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copied from Talk:Main Page archive, (removed irrelevant tangent)
Further to people's complaints above regarding how it is confusing at first as to which article belongs to the picture; There is a little (pictured) caption in the text so it's not a huge issue but how about somethig like this?.. (Rough mockup, it might look stupid in your browser)
Sounds good to me – it won't make much of a difference to the page, but if people find the current arrangement confusing, it ought to be changed – Gurch12:09, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
Personally, I'd still prefer just putting the pictured news on top. Seems like the easiest solution to me..
Still, I like your suggestion. Two questions though. Can the border on the pic be a bit larger? It took me a while to actually notice it. second, mort importantly, doesnt this makeup get messy once the news item moves more towards the bottom? The Minister of War(Peace)13:40, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
This is just a QaD mockup in wiki:table markup, I imagine that the CSS for the front page could include a special element for the appropriate box somehow. So yes the border can be any thickness (I couldn't work it out in wiki markup though). It would get separated from the picture if it slid down yes. But if it were the only highlighted entry the viewer's eyes would be drawn to it more quickly than the obscured (pictured) tag. --Monotonehell14:41, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
I'd still support some changes to show the link between text and picture more prominently. Is this one of those things that everybody is going to agree on, but gets archived without ever being implemented? The Minister of War(Peace)09:06, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I've been using google as the home page for my browser for years now. However, I've recently switched to using wikipedia instead. I don't know how many other people are doing this.
I am finding lately that for most searches, the links at the end of the articles give me much better results than google.
My guess is that the first thing most people do when arriving at wikipedia is conduct a search.
A more prominent placement of the search box, up near the top and centered, and auto-selected like the search box on google would be great. A larger search textbox would be nice. Making the external links more convenient (side column? closer to top?) would be helpful.
Just some suggestions.
Wikipedia is currently moving away from having a single "External links" section in articles, toward having a "References" (or "References and notes") section and a "Further reading" section. This makes that part of the suggestion a bit difficult technically. A separate social reason that I would argue against such a design is that Wikipedia deals with a tonne of spam links every day and a prominent placement of external links would only encourage vandals and spammers. And, now that I think of it, it would also make our policy that Wikipedia is not a link directory harder to say with a straight face.
We are? I hadn't been informed. IIRC we still keep both further reading and external links; the former is for meatspace stuff, and the latter is for stuff available online. Johnleemk | Talk17:58, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
The change (and I think it's fairly community-driven) was because that distinction was causing all kinds of problems with where people thought references should go when some were "external links" and some were dead-tree references. It's not very well publicised, but you can see the shift in practice reflected at WP:CITE#Further reading/external links. — Saxifrage✎18:35, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
I guess I should have added that reading the wikipedia entry for whatever search term I've entered makes me a more educated surfer before going off to an external link or doing a search via google, etc.
It seems to me that even though "Wikipedia is not many things", for many it is filling the role that the early google did.
For the first couple years, conducting a good factual search at google was easy -- the first page of results wasn't clogged with commercialised links -- it was real, useful, data. I don't know what the future holds for google (they are doing great financially) but to me they are gradually just becoming a glorified advertising engine. This may be hard to believe, but their usefulness might fade over time. What once took me a few clicks on google now requires wading pages deep into the results, carefully constructing queries, etc.
I don't know of any algorithms that are better than a human at sorting good data from junk. So... with that said, it seems to me that working on the search features within Wikipedia could be a good thing. Maybe my post here should have been titled "wikipedia search" ?
Where could I learn more about the roadmap for Wikipedia?
...
..ok, now I've read all the current entries on this page, and I see there is already a discussion about a more prominent location for the search box. If anyone is counting, I vote for top center, just above the "Welcome" and to the right of "your continued donations..."
I find myself doing this as well. Wikipedia is like Google except it organizes the best info from the best google results into one neat, concise page. :) --Matt040115:55, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
Since only a small proportion of picture-lacking articles are listed as requiring pictures, but the category and list for requested pictures are quite large, and additionally it is not generally worth a Wikipedian's time to check either out just in case a local listing has occurred, I have suggested a local (depending on need, by city/region/country) category system for requested pictures. Some comments at Wikipedia talk:Requested pictures#Subcategorizing Category:Wikipedia requested photographs would be appreciated! TheGrappler03:24, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
This may be a good idea. We need to encourage those in the area and who have digital cameras to actually take those pictures and submit them here. Denelson8323:54, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
After seeing a number of articles' references sections use a cite.php tag wrapped in container divs (ie <div style="font-size:90%;"><references/></div>), I was wondering if the .references class in the sitewide css could contain this sizing information instead. If it was changed, it would be a simple task to fire up AWB and convert the existing shrunken references sections to simple <references/> code. ericg✈02:53, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
This has been proposed before. The reason for not doing so is that short reference sections look bad in the small font, while very large reference sections look better in the smaller font. Leaving it out of the CSS allows for appropriate variation. Now, if the trend was to having all reference sections in the 90% size, this would be a good idea. Until then, though, I would oppose this—most of the article I work on have very short reference lists and they really don't need the smaller font. — Saxifrage✎05:44, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm opposed to smaller font's for references alltogether, because they are hard to read. I tried to increase the fontsize on a series of articles, but found no consensus. I'm a bit frustrated, that people who have trouble reading small fonts are treated like this. But however, I see a lot of articles having small fonts for the references. I think it would be better to do it in the sitewide CSS (per ericg). Those that would like to have larger fonts (like me) would then have a chance to override that in their own css file, which is one of the ideas behind CSS altogether. Font sizes for article text (also for the references) should not be specified in articles. I support to move that into the sitewide CSS file per ericg (or monobook.css, maybe this should be decided per skin, but I don't care that much on this subpoint). Font sizes belong into the CSS. As an AWB user I would also help to remove the <div> fontsize tags from references sections. But only if there is consensus to do so. --Ligulem08:16, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
You could override the style if the divs contained a class, such as "small-reference". You could add that to your CSS and add that to pages with small-font reference sections as you find them. It won't affect anyone else, so no-one would have any reason to oppose. — Saxifrage✎08:54, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes, good idea. The difficult part is gaining consensus for "if the divs contained a class, such as "small-reference"". And wouldn't that interfere with the class .references? Would be better if there was just one consistent style for references, I think. But if we can gain consensus for using a small-references class (or whatever name), I'll support that. I believe this is still better than hardcoding 90% into the wikisource for articles where editors want the references in smaller font. At least we could then eliminate the difference between those that use 80%, 85% and 90% (there is absolutely no need to have three or even more "small" reference fonts). We could probably solve the above mentioned two cases with this (articles with long references sections, and articles with short references sections). --Ligulem09:30, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
If it were just put in the div, then it wouldn't interfere. The div would then have a class that people can hang a CSS declaration on (essentially moving the current style="font-size: 90%" into the class' definition) and the #reference id (it's not actually a class) on the ol tag would keep doing its thing.
I don't think that putting such a class definition in the existing divs would need consensus. It wouldn't get in anyone else's way and would offer a way for everyone to see the font size they prefer. If someone doesn't care, they can safely ignore its presence. — Saxifrage✎10:12, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Ok. I'm for adding a new css class "references-small" to MediaWiki:Common.css, it could then be overridden in specific skins when needed. BTW this would also make the transition easy, because if we would hammer in the 90% into .references then we cannot remove the existing div 90% from the articles in light speed. So we would have 90% of 90% for a transition time. With the separate references-small, should we later decide to apply the same style for all references, we can define the class "references-small" to be empty and everything goes smooth. So what name shall we take for that CSS class? At the moment I'm for "references-small". --Ligulem10:33, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm not actually suggesting getting it in the site-wide CSS now, rather adding the class to all the existing divs so that you and others can use personal CSS files (such as User:Ligulem/monobook.css) to scale the references back up. It's not a perfect solution, but it has three advantages: 1) it doesn't require getting anything into common.css (yet!), 2) it doesn't disrupt the pages for people who don't care, and 3) seeing it will pique people's curiosity and promote awareness that a CSS solution in the site-wide files is easy and advantageous. — Saxifrage✎19:35, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Hmm. What's the problem with defining .references-small { font-size:90%; } in common.css? It would still have to be used on articles to have any influence. I mean we could then say <div style="references-small"> <references/> </div> in articles where the small references are requested by editors. On those articles where normal size references are requested, just don't use divs around the <references/>. Fontsizes just don't belong in article text, not even via templates. --Ligulem20:12, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
The problem is that you have to get everyone who's currently doing reference sections like this to support it or it will cause all manner of argument and headache. Not only that, but you'd have to get an admin add it to common.css. Without a good show of support, the likelihood of getting an admin to agree to change common.css is low. The way I suggested is something you can do right now and has 0 potential for controversy. It also would give exposure to the issue as people see "class=references-small" popping up everywhere. — Saxifrage✎07:16, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
The admin thing is no problem. And I believe if there is no class definition for references-small people will just remove that from articles. There is no point in using a CSS class that is only used by some users. Also please have a look at Formatting issues in the MoS which says that font sizes should go into CSS. We already have a whole lot of articles specifying 90% or 85% font size for the references. How much more evidence do you need that a CSS class for small references is needed and justified? --Ligulem07:44, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm not saying it's not justified, I'm saying there's no consensus support to do this yet. Without consensus, going ahead is going to be the same as making a conscious decision to crash and burn this proposal. If you want to go and get the consensus going first, by all means. I only suggested that you could personally get this benefit right now and get some interesting social-engineering effects from it too. For the record, I don't think people would be dickish enough to remove harmless class definitions just because they're not seeing any difference, especially if the edit summary adding them explained why. — Saxifrage✎20:30, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I vote for consistancy. Either all of them are 90% (or whatever), or none of them are. Having some small, others normal, looks bad IMO. —Locke Cole • t • c08:59, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Even having given the rationale for not putting it into the site-wide CSS, I still would prefer it if they were consistent. I'd rather see the references all left a normal font-size. Wikipedia isn't paper and doesn't really need to save the "space" that shrinking the references "saves". — Saxifrage✎09:08, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Assuming that this unification is not going to happen (There will stay articles where wikipedians want small references, and other articles where they want normal size references), couldn't you agree to at least ameliorate the current situation by reflecting that in the CSS (i.e. by supporting the adding of the CSS class "references-small". See also [1] for how that would be done on an article. --Ligulem08:59, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, yes, some sort of standardization is better than none (and by standardization, I support including these in MediaWiki:Common.css and insisting people use small or normal and not some code they created themselves). But I strongly feel we should work towards a single size for all articles. —Locke Cole • t • c09:04, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, I wouldn't do this by css. I think the optional parameter I introduced for {{subst:footnotes}} this morning (default 100%) does what is needed.
For the time being I put {{subst:FootnotesSmall}}, which is to be used without parameter, at a standard 92% size (90% is probably too small in most cases, but can still be achieved by typing {{subst:Footnotes|90%}}) --Francis Schonken12:58, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
The advantage to doing it in CSS is that editors who really don't like the smaller font size (and there appear to be a lot of them, judging by how often I stumble across this ongoing controversy) can override it in their personal CSS pages. That said, if a CSS implementation doesn't get off the ground, that's a nifty template. — Saxifrage✎18:58, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Francis, what do you say per the argument that the MoS favors CSS (see Formatting issues) instead of using font-size in articles? I don't believe that font size for article text should go into templates. Templates cannot be overriden locally like CSS. Please also take a look at [2] for how that would be done on an article. --Ligulem09:13, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't know what would be the most practiced "action" if text is too small to read. My intuition would be that a user who has trouble reading small lettering rather would use the "increase text size" function built in to most browsers, than program private css settings. And the present template reacts perfectly to the "increase text size" functionality of my browser (try it out on Winzip, the footnotes are at 95% there currently).
But I don't think we should be even forcing users to do that. That's why I wrote in the wikipedia:footnotes guideline (and on the {{footnotes}} page in the "noinclude" zone): "For readability it is however only exceptionally advised to reduce lettering size of footnotes, and not below 90%. So in most cases, no need to insert a parameter."
If I still left any doubt, I'm one of those "editors who really don't like the smaller font size", and wholeheartedly subscribe the MoS: "Formatting issues such as font size [...] should not be dealt with in articles except in special cases", where IMHO footnotes are not a "special case". The case is certainly not "special" enough to warrant it to be hard-coded in css. If it would be possible, I'd rather programm the css thus that any attempt at reducing size of footnotes text would be made impossible (just as a "maximum usability" principle). But some editors are bent on reducing size on very long lists of references. I'd rather like to see that limited to 92% than what I put in the guideline based on some prior practice. --Francis Schonken09:45, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree with a lot of things that you wrote. I also would like to have normal size for the references. But there is no consensus to have normal font for the references on each and every article. A lot of featured articles use fontsize 90% for the references. What I do not understand is: why do you oppose to add a new class .references-small { font-size:90%; } to Mediawiki:common.css? This class could be used in the articles instead of
(note that what follows is no more than my personal opinion): allowing the class="references-small" has some disadvantages IMHO:
It is too inviting to standardise footnotes at 90%, while I would prefer standardization at 100%. If breaking away from that standard of 100%, I think it would be best to allow that only under the "exception" inscribed in the MoS ("Formatting issues such as font size [...] should not be dealt with in articles except in special cases"), so the editor who induces the font resizing, should be able to gain consensus for "special case" on a per article base. Not as a standard call to the css. I'd put that as sharp as possible in the wikipedia:footnotes guideline (that is: sharper than I did yesterday, unaware I could have made a reference to the general MoS principles)
The code visible in edit mode (" <div class="references-small"> <references/> </div> ") doesn't even give a clue what the size is, and how to change that size. If an editor reads "font-size:90%" in edit mode, he'd be able (without much of a technical background) to change that size to, say, 95%. A wiki principle is that editing should be easy. You don't need to know that class="..." is a css call, and how css works and/or how it is modified.
The threshold built in to the MoS to do size changes preferably by css, is IMHO also intended to avoid that such changes would be done before gaining consensus by the community. I see there are many eminent proponents of the reduced size. But there are also many who oppose it. I also would think this is something that should be discussed (or at least notified) in the wikipedia:usability project. Presently, anyhow, I don't see consensus (not even "narrow" consensus) to append the css in this sense.
