17:03, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
Let me try this again. The previous rule will neither display nor print the references. To display but not print, use this rule:
@media print {
ol.references, a.references-small {display: none;}
}
-- Gadget850 ( talk) 19:48, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
I recently came across this template, as it was tagged on a file in the Special:UncategorizedFiles. While it being picture of the day is worthwhile and all, I don't think this template should be transcluded on the front of images. Like featured article and good article milestones that are accomplished on Wikipedia, I think this template would be best repurposed to the talk page of the image, instead of the actual image itself. Doing this would stop the false leads into finding uncategorized files (since most featured images are on the commons, a lot of uncategorized images tend to be wikipedia file pages with nothing but the potd template on it). — Moe ε 22:27, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia is currently missing a standard of notability for free open source software. I wrote a proposal at Wikipedia:Notability/RFC:Notability of free open source software and would welcome your comments. Thank you, Dandv ( talk) 04:45, 10 April 2009 (UTC).
Not really a proposal, other than we should have better stats regarding quality control. Anyways, at User_talk:Peregrine_Fisher#Referencing_stats one of the nice bot operators has come up with some stats about referencing efforts. Check it out. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 04:54, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
We had some discussions on the ability to grant or remove 'autoconfirmed' status, for example here, but it wasn't conclusive. So I propose to create a usergroup confirmed, with an autopromotion identical to the autoconfirmed requirements. I think it's feasible since the 'editor' usergroup in the extension FlaggedRevs has an autopromotion. So it could be granted and removed by administrators, and would be automatically granted by the software when the user meets the 'autoconfirmed' requirements. Cenarium ( talk) 17:56, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
The usergroup ' uploaders' could also be deprecated as superseded by 'confirmed'. Possible uses could be:
This is a poll/discussion to see if there is support to deprecate the 'autoconfirmed' implicit usergroup and replace it with a usergroup 'confirmed' that is granted automatically to users passing the 'autoconfirmed' requirements and can also be granted and removed by admins. So said otherwise, do you support or oppose a modification of the 'autoconfirmed' permission so that it can also be granted and removed by admins ? Cenarium ( talk) 18:14, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
:::Yes, that's what I meant. I agree with
Gavia immer (
talk ·
contribs).
♪Tempo
di Valse ♪ 21:10, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
I have modified the structure of the poll to make it clearer, move your comment if you wish. Cenarium ( talk) 21:18, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
The gentleman Michael Gibson who operates wikidoc [13] is interested in combining wikidoc with wikipedia. I think that this would be a wonderful idea. They are under the same license as wikipedia but have tighter security with respect to vandalism. They are also written more for a medical audience. Not sure if it would be best to attach it as a sister project or combine much of the information into wikipedia ( as that is were much of the information comes from in the first place ). Anyone have any thoughts?-- Doc James ( talk · contribs · email) 15:58, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
I see this as mainly as a way to increase the number of editors of medicine article. It does sound like a nightmare to combine the two and would be easier to have it as a sister project. This would make the transfer of info back and forth easier. One could write for a medical audience. It would be like have we have simple English as a language. We could have medical English as a language aswell? Just ideas.-- Doc James ( talk · contribs · email) 06:14, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
If the "Edit summary" is left blank then it would be nice if the software would pop-up an intermediate page that gives a little warning and says "You forgot to fill out your edit summary, please fill-out the edit summary to continue." in bold & red letters directly next to the field.
Various online forms do this sort of thing as a reminder. Like when you come across a form that asks you to fill-out your name, address, phone number, email etc. If you forgot a field it will notify you... I must admit sometimes I am flying through something and I click before I realised that I've revised without adding to the edit summary. Because of this I wish the Wikipedia software could pop-up up a warning that the edit summary wasn't filled out. To my mind, I think a LOT of vandalism on WP might also get circumvented this way because if someone has a track record of claiming they are doing something legit (according to the edit summary they posted, but in actuality they aren't) then they will have eventually left a long trail showing they intended to vandalise while making their false edit summary statements claiming they were doing good. Others who are making legit contributions will get a mere small nudge to share what they are changing and will be able to move along thereafter. Would this process add too much load to the WP servers? CaribDigita ( talk) 04:37, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
See proposal: essentially with a bit of CSS we can turn the preview bar into a proper editnotice like all the others we have. Comments appreciated over there. Happy‑ melon 19:57, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
I have often noticed IPs or new users who didn't know how to cite, and messed up with references tags or just didn't format. So we could add a note on sourcing and link to Wikipedia:Citing sources in MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning or MediaWiki:Edittools. Of course, it would also help to improve sourcing. For example:
And/or adding a more detailed note on this below Please note:, although it would be less visible. Cenarium ( talk) 19:28, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
Content that violates any
copyright will be deleted. You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the
GFDL*.
