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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Collapsible synopsis sections for films

There have been long discussions in WP Films on the length of synopsis sections in film articles. I would risk to state that some consensus has been reached on a 500-600 word length. Yet there are members in WP Films and other users who think the synopsis should be as concize as possible. But not every contributor has the talent to put in a few lines the whole plot of a film. There have been reverts in long synopsis to short versions and the other way round, but no big edits wars (that I know of) yet. My preference is a full plot that doesn't indulge on trivial matters, but I do respect those who don't want to have to go through a long section, even with spoilers, in the length of the article. We have discussed even creating separate pages for long synopsis of films, but we found out they don't stand a chance in Wikipedia. So I have encouraged a knowlegeable member to create collapsed-collapsible sections and here is a display of the result: User:Hoverfish/Notebook#Testing collapsible long synopsis. I am aware that under accessibility and older browsers, the section shows anyway. So I wanted to ask Village pump, if we could use this CSS technique as an attempt to satisfy both sides. Hoverfish Talk 17:09, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know, collapsing does not work in every skin. -- ReyBrujo 17:49, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Seems like a minor objection to me. I like the proposal.

El Ingles 17:54, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

No, the code for collapsing is in MediaWiki:Common.js so it will work in any skin. However, it won't work for browsers that don't support javascript. Tra (Talk) 18:38, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

This is indeed so. It works in every skin but not for some browsers. However in the rare cases it won't work, no information remains hidden, so it doesn't violate Wikipedia:Accessibility Don't use techniques that require physical action to provide information. The only inconvenience is that some few users will see the long synopsis anyway. Hoverfish Talk 20:26, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Personally, if the summary becomes so long that it needs its own articles or a collapsible section, it is excessive. However, if there is consensus to hide the unnecessary stuff leaving the article as bare as possible, I am not against it. -- ReyBrujo 20:33, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

The 500-600 word limit will apply to the Long synopsis as per current consensus. We have some articles where a well written short synopsis exists and users wanting to add to it spoil the quality of it. In other cases we have a well written longer synopsis and users trying to trim it down, also spoil its quality. This is the main reason for this proposal and not to encourage overly long summaries. Hoverfish Talk 21:04, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Will it be complicated to use, for relative newcomers like myself? Shawn in Montreal 21:38, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

It's very easy to use. If you want to read the short synopsis than you can. If you want the entire plot or more elaboration you click on the "show" button to reveal the full synopsis. That way it is your choice which you want to read. --Nehrams2020 21:43, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant that, as someone who does create and edit articles on film, how much more code would I have to learn? Is there a tutorial already on how to create a collapsible section? Shawn in Montreal 21:45, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

From what I know it is the same as editing a section of an article. Once you "show" the section, then there is an edit button to allow you to modify the text. Once you're done, you can save it as a normal edit. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nehrams2020 (talk • contribs) 22:00, 19 January 2007 (UTC).

No, that's not quite correct. There is a template called {{LongSynopsis}}. You use it like {{LongSynopsis|This is a quite long synopsis that few people will want to read in it entirety, etc....foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, }} in the wikitext. Then it shows like:

{{LongSynopsis|This is a quite long synopsis that few people will want to read in it entirety, etc....foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar,}}

To modify the synopsis, you would just modify the text between the '|' and '}}'. A full example is at User:Hoverfish/Notebook#Testing_collapsible_long_synopsis. To me this seems like a bad idea for articles, but I'm not sure. --Superm401 - Talk 22:06, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I would prefer having a begin synopsis and end synopsis templates, like the spoiler one. It seems cleaner than having a lot of text inside a template. -- ReyBrujo 22:08, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

This section is actually to be a subsection of the main "Synopsis" section. The spoiler templates are to be given in both cases. Hoverfish Talk 22:12, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm very much opposed to this idea. The current guidelines state, "Plot summaries should be between 400 and 700 words (about 600 words), but should not exceed 900 words unless there is a specific reasons such as a complicated plot." These are only guidelines, so we can be flexible. The plot summary for Pulp Fiction is 1,303 words, which is above the guidelines but is justified because of the film's chronology. This summary stands in stark contrast to the unwieldy 2,592 words it used to be. Another example is Psycho. The plot changed from 1,469 words to 687 words. I invite you to compare the two versions; here is the earlier one, and here is the current. Is there anything essential missing in the much shorter version?