If you're going to change the font size, change it for all of the references, with site-wide CSS. But I don't see any reason why the font size should be changed. — Omegatron10:57, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Would this be a good summary?:
Refer to the MoS ("Formatting issues such as font size [...] should not be dealt with in articles except in special cases") in wikipedia:footnotes;
The only thing I'm not sure about yet is whether I'd remove the "optional parameter" from {{footnotes}} - if that would be experienced as too inviting for font size reducings in individual articles (which I'm personally inclined to believe now), I'd be happy to remove that option from that template. --Francis Schonken11:13, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Possibly I started this heated discussion here by putting 90% in the subst template in the first place. I didn't realise people would feel so strongly and apologise for just going ahead without consulting. I do think 90% size text is highly aesthetically pleaseing in articles though and it seems likely lots of editors think so too. Having two CSS classes "references-small" and "references-standard" would be a compromise to make everybody happy surely... Editors who like 100% can use the 'standard'. What's more if the standard ever needs to include any other style info, it'd already be in place Wikipedia-wide. Donama13:05, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
A way to rate user confidence for each article
I suggest an algorithm be developed which gives an idea of the ratio of viewers of an article to the number of editors over a given period of time. This would show how many eyes have seen an article and what proportion felt it needed changing. A low number of changers to viewers would indicate that it was fairly consensual. A high number would show it to still be in a state of flux. I'm not sure if the measure would be best if it showed the number of individuals concerned regardless of number of edits or viewings or whether repeat activity in either category should be included in some way. The rating could be dispayed in the corner of the page for each article. The algorithm could be constructed so that it ranged from close to zero (low confidence) to almost 1 ( high confidence). Lumos301:02, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
I'd love to have access to such a statistic, but it shouldn't be displayed with the articles-- at least, not at first. That step would require a huge debate and probably the mother of all straw polls, with several versions competing that had all been fine-tuned for some time. Melchoir01:10, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
This would be a very poor indicator imo. There are many factors other than quality involved, eg level of controversy, how many people are capable of contributing, whether it started out as a fairly full article, whether one or two people have ever taken it up and done most of the work of the same result has been achieved by many hands, whether it is a current topic which requires regular updating for new happenings or a historical topic etc, etc.
A hint to get statistics: create a good external page with additional information (however this is only possible for a few articles), add a link to "external links" and watch the site statistics. At least it can give evidence the article is continiously displayed/visited. It requires website programming knowledge. Probably it makes sense to host a "website poll", but from own experience i can say "5 percent do vote" is a good number...don't expect hundreds of votes for a tiny article. alex15:18, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Filmography "hide" feature tables.
Filmography on popular actor pages is usually a big list or missing stuff. I propose we create this format for filmography. It is illustrated in this horrible picture I created Image:Filmography temp illustration proposal.jpg.jpg.
Basically it works like this. First table shows all popular movies the actor was in. The user can press "show all" button and the table expands to show all roles.
The second table features all minor roles and naturally is completely hidden. Once expanded it will show all the minor roles.
Now this will require some coding which I am not aware of how to do but does anyone think this is a good idea? its stylish and space preserving in my opinion. It also allows for more information to be available without clogging up the page. – Tutmøsis(Talk)14:48, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
I was thinking also the filmography can be converted into a template so that it be harder to vandalize for n00bies and on the actual page would only have one sentence under that section yet so much contents. So does anyone know how to make such tables? – Tutmøsis(Talk)00:10, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Also to note its maybe alot of work coding the first tables but after that its only a matter of mostly copying and pasting for other actors. – Tutmøsis(Talk)00:14, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Well what about a slash page (added to entry by "...../roles" ).
It may make sense for some entries.
I am trying to discuss it currently for other purposes (outsourcing information which is not of major interest, but still required for completeness reason). alex15:22, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
recommendation - automatic referencing
i was just using wikipedia and though - hey - Wiki should have a link at the bottom of every page that appears that automatically generates a proper refernce in MLA and APA, to assist those doing scholarly research?
It's not on the bottom; it's in the "toolbox" on the left side of the article. It's called "cite this article", and you'll get a page like this. — Knowledge Seekerদ01:44, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
I'll point out, though, that citing Wikipedia in your scholarly research doesn't currently go over well in academia. You should follow the sources given by the article and cite those instead. (And if the article doesn't give sources, what are you doing trusting it for your research?) rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 02:32, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
Right now, we have page protection, but it only has two settings, "on" and "off", and must be applied manually.
It might be useful to have more options. Not all pages need to be protected, but when a page has been vandalized more than once in a week, some kind of protection should kick in for a while. Maybe levels of protection are needed, like this:
Unprotected - the normal case
Protected against anonymous edit - kicks in after vandalism by an anon, turns off after a few days/weeks.
Protected against edit by named but unverified user - kicks in after vandalism by a logged in but unverified (no verified e-mail address) user, turns off after a few days/weeks.
Protected - as at present, applied manually; only an admin can edit
This would provide some additional options, and cut down on casual vandalism, without giving up the "anyone can edit" goal of Wikipedia. The vandalism-reversion bots would be empowered to turn on the lower levels of protection. Comments?
--John Nagle05:36, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
There is semi-protection already, blocking IP and new users from editing an article. It doesn't turn off automatically, though. I'm not sure whether automatically unprotecting pages is all that useful. Kusma(討論)05:46, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Protected against anonymous edit makes sense, probably just as "reminder" display - people can still edit without logging in, but it is explicitely seen as bad style. alex12:16, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
But it's not automatic. We need more automation in the anti-vandalism area. Too much effort is going into reverts. --John Nagle18:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
How do you automatically detect a vandalism revert as opposed to someone reverting for POV, testing, redundant information, etc.? How is it justifiable to have widespread protection of pages (which this would seem to imply)? I think that would be counterproductive. --W.marsh20:13, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Buttons
Sometimes, the radio buttons don't show up. Is this an issue that has been brought up? Will this be worked on?
I've seen this happen on edit pages (like where I'm typing right now). The alt text shows instead of the graphics, so you see "Horizontal line (use sparingly)" as a button to click on. I think it's related to slow graphics elsewhere in the system, but maybe it's part of the revision of the javascript (see several questions back, where I replied). Ctrl-Alt-R refreshes the javascript cache in Firefox, and fixed it for me.
That's been happening to me for the last two days. I've refreshed everything in sight, including clearing Firefox's entire cache, and I still can't get editing button graphics - just the alt text. Somebody broke something in the last change, I suspect. --John Nagle05:22, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
No, I'm sorry, Dahrtung, that's not where I'm talking about; I'm talking about the history pages.
Hmnn, now that I think of it, a unified search of all projects would be useful, but not on Wikipedia. Why? Because this is the English Wikipedia, and people come here to read/edit encyclopedia articles. Wikipedia is cluttered enough as it is. Btw, get a username.
Oh, your being VERY fair. So to say that littering the ENGLISH wikipedia WITH MY PROPSAL IS crap, & all others aren't? Not to say that even you agree it is a good idea. No, do you want to make Wikipedia better then stop hating on me! Oh, & get a username, how the hell do you have the right to tell me what to do; FYI, I'm not getting a username, cause I coudn't delete once I get it!
Um, when did I ever say that your proposal was crap and all others aren't? I assume you are angry because you thought I meant that, but I really didn't. And besides, I was only suggesting you get a username...I still think you should. That's what I suggest to all anons.
It's possible this user was talking not about languages, but about wiktionary, wikiquote etc. I think it would be useful to integrate searching of these. That way, if there is a wiktionary article on the thing I search for, but not a wp article, I see it, and, am not tempted to create a wp article on it.
That's probably true, but I never told this anon that his/her proposal is crap and everyone else's was better. And in no way was my statement hateful...was it?
Yea, I believe a unified search would be better, I guess since the search WILL be made more powerful [its on the list of things to do for the developers, but @ the bottom], maybe Search could also be changed so that it searches for in ALL of the WIKIPROJECTS. Yes, I did mean IN THE WIKIPROJECTS, NOT WITHIN THE OTHER LANGUAGES, but that might not be as important, cause a word spelled the same in another language usually has nothing to do with the word spelled excatly the same in another language.
Can I propose that Wikipedia features a new section entitled "Media Watch" which details any recent media coverage (whether in newspapers, televisions, radio or through other media) of Wikipedia? On U.K. television this week, on "The Gadget Show" on Channel Five (April 17), Wikipedia was mentioned. A summary of this and other media snippets could summarize and assess such coverage. ACEO08:24, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
A proposal that came out the Main Page Redesign discussions was:
Improve visibility of the left-nav search box, with an orange-colored border (as used on the active tabs at the top).
This would be to aid new users in finding the search box. (a frequent complaint at WP:SEARCH)
this is easily shown by adding this line to one's user/monobook.css.
#searchBody {border-color: #FABD23;}
The proposal was initially offered as an alternative to a second search box that was appearing in the headers of many redesign-drafts. (links to discussion archives: 1 - 2 - 3 (main discussion)4 (vote and three colour examples))
It is possible to code this highlight to only display on chosen pages.
3 questions:
Does anyone disagree with this plan in general?
Which pages should the highlight be displayed on?
just the Main Page
All Help/Community pages (+ Main Page)
All pages.
other.
What color? (we can shade the background or the border)
This is a bad idea. It looks utterly horrendous. It's a horrid mismatch of styles. By all means make the search box more prominent, but this is not the way to do it. It doesn't fit in with the overall site design at all. The colours are not just randomly applied. They are semantic, and this box is not part of the group with the orange borders. I'm all for making Wikipedia easy to browse, but not at the expense of making it ugly to the extent that it's unpleasant to browse. Sam Korn(smoddy)19:35, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
The colour used is changeable. Do you like any of the other colour options, or have one to suggest? --Quiddity
To be honest, I think using colour is not the right way to achieve this. I don't know what is, though I support highlighting it in principle. I think consistent site design is very important and lends a sophisticated, integrated feel to the encyclopaedia, rather than a slip-shod mess of styles. Sam Korn(smoddy)22:57, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
Strong Support. with a very weak preference for on just the Main Page, and orange as on tabs (and in example). --Quiddity19:55, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
I like it too, as long as it is the same shade of orange used on highlighted tabs. Ideally, it should be pushed up, to be above the navigation bar, but I don't know if that will happen anytime soon. Titoxd(?!? - help us)06:36, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
That was another suggestion we talked about during the redesign. The main objection was that the search box breaks up the boxes of test in the nav bar, in a useful way visually.
A third suggestion was retitling the box to be "find" instead of "search", as search is the label of the secondary button, and hence confusing. I think both are worth discussing some more. --Quiddity06:54, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Strong Support moving the search to the top, or setting the border to the orange of the tabs. On all pages. Orange is a highlight, and does not indicate "you are here" (indicated by bold text, and the missing border-bottom on the tab). It is not out of place in the current style. The blue border looks terrible and the yellow background is indistinguishable. Those two options should be removed. The border should be set for all pages. While it may not be perfectly appealing, it is of great benefit to the new user. As for moving the search box, I recall the top right as the correct position, but perhaps not appropriate here. I can't disagree more with the opinion that the search provides a "good seperator" between the two boxes. Moving it to the top makes the leftnav look much more uniform, much less scrambled. A related point I'd like to bring up is the severe error of bolding the "Go" button when it is not the default action of that form.–MT15:05, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Strong Oppose. The argument against a search box in the body of the Main Page was the possibility of the newcomers becoming reliant on it and not seeing the one to the left. By putting that here, you eliminate that. but there was another concern, not brought up as much but still mentioned: "What makes this search box different from all the other search boxes? Will it search off this site and the others won't? Will it bring up things using Google and the other's won't? Why is it highlighted?" And NO, we are NOT highlighting it on all of the pages. People see it. Do you see "Can I search your site for articles?"-type complaints from anons and new users? Please.--HereToHelp22:21, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Frankly, i'm more in favour of raising it above the Nav box in the sidebar, than the highlight. Or just give it a darker-gray/black border instead of the orange.
It does tend to blend in/get ignored more than it needs to, so something needs to be tweaked. Somehow. :) --Quiddity23:53, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
"[S]omething needs to be tweaked". I'm not sure it does. People see it. Like I said above, we are not flooded with "how can I search your site" complaints. I think it needs to stay where it is and divide the two sections of text. A slightly darker grey may also get some people wondering what's special about it, but not much. I'm still opposed to it, but not as much. Getting them to see it subconsciously is interesting, but still not necessary. If it's not broken, don't fix it.--HereToHelp17:11, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
If the search box on only the main page is highlighted, nobody is going to think that it performs some special function that the other searches do not. Suggesting that is ridiculous. As is suggesting that a user can be competent enough to post a question, and yet is unable to spend the few seconds searching. This is clearly targetted towards uncommited users, and towards promoting the use of the search function. Imagine arriving at a site from google, and the page isn't what you were looking for - a prominent search box would prevent you from exiting. Perhaps you're interested in some other subject, but have found no good site yet. It's a very minor change for a minor/moderate gain. Constant users will quickly come to ignore the color, so that isn't an issue. Another point is that the seperation is a problem. When I first arrived, I didn't notice the toolbox at all. The languages box caught my eye, and I assumed that anything below such a prominent seperation was not relevant to me. Amusingly, the first times I uploaded a file, I had to repeatedly use the search box to get to a page that linked me to the correct one. But :moving the box up might be a different proposal. –MT14:24, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
final suggestion
lighter gray borderlighter gray border and at top of hierachy
At first I liked the idea of highlighting the search box with color, but less so as I've tried various options in my monobook.css. This particular shade of gray seems a bit too dark, as it makes the border around the search box seems busy to me with the search being lost in the chaos. I've tried several shades of gray. I found that actually a lighter shade than the present gray made the word "search" and the actual search box stand out a little more to me. Or the status quo is fine with me, or I'm still open to the idea of moving the search box above the navigation box. -Kmf164 (talk | contribs) 14:06, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
I like lighter too, say #searchBody {border-color: #ddd;}
I'm also in full favour of moving the box up to the top. I'll make a final screenshot, and minimize those at the top.--Quiddity23:53, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Parkinson Factor
In reference to Parkinson's Law I propose to periodically calculate the Wikipedia:Parkinson Factors, Page-PF, defined to be the ratio of the number of pages in the "Wikipedia:" space (including talk archive pages) to the number of pages in the article space, Byte-PF, the same in terms of bytes. This would be a gauge of bureaucratization of wikipedia, with its multitudes of policies and guideliness. Not to be confused with Parkinson's Coefficient of Inefficiency).