Encyclopedic content must be
verifiable, references are required for most claims, please
cite your sources.
Please discuss at MediaWiki_talk:Copyrightwarning#.22must_cite_sources.22. Cenarium ( talk) 20:39, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
This is to let people know that there is only a day or so left on a poll. The poll is an attempt to end years of argument about autoformatting which has also led to a dispute about date linking. Your votes are welcome at: Wikipedia:Date formatting and linking poll. Regards Lightmouse ( talk) 09:05, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Advertising discussions, a proposal I've made to formalise guidelines on where and how the largest discussions should be advertised around Wikipedia to ensure sufficient input to major discussions. Improvements to the page and input on the talk page would be appreciated. Carcharoth ( talk) 10:33, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
There is currently a poll on the autopromotion of reviewers at Wikipedia talk:Reviewers#Poll on autopromotion, for the trial implementation of flagged protection and patrolled revisions. For information, see general documentation and overview. All users are invited to comment, and to participate in the elaboration of a reviewing guideline as well. Cenarium ( talk) 13:43, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
Despite the importance of the maps, we have very little editorial tools (or control process) over the maps. We have no templates, inline for map citations, or for map pages, to indicate that a map may be inaccurrate or unreferenced. We only have the {{ POV-map}} template for indicating on a map page that it may not be neutral, but we have no inline version for caption. I propose creating the five missing templates, see also threads at Wikipedia talk:Dispute templates#Disputed map, Template_talk:Unreferenced#What_about_maps.3F and Template talk:POV-map#Inline version. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 17:20, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
We are planning to enable the MediaWiki subpage feature on the namespaces Help, Help talk and Category talk. If anyone has any comments to that, see discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Subpage feature. Technical comments are especially welcome, we want to know if anyone knows anything that might break when we turn that on.
-- David Göthberg ( talk) 12:12, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
I have proposed that Citation bot amends pages using a mixture of 'Cite xxx' and 'Citation' templates so that only one family of templates is used. I would welcome comments on this suggestion here. Thanks, Martin ( Smith609 – Talk) 20:01, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
I was considering the issue of BLPs, and not convinced that any of the current proposals (CSD#10, or otherwise) would make sufficient difference. A possible suggestion:
From <date> onwards, all new articles should be of some basic standard, to be added to the wiki. At a minimum:
New articles that do not visibly meet these criteria may be moved by any user to a "Drafts:" namespace as follows:
|
Advantages compared to current processes:
Initial thoughts?
FT2 ( Talk | email) 15:12, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
I propose some automated (bot) cutting-down of this category. All the 6,119 page included have some <ref> issues that result in the loss of information. However, within that there are many distinct causes which a bot (or someone with a lot of spare time on AWB) could sort, leaving the important ones more accessible. The point is that many of these pages - and I wouldn't propose editing anything in article space, don't worry - are now archives, and no-one really cares very much.
Page scope | Solution | Controversial rating |
---|---|---|
AfC declined archives ( example) | If they have an existing == References == or == Sources == section, auto-add a {{ Reflist}} after that. Else, dump a new section in at the bottom. | Uncontroversial |
Handpicked list of general Wikipedia: ARCHIVES ( example) | Add a new {{ Reflist}} catch-all section at the bottom, with a useful note showing it was added later. | Substantial - may goes against 'do not edit the content of this page' |
AfC archives ( example) | Ditto above | Ditto above |
AfD nominations ( example) | Add in a new section, with note, at the bottom, outside of the archive box. Knock on clears logs pages as well. | Moderate. |
FACs ( example) | Ditto above, knock-on archive listing | Highly - goes against 'no futher edits...' |
Templates with built in refs ( example) | Create and transclude a doc page warning about the need to place before a {{ Reflist}} in articles, as well as a 'preview' of what that ref will look like. | Not overly - added value due to documentation. |
That's just a start, but we'll see exactly the community is happy with (editing archives?) before proceeding. - Jarry1250 ( t, c) 10:40, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
What do you mean? That is an argument to do what? Debresser ( talk) 02:02, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
BTW, fixed the first 5 templates from this category. Their only problem is a missing references section. See my talk page for how to fix this. Debresser ( talk) 03:15, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
See my talk page that I fixed all images, all subcategory pages, and all stray templates. Left: templates at letters "I" (from Infobox) and "T" (from Template). Debresser ( talk) 14:31, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
In short: I think we need "Article", "Template" and "Category" namespace, preferably also "Help" and even "Image" namespace, "but not "Talk", "Wikipedia" and "User" namespace. Other namespaces I dont care either way. Debresser ( talk) 15:01, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
That bug was opened almost two years ago and nothing has been done. The proposal has been made again during a discussion at Wikipedia:Abuse filter/Requested#LEPS. -- IRP ☎ 20:21, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Also made the request here. -- IRP ☎ 23:34, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
After the rename of the "image" namespace to the "file" namespace, I propose that we rename links to "images" to be links to "files", if the article is already being edited for some other reason. For example, this can easily be done using AWB while also making other edits, but edits should not be made solely for the change as it is a waste of server energy.