We should also always think of the end user as well. The user who does not want to know the plot can skip it by clicking in the table of contents. One click and he skips the long plot, without the need of javascript that creates worrisome compatibility issues. If he wants a brief summary of the plot, we can create a new guideline saying that there should be a brief spoiler free summary before the main plot. Such sections can be found scattered about, such as the one here. My final objection is that it clutters the page.--Supernumerary 22:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I agree. But the point is that some users are trying to bring plots down to a few sentences, or a couple of paragraphs at the most. Hoverfish Talk 22:20, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

These users are wrong, and we should discourage their practice by reverting their edits. If they protest, then we can work our way through discussions, third opinions, request for comment, and so forth.--Supernumerary 00:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Here, by the way, is the last big discussion we had in WP Films: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Films/archive8#Long synopses -- again + a few sections after it: #Extended plot sub articles. I like your point of view and your excellent work on plots, but does it look like the matter was settled? Hoverfish Talk 22:26, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Obviously it's not settled, or we wouldn't be still talking about it.--Supernumerary 00:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

An example of what I had in mind happened lately in Night at the Museum, where a whole plot has dissapeared and now a few lines are "enough said". Hoverfish Talk 22:40, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Ugh. Talk about an ugly plot. Not only is it stub, but now it's not even in prose. I'm going to go revert it back to a decent plot, which is what we can do in any case where someone does something bad like this.--Supernumerary 00:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Something has to be done to reduce the size of plot synopses. Editors produce huge, unparagraphed synopses that are completely unreadable and defend their sodden prose with ferocity. This is a common reaction for bad writers (I've seen it in several online fiction critique groups) and it's why they're bad writers: they won't ask themselves "Would anyone want to read this?" and any feedback from readers produces only defensive blustering. All the published writers I know (a fair number of science fiction and fantasy writers) send their work to test readers before they send it to the publisher -- and they listen when someone says, "This doesn't work." The long synopsis cutout isn't particularly elegant, IMHO, but it does provide a way to divert the long-synopsis writers into a cul-de-sac where they can ramble endlessly and no one needs to scroll past the boredom. Ideally we'd just have a rule, enforced, saying that nothing can be longer than 600 words without a papal indulgence from Jimbo, purchasable for a mere $1000, but ... I'm not sure I could get this one passed :) Zora 23:19, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Do we really want to encourage bad writers to ramble on? I say we beat the habit out of them by reverting their poor edits. Another thing is that this condones adding material that is not truly encyclopedic. Who wants WP:Films to become known for having terrifically long plot "summaries" even if they don't have to be read? This just occurred to me, but are bad writers good for wikipedia? I guess they are when they add to an article, but they must learn at some time that they should leave the proper grammar and syntax to those better than them at it.--Supernumerary 00:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

The more that you hound and revert bad writers, the more that they will be convinced that you are wiki-snobs trying to mold Wikipedia into what you want it to be. Regardless of how bad you think they are, if you attack them they will just stick to their guns even harder. Mentor bad writers into being good writer, don't slam them simply for being inexperienced and over keen.

perfectblue 11:53, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I realized about a half-day after I posted this that I had overlooked the fact that bad writers can become good ones.--Supernumerary 00:38, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Now that I've read though the arguments, I must say I agree with those opposed, particularly the last two. I'm lucky or cursed to write film synopses for a living and distilling a story down to a reasonable length is not rocket science. It takes some talent and editing, either self editing or the kind that Wikipedia uniquely provides, sooner or later. Shawn in Montreal 03:30, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

But there are relatively few of us working on film articles who seem to CARE about readable synopses. We're far outnumbered by the self-indulgent bores. Attempts to prune a synopsis often result in a long and excruciating edit war -- which the summarizer may well lose. The problem is that there is no enforcement mechanism for the 400-600 word guideline developed by the film project and no way to inform new editors that this is a rule. People seem to pick up on 3RR and suchlike, if they've been warned or blocked, but there's no such enforcement for synopsis length.