Individual Parkinson Factrors might be of interest as well.
There have recently been a plethora of complaints about admins abusing their powers, such as indiscriminately blocking users who offend them or are involved in an edit conflict with them. Some of these complaints can be found at User_talk:Jimbo Wales. I have once experienced been repeatedly blocked for no reason by a rogue admin, which forced me to temporarily leave Wikipedia.
A possible reason could be because it is relatively easy to become an admin in Wikipedia, so many new admins make mistakes, or deliberately abuse their powers.
I suggest Wikipedia have multiple levels of adminship, and different levels of admins have different types of admin rights. In some online groups services, for example, one level can only moderate posts, one level can moderate posts and ban members, and one level can do both and change group settings as well. Could we implement something like this for Wikipedia?
Once an admin at a certain level has proven to be trustworthy, capable, consistent and commited, he can be promoted to a higher level. However, this might require an approval vote by multiple (e.g. 5) members of a HIGHER level, to prevent abuse. This allows admins to gradually gain trust, and be "put on probation" with the powers they already have before gaining new powers. If the admin receives complaints from users, he risks being demoted or stripped of his admin powers.
I would support having admin-light (or whatever name you like) that cannot delete/undelete nor block. Only protect/unprotect and edit protected pages. This would be great for template maintainers like me which often stumble upon protected pages which have a template call that needs to be changed due to a change in a template. Or editing protected templates which were protected because of their high usage. This would be a more technical admin. --Ligulem18:54, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
This kind of "admin level" thing gets suggested from time to time, here and on WT:RFA and elsewhere, and I used to support something like it. But it's ultimately instruction creep, I think... especially as you have a ton of levels, different voting procedures for every one, all kinds of pages, etc. I do think a "trusted user" level could be nice... able to view deleted pages, use rollback, and issue blocks for simple vandalism, for example. It could be bestowed and taken away by beaurocrats at will. But ultimately to get the ball rolling on this, see Wikipedia:How to create policy, it's going to take a whole lot to effect a change on this issue, I'm afraid. --W.marsh20:18, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
You don't need tons of levels. Three to five are enough. All can use similar voting systems. For example, if there are 5 levels, 1-5, 5 being highest, and you are at level X (it can be 0, for non-admin), and want to be promoted to level X+1, you need N (say, 5) admins of level X+1 to approve you before you officially become an admin of level X+1. --J.L.W.S. The Special One04:02, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Two levels would be enough. Admin, as we have today, and admin-light. No new voting system. Each candidate states in her/his acceptance of the nomination whether she/he applies for admin or admin-light. Admin is the default. Admin-light is no prerequisite for admin. Of course an admin-light could later apply for admin. Admin-light rights would comprise the admin set without blocking/unblocking and without delete/undelete. That's it. No new bureaucracy. No new procedures. No new voting system. RfA remains as it is. --Ligulem13:59, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
general discussion forums
I think it would be nice if we had general (off-topic) discussion forums that are not related to Wikipedia. The forums that I am suggesting are meant as a fun factor. I understand that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not an online chatting site, but adding these forums may encourage potential contributors to stay.
Possible forums include:
The Lobby - for new users to introduce themselves and ask questions
The Study Lounge - for users to discuss academic topics
The Debating Room - open for civil debates, as the name implies
The Cafeteria - for discussion on current events
Writers' Club - for Wikipedians to share their literary works - songs, fiction, etc.
The Recreation Room - for general chatting (users can vent about their frustration at work or post pictures of their new car, etc.)
"The Lobby" may be useful. We already have a "Study lounge" of sorts in the categorical Q&A project pages. I don't know about the rest, that may be better on seperate forum. Certainly, it is a way to get this particular community together.Voice-of-AllT|@|ESP07:27, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
I was involved for a while in a support program in which all off-topic discussions were confined to a "community chat forum". It was very popular and a lot of fun. It was also constrained in certain ways: no vulgarity, no personal attacks, no political or religious discussions. There was a moderator, assisted by sysops from the support program, and offending comments were summarily removed. -- Donald Albury(Talk)11:26, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
I was wondering around the italian wikipedia, and they had a bar over there. And we think the english wikipedia is advanced.--Rayc15:15, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Cite Assistant
Wikipedia would be a much better encyclopedia if more people referenced their contributions. But referencing is not that easy. Many people who can make valuable contributions may not be willing or able to come to grips with referencing.
Recently I started putting references into my own contributions. I can remember the syntax now, but I still sometimes make errors that break the reference, or even the page. I found referencing to be so painstakingly pedantic that I took time out to write a quick and dirty VB.Net program to help me with web references. It allows form based reference building and copies the result to the clipboard ready to be pasted into the Wikipedia editor. I've put a copy of the executable, wikicite.exe on my website. I only have a 128k link so I'll have to take it down if the whole world comes knocking.
A much better solution to the referencing problem would be for Wikipedia to make a Cite Assistant available within the editor as a javascript popup form. That way validation checks could be performed on cites before they made it into the page and even novice editors would be able to include references with confidence.
I believe such a Cite Assistant would be a valuable addition to Wikipedia.
It seems like there's a LOT of Vandalism GOing Onn. Well, we could require all changes made to be made from a logged on Useraccount. Depending on the vandalism though, I acually don't know what the vandalism is like,[since they haven't instituted the option to delete your account, made their own licence, or the GNUL hasn't changed yet, I haven't signed up], but it must be made clear User Accounts have the option to be deleted, & after a certain period of time, they should be deleted; somepoeples personalities are like that they like to have things open ((open ended/no closure)).
Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals). You should have looked at it the last time I mentioned it to you. Also, why do you constantly repeat "your" email address and that screed about why you won't sign up? We saw it the first few times, we don't need to be reminded of it every time you make a comment, unless you're just trying to make some point.
I checked Perennial Proposals, but the thing thats' not there is the ability for the user accounts to be come deleted after a period of time, & the option to delete an account. 1 reason people do not sign up for an account is because a name they want has been taken. Another reason is because they want closure; if the person decides they no longer want to be associated with Wikimedia, they have no way to achieve that.
Wikipedia works the way it does because the entire history of the project is visible in the database. Being able to delete accounts would interfere with the ability of editors to see who did what to an article.
When you sign up for an account to any project, & any language division, you must set up a username & password. That's what we sould be allowed to delete.
You can change your username and password afterwards to something anonymous (by WP:CHU). Otherwise, I don't really see what you expect account deletion to give. Deletion of all contributions?
Well no, I think that deleting your username, allows people who want your username to not go thru so much red tape. Also, I was I was given the choice, I wouldn't mind people taking credit for my work; here's an idea, you could make policy a page where you must click accept, in order to delete your account, so that it because legal or whatever, that the deleter abides by those rules, maybe namely to reliquinsh all rights to credit for any work done on any part or parts Wikimedia projects, Language Divisions, &/or Wikimedia itself.
I don't see the importance of having EVERY changed documented. Besides, accounts that are deleted does not affect the change history, & accounts that have been inactive for to long also makes no impact to the change history of wikimedia.
You show a fundamental lack of understanding of how the database and code works. Of course every change matters: how do you think articles are stored? The article you read is not stored as it appears, only changes to the original are stored. Take away changes in the past and you break Wikipedia. Similarly, take away accounts and you lose vital pieces of the database.
There's also no advantage to your suggestion: it won't save on usernames, because it would be chaos to allow new users to take a name that used to belong to someone else.
Also, stop saying "please reply". I realise English is not your first language, but it's rude. "Please" is not always polite in English, especially when it is part of an command given to someone who is not your subordinate.
That didn't make sense the last sentence you had. Are you insulting me? Isn't there a way to have a an article so that the changes would be saved as the sole article? Like in Word, when you make changes to a file, the changes are stored ON THE ORIGINAL FILE, so there arn't 17 files if you make 17 Saves, & not like 1 big original file, & 16 small changes? Are the developers working on that?
I suspect you must be the same person as the other IP addess. Your suggestion that all changes be saved in one "file" shows even greater fundamental misunderstandings of the way the software works than you did before. There is no "original file": it's all saved in a database, and each change is saved individually. If it weren't, there would be no history for you to look at and want to see three different versions of (as below). Since every change needs to be saved, saving everything in "one file" would take up enormous amoungs of storage. Do you remember how you suggested that all the extra spaces be taken out so that articles take up less storage?
Now, you haven't the slightest understanding of the things you talk about, you seem to have little to no experience with the way Wikipedia works either technically or as a piece of software, and you refuse to get a user account to make it easier to communicate. In sum, you annoy and bore more. Go away.
You see, I actually appreciated that last reply. You actually taught me somthing, though you have definiatly some social personality problem. Well then I proprose that Wikipedia not be stored on a database, but as documents. Refering to 'Extra Space', I take that those ideas back. Actually, its not hard to communicate; you seem to lack an understanding of the internet. Recently, gadfium sent me a personal message, you could send me a message!?
Banning all anonymous editors isn't really the way to go. Anonymous contributors are like the little gnomes that walk around and make fixes all over the place. Without them, Wikipedia wouldn't be what it is today. —THIS IS MESSEDOCKER(TALK)18:57, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
WikiProject Drafts
There are many editors on Wikipedia who know an article they'd love to reorganize, wikify, expand, et cetera, but don't have the time to, due to work, school, family, or other reasons. I know that I've drafted an expansion of Shade's Childrenhere but can never post it because it is so unfinished. I know that since there are a lot of terminal stubs in Category:Old Kingdom series, Abhorsen327 has started her own draft to merge them, posting the merge suggestion on each page - see the work so far. My suggestion is thus a wikiproject to unite these sporadic edits which, without help and without the level of completion to post on the actual page without guilty twinges, will take a long time to reach completion and posting - the project could also "adopt" stubs for expansion. By the way I'm not entirely sure about this idea, so please constructively criticize if you have ideas or suggestions. Nihiltres03:25, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
Marvelous idea! We could have /Article name, which would accompany all the different drafts (say, /Article name/John's draft and /Article name/Jane's draft). Then when a rewrite of the article is being drafted, we could link to it from the main article's talk page! I cannot emphesize enough what great of an idea this is! —THIS IS MESSEDOCKER(TALK)18:52, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't see this mentioned anywhere else, but maybe it's just because I don't know exactly how to describe it. I always see a little text box pop up when I mouse over links in articles. It is usually exactly the same text as the link. A lot of the time, I wish this contained a short definition or description of what is contained in the article that is being linked. That way, if I didn't know what something was, I could just mouse over it for a quick definition and then continue reading the article I went to in the first place. Netflix does an incredible job of this. When you mouse over a movie title, you get a summary and a picture of the movie packageing. I'm not even sure if this could be implemented on wikipedia, and it wouldn't have to be anything complicated, but it would be very nice.
I suggest that users ought to have the option to enter a message to be displayed to other users emailing them, for example Please have the subject line as Wikipedia10 for my spam filter. Any opinions?--Keycard(talk)08:08, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
If somebody emails you by clicking on the "email user" link on your User or Talk pages, the default header is "Wikipedia email". User:Zoe|(talk)22:27, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
and the other's are from 0.0.0.0 - 0.255.255.255 -> now it includes 100% of vandalism, and we can ban the entire range. please excuse if this sentence is grammatically incorrect/figures a language abuse alex12:13, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
But people will just go to the ISPs with IPs like 301.341.287.1023 and then we would have to block an even larger range!!! r3m0ttalk20:44, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
It means to add a sub-page to an entry.
In example i would like to "outsource" the information about "discriminatory usage of watermelon imagery" within the watermelon article.
For the reason (I believe this) the majority of people does not seek "neagtive information/communications".
It would be included by "discriminatory usage of watermelon imagery",
which links to watermelon/discrimination.
There seems to be various occurance of such usage, but most of it connnected to north american racism.
Your ideas/do you agree/how can it be done?
I have already performed it for an explicit illustration (within another article).
I have seen "need for action", because the illustration is illegal to display in certain countries.
It is still possible to access it, but people do not need to see it all of the time.
Is it possible to understand the idea/concept of "slash page", any idea for a better indentifier (the name for this sort of pages)?
I'm not quite clear on what you are proposing. As for your last question, they're called "subpages", but no longer work in the main article space, i.e. watermelon/subpage is a free-standing article that happens to have a slash in the title, not a subpage of watermelon. Note that this won't keep it from being displayed where it is "illegal", since clicking "Random Page" will still deliver them to readers randomly. — Saxifrage✎20:26, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Well i am basically asking if it is accepted most likely (if i believe the majority of people does not seek a specific information, but it is required for completeness sake).
Important, i do not wish to prevent anything from being displayed, just to add a sub-layer to skip around explicit information.
Then, it requires an additional action of will to display the information.
Probably it is useful to apply/rewrite articles generally (if they contain cruel/illegal illustration, information on racism and hate, etc.)
It is absolutely not about omitting any information, just the way how it is displayed. alex12:10, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not censored, so I don't think the idea of adding extra layers to prevent information from being displayed will be accepted by anyone. This is currently done for some pornographic images, but this is reserved for the very small number that are uncontestedly pornographic, not for things that people "might" find objectionable. — Saxifrage✎19:27, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
I just do not know if it is acceptable to put information into a slash page (which is linked clearly visible):
-If the article gets shorter and better readable.
-If negative information is not longer scrolled by default.
And how about to add statistics tables (i.e. south american countries) but not to the article itself (it would expand too much). Such tables are not original research, but applying a static method (addition/division, standard degression). It is also possible to put them into an external site (they do not take much bandwidth). I do not (yet) need to do it, just asking in general. The watermelon article has improved on its own, i checked it today. The proposal itself is that such pages are not counted as articles on their own (however it wont bug very much if they are). alex08:38, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Well i can live with this method. However such articles are hard to find (by search) sometimes.