The reason for this proposal is that seeing both "Image" and "File" could be confusing to newer users who aren't aware that there was a change. File is also the more correct term to use after the rename, and being two letters shorter could have some impact on page loading for users with slower connections if there are a lot of files on the page.
Thoughts? – Drilnoth ( T • C) 22:45, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
The change from Image: to File: has not been published very widely, so there are probably quite a few long-term editors who are not aware of it (I wasn't). And then just changing this will actually confuse them even more than new editors, who will simply start using File: to start with. Since there is not any positive effect to be achieved by changing Image: to File, I would still recommend to NOT do combine changes in other edit work. AWB work is often already obscure; please don't make it more obscure. IF the change is necessary/required/decided, then a simply bot can do all the changes throughout WP. Wim van Dorst (talk) 19:30, 9 April 2009 (UTC).
We already had problems with editors thinking that changing Image to File was a good idea. I noticed 1 or 2 editors doing only this. If we add it to AWB we will cause more confusion. I think we are ok the way we are. Changing Image to File is like changing redirects with the original title. No gain, more confusion, more editors are making only non-constructive edits. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 23:42, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
With the Google search engine, you can search for a specific term, found only in the tags, and only show those with tags you like, and not those with tags you don't like. Click here to see a search that reveals all those articles tagged as fancruft. You can have Google filter out all searches that have that also, if you don't want to see any fancruft at all.
If you want only want to find article approved as being of a certain quality level, then you can search for those who have an appropriate rating on the Assessment scale and/or the Importance of topic scale. Additional tags can be made. Just determine what some people want(such as articles for every episode, character, and list of weapons in a series), and others do not, and tag them accordingly, so people never see something they don't want to, while others can still have their fun.
Remember, 99% of wikipedia articles are just entertainment. Even some education ones, listing all species of extinct insects, ancient battles from two thousand years ago, etc, are entertainment only for those who like that sort of thing, there absolutely no practical application for that knowledge. And that's just fine with me.
And for all those people who are complain constantly that fancruft and whatnot give wikipedia a bad reputation, to whatever snotty elitists they believe are out there judging us and care about, you can have the default set to filter fancruft and whatnot out, people only finding it if they click the option under the search button, saying they want to see it. That way, everyone is happy, no legitimate complaints left to argue back and forth on. Dream Focus 21:33, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
To Wiki programmers: could someone add a spell-checker to the edit buttons above? I don't think it'd be a big task, and wiki editors would be forever grateful--would save so much time and hassle. After installation, other wikis could also copy/translate the proceedure, a gain for every Wiki on the planet (I happen to work for hu.wiki). The substitute solutions offered by en.Wiki for having and operating a spell-checker while creating articles are clumsy and troublesome. A spell-check button above would be so much simpler. Please help us out. Thank you,-- 97.112.153.113 ( talk) 00:06, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, but I know about Firefox. I don't have it, and don't want to have it. Why wouldn't the above suggestion work? Should I transfer my request to Bogzilla? -- 168.103.249.30 ( talk) 00:15, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Oh please, gentlemen...I read about it all. Can't you just answer my question: why couldn't Wiki install a spell checker into its edit box? Can it or can't it. I can't believe it can't. -- 97.121.172.3 ( talk) 00:47, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
PS. In addition, what I need is a Hungarian spell checker. ieSpell doesn't have that. (FoxFire does, but as I said above, I don't want FoxFire.) But if enWiki would put the spell checker into its own edit box, all wiki sites could instantly install their own. Why is that so difficult? Please don't ignore the proposal, and the innumerable wiki volunteers, all wishing for an easy access to a checker in the editing box. If you can't help, nobody can.-- 97.121.172.3 ( talk) 01:04, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
-- Ckatz chat spy 02:32, 14 April 2009 (UTC)"No, we will not add a spell-checker, or spell-checking bot. Spell checking has been disabled on the Wikipedia search engine for performance reasons, and also because it is impossible to prevent it 'fixing' legitimate errors (see Teh). You can use search engines like Google to search Wikipedia and correct mistakes in searches: include "site:en.wikipedia.org" with your searches. And for spell-checking what is in the edit box, you can use a web browser like Firefox, which includes such spell checking."