I know how we can inform them of this rule. We can add it to the welcome template, or in the film template we could add it to the editing guidelines. Then a reminder would be on every film article.--Supernumerary 15:50, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I suppose it would help if all synopses (even non-film synopses, such as for novels) had a short no-wiki warning right after the Plot or Synopsis header, saying something like "Summaries should be at most 600 words long. Longer summaries will be edited ruthlessly." Probably not the best wording. Suggestions invited. I've noticed that stern no-wiki warnings deter some (but not all) editors intent on linkspam. Zora 04:23, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Is it possible to have a short synopsis that can be expanded into a longer synopsis if the user clicks on "show"? This would seem to be the ideal, a button that would toggle between short and long synopses.Fistful of Questions 23:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Holding deletion discussion (of articles) in WikiProject space

See Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion#Proposal for de-centralization of debates for more detailed arguments. Basically, the idea is creation of a process which puts the encyclopedia before deletion and is improve first and delete only if necessary. Additionally, discussions should be informed by the informed. --Keitei (talk) 01:04, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Ugh, no. Let's not make it harder to find discussions than it already is. --tjstrf talk 06:31, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I have to concur with tjstrf, this is a bad idea for several reasons:

1.' It's important to have one centralized location for AfD discussions. An article should only get deleted if the topic itself is unverifiable or non-notable so those articles that simply need improvement don't, or at least shouldn't, get deleted anyways.

2. Wikiprojects are going to tend to cling to articles falling within their scope and are less likely to push for deletion of something even if that something should, in fact, be deleted.

3. What about articles that don't fall within the scope of a single Wikiproject? They would get less protection than articles falling within a project if this were implemented.

4. Even worse than articles falling under no Wikiproject are those falling under a number of projects. For example, renewable energy fits within the Wikiproject on energy, the Wikiproject on the Environment and the Wikiproject on International Development. A process like the one above could easily result in problems arising between projects.

5. The notion that this allows the "discussions to be informed by the informed" is not a valid one. Currently, when an article goes up for AfD a notice is placed on the page in question and anyone who normally edits that article and similar articles is likely to see it and get involved anyway; as a regular contributor to AfD discussions I'll say that those rare few AfD's that may actually require some specialized knowledge of the topic do, in fact, draw those individuals into them. And besides, AfD's are procedural and don't actually require this knowledge; the central question in and AfD discussion is whether the article in question meets the Wikipedia's guidelines/policies. It doesn't take an expert to decide whether or not something is notable or has sources. --The Way 04:13, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Re: " An article should only get deleted if the topic itself is unverifiable or non-notable so those articles that simply need improvement don't, or at least shouldn't, get deleted anyways." --
if only that was the case. Quite a few users (including admins) believe that articles are deleted when they could have just been improved. In most cases an admin will find 2 faults in an article -- like finding a paragraph that reads like a how-to guide and bad referencing -- and instead of putting up a template or two, will put the entire article up for Deletion Review. Then after a week, if it's an infrequently visited article, the problems still exist (because no template was put up) and the article is deleted. That's exactly what happened on the article for Anal Stretching -- an article that should exist but no admins bothered to put up templates.

The deletion of articles instead of amendment of articles seems to be a major issue, and any suggestions to fix such would be welcomed :) Rfwoolf 13:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that this is a widespread problem. I regularly participate in AfD discussions and very rarely does it appear that an article gets deleted when it shouldn't be, in fact the opposite seems to be the case; more articles are kept than should be. Articles are almost always deleted due to a lack of sources that serve to verify and establish notability. Indeed, I think that allowing Wikiprojects to determine what stays and what gets deleted will result in many articles being kept despite being against policy; Wikiprojects are going to naturally want to keep anything falling within their jurisdiction no matter how trivial. Furthermore, implementing something of this nature would make issues of 'jurisdiction' a major problem, as I've already mentioned. A decentralized AfD and XfD process will make sure that the official policies/guidelines are not evenly applied; some Wikiprojects will be quicker to delete than others. Many Wikiprojects aren't very big and implementing this proposal would give small groups of editors with an 'agenda' more power than they should have. Keeping AfD's and XfD's separate maintains a level of objectivity and the AfD and XfD discussions are currently fully transparent and open to everyone. Decentralizing them would make them less transparent. --The Way 06:58, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Multilingual article cross-reference

A small team so that entries that are built in multilingual Wikipedias have the same entries in the English Wikipedia. Probably only the entry name would need to be translated for an 'entries to build' section; with only the more obscure entries needing to be translated in their entirety. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.102.4.199 (talk) 12:09, 22 January 2007 (UTC).

I second that, this feature would be incredibly useful. The best would be if there was a selection box (drop down list) of available languages for each page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 89.10.24.32 (talk • contribs).

Feedback button

Why not had a feed back button to say that I appreciate this article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.219.255.154 (talk) 14:08, 21 January 2007 (UTC).