Hence it is required to include a link into the basic article...i am just thinking in MSDOS directory structures. It takes additional thought to understand "wikipedia is not a MSDOS directory tree" alex09:04, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Parentheses are only used to disambiguate subjects, such as to tell the difference between Spore and the game Spore (game), not to separate different sub-topics of a subject. — Saxifrage✎09:37, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
WP:PP
I have a protection script[4] that takes out all the slow, tedious paperwork of listing on WP:PP for every single (un)protect. Is there a way to have something like this enabled if people check it in there preferences or something? The list at WP:PP often gets VERY out of date and I think the problem is that people just don't feel like updating it since we already have the category.Voice-of-AllT|@|ESP22:46, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Auh...I am for the list. That is why I made the script. The script does the paperwork for you, and part of it asks "enter an explanation". People don't bother to update, so I made this script that automatically delists whatever they unprotect and vise versa (when the use the script's protection tabs).Voice-of-AllT|@|ESP06:16, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
As someone who uses VOA's wonderful script, I highly recommend it for, well, every admin really. But particularly those who involve themselves regularly with RFP. · Katefan0(scribble)/poll06:26, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. I think that it works quite well. The only bug that lingered was the mis-parsing of special characters like accented letters, which was fixed on the 22nd (yesterday). It almost always finds and delist articles, and it works best when more people use it, since it can always recognize and delist what it lists, where as people sometimes use the wrong template/no template/redirects to the actual articles, which may cause it to be unable to find the article. The only thing to work on know is to trim the size, which I can do by having more general variable that switch to the constant ones, so that I can have one or two command blocks for each function.Voice-of-AllT|@|ESP06:31, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm currently printing several wikipedia Articles for offline reading, then it ocurred me that Wikipedia could make that a little easier/better!
I mean, creating some sort of button, or tab, in which you could get the article specially formated for your specific use. One of those uses could be printing(without edits, links, etc), or exporting it in a PDF, or in a html page(without the online-only content), if you could download the PDF, you could also use such articles offline in a very neat way! For instance, to go inside a CD (or for the old fashioned, inside a floppy) or maybe even portable devices, such as iPods, mobiles and PDAs!
Finally, exporting formats could include:
txt
pdf
Image
iPod
PDA-specific
mobiles
printing
OS-specific
.doc
and much much more.
And that's it for my Idea.. :)
There is a link in the Toolbox just below the Search box that reads "Printable version". This strips out the navigation bars, all the links, and other online-only stuff. I don't know what kind of browser you're using, but a number now include the ability to print to PostScript or directly to PDF. It's a good idea, but I think this kind of thing is best supported by documenting what can be done on the user's side to make it happen, since processing document formats would be very heavy on the servers that are already heavily loaded with just handling normal Wikipedia daily operations. — Saxifrage✎20:22, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Well in that case ignore this post, and feel free to delete it! (I'm stupid for not ever looking in the side bar) Leo Luigi21:56, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
That happens! :-) It's such a small part of the interface that its easy to miss features of it, especially when they're just newly added. — Saxifrage✎22:44, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Current and upcoming television
There is a lot of discussion going on about what to do with current and upcoming television content, mostly on how and if that content should be marked and in what way. See TfD's: here and here. Though some things (keep {{future tvshow}}) are very clear, other things especially concerning keeping track of currently running tvshows, and marking information about "yet to be aired" TV episodes is still completely lacking concensus. WP:TV has openend a more general discussion and we would like to see more input from people concerned about Temporal and fandom issues in Wikipedia, and people interested in TV subjects. Please join us there. - The DJ15:10, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Wiki-World-Projects : Tracking those TASKS changing our world.
Hello Jimmy Wales and great wikiminds !
I enjoy Wikipedia, and I have enjoyed seeing the role it plays in people's lives. For example, I have met medical doctors in training and during internships who claim they turn to the Wikipedia for easy to understand and absorb information in chemisty and other tough to understand topics.
I have worked in project management, and I rather wish the world came with a project plan. For example, let's go back in time and imagine the English Chunnel is in the development phase. Wouldn't it be fascinating to know at all times when the work was scheduled to begin and when the first passengers where scheduled to be conveyed? And at all times to have a reliable percentage of completion and know what resources were currently being engaged? This would make the tracking of change in the world so much more practical; it would also make adjusting to those changes somewhat more convenient. Today, I have to monitor all kinds of news sources only to get very rudimentary information, most of it drawn from press releases, a spinnable source of information.
Quite simply, anyone could declare a project, establish tasks with the following information: TASK-KEY, TITLE, EXPECTED START DATE, EXPECTED END DATE, RESOURCES ASSIGNED. More, it would be great if a reader could access contact information or links to a Wikipedia article. The TASK-KEY would probably be generated by the software, and it would allow users to sort, select and analyze events in a meaningfull way. Metadata, as in country code, could help the users in analysis, too.
Once a project and its tasks are set, the updates would be posted by all those who know what is taking place. Official sources would only have a slightly greater advantage to updating the task than people who observe the task progress. Sometimes the guy on the ground knows more about a bridge project than the bridge building authority is willing to post.
To a certain extent, volunteer project managers donating their expertise will want to populate a past project history going as far back as verfiable human history allows.
This sounds like a very interesting project, but it's far, far beyond the scope of Wikipedia as a project to build an encyclopedia. — Saxifrage✎23:23, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
There is a method whereby a blocked user can edit only their own user and user talk pages. Is it possible for a siimilar fix to be put in so that a user can have deletion ability on their own user and user talk page, and any subpage of them? As things stand, if someone wants to delete one of their user pages, they have to ask an admin. It might be very useful if all users had this very limited deletion faculty just for their own user space. Possible? And if so, good idea or not? Grutness...wha?01:38, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't like that idea. For the userpage ok, but not for the talk. It would be too easy to permanently remove unfavorable comments or vandalism/3rr/personal attack/etc warnings that way. Garion96(talk)02:00, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
It's my understanding that even administrators should not delete their own user / talk pages, but should ask another admin to do it for them.-gadfium02:11, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Agree with above. Users definitely should not have the ability to delete their talk pages. User pages perhaps, but I would prefer that all users, including administrators, ask another to delete their user pages if they so desire. User subpages are fine to be deleted. — Knowledge Seekerদ06:14, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Good point. Yeah, this isn't a good idea. Besides, there are already admins a-plenty doing speedies and prods, so the deletion requests are currently not actually any real additional hassle. — Saxifrage✎08:38, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
I've lately been seeing more and more vanity pages which seem to survive or at least throw significant wikilawyering challenges to their deletion noms because oftentimes the criteria here are vague enough to allow for certain people who are not truly notable to assert themselves as such.
The problem, as I see it, is that you can't really have a notability criterion for people anymore than you can have one for things, ideas, etc. It's simply too broad to make definitive judgments across the spectrum. And what seems to be arising which I like and find more useful are things like WP:CORP and WP:MUSIC, which are designed specifically to deal with a particular subset of article subjects and are thus more "fine-grained" assessments.
As the WP:MUSIC criteria were written, IIRC, by the WikiProject for that category of articles (I don't know if WP:CORP was), I'd like to advocate that as a possible initiative that could be used towards the creation of more category-specific notability criteria. There are many WikiProjects which cover categories which are neither too broad nor too specific which could likely contribute in this manner. I cite the broad/specific axis because while a topic too broad will generate the same problems I'm citing with the (people) requirements, one too specific would be more likely to be overly inclusive (think fancruft).
There will of course always be subjects which do not clearly fit into these more specific assessments, which means we should not scrap what we already have. However, I don't see how bringing some of the categories of topics into a more finely-grained notability policy tailored for that type of article can possibly hurt if implemented well.
Does this seem a useful idea - encouraging some (but not all) of the WikiProjects to start developing their own notability criteria for their subjects and then bringing the proposals here for community-wide critique and adoption? Girolamo Savonarola19:35, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
I'ld actually like us to get less category specific. WP:CORP is great because it doesn't give special rules to different categories of corporation. There's no special criteria for manufactures, or auto-sellers, or oil producers, or whatever. It's mainly about the level of coverage in independent reliable sources. We should take WP:BIO in that direction, instead of the current per-profession/industry system of rules. For instance, WP:BIO says architects should "become a part of the enduring historical record of that field". Yet, an athlete merely has to compete at a certain level. So, having even more category specific rules, would only add to the unfairness. --Rob20:07, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Let me clarify that I agree that it shouldn't be too specific. But it seems that larger somewhat-specific categories of people should be able to have more efficient notability guidelines when they only have to account for that large category. I.e., there doesn't need to be lots of generic, ambiguous wording as to what makes a person notable, because the guideline wouldn't apply to every single person in every field or category. WP:MUSIC is a good example of what counts as notable work in a whole field of the arts. Certainly similar things could be done for equally large but defined groups such as literature, film, sports, etc? Girolamo Savonarola20:19, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Please. No. More. Rulecruft. Existing policies deal with this in excruciating detail. More vague, POV pseudo-policy is counterproductive instructioncreep. For great justice.22:04, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Making a common mistakes page
I just looked at the welcome template (Template:Welcome) and noticed that none of the links in it have a 'common mistakes to avoid' page. I have also been unable to find any such page on Wikipedia. So I think we should create one. I would just go ahead and do it myself, but only have a few common mistakes in mind. They are:
Linking individual years just for the sake of it, like: In 1996, Netanyahu became the PM of Israel. Many new users look at existing articles which have this and continue the trend.
Capitalizing all words in a title - this is proper English grammar, but contrary to Wikipedia policy. Many new users don't know this.
Moving articles, especially on non-Engilsh subjects, without checking discussion first - we have naming conventions for just about everything, but most new users don't know this and change around transliterations and stuff. This is often harmful.
I think a common mistakes page will make new users edit properly much more easily than having them read the entire contents of Wikipedia:Help (almost no one will do this). Can anyone come up with more common mistakes and formulate them? I suggest the title Wikipedia:Common mistakes to avoid. The shortcut will be WP:CMA (WP:CM is taken, but we can add a disambig link on that page).
The MOS seems to think that years should not be linked unless it's necessary for understanding the topic. I know it's a guideline and not a policy, but it guides regular Wikipedians, plus there's no good reason to just link years for the sake of it. Aside from that, do you have any suggestions for my proposal? -- Ynhockey(Talk)20:24, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
I think this is a good idea. I don't see that there's currently a lot of enthusiasm for it, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't go ahead and start it rolling. If it's good and useful, it will get popular. I would suggest starting it in your user space until you've got a good layout and basic list of mistakes, while advertising it and developing others' interest in it and getting them to help expand and polish it. Then you can move it to Wikipedia: space with the support of enough people that it won't seem like it's a new, unpolished instruction page out of the blue. — Saxifrage✎10:25, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
recruiting editors is a task apart from just publicity; while the two are related (readers become editors), editors are more useful to the project.
This kind of stuff fits well in a WikiProject, whereas I'm not sure of the exact purpose of the page Wikipedia:Building Wikipedia membership - it seems like a project!
Are you saying a project should be instated to encourage readers with accounts to become more active editors, or are you saying that a project should be started to increase the number of accounts on Wikipedia? --Osbus23:51, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Mostly, encounraging people to edit, whether they have accounts or not is secondary. Barging into forums and universities saying "Hey! You people know stuff about a topic that's not very well explored on Wikipedia! WE NEED YOU!" Flammifer02:46, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Whose pronunciation would you use? British? American? American Southern? American Northeastern? American Northwestern? Northern Irish? Republican Irish? Scouse? Welsh? User:Zoe|(talk)05:20, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
why not have all edits on all pages on wikipedia more secure
you can add a edit, but it gets put into a queue
and then a few people have to accept it for it to go through into the page
it would be slower, but make wikipedia more accurate
of course, you can remove things from the queue if its junk
Controversial edits would take forever to get through. Obscure edits might take forever too, because people wouldn't know if it was true or not. I would stop editing if my edit had to wait in a queue. Donama13:08, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
It would greatly increase the difficulty to do things/to do anything.
It is possible to make suggestions on the "discussion" page, and just to do it, if no one disagrees.
However, creators/editors can add this to a (new) entry: "please log in/create an account before editing this article" (as polite suggestion). alex15:10, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
What's great about Wikipedia is that new information can get passed into an article right away. If we forced a queue, then it would take longer for information to get in. Overall, we're better off allowing direct editing and revert vandalism when appropriate. —THIS IS MESSEDOCKER(TALK)18:37, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Good idea in principle, but hopeless in practice. You'd have to have hundreds, maybe thousands, of people signed up to checking edits before this could work. - Runcorn22:18, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
More encouragement for 'Show preview' button
Mainly aimed at newer users.
I think more encouragement should be given to use the 'Show preview' button when a page has been changed. Perhaps a bold sentence like Please use the Show preview button until you are happy with your changes could be inserted above the three buttons. This should reduce the number of changes that need to be recorded. MikesPlant19:07, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Just as we have the preferences option to "Show preview on first edit", could we add a default of the "Show preview" button being bold on first edit? (instead of the "Save page" button) --Quiddity20:16, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I would go so far as to hide the Save page button until after the user has clicked the Show preview button. This would be in effect for all unregistered editors.--Hooperbloob20:31, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
No, I'm opposed to this. This would add confusion and needless complexity to the process, and could even discourage some users (like me) from making minor (i.e. inter-wiki link fixes, sp., etc) but helpful edits. 209.236.231.25304:00, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
209.236.231.253: "No, I'm opposed to this" - this appears to be against hiding the save button - what about the original idea? p.s. why not register? MikesPlant07:20, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
I think it would be more pointless instruction creep. For example, if someone is editing the 'internet' article (I'm picking that because it's a long article I'm aware of), who here actually thinks they will scroll down to the part they edited, and then read the entire paragraph to make sure they spelled that single word edit correctly? More likely they'll either
a) Click preview and then immediately click save (or write a javascript to do both for them)
b) Not make the edit in the first place, which would be detrimental to wikipedia.