You quote: "Spell checking has ben disabled...for performance reasons...etc." May I ask you this: what about us, i.e. our time? I don't have to elaborate on this, you all know what I'm talking about. All we want is to have a spell checker, that's just a click away, right under our noses; to correct no more than typing errors, as fast as possible. Gentlemen, I want you to know that I wrote to the founder of Wiki, telling him about this problem--for him small, for us fairly big. I hope he will listen and do something about it. Thank you for trying to help. My best regards to you all. -- 97.121.172.3 ( talk) 03:17, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Well, thank you, Peregrine Fisher--at last there's one person who understood my plight. I looked up the link you directed me to. Yes, there are many "non-tech" editors (including myself), otherwise able to do lots of valuable things. It's a pity that the "facelift" is so far away. Greetings,-- 168.103.248.249 ( talk) 15:57, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
There is an ongoing proposal to rename Articles for Deletion to Articles for Discussion. Interested editors are asked to comment and make their thoughts known. -- Nick Penguin( contribs) 04:30, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
I'm proposing to include a favourites section in the members 'taskbar' so members can quickly access aticles they like, and also to take their favourites around with them. It could also help students with their studies as they could quickly find the articles they need. It's just an idea and feel free to shoot it down. JRGregory ( talk) 23:41, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
A watchlist is mainly for watching articles that you have edited, or in the process of editing. I'm talking about being able to use your favourites everywhere, with IE or Firefox you have to reinsert your favourties everytime you get a new computer. A favourites section which is intentionally used for favourites, not edited articles. JRGregory ( talk) 10:55, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
What i'm really trying to explain is practicality. People who will use wikipedia for research will not want to go through the lengthy process of saving bookmarks offline or saving them to a subpage. Most people including myself want to be able to quickly get on a website and get started immediately after registering. People will be put off the fact that they will have to redesign their page using code, just to get a favourites page. JRGregory ( talk) 14:09, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
My solution would be to just edit your user page with the desired links to save the developers from unnecessary work. If that's a problem, you can always create a user subpage specifically designated for these links. I've done this many times in the past.-- penubag ( talk) 07:46, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
This is the slightly revised text of a message that I was directed to post in this forum.
Following my perusal of the discussion regarding whether the British singer Susan Boyle meets notability and BLP criteria, and regardless of either the particular case of that article, or the more general and difficult question of whether brief but massive media attention is always notable, I have come to wonder whether the usage statistics of Wikipedia itself may not be more productively used.
While reported usage statistics from other web services or search engines, (e.g. Google searches, YouTube views), suit me just fine personally to establish how notable a thing is, though certainly not how credible, it may not presently be possible to surmount the problem that most web services, as privately owned or administered, are flatly not credible as the only sources of their unreviewable claims unless their service (and thus methodology), were really, truly completely transparent, which Google is certainly not.
However, what i'd like to emphasize here is that the usage statistics of the Wikipedia itself are *relevant to what people want to find in an encyclopedia* unless one were to propose a rather dubious argument that millions of queries for a phrase or a name, or millions of views of an article, reflect a poor popular understanding of what an encyclopedia is supposed to be.
Although I do not see any obvious solution to the notorious problem that editing seniority has displaced peer review in the Wikipedia project, I think that the Wikipedia does have its merits, and that one of them is an unique opportunity for a definitive encyclopedography, such that is not possible or not worth the effort in a paper encyclopedia.
For the present, I would like to see only a few small changes (that may well be impossible to implement retroactively, but that could still be started later rather than never). I want more usage statistics incorporated into the main article layout; this information is actually valuable to me. I would also like administrators to formulate specific guidelines on the relevance of this type of information for content management. It is as important as a consensus by the editors, or more so, because it is found rather than deliberated.
I'm not in the least suggesting an (accessible) list of current watchers, which, in addition to being unavoidably inefficient, would also in my opinion reflect an inappropriate philosophy for the project. rather, in addition to accessible counts of authors, revisions, and a simple total of views, i would like various subsidary counters describing the actual use of links to an article, links from an article, instances of query entry of the article title, and redirects of alternate titles (so we learn which title is actually more in use!)
I wouldn't necessarily care whether these counters are placed in situ or in an appendix, or tab, or box or whatnot. (links to an article, and the counters for their use, would have to be tabulated in an appendix; links from could have a counter in situ). ideally we can even derive some sort of percentage relevance from these counts. (Isn't that exciting?)