Short answer: why? While I'm sure people are happy to hear you appreciated an article, a button to say so wouldn't help improve the encyclopaedia. We don't rank pages according to popularity or usefulness. Trebor 19:50, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Use the "discussion" button 82.36.120.68 07:10, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion

Suggesting the change of the first entry to:

1556 - The deadliest earthquake in history killed 830,000 people in Shaanxi Province, China. --Tengku syariful 17:52, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Automatic signing

I am new to Wikipedia. One of the first things I noticed was that signatures were not automatically appended to talk pages. I knew nothing about "signing", and assumed my name would be inserted after a paragraph I wrote in a 'talk' page. I later noticed that a bot made some funny signature for me, exclaiming something to the effect of "Danger Will Robinson! Danger! Xerxesnine did not give a signature! Abort, abort! Does not compute!"

This is so completely ridiculous, I can hardly believe the practice of manual signing has gone on this long, even though it's just a few tildes. In the computer world, the term "signature" by definition means something which is automatically appended by software, so it's an abuse of the term. But this is beside the point, because there's just no justification for requiring users to do ANYTHING when software can easily do it for them.

Please don't respond with, "Oh, it's just a few tildes." Arbitrary and useless hoop-jumping is always a bad thing. These things add up. Old-timers get accustomed to such irrationality, but newcomers like me see the silliness for what it is.

The signing instructions above says it all --- obviously, such "instructions" should be entered into the software where they will be executed reliably, rather then attempting to upload them into the brains of users. --Xerxesnine 14:25, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

The bot's text is ok IMO, but feel free to add a proposal.

As for automatic, there are many cases where the signature must be omitted (e.g. in WP:RfA summaries), or preceded (e.g. when placing a quote from a source), or altered (e.g. when only sig, [~~~] or only date [~~~~~] is required), or duplicated (e.g. when intermingling 2-3 responses in different parts with one edit) and the software would not know how to make a distinction. Please try to get used to it. Here goes: NikoSilver 14:39, 15 January 2007 (UTC) :-)

But the first-pass answer is obvious: automatically append a signature when there is a new unambiguous paragraph. I even forgot about my sig just now, and only noticed it during the preview. Xerxesnine 15:12, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

As for the issue of having the wiki software do what the bot does - there are only a few (two?) full-time (part-time?) paid programmers, and they have a long list of features and problems to work on. If something can be implemented by a bot (that is, without changing the core wiki software), that's one fewer thing for the programmers to do. And one fewer things for the programmers to maintain. Maybe, eventually, when they run out of other things to do, they can look at the various bots and start replacing them with core code, but I wouldn't (personally) hold my breath while waiting for that to happen. John Broughton | ♫ 14:47, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I did not mean to imply a distinction or a preference between "bot" and other software. I don't care how automatic signing is implemented. My point was that the current signing bot seems to make a big deal about it (large and distracting comment), rather than quietly performing its duty. Xerxesnine 15:12, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

As Niko Silver said, you don't always want something signed in the same way, or at all. The automatic signing bot has already added my signature to one page completely incorrectly, and I can't see any other automatic system getting it right under every circumstance. Trebor 14:52, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

In the case of an unambiguous new paragraph without a signature, it will always be right. There is already a distinction between pages which require a signature and pages which don't, so it's a red herring to say that you don't always want a signature.Xerxesnine 15:12, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

This would not "always be right." There are plenty of instances in which a new paragraph that shouldn't be signed (such as a summary or an advisory) is added to an ordinary talk page.

Furthermore, the {{unsigned}} message is supposed to draw attention to the fact that the user didn't sign the message, thereby encouraging him/her (and others) to do so in the future. The wording, however, actually is rather mild. There is no shame involved. —David Levy 19:49, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

The current signing bot will already sign all such paragraphs, including the ones you mention that should not be signed, so I don't see the relevance of your point --- except that I should have said "almost always" instead of "always". As for your "furthermore" part, my whole argument is that we should do away with the ridiculous manual signing in the first place. Grabbing attention is exactly what the bot should not do; it is needless noise. Did you read my initial post, above? Xerxesnine 16:45, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

1. Indeed, HagermanBot has the same flaw. Personally, I'd prefer that it be retired. (It causes other problems as well.)

2. "Almost always" remains an overstatement. "Usually" is more accurate.

3. Yes, I read your initial post (which is what I alluded to). You claimed that the message "exclaim[ed] something to the effect of 'Danger Will Robinson! Danger! Xerxesnine did not give a signature! Abort, abort! Does not compute!'", which is a silly exaggeration of mild wording that serves a valid purpose under the current setup (irrespective of whether said setup should be changed). —David Levy 00:29, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

To clarify, consider when:

• The user edited a page which requires a signature.
• The user made edits which are clear and unambiguous additional sections.
• The user did not add a signature to one or more of said sections.