Does the lack of previewing even cause that much of a problem? I mean any badly-formatted etc. edits can simply be fixed, it isn't hard. Cynical07:31, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes it does. New and anonymous editors typically make several edits in a row when one change would have sufficed if they would only preview the change first. Often it is a formatting issue, but it is also often just that they are making incremental changes to the article. The most common message left on user talk pages in response to this is "please use the preview button". The instruction is already getting out there, only reactively instead of proactively, and so it's not really instruction creep. — Saxifrage✎20:09, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
Mike: I have no objection to the original proposal; merely to the hiding of the save button. I don't really think it would have that much impact, but I'm not opposed to it per se. By the way, the text bolding does not appear in certain browsers—Safari, for one (and there are probably others). And, regarding registration: I really don't contribute enough to make registering worthwhile. 209.236.231.25321:59, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
Hm, I think one edit would be enough for registering, it is extremely easy. Regarding the proposal: it happens too often that I accidentally press save on a wikipedia article without thinking, a habit from pc where I press save nearly after every word. I wouldn't mind if the save button were hidden away a bit. I also wouldn't mind if it would not be there at all and for example appear under the preview or list of changes, with an "are you sure" message. Piet13:02, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, i'm more in favour of my suggestion than yours (have the "Show preview" button be bold on first edit, or even permanently) (because there is already a lot of text down there). But either way (or both), i'd guess the next step is take it to VPtechnical to find someone to implement it? --Quiddity17:53, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
I'd like the categories with the rest of the article in preview mode, not stuck down at the bottom of the page. - Runcorn22:16, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Notability is not inheritable
I propose that notability is not inheritable. That is, given a notable subject A and some subject B that is important to A, it does not automatically follow that B is notable. This is a matter of scope and context. The scope of Wikipedia is general; our context the universe of human experience.
For example, Star Trek is a notable television series. It has spawned sequels, books, and films; it's had a significant influence on other works of fiction and art. A fan campaign led to NASA's christening of the prototype Space ShuttleEnterprise.
The Enterprise is a notable, though fictional spacecraft, if only for the same reason noted above. It's also notable for the level of realism and detail found in its design; earlier fictional spacecraft (eg) tended to be laughably primitive and unrealistic. But the Enterprise is less notable than Star Trek. It is central to that world, but not to ours.
The bridge turbolift or elevator is doubtless essential to the crewmen of the Enterprise; it's worth at least one thick technical manual and may even be the subject of many water-cooler or coffee-pot jokes. ("So Sgt. X and Lt. Y got stuck in the turbolift...") But it is not notable enough for Wikipedia to devote an article to it; it does not even require elaboration for its own sake in any article.
Wikipedia is a general reference encyclopedia, notan indiscriminate collection of information. This policy is being violated repeatedly by the inclusion of material that is only notable within its own context. I propose that this end; that we regard a subject as notable only on its own merits and not on its relationship to other subjects. I incline here to the liberal and would merge much into parent articles; but endless proliferation of trivia adds no value to the project.
There are more than enough relevant guidelines already. People use the term "indiscriminate collection of information" whenever they feel that well organised information is not notable enough. It adds nothing to the debate. Wikipedia has redefined the level of detail appropriate in a general encyclopedia because it is not paper. It is too late to try to cull articles down to the minimalist Britannica quantity. Choalbaton05:23, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
I think that on the contrary, articles of this sort a great deal of value to the project. Wikipedia is exceedingly useful as a clearinghouse for this sort of niche information -- stuff that a normal encyclopedia wouldn't find it profitable to cover, but nevertheless interests a substantial number of people. Wikipedia is one of the top google returns for "turbolift;" I'd imagine that our article on it is read and appreciated by people every day. Christopher Parham(talk)06:39, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
I need more information. Are you claiming that turbolift is truly notable in and of itself? If Star Trek never existed but Enterprise somehow did, the latter might still be notable. Do you say if neither of these existed then turbolift might, in some way, be notable anyway? Or are you arguing against notability entirely as a guideline for inclusion? In which case is there anything too trivial to warrant an article? (See Prince Charles' left big toenail clipping from April 17th, 1973) Please explain your position. John Reid12:44, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
I can't say that I'm interested in getting into a debate on its notability at this point. I'm only claiming what seems to me almost certain -- that hundreds or thousands of people have found the article useful. So if we measure value by our usefulness to readers, then the statement that it "adds no value to the project" seems transparently false. Which is not necessarily to say that we should keep the article; but the fact that it is useful to readers seems like a pretty good argument for doing so. Christopher Parham(talk)18:49, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
This comes down to the question: What should Wikipedia be? I say it should be a collection of fact. Fact about a fictional subject is fine. You think readers should be able to come here to read a story, to consume fiction itself. I don't, that's all. John Reid09:44, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm not entirely clear on your stance. You indicate that the turbolift topic "does not even require elaboration for its own sake in any article." Do you mean that the page's content shouldn't be in the encyclopedia?
I just read the article in question. It was informative, and I see no reason why this fictional device featured in numerous popular television series and cinematic films should not be covered here.
If you only meant that the subject is unworthy of a dedicated article, where do you propose the information be merged, and how would the resultant redirect improve the encyclopedia (compared to the status quo)? —David Levy14:33, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
I gained factual information about a fictional device featured in numerous popular television series and cinematic films. —David Levy11:33, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
You're speaking in generalities. Can you be specific?
Forgive me if my challenge is provocative; but this is the axle upon which my argument turns. If the article includes some statements of real fact, it may just perhaps pass into notability. Please give one or two specific examples. John Reid07:47, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Just because Scotty stood on the bridge in Episode 27 and shouted "We can make Warp 9 Cappin!" does not make that a fact. The Enterprise is a fictional vessel; it does not exist at all in reality and has no factual top speed. Insofar as there are models of the Enterprise they are bound by Einstein's awful speed limit and can't go anywhere near Warp 9, whatever that might be.
The Enterprise, fictional as it is, has an existence that protrudes slightly into reality. On this shaky ground I permit it an article filled with fictional details. I'm extremely liberal in this regard.
But there is no such thing as a turbolift; only a series of movie and television sets, kits made of cardboard and plastic. None of these move at all; they stay in one place relative to the surface of the Earth and simulate motion with whooshing sounds and flickering lights. From time to time an actor might lurch to one side. Although there may just barely be some particular, verifiable fact that could be dug up about a turbolift, I have not seen one. John Reid09:44, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
What do you mean? The article is full of them. That turbolifts don't actually exist doesn't change the fact that these fictitious details do. I'm only a casual "Star Trek" viewer, but I would say that this particular fictional device is sufficiently notable (along with several others that come to mind, such as phasers, tricorders, replicators and holodecks).
You didn't answer my questions. You've indicated that the article's content should not be deleted, but you haven't specified what should be done with it. Should it remain in the encyclopedia? If so, where? If not, why? —David Levy11:33, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Of course fictitious details exist; but they are fictitious, therefore not fact. The two terms are contradictory. Only facts can be verified; fiction can only be copied or retold.
I disagree that all these topics should be lumped together. Phasers are notable, if only barely; they should at least be discussed as a member of the set of fictional ray guns; these have made a lasting impression on the public conciousness. Tricorders are just on the borderline, being part of the ongoing water-cooler routine in which (Joe) waves an imaginary tricorder and says He's dead, Jim. Replicators and holodecks are too new to have made such a lasting impression. Turbolifts are just trivial.
I highly disagree with this. First of all, why delete? what is the pratical gain we get from it? I understand deleting vanity and spam pages, but why that elevator? Shure it's an obscure information, but it's an usefull information for someone. There are two cenarios here: one where this kind of articles are deleted for non-notable, leaving a smaller wikipedia (but without "database entries"), and another where this kind of article is left, making a more complete wikipedia. The only reason for deletion is purely theorical, and I believe it comes from a misundertanding of "wikipedia is not a database".
In my opinion, this isn't about notability, but about how the information is presented. An enciclopedia is about good text and explanations, with some support material like pictures and etc. An database is about lot's and lot's of information in charts, tables and etc... look in article 65P/Gunn for instance, this looks a lot more like a database then the turbolift (I still like the comets series tought). algumacoisaqq01:44, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
Dear heavens! I never said "delete"! I said it's not notable enough for an article -- but there are other tools available to us than the flamethrower. John Reid09:44, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Please, no nasty names. When I want to delete something, I'll tell you.
Oppose as per Loom91. This is vague and anyway notability most certainly is inherited in some circumstances. See Louis XIV, who has an article because he was the son of Louis XIII, not of Jean Simple, peasant. Piccadilly15:13, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Disagree. Louis XIV is notable because he was King of France, a nation important to world history. That alone would make him notable if not for his any other claim to fame.
I believe you are confusing legal inheritance with inheritance in a data management sense. I agree that the most insignificant worm can ascend to great status on his pedigree alone; further, that having so ascended he is notable. I mean to say that subjects -- people, places, things, ideas -- are not notable merely because they are related to or descended from a notable subject. John Reid09:44, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Oppose This proposal seens to be related to the "paper" encyclopedia mentality where a vast number of such articles would produce an unacceptable number of encyclopedia volumes. However, WP is on a hard drive and I believe the total size of WP is less than the drive space I have in my computer. On that basis there is no reason not to store such stuff. Another Oppose argument is that instead of writing WP we will spend ridiculous amounts of time debating what stays, what goes and establishing yet more guidelines. WP has enough guidelines already - Adrian Pingstone16:34, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Say it openly, or not at all, please: Do you think there is anything too trivial to rate an article? Can you give an example? John Reid09:44, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
John, your attitude is rude: "say it openly or not at all" is not how we talk to each other so I won't bother to answer you - Adrian Pingstone10:51, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Adrian, I'm sorry if you find me uncivil. I certainly don't mean any disrespect. I'd simply like you to state openly what you think: Is it possible for an article's subject to be so trivial that it does not rate an article? Or, if you'd rather it were stated in the positive: Should we (or do we) have any policy or guideline that you respect regarding notability at all as a standard for inclusion? John Reid07:47, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Comment. Adrian Pingstone has just inserted "Oppose" in front of several comments above. I am quite uncomfortable with this. I believe that this is a material alteration to what the editors posted (however much it may reflect their comments). Moreover, this has not been structured as a formal poll. -- Donald Albury(Talk)17:32, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, User:Arpingstone, this edit is rather tacky; and hiding it behind a misleading edit sum doesn't make it any better. I'm too involved to rv you, so I don't have to figure out how. Perhaps you'll reconsider your action. John Reid09:44, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Apologies if my addition of Oppose is disliked. I meant no harm and merely wanted to make the trend of the opinions clear. I still think it was a good idea so that people coming across this discussion could see how opinion was running. I've removed all the Opposes but, of course, I may have removed an Oppose message that was intended to be there! (P.S. To say I was hiding the change is just silly, how could I possibly hide the bolded Opposes that suddenly appeared?)- Adrian Pingstone10:51, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Why did you remove the instances that you didn't insert? Why didn't you simply undo your changes? Not only did you alter the wording of different messages, but you left most of these posts without the proper indentations. (I've corrected this.) —David Levy11:33, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Please note that I have not used the word "delete" in my proposal -- not anywhere. There may well be a place where non-notable subjects belong; perhaps several such places. I think it would be excellent if there were an entire project devoted to fictional subjects.
I don't think anything should ever be deleted, not on any grounds whatsoever; I dislike intensely that anyone would place me in that camp. Some things should be moved, some merged, some transwikied, some retained in history and some in archives only. But nothing should ever be deleted. John Reid09:44, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
I see where you are coming from, and I sort of agree, but I'm coming from another place. I don't agree in principle that notability os not inheritable, otherwise notability is to my mind undefinable, something inherits notability from events or circumstances relating to it; turbolift's notability is inherited from Star Trek just as Star Trek's notability is inherited from Television and so on and so forth. I'd also much rather all information were simply better sourced; I see no harm in an article on a Turbolift which satisfies the principles of the three key policies; its significance should be noted as being a fictional component from a fictional television series of some regard. Let the audience judge the value of it. To tackle Prince Charles' left big toenail clipping from April 17th, 1973, I'd have to ask how such an article would satisfy the three key policies: where would we source an article on such a topic from, and how would an article on it agree with the undue weight and POV fork sections of WP:NPOV? Steve blocktalk10:56, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Whew! Much heat, but I see little light. I'd like to try to get a feeling here for what editors truly believe. As I follow the comments I get a sense that many editors simply reject notability as a standard for inclusion. If you don't think any topic is too trivial for this project, then I suggest there's not much merit in discussing whether such an irrelevant quality as notability can or cannot be inherited.
The question's been asked: If something is not notable, what do we do with it? Respectfully, I have to say this is not what I'm discussing. I have a lot of thoughts about what might be done with non-notable content but those stand whether the item is non-notable for this reason or for another.
I'd like to ask everyone to stick to the proposal as worded: Notability is not inheritable. Pro or con, please speak up. John Reid07:47, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't think this is really about inheritance of notability, its more about the best way to structure articles. Seperating out common parts of existing notable articles to avoid redundancy is a good thing, it avoid duplication of effort, and reduces the chances for conflicting or inaccurate information. -- Sfnhltb08:14, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Comment Maybe I missed it in this long-ish discussion, but I think the reason people are not "sticking to the proposal" is that you don't seem to have made one. You have generated a good discussion on the nature of notability, but (and forgive me if I'm once again missing the obvious) it doesn't seem to me that you're actually proposed anything. A proposal, in the sense used on these pages, is a plan of action to accomplish something. Can you state (or re-state, if I've missed it) exactly what your plan is? Matt Deres02:17, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
The proposal is unacceptable only because it's not always true. Sometimes notability is indeed inheritable--it depends upon the strength of notability of what it inherits from as well as its own inherent notability. — Stevie is the man!Talk | Work16:51, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, it's in my Chambers dictionary. cautious support; I'm listed as a 'Wikipedian who likes Doctor Who' but even I recognise there are limits. There's an article for every single Doctor Who story and novel (and Star Trek episode and novel) already, and they are by-and-large pretty objective and well-written. If it were up to me, I wouldn't create another page or red link except for new stories. WP:FICTION is clearly a way to put brakes on this proliferation, and this new principle really seems to be a paraphrase or elucidation of that. I would suggest that it is often possible to make do with a 'list of Star Trek technology' or 'list of Babylon 5 aliens'. --Cedders12:02, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia was created to be a great repository of knowledge, not a battlefield. Articles, so long as they follow the five pillars
According to a parallel discussion on the Main Page talk, we only have one SSL server, which would promptly overload if we sent all of our AOL traffic through it. Wiktionary is still testing it out and I don't see any rush to see how it turns out for them. As long as someone remembers to bring it back here if it works. ;) Being able to actually block chronic AOL vandals... heaven. - BanyanTree01:23, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
I think there should be at the bottom of every article a couple of voting options.
