User talk:Pengo/rants

Licensing on user pages

Hrm.... I can agree to a limited extent, and it's the parts that get tricky that prevent me from agreeing enough. I think it is easy enough for Wiki to allow the text on a user's own page be licensed how ever the user wishes. However, images are a far more difficult beast. They appear on a user's page, but they are uploaded to a single, general and common area, undifferentiated between article image space and user space. That's the stopper for me. How do you prevent a user from uploading non-GFDL or other non-free license images or allowing them to only be used in user space? The obvious answer is to have "user image" space split from "article image" space. But then what? What if I want to work out some differences and upload a couple of choices for an image and have the discussion in a user space, but the images are eventually destined for an article, so they are uploaded into article space? Now we have a mix of images in user space, some of which are in article image space, and some in user image space, or worse, we upload the same image to both user image space and article image space. - UtherSRG (talk) 13:51, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

We already have multiple classes of image citizenship on en.wikipedia: fair use images are only allowed in certain places. That's done just by the license tags without any special technical solution, and still manages to get enforced. Likewise a tag could be created for "I uploaded this image, which I created and hold copyright to, for my own exclusive use on my own userpage and I don't give anyone permission to use it for anything else, and it probably wouldn't be appropriate for anything else anyway because it's a photo of my dog." or words to that effect (perhaps wordsmithed to sound less narky). If the image appears elsewhere it can be removed. And unlike fairuse images, the tag could include a clause about allowing the image on pages such as, say, a gallery page showing all images of wikipedia or the like where there might be accidental "mixing".—Pengo ^{talk · contribs} 23:34, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Standardised licensing templates

Standardizing anything is a problem. We can't even come to an agreement as to which English is standard and which is not. Instead we say that if an article started with BE then BE it shall be and if an article started with AE then AE it shall be.

Be that as it may, yes, I agree that it would be a very strong and positive thing to have some standardizing of templates. - UtherSRG (talk) 13:51, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Navigation popups

Oooh! I hadn't looked at this until now, and I've just added the functionality. I agree that it should become a part of the mediawiki standard preferences page. - UtherSRG (talk) 13:51, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Sysop/Admin reviews

I'd like to agree, but I fear I'd be de-sysop'd. ;) - UtherSRG (talk) 13:51, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

me too :) thanks for all your comments here. they certainly add to original rants. —Pengo ^{talk · contribs} 23:17, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

There was some kind of "pledge" I saw going around where an RfA candidate could swear in public that if X number of formal complaints were filed against them, or something like that, they would step down from adminship. Any idea what I mean? I haven't been able to find it again. I remember it being interesting because no one who had taken that pledge, not even one, had actually complied with it.  :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 22:00, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Cross site logins

Amen Broth Pengo! Sing those words loud and strong! - UtherSRG (talk) 13:51, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Voting between people or things

Yup. I've been a proponent of using various proportional voting systems for awhile now. I got tired of railing against the idiocy of simplicity (first past the post). "The one item the most people think is the best" is not the same as "the one item most people think is the best". - UtherSRG (talk) 13:51, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Voting for a person or thing

I'm hot and cold on this. Secret ballots are good when used properly, and bad when not. Likewise for non-secret ballots. If the point is to generate discussion and consensus, then secret voting is terrible. - UtherSRG (talk) 13:51, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Phylogenetic classification of species

This is the rant that drew me to your rants page. Perhaps I'm just mentally flexible, but I have no problem stating that Group X contains Group Y, and both are accorded the rank of Order. Perhaps the term "rank" is what scientists need to throw out. *shrugs* I look at taxonomic ranks as groupings that have a certain level of similarity within the grouping, on the same level as the similarity of other groupings at that same level, discounting the differences of groups containing like-ranked groups. For instance, there's a certain degree of similarity among all birds, which is roughly the same as the difference between all mammals, which is roughly the same as the difference between all reptiles. So those are all orders, despite the fact that the reptile group contains the bird group. The rank helps us visualize and contextualize the variety of the group, regardless of the phylogeny, while phylogeny helps us to understand the progression of evolution and the rise and fall of various groups and their features. Both are valid, but for different reasons. - UtherSRG (talk) 13:51, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I guess I've trained myself to think of, say, monkeys as a tree-dwelling fish; or humans as a ground-dwelling treefish; or of birds as a kind of reptile. But I guess you've got a point, and not everyone wants to see the animal kingdom only in this way. —Pengo ^{talk · contribs} 23:24, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Super-packed linking

Hmm. I can see that example being a bit annoying, since going to the ancient greek history article already puts you in the "space" - said article will almost certainly have links (in prose or categories) both to ancient history and to greece. But what about this case: 12-14 November 2006? Or one I used recently was more like 12-14 November 2006 WPA Men's World Nine-ball Championship. If I were to shorten that, I think I'd do it via dropping the specific-date links and keeping the in-sports and event ones. Yet, WP does have a strong preference for making wikilinks to specific dates like 14 Nov. Just curious what your take on this would be, given you have a strong opinion on the general issue. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 21:56, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

In my humble opinion, dates should go to dates. If I really wanted the dates linked (which is itself pretty unnecessary) I'd have (just the dates) as: 12-14 November 2006. However, Wikipedia has this crazy policy of linking to yearless dates, which (IMHO) is akin to only ever linking to people's first names.

However, more specifically, I'm not sure the value of "2006 in sports" in this context, and instead the link should simply be to 2006 WPA Men's World Nine-ball Championship, without dates, as I'm sure that has the dates in the article. Or simply have dates without links, as there's little value to the reader of having links to those particular dates anyway. —Pengo 23:10, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Voting for a person or thing

My solution is... "Vote" is for Blocking User:GarrieIrons. Somebody comes up with vote templates that have the following paramaters: Vote=Support/Oppose/Neutral/Abstain (whatever) Issue=Block Target=User:GarrieIrons

The template goes on the voters user page. A page which only some identified admin/beurocrat can create, actually does all the tallying once the vote process is finished.

How's that sound?Garrie 04:34, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Nice one. That's a pretty good way to do it. —Pengo 10:09, 22 June 2007 (UTC)