When all three conditions hold, a bot should quietly add some standard signature to those sections lacking one.

By "quietly," I mean that the bot's diff comment should be very short and non-attention-grabbing, or better yet that there should be no diff at all (which probably means the code runs in the commit hook rather than a separate bot entity).

What do you think? Xerxesnine 15:57, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I concur about automatic signatures. It would be a nice feature to have the Wiki automatically sign my username whenever it is required. I detest seeing the Bot messages which I just to delete. My recommendation would be for the Bot to put the unsigned message on the talkpage written upon and not put a message on the user's talkpage. Ronbo76 16:12, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

And if it doesn't change, I think it might wait 20 seconds before editing. I realized in one talk I didn't sign, then I returned, and I had an edit conflict with HengermanBot, I think it's called.

—Nethac DIU, would never stop to talk here—
18:56, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
This time I noticed.

Add yourself at User:HagermanBot/OptOut. I like the bot, but I wish it could move new talks to the bottom (new users usually post at the top instead of the bottom). -- ReyBrujo 23:05, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

People whining about Hagermanbot is getting really lame really fast. If you don't like the bot, learn to sign manually. It's that simple. If Hagerman bot didn't exist, then the only thing different is that one of us would have to sign your posts for you using {{unsigned}} if it was causing confusion in a topic. --tjstrf talk 22:58, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Of course this is simply the authoritarian stance on the status quo. "Love it or leave it." It does not address the underlying problem which I stated in my original post; indeed, I anticipated this argument and explained why it is flawed. Xerxesnine 12:53, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

So, because you think there's a problem, anyone who disagrees with you is "authoritarian"? Could it not just be that most of us do not think there's a problem? -- Necrothesp 14:33, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

The response is authoritarian, yes. To say "It is right, deal with it" without even addressing the point is called an authoritarian response. To simply respond with "'Tisn't!" is equally weak. You have to make a rational argument to the point. Xerxesnine 16:22, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Going back to the original comment, Xerxesnine said, "In the computer world, the term "signature" by definition means something which is automatically appended by software,..." and says that the Wiki code ~~~~ signature sistem does not fit that definition. However, I must disagree, because, through not having to type out the entire [[User:Nineteenninetyfour|<font color=green>Ninety</font... thingy, and being able to simply type ~~~~, you have an automatic signing mechanism. Ninety^wazup? 00:13, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

You are at liberty to disagree by presenting rational counter-arguments, but you are not at liberty to change definitions and pretend that's a counter-argument. "Automatic" as I have used it clearly means "without user intervention", and this includes typing tildes as is clearly stated in my original post. It also appears as though you missed the clause in my original post which states "But this is beside the point". Xerxesnine 12:53, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

This would be a nice feature if it were simple, or even possible, for software to determine when an addition needs to be signed, but I don't know that it is. The rules you propose above would inappropriately place signatures when people add templates, etc. that do not need to be signed. Christopher Parham (talk) 19:33, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

To clarify even further, software should NEVER require needless work on the user's part, and should minimize manual labor wherever it can. It has been argued that sometimes you don't want a signature. Alright. If 99.9% of the time the user DOES want a signature, and 0.1% the user DOES NOT want a signature, then what should the software do? Clearly, there should be a "no signature" tag (say, "!~") instead of a signature tag (tildes). Furthermore, there can be special exceptions where no signature will be added, for example paragraphs which consist solely of certain templates, thereby pushing manual use of "!~" down to 0.0001%. --Xerxesnine 17:06, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

1. Your figures are greatly exaggerated.

2. I wouldn't oppose such a setup, but only as an optional, non-default setting. Otherwise, mass confusion would ensue. —David Levy 00:29, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

1. The use of obvious hypotheticals ("If 99.9% of the time...") in conjunction with obvious hyperbole ("Danger Will Robinson!") are techniques which are meant to illustrate a point. They serve the same purpose as homework problems involving trains moving at 3/5 the speed of light which are given to first-year students in Special Relativity. A train moving at 3/5 the speed of light? Your figures are greatly exaggerated!