These could be "Accuracy", "Completeness", "Overall", and judged out of 5.
This would encourage more users to give feedback on the quality of the article, as many wouldn't use the Talk pages for a variety of reasons. If a user sees an article with poor rating, it may inspire them to work on it themselves, or maybe visit the talk page to see what others are proposing.
You could only vote once per edit, that is, each time an article is edited, you can vote again. Votes would cumulate over the life of the article, and would not be reset each time the article is edited. Obviously, methods would have to be devised to stop people stacking votes etc.
The reason why i think this is necessary is that it is difficult to gauge the validity of an article without going to the edit page, and checking through. If users could see that an article is a 4 (for example) they know that it is pretty good compared to one with rating of 2. Rankings might make the job of finding featured articles etc easier. Furthermore, if it is on every page, many more pages are able to go through some sort of quality assurance process, as currently only a very very small proportion get this treatment.
Agree However prehaps having a seperate link at the top of the page for example: Article - Discussion - Vote. Would mean that the pages would load quicker and the vote box wouldn't overcrowd an article, even if it is at the bottom. Lcarsdata16:13, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Good to hear its being thought about. I think Wiki should be focusing more on getting the quality of its existing articles up to scratch, rather than just getting more articles. For this to happen, there needs to be some sort of mass quality control process, not the hotch potch system currently in place. Re Lcarsdata I think the vote rating has to be directly available on the page, otherwise not enough people would use it and it kind of defeats the purpose. Suicup08:00, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah that could work. Basically as long as it is in a high visibility position, it would be used effectively. Suicup12:34, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
This proposal has a lot of weaknesses but the central idea is sound: Let readers tell us if they found the article useful. I incline to at most a 3-axis vote and think 2 axes is about as much as we should demand of our readership; but that's another detail.
Right now, anybody can comment on an article: just edit the talk page. But this requires thought, some willingness, time, effort, and a rudimentary ability to express oneself. If we can lower the feedback bar a bit I can't but think it would help.
Editors already have channels of expression; vote buttons ought only appear to users who are not logged in. (Presumably the set of registered users who never edit yet continue to log in merely to read is small.) For that matter, it would be nice to accumulate anon edits and turn off vote buttons for active anon editors.
I worry about persistent vote accumulation. I'd rather see every vote dated and weighted; the older votes less significant. Heavily editing a page should drive the weights of all votes down.
At some point we decided not to report page hits, although the basic MediaWiki install does so. Can anybody find a link to that debate? Might be relevant. John Reid08:16, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Some good points there John. I disagree that only anonymous people should vote, i think the more votes the better - besides, excluding people goes against the democratic nature of Wiki doesn't it? :P I agree though that a vote's weight should decay over time, ie votes from the current edit should be weighted more than votes from previous edits. Lets hope whats in the works is along the lines of whats being discussed here! Suicup13:23, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, are we editors smarter than our readers? By definition, as soon as a user comments about an article on talk he is no longer a reader but an editor. We have no way to get feedback from our readership. If we're humble enough to believe they might have something to say, I think we ought to hear it.
We must permit voting by readers only. Editors have plenty of opportunities to comment and -- if permitted to vote -- would surely overwhelm any ordinary reader vote. John Reid14:25, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
How could editors overwhelm the vote of the general anonymous readership when they are outnumbered 70 to 1? I still think it is silly to restrict certain groups from voting. Editors shouldn't be penalised just because they decide to be more active than the average person. You cannot forget that editors are actually part of the readership themselves, indeed this is one of the core principles of Wikipedia. So by creating a two tier system, you are undermining the very idea of this site.Suicup12:42, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I think that the revisability of Wikipedia lessens the value of voting on the quality of articles. For example, it's not hard to imagine a situation in which a person might vote on an article one day and then find that it has been completely rewritten the next. However, since each version of an article is archived, this problem could be addressed by associating votes with only the particular version of the article that they were cast on. - Stephen Larin15:21, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Obviously more weight would be given to votes from the current edit, as opposed to older votes - a decay system would be necessary. Suicup14:20, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Are you allowed to vote each time there is an edit, however trivial, and have those votes accumulate? Easy enough to have a friend make hundreds of tiny edits and then you can vote hundreds of times. - Runcorn22:12, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Current edit votes would be weighted more than old votes. Indeed, you could set it up so that after a certain number of edits, those votes don't count anymore. Suicup14:52, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
User defined citation format
It would be a useful option for users to be able to specify in account settings what format to display references in (MLA, APA, etc).
Yeah, but that would be nearly impossible to set up properly. For one thing, not all formats require the same basic information. For example, many formats do not require issue number, but Turabian does. Bluebook does not require publisher or city of publisher, but most other formats do. And so on. --Coolcaesar06:03, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
More assistance for new editors of fancruft
I accept that there are many people who want to add articles about their fictional characters, bands, music, and movies to Wikipedia. The problem is that 1) often the article they add is their first article, 2) they don't do a very good job of it, and 3) the cleanup backlog then increases.
We need something to make it easier for people totally unfamiliar with Wikipedia to format article of the following types:
Albums, songs, and bands
Games and game characters
Movies
TV shows and episodes thereof
Templates won't help first timers. This requires web forms.
The idea is not to get the perfect article from the form, but to get all the key data captured and formatted, so that the basic info doesn't have to be manually cleaned up.
I'd suggest doing this first for albums, songs, and bands, since that info tends to be stylized. It even can be filled in automatically from one of several CD databases, which is worth negotiating a license deal for.
--John Nagle06:23, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
If we're merely going to copy info over from a CD database then we're not adding a lot of value if we don't insist on additional information as to the CDs notability. If fact, I'd suggest making it one of the deletion criteria, the article gets zapped if it doesn't have accompanying information beyond what can be found in a CD database.--Hooperbloob07:22, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
I just want to say that fancruft can turn into a good article. This was originaly considered fancruft and sevral users wanted to delete it. Now it is an outstanding article. My point is that often times bad or "fancruft" articles inprove into very good ones. Tobyk77719:02, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
Also, the defnition of fancruft may varry. Some people consider this fancurft. I think that this provides an easy to use informative show summary. Tobyk77719:02, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
Might I suggest that, for users who create a new article, about anything, including their favorite band, only to have someone stamp on it saying "'crapcruft' nn deleted" it's quite likely that these users will not form a very positive impression, and may go on to vandalize pages. A more constructive method for the long term would be to spend a couple of minutes trying to work on the article with them, and, if it seems to be unverifiable, explain to them why you think it may not belong on WP, and that editing something else, and perhaps removing that article, may be a better idea. I really think that this would reduce vandalism. For great justice.21:42, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
That would take a lot of time. What we should do, if we see something that obviously doesn't belong on Wikipedia, is delete it, then leave a polite message on the user/ip talk page explaining why. --Osbus14:54, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
It's because of your attitude that you get to decide immediately what is crap or not that so many new users become vandals. A little less arrogance and a bit more discussion would be good. For great justice.22:00, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
It's not the obvious ones that are the problem. Those are easily sent to speedy deletion. It's the ones where the article reads something like "The Bozo Brothers are a famous grunge band who just finished their first world tour after releasing their second CD, 'The Bozo Brothers Easy Listening Album'". Then someone has to dig to find out that the "world tour" was three towns in upstate New York and the CDs are self-published. What I'm proposing are web forms which require enough hard info that it's clear whether a band qualifies under WP:BAND. --John Nagle17:32, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Not to be picky, but isn't this what WP:FILM, WP:BAND, WP:ALBUM and WP:TV are doing? I mean we cannot force those rules upon people. It's just that they haven't developed and matured enough yet to be actively enforced. But Wikipedia is not on a timeframe, and most of these articles are tagged with stub. We cannot prevent the fancruft. It's a part of life and we just need to deal with it like we deal with any problem in wikipedia, form concesus and ask people to follow policy and guidelines. Web forms are a VERY bad idea in my mind since they create pages that are not origiannal reading. It's just standard text with data entered and belongs as much in Wikipedia as the fancruft - The DJ23:11, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Directing new submissions to more appropriate projects
Sorry if this has been suggested/asked before. I've tried a bit of janitorial work, and one obvious problem is the tendency of new users to create pages for self-promotion of something that isn't otherwise notable. These then need to have their notability checked, and be cleaned up or taken to AfD or speedily deleted, and this and ensuing conversations with the user can be tedious. The contributor may be acting in good faith, but have misconceptions about what Wikipedia is, even after they are pointed to the relevant WP:CORP, WP:AUTO, WP:BAND, WP:OR or WP:NFT policy. For example, there seems to be an idea that because there is lots of information about popular beat combos on Wikipedia, that they can become popular by being listed here; word gets around about Wikipedia in certain circles, as maybe "a great website you can add your own stuff to" without fully understanding the explicit limits of what is covered or that bit about "Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia". (I also worry somewhat about PR things being posted here in the form of encyclopaedia articles and POV being inadequately removed because we don't know better.)
So my proposal is to make these contributors feel less excluded and so less argumentative, and perhaps give them more of what they want and might benefit from. This might also change outside perceptions of Wikipedia and stop attracting more of the same type of unsuitable submissions. In addition to pointing them to policy and leaving templates on their talk pages, they should be directed to other more appropriate projects. This is already done with Wiktionary: and Wikisource: to an extent.
As far as I have been able to find them, these are the options we have at the moment:
Original research, especially idiosyncratic theories
Not Wikimedia; maybe Wikia again
Creative writing
Writely VirtualSoil?? Webquill
Jokes etc.
Uncyclopedia?
Stuff made up in school personal pages etc.
Wikipedia fork for kids?
Obviously one would need to check with the relevant site that they are actually prepared to take such submissions. Where an appropriate project doesn't exist, I think maybe Wikipedians should support its creation. There seem to have been suggestions of bowdlerised/filtered forks for kids before; I would suggest a Wiki as one huge fork as a sandbox that can be edited by people who don't really understand the difference between an encyclopaedia and a book of jokes, and then useful contributions moved to Wikipedia if needed. It's getting to the point where Wikipedia is an institution and collection of work which people want to defend; some are looking for an alternative free space, and it may not yet exist. Perhaps there's a call for a very lightly-edited Wild West Wiki. --Cedderstk15:40, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
Original research, especially idiosyncratic theories --> Wikinfo(that may not be exactly what it is for, but who will care?)
Stuff made up in school/personal pages --> myspace.com
I've noticed that the top of the contributions page, for example Special:Contributions/Dmcdevit, says "(Newer 500) (Older 500)" (or whatever number you have it set to). This strikes me as less logical than the "(previous 500) (next 500)" used for page history. As far as I can tell, that would entail changing MediaWiki:sp-contributions-older and MediaWiki:sp-contributions-newer to "Next $1" and "Previous $1". Would anyone object to this (and/or want to make sure that MediaWiki stuff makes sense.)? Dmcdevit·t01:40, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Actually, I personally found the previous/next on history pages confusing, as I always expected, from their names, that they would do the opposite of what they really do. The older/newer makes more intuitive sense to me. — Saxifrage✎08:38, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia now supports semi-protection, which prevents editing of protected articles by anons and new users. But semi-protection is granted reluctantly, even for articles where vandalism occurs several times a day. I propose that, as policy, semi-protection be enabled on request for any article vandalized by more than one anon in a one week period. This will slow nuisance-level vandalism down without being overly restrictive. Too much effort now has to be expended undoing vandal edits.
This is a compromise between the "everyone can edit" and "only logged in users can edit" positions. It's weaker than the Wikipedia:Restrictions on Anonymous Editing from Shared IPs proposal. Only a small fraction of Wikipedia articles will be affected.
I suggest, as a 30-day trial, that all the pages on Wikipedia:Most vandalized pages be placed on semi-protection for a month, after which this approach can be re-evaluated. That's easy to do, and it will tell us if this is going to work. Comments? --John Nagle19:25, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
More than one anon per week? I think that's way too strict. Perhaps more than one anon per day for a period of 3 days or so. Most important articles get vandalized relatively often, and we can't semi-protect the entire encyclopedia! --Mets501talk21:57, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
No...no...just no...sorry. This kind of policy, while well meant, gives vandals too much denial of service and pyschological power, many times I just revert (3) times and they say "ah hell" and leave. When I make a big deal over a few vandalisms, the trolls get more power. Personally, I would like it of every article was "semiprotected" and only "open-task" articles were not, they would act as proving grounds for prospective users...however, that is a different story and it is not responsive to individual vandals; it is also, likely, a serious WP:foundation issue.Voice-of-AllT|@|ESP22:01, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
OK. Let's put a selection of the 300 or so of Wikipedia:Most vandalized pages on someone's watch list (perhaps Voice of All (talk·contribs) would like to volunteer), and make them responsible for fixing those problems. Then at the end of a month, we ask them how much time it took them and evaluate their performance. This will give us a good measure of how much effort is required to fix vandalism manually.