More ambitiously, I would like to know what information is proximal in actual usage, rather than nominally by deliberately creating cross-references. I would like the Wikipedia to sample at random what wikis a given user is looking at before and after the current wiki to whatever distance would probably be relevant. This data could be collected for a good sampling of users without much overhead. The results will have high redundancy with cross referencing, but what we'd get out of this automated process are some new cross references that would not necessarily have occurred to us.
L —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.83.173.203 ( talk • contribs) 09:52, 15 April 2009
Not long before Easter 2009, there was a request from a Wikipedian, who was concerned about articles getting deleted, to have some type of "page view" counter. The answer was - one is already there, if one presses "History" at the top of any article. However, it was pointed out that we should use measures other than how many times a page has been viewed as a measure of notability, and I am inclined to agree. After all, if we were to use these page view statistics as our prime measure of an article's notability, Wikipedia would end up being sadly lampooned as an encyclopeadia of popular media culture. Which of these articles do you think had the most views in early 2009 - Paul Tillich, James Joyce, Ludwig Wittgenstein or Amy Winehouse? Yes, I am afraid it is the answer one might fear. More disturbingly still, did you know that the articles on John Lennon and on Star Wars got more views in March 2009 than the article on the Bible? Well, I think this is evidence that what ever use we attach to page view statistics, they should not be used as either the only or the prime index of an article's notability. ACEOREVIVED ( talk) 20:23, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
I agree that giving exclusive or primary importance to a viewing statistic would be an extraordinarily bad idea. I do think there is a place for these numbers in an AfD discussion despite 'page views' being listed as a fallacy in AfD discussions. Of course, one cannot say whether something is notable by referring to page views alone; it is a discrepancy between perceived notability and page views which should prove to be useful when in doubt of notability. There would be nothing wrong with supporting a notability judgement with statistical analysis that predicts how articles in certain categories would be expected to perform, (assuming that existing articles largely pertain to notable instances of that category --if we may thus provisionally reduce the information), compared to the actual performance of the article. (I don't claim to have made such analyses and would hate to try, just to be clear.)
(... also, shame about Wittgenstein; surely the man was unhappy enough to have been just as interesting as Winehouse.)
Irrespectively of relevance to inclusion/deletion debates, applications of query information and views would serve to keep prevalence-sensitive information up to date without any need for sources pertaining to prevalence (esp. of nomenclature; synonyms, metonyms, aliases) --which, *actually*, are quite likely to be inferior to the quantitative data drawn directly from the user base, anyway. (If a poll on the scale in the Wikipedia operates contradicted earlier surveys of prevalence, I would say the earlier surveys were wrong!) E.g., with an extremely simple script & the appropriate database, the most prevalent way of referring to a given subject could always automatically become the title to which all other queries redirect.
The short and skinny of the bigger proposal is that an empirically based, automatically generated proximity map of each wiki in relation to other wikis would be a useful and attainable complement to existing hyperlinks and classificatory elements. The user would be able to look at all 'nearby' wikis whether or not the nearby wikis are 'hard-linked'. It does occur to me that, where the hard links differ from the generated links, the pop culture bias would probably be higher in the latter, but since this scheme would not be intended to replace other ways of framing relationships between wikis, biases, whatever their nature, would actually be desirable. So, how is this different from just using a good search engine cleverly enough? Only in that the contents of the Wikipedia are already selected specifically for expository value.
L
Oh, and one other thought that makes me extremely pleased; if we could classify articles in such a way that their performance (in views/time) may be predicted, we would not merely have an indications that an underperforming article may not have been as notable as we thought, or that a disputed article performs well enough to satisfy skeptics, but also than an *overperforming* article might have been 'gamed'! yay, stats!
Is there any particular reason, technical or otherwise why the move tab has no other tabs at the top, ever other tab does, doesn't make sense for this one not to. I'm guessing this is a bugzilla thing but thought I'd bring it up here first-- Jac16888 Talk 02:52, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
Because my computer isn't working online right now, I'm using my alternate account (meant for use on public computers) instead of my actual one, Nyttend. Each time that I use this account, I have to go to my main account's talk page to see if there are new messages, which I'd like to avoid if possible. Would it be possible somehow to create a system whereby those of us with legitimate multiple accounts could somehow get them "tied" together, so that a message left on one talk page would generate the orange "You have new messages" banner on the other account? Nyttend backup ( talk) 12:44, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
I've realized after installing a wiki for my personal websites - that only I can edit - that some of the 'fun' of wikipedia is to edit stuff even if nobody else contributes. So if some people are so determined to edit and nothing can stop it even everyone else tells them to stop, "why don't you run a wiki" tell them:p -- AaThinker ( talk) 18:06, 17 April 2009 (UTC)