2. Right, of course it wouldn't be appropriate to completely change the behavior of the current signing bot. Users would explicitly opt-in to such behavior. Xerxesnine 15:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

As this thread comes to a close, I will just express my general lament that poor user interfaces can persist (here and everywhere) due to users perpetuating them out of habit and/or arbitrary attachment to the status quo. I believe my arguments concerning the four tildes, and the reactions to those arguments here, demonstrate this problem well. Xerxesnine 15:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I do not necessarily agree with Xerxesnine that automatic signatures are a good idea but I certainly agree that no real counter-argument has been presented in this discussion. I do not have the experience of wikipedia to come to an educated conclusion on the signature issue - there may be some good reason for not implementing them automatically that I have not thought of - if so I would like to know what it is because it has not been mentioned here yet. Tripper 17:41, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Merging Greek and Roman gods

There are a number of articles where there are two articles for the same god, one for the Greek name, and one for the Roman name. While I admit there are slight differences in the personification of these deities across cultures, it would make sense to me to merge the articles. I saw no mention of this issue at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mythology or in the WP:MOS so I wanted to ask people's thoughts here. —Dgies^t c 01:11, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I think there are enough differences that two articles are appropriate. Blueboar 01:54, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Micropedia -Macropedia

I have noticed that many articles are quite long, also difficult to navigate. There is also the problem that some partsd of articles need to be under many keywords. Why not split big articles in a short summary article and then (with short descriptive headers) subarticles that can be included under many headers (like detailed description of history of diesel engines in both article of Rudolf Disel and Diesel engine) There are many laces where (IMHO) that would make the articlles much more readible. Seniorsag 16:57, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

We already do this. See Wikipedia:Summary style for information on how. --tjstrf talk 16:59, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Multiple versions of a same article

Since the English Wikipedia is so huge now due to its huge contributor base, I have come up with an idea... Maybe we could do several versions of a same article, each one with a different style so that they may adapt better to different readers. For example, I may be interested in a particular article of a famous battle but find the article too long for my needs and reading just the lead isn't enough for a general overview. A shorter version might be useful here. Maybe different contributors have made more or less equal in quality but incompatible editions in an article and it would be useful to keep both. It is possible that this has already been discussed, but nevertheless I'll write this so you can discuss the viability of this idea. --Taraborn 12:47, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

There would probably be problems with synchronizing the articles and making sure they didn't contradict each other. WP:POVFORK contains a small amount of information about why this 'content forking' is a bad idea (although it's mostly about people splitting articles to promote a POV). I remember Wikinfo does something of the sort, but not being a contributor there I'm not sure exactly how it works (except that it has something to do with multiple viewpoints). --ais523 13:10, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

If the lead isn't enough, and the article is too long, then we should work on splitting it and summarizing it with summary style. Big topics break into numerous articles to cover various aspects, with short summaries in the main part. If there's a piece you don't need, leave it out. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 15:39, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

There is a project called "simple" which is meant to be articles done in simple English. That may be what you are looking for. I for one do not advise creating multiple articles on a single topic. I kind of destroys the purpose of a wiki, which is the use the combined efforts of numerous people to create the best overall content possible on a topic or subtopic in a single article.

As for your example: A good article should be one where you can read the lead for an overview, read the first section for a more detailed picture, and then read the subsequent sections for a mroe complete picture. If the article does not do that, then it is not well written and that is the issue. I'm sure that most long article here do not do that, but this project does seem to improve in general over time. Either ask for a revision, or be bold and edit the article to suit your needs. --EMS | Talk 16:20, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Images on the Main_Page

From my experience, a lot of new users expect the images next to articles on the home page to link to the article themselves. This is understandable since so many sites (Google News for one) use images in this manner to link to news stories or articles. I think it throws people off when they click on the image and get the image page, especially since the home page is a place for so many Wikipedia beginners. It might be more user friendly to make these images direct links to the article. Or to find some compromise. Pdubya88 03:46, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

The images need to link to their description pages for copyright reasons (unless they're public domain, which is rare). One possible compromise would be to use <ImageMap> to link the whole image apart from an icon in the corner linking to the description page, but that would probably uglify the Main Page and not give too much benefit. Perhaps we could put a notice on the Main Page image protection templates explaining what happened? --ais523 10:33, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Maybe a small link to the article could appear in the corner, only when the user rolls over the image (though this may still be too ugly). I think putting something in the image protection template could work... i.e. "If you were trying to reach an article from the main page, please go back and click on the text link." but nicer. Pdubya88 21:46, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I like this idea, Pdubya88. I think you're right that most new users aren't looking for the image page when they click on the image, and this would make it more user friendly. delldot | talk 22:51, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Simplification of barnstars and nomination process