As an example of the problem, Voice of All (talk·contribs) did revert vandalism to the Bill Clinton article on 28 April. But the article has been vandalized and reverted 20 times in the one day since then, with the vandalism repair performed by twelve different editors other than Voice of All. Some vandalism slipped through anyway. This indicates the level of effort required and the failure of the present approach. --John Nagle17:44, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
If 12 other editors revert around the clock, then good. We have many admins, and each of us may catch a vandal and revert 1-2 times. When 12 admins do that, it kills a lot of vandalism without wasting any one individuals time (a few seconds). If you want to get a High Traffic Page protection policy, then propose it, but I doubt it will get through.Voice-of-AllT|@|ESP17:48, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
I've met (and unsuccessfully tried to beat to a revert, missing by 3s) Tawkerbot2, but I still see a lot of vandalism going on that is hard to combat with brute numbers and good bots. On the other hand, indefinitely semi-protecting a page invariably leads to the question of Wikipedia's ideals. I myself would give a Weak Support to this idea; if used in extreme moderation it could be beneficial to articles such as Newbie which are vandalized extremely often. Nihiltres03:32, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Purely on the technical side, there are problems with your solution. Accurate automatic conversion is not possible. Not all instances of "color" can be replaced with "colour", for instance. e.g. the film Colors is always spelt that way, as is the command color in BASIC. And to be self-referential, the sentence above start with "Not all instances of" would be trashed by your proposed enhancement.
The only solution that could work reliably would require every instance of every br/am word to be tagged. For example: "The opening scene for Colors uses the {{am-br|color}} red lots." This would require the MediaWiki software to allow templates to access custom user-specific settings, which is not allowed at present (for cache performance reasons). [i.e. [[USER:{{USERNAME}}/spellingpref]] cannot be used to make a choice within template code, because {{USERNAME}} is not allowed], see bug 4196
Finally, however, I'll address the problem itself. Most people aren't worried about the different spellings, and so a solution to the problem is not a pressing issue. Perhaps it will become more so as teachers find themselves using materials from Wikipedia in classes, and demand their texts be automatically localised correctly (I don't see it, really). Most conflicts come from people who are unaware of the variations and so they "correct" what doesn't need to be, and so finding a technical solution will not make them any more aware of the issue. Hope this addresses your proposal adequately. —Pengo04:51, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
When the title doesn't need to be converted, type:; When the page content doesn't need to be converted, type:; When a particular word doesn't need to be converted, enclose the word in: -{}-s.
This is better than using templates and tags. There are many Brit/Amer variants, tags would be a great deal of work and maintenance; However, there are only a few instances where one would not want to convert (such as the examples you've listed, the film, BASIC...), allowing for automatic conversion brings all the spelling issues to a few pages MediaWiki:Conversiontable/en-br and MediaWiki:Conversiontable/en-am. Type on the page Colors (film); Type -{color}- in the article on BASIC. --Shibo7717:46, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
We should have featured content according to namespaces. As far as concerned, we have main, image, portal, category, wikipedia, template, user, mediawiki and help namespaces. In which we have already feature status for first three of them. I oppose featured list in article namespace. We should have different namespace for lists, like, simply (List) namespace. For featured topic, I would suggest category space to be featured rather than every article to be featured. I want to make a proposal to be featured for wikipedia namespace, template namespace. Pour in your suggestions. Thank you, Shyam(T/C)06:55, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
I refer others to previous discussion on the matter at Wikipedia talk:Featured content. Pursuant to my comments there, I believe this proposal fundamentally misunderstands the purpose and function of the featured processes. They are established to promote the merits of Wikipedia as an encyclopædia.--cj | talk07:10, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
The intent of our featured process is to showcase encyclopedia content of exceptional quality. However, it must be noted that in practice it also involves an element of 'bragging rights'. Having gotten articles promoted to featured status is often considered in RFAs (though it has nothing to do with adminship) and listed on user pages. This is not a bad thing per se... people should feel good about helping to make Wikipedia better. What Shyam is suggesting is an extension of that concept, but I agree with Cyberjunkie that it focuses too much on the recognition of achievement 'side effect' of the current featured process.
I think it is fair to say that I am one of the 'top 20' template builders on Wikipedia and that alot of my work would be included in any list of 'featured templates'... which would certainly be personally gratifying, but I don't think it would do much to advance the encyclopedia. Possibly it would make people more aware of what template options are out there, but that tends to happen automatically with the useful ones. There'd be no value to the average reader in knowing that {{conv-temp}} (or whatever) is a 'featured' template. Someone who had never edited Wikipedia or done so only casually would have no idea what a template was or why the page displayed was 'featured'.
There would be some benefit to 'advertising' useful wikiprojects and templates and the like to the community of editors, but not to the readers of the encyclopedia. Thus, I don't think that the 'featured' structure is the right vehicle for these 'behind the scenes' items. Featured status is for 'front page' materials that Joe Citizen might find on a Google search. Promotion of other stuff (most active wikiprojects, most heavily used templates, et cetera) should follow a different path - probably in the Wikipedia namespace. --CBDunkerson12:01, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I edit my proposal in points format so that every point can be discussed.
Featured lists should be a part of List namespace (which does not exist, need to be created).
Some of good quality and very useful project from wikipedia namespace should be featured as featured project (we don't have featured project but according to consensus we can have). It may help to users in contributing more effectively. We can select a collaboration project of the week from featured project, if needed.
Some good quality and very useful (in the sense of "they are linked to important and good articles") templates should have featured status. As article contains a template, if a template is of good quality then an article page also looks good.
Re: #3 and #4 (projects and templates) should be promoted in a different fashion from encyclopedic content, per reasoning of CBDunkerson.
I would suggest that they might get added to a Tip Of The Day each. That way they would appear at the Community Portal, and at the Help:Contents page, hence remaining visible only to Editors, their target audience. --Quiddity19:30, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Re: #1, I agree with ALoan, that lists are just articles with lists in them. A new namespace is not needed or desirable.
What is the criteria to distinguish between a featured article and a featured list? If an article is well-comprehensive and have good numbers of referenced and well formatted tables in it, then should it be a part of either featured lists or featured articles? So, I think we need an extra namespace for all the lists. Many of the articles simply have notaions as list of something, so we can simply move those pages to list namespace. In addition to that for featured topics, if a proposal has been made then we can contact maintainers to make a category which have only those articles which have been featured as a part of featured topics. Shyam(T/C)20:19, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
If we create List namespace then firsly we can have all the information regarding datas. We can have some comparison factors in the list namespace. We won't have to the look the full article page for collecting datas. Shyam(T/C)07:19, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
I wanted to say that if we create a seperate namespace for list. Articles starting from list of.. can simply be shifted to list namespace. All the articles in list category can be shifted to list namespace. We can simply distinguish between the lists and article pages by creating list namespace. Shyam(T/C)07:45, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
I had to do a data collection for a statistics class, so I chose to do it on anonymous vandalism on Wikipedia. I found that 38% (+/- 13.5%) of anonymous edits were considered vandalism by WP:VAN. The confidence interval is 95%. The sampling was done at 19:15 (UTC) on May 4th (a Thursday). The rate of vandalism may change depending on the time of day and day of week, but I didn't need to do that much work for the class project. The sample was the first 50 edits that appeared on the recent changes page (logged-in users hiden). 19 of them were considered vandalism. There were a few edits where my own judgment as to what vandalism is may have influenced the results, but I think the definition, overall, was fairly easy to interpret. On a non-scientific note, I also counted the number of vandalisms that were link spam and the number of vandalisms that were reverted within 20-50 minutes. 5 of the 19 vandalisms were link spam (26.3%), and 11 of the 19 vandalisms were reverted within 20-50 minutes (57.9%). The later statistics did not have a great enough sample size to mean much, but they are still interesting. I know it is a fairly simple study, but I thought some people would be interested, and I had to do it anyway. Does anyone know if there have been other similar studies? I think the amount of vandalism we have to deal with here is quite outrageous. I think further studies on time dependency of vandalism and the rate of vandalism for logged-in users would be interesting. --Basar20:44, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes that's interesting. Have there been any studies of anonymous editing in general? I.e. types of articles; IP addresses, &c. It would be nice if registered users could optionally have a summary bar appear at the top of each page showing things like: # edits in past month; % anonymous edits; % reverts, &c. My suspiscion is that vandalism actually only occurs on a relatively small percentages of the pages, so it would be nice if registered users could see statistics to that effect. That might help draw attention and more careful review to those pages. :) — RJH17:15, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Ads poll
Would it be possible to have a poll on whether or not everyone would mind ads on wikipedia if it will make the site better. If the majority don't mind then having a few ads on wikipedia shouldn't be a problem. The poll could be just a small box on the left side underneath the toolbox Pseudoanonymous01:38, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm personally in favor of ads, at least before considering how many people would leave if they were instituted. But realistically, this is something that's going to be decided by the Foundation, not us. (Not to mention that I suspect it would stand a poor chance of achieving any kind of consensus.) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:08, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Contributors are not paid. If you do not wish money to be made from your contributions, you should stop contributing to Wikipedia, because there are certainly plenty of mirror sites featuring your articles with advertisements. — Knowledge Seekerদ06:15, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't get this objection. The Wikimedia Foundation has annual expenditures in the ballpark of $1 million. Why don't you expect to be paid now? Would it change anything if logged-in users were exempt from ads, so you wouldn't have to see them? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:31, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, how might advertisements make it better? Superficially, they make it worse, as I'm sure has been discussed many times before. Are you suggesting advert to pay for Wikimedia expenses? I'm opposed in any case, both to advertisements, and to including a poll feature in standard skins. --Cedderstk14:17, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, advertisements could pay for better hardware, as well as possibly more paid programmers. This would definitely benefit the site. (I don't think we really need paid admins or supervisors of any kind; one of the better things about Wikipedia is Jimbo's point #2.) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:31, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Why are you opposed to a poll feature? What harm would that do? All it will do is allow us to be more in touch with wikipedia's community and everyone who visits here. It will allow everyone to tell us whether or not they want something, and how they want it to be; like the village pump but only faster. Advertisements will wikipedia better because we will be able to have fulltime admins who are paid(who get promoted from volunteer admins or are hired), and we can pay experts to check the accuracy of major articles. Why would people leave just because there is ads? We are not turning wikimedia into a private company, it will still be non-profit, just with more money. With a poll we can help the Wikimedia Foundation make the decision of whether or not to put ads on. If some people are going to leave, they will be back once they see the improved accuracy and the reduced vandalism, if they won't come back then thats exceptable losses. Pseudoanonymous19:59, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
As Simetrical said, this is a decision to be made by the Foundation, and any poll of editors will have no weight in the decision. User:Zoe|(talk)20:18, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, that's a bit too strong. Community opinion will be considered if this comes up, just it won't necessarily be a deciding factor per se. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:31, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
I think I have a solution to articles with initial lowercase letters.
Uncyclopedia, a wiki hosted by Wikia, found a workaround a while back. All it uses is a a template. You won't see the title show as {{{1}}} on the template because for some reason it uses {{{PAGENAME}}} for when no variable is provided. Ironic, since that makes the template pointless if you don't pass a variable, but whatever... Anyway, you can see it in action at my userpage (here), my userpage (there), iPod (there), eBay (there), and probably more articles too. Nobody seems to have had a problem with it there, but there might be a browser or two out there that wouldn't like this. If nobody can find an incompatible browser though, should I go ahead and edit {{lowercase}} to finally display lowercase letters? Just thought I'd bring it up here before making such a drastic change to a template used so commonly, in case someone finds an issue with this code. --Nintendoruleztalk01:37, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
No offence intended, but your userpage looks horrible when viewed with the Classic skin on Wikipedia. Quite a few people use Classic, so a change such as you suggest would not be acceptable.-gadfium04:58, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
If the class is renamed (e.g. littleletter) and placed in MediaWiki:Monobook.css non-Monobook skins will show the default. This means such users won't see the lowercase letter, but then again would that be any different from the way things are right now? GarrettTalk06:21, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, we'd just need to change the white background of the template to whatever CSS variable corresponds to the normal background there, right? Then it'll work on all skins. --Nintendoruleztalk19:14, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Oh, I just tried classic, and I see what you mean. I thought it would be an issue of the white background around the box, but it's a bigger problem. Doubt a way could be found to fix that... --Nintendoruleztalk19:48, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Lowercase letters are technically possible, if they are enabled. Wiktionary is a prime example of thise. However, I believe that initial capital letters were determined to be prefered. Don't hold me accountable for it, though. —THIS IS MESSEDOCKER(TALK)14:08, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Wiktionary is case-sensitive in the first character, right? As in "polish" and "Polish" would be two separate articles. This proposal isn't about making Wikipedia more case-sensitive, it's about making articles be able to display a lowercase title on themselves. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 18:28, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Would using the template be a good or a bad idea? I wanted to propose this template for deletion, but the original author did provide some valid arguments on the talk page, why this template would be useful. —Ruud16:01, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
I've substed the template and made the category a link so that this page doesn't get added to the category.-gadfium21:58, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
sounds like a good template, but we'd need similar ones for other languages too - it could get messy if we had them for 30-40 languages! Grutness...wha?01:38, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't particularly like this idea. Telling someone that we don't have an article on X but the Y language encyclopedia does is only going to be helpful to the small minority of users that speak Y. To use the present example, if every Dutch speaker also knows English then still only 3% of English speakers would know Dutch. Some languages would do better, many would do worse, but on average it would seem to be of only limited utility. At the same time it causes a sort of active harm by turning any page with that template on it into a blue link even though there is really no content. Most of the time when I start new articles it is because I noticed a red link that I know something about. By eliminating those red links it becomes harder to grow this encyclopedia. In my book, this harm, though also fairly minor, outweighs the good. Dragons flight02:09, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
I also worry about false bluelinks. Perhaps a template like this could be put on nonexistent articles' talk pages? It would be less useful so hidden, but at least it would still categorize the articles and provide a known interlang link if/when the article does get written. Melchoir02:15, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Puting it on talk pages would be a good idea! It would be more like something along the liens of "If you create this article, please also add links to and from the nl wikipedia, where an article on this topic already exists." - it would also be a good way to allow searching for pages to be translated while not making the concerned pages blue links :) Flammifer05:16, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
I think having templates like this on the Talk pages of such non-existent articles is a great idea! It doesn't damage the redlinks, and it provides information that can potentially jump-start the article when it's created. I do think that the template format shouldn't look like the "there is no page here, would you like to create it?" default text of uncreated pages if it's no longer intended to appear instead of that text.