I feel that often barstars are given out too easily and don't fully reflect what the recipient has done. A nomination process (possibly similar to Rfa) would result in far more credibility to the award. It could also be simplified so there are only a few different ones awarded (off the top of my head; vandalism barnstar, editing barnstar, signifcant contribution barnstar and Minor edits barnstar (for the tireless tasks). I just gave my 1st one which I feel is deserved, but this is not shown because anyone can give them RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 23:04, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I think all that would do is drag people away from editing the encyclopaedia, and into more bureaucratic !voting. Can't a barnstar remain as a symbol of one user's appreciation of another user's contributions? Trebor 23:08, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I definitely oppose this, and can't think of a more misleading title for your post. You don't want to simply them, but rather to create instruction creep; you're missing the point. Superm401 - Talk 23:16, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

But surely it would spur people on to edit, and their contributions could be rewarded with a meaningful 'wikipedia award' RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 23:18, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Too bureaucratic, plus barnstars are not that important. Right now every barnstar is deserved because one editor thinks that another editor deserves one. Good enough for me. Garion96 (talk) 03:35, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

The point of the barnstar is that it has meaning only as a symbol of one editor's appreciation of another. It's a very personal and informal thing, not a consensus-based meritocratic reward. See Meatball:BarnStar. Ideally, people don't edit seeking barnstars. They are meant to be a honor, not an incentive. Superm401 - Talk 04:43, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Aren't barnstars supposed to be simply small tokens of appreciation? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:05, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, small and personal. If I made it seem like A Big Deal, I shouldn't have. Superm401 - Talk 06:35, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Truthfulness

Occasionally articles are submitted which are demonstrably, obviously and verifiably untrue. Perhaps intentionally, maybe sometimes accidentally. Assuming that such articles do not earn a {{speedy}} tag, they will, I assume, find their way to {{AfD}}. At this point I would like to afix, as a reason for AfD failure, the label WP:UNTRUE. But this tag does not appear to exist. (The tag WP:TRUTH does, but only as a humorous essay, which I feel should not be in Wikipedia. Different topic). I know it's possible; would it be reasonable to create this tag? Clearly, articles which can be shown beyond doubt to be factually untrue should not be retained. I appreciate that other tags will usually apply, but this one would be very convenient. And wholly apposite. --Anthony.bradbury 17:22, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

How would you deal with a page about something where the subject matter is known to be untrue, and is the reason for the entry in the first place. For example, a hoax?

perfectblue 17:56, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I am quite unclear as to what this proposed template would contain and how it would be a departure from what already exists. If an article is untrue in the sense it is a hoax, {{hoax}} already exists and the article, if it doesn't meet a criteria for speedy deletion, can be prodded and/or taken to afd. How would this new tag add anything to this? If you are proposing that we have a new speedy deletion basis, that can be proposed on WT:CSD. But note prior discussions here, here and others going back a ways. The short answer to that where an article's truthfulness is questioned, the appeal to that (un)truth must perforce rely on research to substantiate which is correct: the claimed truth in the article and the claimed untruth of the objectant—not matters that are well-suited to deletion without discussion.

If you are talking about articles in which the subject is not questioned, just the treatment of that subject in the article, I, and I think most editors, believe deletion is not the correct route. Our policies already require reliable sources, verifiability, and prohibit original research, and any unsourced statements in dispute may be removed from articles. So if an editor is not willing or situated to edit the article to make it truthful, article tags such as {{fact}}, {{unreferenced}}, {{disputed}}, {{totallydisputed}} etc., as well as the ability to delete such claimed untruthful matters, already covers this territory.

So if you are at afd saying an article is untrue as in a hoax, the deletion basis is that it is a hoax, that it is original research or unverifiable or even not notable by virtue of being not written about in the wider world, regardless of truth. And if you're there saying "as presently written, the text it's untrue on this real subject," you're going to be told that deletion is not the proper response. So what would this tag actually say?--Fuhghettaboutit 18:53, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

The statement which prompted my question was contained in an article, since deleted, about a tennis player in which it was claimed that in the year 2002 he was ranked in the top 100 in the world rankings, which was demonstrably false by searching existing data bases, without any suggestion of WP:OR. As I see it, there is a difference between a hoax, which is however misguidedly intended as a joke, and a deliberate untruth told with intent to deceive or mislead.