I imagine that if we really wanted it to be thorough, we could arrange to have a bot populate the Talk pages of non-existent articles that have corresponding articles at other-language wikipedias. I'm not sure how the current bots that I always see updating interlanguage links work, so I'm not sure if it would be feasible to piggyback on them or to use a similar bot program to do this. I think it bears investigation if this gets adopted as a Good Idea, though. — Saxifrage✎23:31, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
The way Yurikbot works is by checking each page for links to other languages' pages, and if they exist, making sure a reciprocal link exists. So if he:כלב linked to en:Dog, but en:Dog had no link to he:כלב, Yurikbot would add [[he:כלב]] to Dog. This could be adapted fairly easily for cases where a wiki links to a nonexistent page in another wiki: the appropriate templates could be auto-added to the target wiki. Put on talk pages, a template like this isn't a bad idea, although I wouldn't call it massively useful. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:41, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
I think this would be a hard talk to do automatically in general, but it should be do-able for articles which have the same title in all languages, such as biographies. —Ruud22:54, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
I realize few people will be able to read a foreign language page, but we could mention in the template that if you are able to translate it for the English Wikipedia, feel free to do so. That would be more than helpful, I'm sure. For all languages. --Nintendoruleztalk01:47, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Article of the Day
On April 20, I thought that the article 420 (cannabis culture) would receive a lot of attention. I was correct. While it indeed received a lot of vandalism (leading it to semiprotection), a plethora of good came out of it. 4/20 was good for 420. All this positive attention that an article received in one day made me think of something: imagine all the articles that can receive attention if we give them high exposure. That led me to an idea: Article of the Day. Everyday of the year, a random article would be selected and featured as the Article of the Day. The declaration of the Article of the Day could be done by anyone who's fast enough to do it. The article would be declared on the template, which (hopefully) would be posted in many high-profile areas, including the Main Page. While we already have article collaborations, which are good and all, those are more long-term and involve a lot more process. Article of the Day is a more simple, quick version. If 420 (cannabis culture) could be greatly improved within a single day, imagine all the other articles capable of high status from high exposure, especially though vague topics! —THIS IS MESSEDOCKER(TALK)21:06, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
The only reason the 420 article was under high exposure is because of the event, not because it was under exposure on Wikipedia. In fact, Wikipedia probably gave it no exposure...that's why your proposal doesn't make much sense (although I'm probably misunderstanding something). --Osbus23:46, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
This sounds like Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week, except there wouldn't be as much time to work on the article, and using Special:Random would result in lots of articles that few editors would want to work on.
The idea that I do find interesting is to advertise such collaborations on the Main Page. Newcomers to Wikipedia are unlikely to visit the Community Portal, so they aren't exposed so much to the collaborative project side of Wikipedia, as opposed to just its product. Would it be a good idea for the community to hold a small outpost on the Main Page? Melchoir00:20, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
This is a really interesting idea [User:Messedrocker|Messedrocker]],
Remember when Google spelled their name in Braile and linked to our article as the first hit when you clicked on the logo? Editing on braile went bananas! What should be done, rather than having "article of the day" being random (which is quite like WP:COTW) but having it linked to something relevant to current events, that day in history... That way, issues that a non-wikipedian would be likely to seach for that day would more likely come up with our page. Precisely because of its topicality, they would be more likely to come here, more likely to return here and more likely to improve that article.
In a nutshell, I suggest not an "Article of the day" that is just random but "Article of the day" that has some special significance/importance/topicality.
Witty lama12:15, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Userboxes can tell us almost anything about a user. Using about 160, I for one have composed a detailed profile. A profile made of userboxes must also be much more machine-readable (at least if the machine looks at the wikicode) than one freely written. I think such machine-readable profiles of people could be used to create a free online dating service. Besides being a great perk for existing editors, this could encourage otherwise non-Wikipedians to create accounts and user pages, and eventually become involved as editors as a result. Here's how it could be implemented with very little by way of server resources, and no financial cost to anyone.
Each Wikipedian interested would use userboxes to make a profile on his or her user page, or a sub-page thereof. (We might consider allowing people to protect their own user pages.) Anyone whose user page contained Template:User friendly, Template:User girlfriend-wish or Template:User girlfriend-wish, and userboxes for a few basic things (such as gender, home city/region and language) would be considered part of the pool, although a more detailed profile like mine would be preferred. Those on other language Wikipedias would be considered if they had matching Babel templates.
When a user was searching for matches, they would run an open-source script that someone would put up on a Web page for the purpose. Because of the scripting involved, this would probably have to be either a special page or non-wiki. The script would tell them what userboxes they would need to add, if any. If they had all the requisite userboxes, they could enter their search criteria (e.g. date must identify as heterosexual, must be between 25 and 30 years old, must be en-3 or higher, must live in Ontario, must not be blocked, must not be an Aspie, must have made 50 or more edits in English main namespace). They would also have options about what to consider (astrological sign? favourite colour? food preferences?) Then, the script would search the User namespaces of all Wikipedias (which it would have downloaded, and converted into a more usable database form earlier that day) and generate a compatibility score for each result. Then, it would output a ranked list of links, with the most likely matches at the top. The open-source nature would mean that those dissatisfied with their results could make or request improvements.
Finally, the searcher would follow these links, read the user pages, and decide whether each one was interesting. He or she would then post to the user talk page of the object of his or her affections, then add it to his or her watchlist. If no reply was forthcoming, he or she could use Special:Emailuser. Boilerplate greetings would be available for this purpose, as would boilerplate replies of both yes and no, but many users would choose to write their own messages. If the person accepted, the two could continue talking on the user talk pages, use the e-mail form to start a conversation that way, or use instant messaging. And they would live happily ever after. The end. :-) Seahen12:27, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Not so much mission creep as mission leap off in a completely unconnected direction. Bunchofgrapes is right - we should do what this was set up to do - be an encyclopedia. User pages are to assist in that, not to compete with livejournal or myspace or whoever. Average Earthman21:58, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
You said it. Yikes. Incidentally, this is exactly what people were talking about when they said that userboxes were the first step to Wikipedia becoming MySpace. This is horrendous. There are other, far more appropriate places for this. Please don't do it here.--Sean Black(talk)22:01, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
This is quite pointless, and trying to sort users by categorization based on userboxes has already resulting in desysoping and RfArs. Titoxd(?!? - help us)22:11, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
What are you talking about? Users probably already try to make acquaintances through userboxes, and I'm just thinking of automating it so that Wikipedians looking to date/befriend other Wikipedians can explore more options in the amount of time. Seahen22:28, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Users do indeed make acquaintance through userboxes for the express purpose of cooperating on Wikipedia. Any other use is superfluous and should not be encouraged. Suggestions like this are likely to lead to more of a crackdown on userboxes rather than a relaxation of the rules. If you can't find an existing wiki on which to play your dating games, try setting one up yourself: setting up a wiki is intentionally easy after all. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk17:24, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
A reminder from WP:NOT, "The focus of user pages should not be social networking". Dating falls under that category, it shouldn't be done, and an effort to make it easier is ill-conceived. End of story. This isn't myspace, its an encyclopedia. pschemp | talk22:34, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
What more appropriate places are you thinking of? I think the following are essential aspects of the plan, which we won't get with MySpace or Livejournal.
The open-source nature would allow people to improve the classification and match-evaluation systems.
An account can be created without giving contact or billing information.
There are no fees for the users.
Userboxes are easy for both humans and computers to read, and makes it easy to change or organize a profile.
At the same time, users can also easily add text or personal photos anywhere on their pages, outside the userboxes.
Since the userboxes and many of the user pages and accounts are already on Wikipedia, negligible extra disk space is required on Wikimedia servers. It also means the project will have a well-developed folksonomy and sufficiently large population from the get-go.
I could consider doing it on a Wikia instead, but we'd have to copy over the user pages and userboxes, and the images they used, en masse. We'd also need a way to publicize it to Wikipedians. Seahen22:42, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Nice delaying tactic, sending someone to something as heavy as an ArbCom debate. Keeps them away for hours, if they bother to read the whole thing before responding. But all I really needed to read was the TfD debate. But having read that, the summary provided, the findings of fact and the decisions, I feel the userbox should have been kept. I would personally have changed "pedophile" to "boylover" or "girllover," to (a) eliminate the criminal/abusive connotations and (b) imply only the desire and not the act. But I don't see as the userbox's existence would make for bad publicity unless its use was widespread. Even then, the strongest criticism would mostly come from (a) those who don't know that non-abusive pedophilia exists, and (b) the extreme religious right who were trying to ban school sex ed in the 60s. Just because a userbox shows support for activity that is criminal in some jurisdictions does not make it invalid, hence User pro-cannabis. Seahen23:42, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Seahen, You are ignoring the point that Wikipedia is not, was not, and never will be used for a dating service, as that is *against policy*. It doesn't matter how easy it would be to do, It is *against policy*. Which I quoted for you above. pschemp | talk22:49, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
I would estimate that almost everyone looking for a Web-pal or a date would be interested. Granted, this is by not means all the users, but it's probably at least a large fraction. And my question still hasn't been answered: Is it possible to batch-copy all userboxes, userbox images and facebook images? Seahen00:13, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
Keep in mind that personal userboxes can be a liability to serious work. For example, your user page tells me that you're a 17-year-old single male with one userbox for every five edits, and you live in Ontario yourself. Call me unfair, but these revelations cause me to doubt your priorities regarding this proposal. Now, I can see you put a lot of effort into it, and this village pump should encourage creativity. So thank you for considering ways to improve Wikipedia, and better luck next time! But this one proposal can't be rejected strongly enough. Melchoir22:56, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Why not go to myspace or some existing matchmaking site, and list "edits Wikipedia" as one of your interests? That way you get to use their specialized matchmaking algorithms with not much effort. FreplySpang(talk)23:05, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
MySpace is fine for those who like it, if it has an equally extensive folksonomy and an equally large userbase. But a wiki offers some distinct advantages, as I mentioned above. Would it be possible to batch-copy the user pages and userboxes, and their images, to a Wikia instead? If so, would it address everyone's concerns about doing it on Wikipedia? Seahen23:51, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Ah, you want a wiki. Well, there are plenty of wiki's that aren't at all related to Wikipedia. Legit or not, I don't think you'd generate much goodwill or buyin by doing that batch copy. FreplySpang(talk)23:58, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Userpages, userboxes, whatever. Anyway, my personal opinion is that you are vastly overestimating the number of Wikipedians who would be interested in this. FreplySpang(talk)00:04, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
I would estimate that almost everyone looking for a Web-pal or a date would be interested. Granted, this is by not means all the users, but it's probably at least a large fraction. And my question still hasn't been answered: Is it possible to batch-copy all userboxes, userbox images and facebook images? Seahen00:19, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
Heh that's an interesting idea (userbox matchmaking). However, as fun as it sounds, we can not implement it. Wikipedia is, as much as it is an online community of the smartest people in the world (wink), an encyclopedia after all. Matchmaking, dating, and such, would slow down our goals for being one of the best encyclopedias in the world. Oh yeh, for all of you who say to this well-meaning user to go to Myspace or Facebook, Myspace/Facebook doesn't have userboxes. All they have is a boring profile, nothing nearly as cool as userbxes. --Osbus23:43, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
One problem I've run into with my teachers is that some of our articles are so freely editable that teachers see them as unreliable, whatever their accuracy. For most articles, noting their accuracy is unnecessary, but for major articles that aren't the subject of much factual debate and aren't really affected by current events (for example, "John Wilkes Booth") such a confirmation would go a long way to expanding the acceptance of our site.
I propose that for articles that have been around for some time and whose information has been basically confirmed, for us to note the article's accuracy, lock the page down, and push any proposed changes to the discussion page (or a new "Proposed Additions" page) so that Wikipedia content can, progressively, be better recognized for the accuracy of its content and more justifiably cited in academic works. Putting a small icon (maybe of a "school house") right-aligned next to the article's title would indicate that an article would be fact-checked by editors and locked down from easy changes so as to be more easily referenced by curious professors.
One risk would be the perception that there are to tiers of Wikipedia articles -- factually accurate ones and ones of questionable accuracy. But I think checking uncontentious articles for their academic reliability and confirming them as such would prove beneficial to students and Wikipedians alike. All of us are aware of problems that go with a massive and open project like this. Decreasing that ambiguity where we can, however, is something that I think we can do in the case of uncontentious articles.
This doesn't mean the pages would be permanently unchangeable; it would just mean that the pages could only change given some concensus by our researchers, which is already, for the most part, the practice for both contentious and vandalized articles. This change would help convince Universities of Wikipedia's academic usefulness because of this additional oversight. Pat22:11, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Academics don't like tertiary sources. Even a reference to Encyclopedia Britannica and similar 'respected' publications result in lower grades. The best solution is to encourage people to put references to primary and secondary sources in their Wikipedia articles. Articles without references should be considered less reliable than referenced work. To please your Professors, follow any references from Wikipedia to 'good' sources and cite those. If the Wikipedia author didn't provide them, use Google with some of the terms in the article, find some 'good' sources for your assignment, then return to Wikipedia and improve the article by inserting references to the sources you found. I have a tool that makes this easier, see my user page. --Dave01:29, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
I certainly agree with that. I guess my point is a bit broader than strictly academic, though I didn't really make explicit mention of that in my first post, and I do agree it's better to go straight to the source rather than cite Wikipedia directly (I've done this many times.) In general, too, I think that letting Wikipedia content be open to editing improves our articles and helps to attract more and more contributors to this endeavor. I am proof positive of this latter point.
I believe, however, that locking sections down would be useful in terms of QC because it would help to minimize some of the content policing the folks upstairs (and myself and others downstairs) have to do. As evidenced by Kotepho's link and the discussion therein, the idea of "stabling" articles has been talked about for several months now, especially after the John Seigenthaler controversy. My main point is that regardless of if citing Wikipedia is espcially beneficial to students' grades, I believe that for Wikipedia to stand as a reliable tertiary source, even for non-academic inquiries, it would behoove it to slow the edits to its most reliable articles, and then note those articles as particularly reliable. Especially early on, I would think the practice would affect only a small number of articles, but I think the overall benefit to the site would be great if such a system was implemented.
Btw, thanks for your citation tool! It's always fun to see more and more things related to this site. Pat06:08, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