To answer the question asked by User:Fuhghettaboutit, the tag would say "This article contains statements which are demonstrably factually untrue". the editor would still have the usual recourses available with any other delete tag or prod. I was only asking - please don't bite me!--Anthony.bradbury 19:43, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

A hoax is "an act intended to deceive or trick" so is pretty much synonymous with "a deliberate untruth told with intent to deceive or mislead". I'm not seeing the difference. Trebor 19:49, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I see it as a difference in motivation. A hoax is designed to annoy or confuse people, or to make them behave in a way that they would not otherwise have done. A lie is designed to advantage in some way the person making the statement. But it really is not a big deal and I think I wish now that I had never suggested it. Thank you for your time and your patience.--Anthony.bradbury 19:54, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

When I said Hoax, I really meant a page about a hoax, not a page that was a hoax. For example, a page covering a notable April Fools day joke pulled by a newspaper. The page could cite the newspaper even in the knowledge that the contents were false. perfectblue 07:47, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

San Serriffe is pretty much a textbook example of how to handle something like this... 23:46, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Or Piltdown Man. User:Zoe|(talk) 19:37, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

• Would WP:BALLS help? >Radiant< 15:57, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Please Issue Easy Guidlines for Footnotes with Links

I'm a newbie and can't find a simple footnote button or any kind of instructions on how to create a footnoted link to a web article in plain English for the technically-challenged. Can you post some simple (as in gratingly simple for the utterly stupid) instructions for how to create citation links? Since I can't figure out how to do it, I've been putting the references in the summary of edit line for whoever would like to incorporate the info. But just can't do it myself. The instructions are all Greek to me. Help? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by FirthFan1 (talk • contribs) 18:40, 12 January 2007 (UTC). FirthFan1, 18:40, 12 January 2007

Here's a real quick example, hope it helps. —Dgies^t c 18:46, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

==Some paragraph==
 Contrary to popular belief, the sky is not blue.<ref>{{cite web|title=Crackpot Journal|url=http://your.url.com/}}</ref>

==References==
 <references/>
 

Did you discover WP:FOOT? (SEWilco 19:43, 12 January 2007 (UTC))

Formatting references isn't that difficult. Just enclose the reference's URL in <ref>...</ref> tags. For example, if your reference is http://google.com, you would format the reference like this: <ref>http://google.com</ref>.

Above the "External links" section (if the article has one), add a "References" section consisting solely of the following tag: <references/>

I don't know how to format references that aren't URLs, though. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 09:13, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

WP:CITET offers links to several templates that can be used to cite references either inline or in a section at the end. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 09:43, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Here's a few more places to look: Wikipedia:Citations quick reference, Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links), and WP:CITE. I'm not sure how "plain English" they are, however. John Broughton | Talk 15:52, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Glad someone else is having trouble with "references" or "footnotes" - whatever. I have discovered:- This should give a small superscript "[1"] which can refer to the list of refs listed near the end. BUT what do I do if the same ref is referred to more than once and therefore given more than one reference number? (Hope I can find this page again to read the answer to this question!!)Osborne 11:24, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

If you need to cite the same reference twice, use <ref name="...">...</ref> and when you need to refer to it again, use <ref name="..." /> where the name is the same. invincible 15:04, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Many thanks. It works - but one wee error and the rest goes up the shoot! One further question however: is there a difference between: "..." and: ... thanks. Osborne 09:03, 25 January 2007 (UTC) Oh ... only shows up in "edit" not in edit - queerOsborne 09:05, 25 January 2007 (UTC)Only to be appreciated (spelling?) when in "Edit". Osborne 09:09, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

... was just an example. You can use whatever name you want (preferably one more descriptive than ...). Just make sure the name is the same every time you use the reference. See Meta:Cite.php#Multiple_uses_of_the_same_footnote. Superm401 - Talk 08:03, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

References

Wikipedia:Images for Upload

I have created Wikipedia:Images for Upload. I wonder if someone can change the text in MediaWiki:Uploadnologintext to inform unregestered users tbat they can suggest an image that is online for creation there.--Natl1 (Talk Page) (Contribs) 23:22, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Place your proposed text on MediaWiki talk:Uploadnologintext and place an {{editprotected}} template on the page; that will (eventually) attract the attention of administrators who will make or decline the change. --ais523 13:20, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Thesis

Wondering if anyone has posted a finished thesis? I just finished mine and think it would be a great learning tool/exercise to see what the Wiki-gang would edit. Also anyone know how i would go about posting it?

Thnx —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bkado (talk • contribs) 21:44, 28 January 2007 (UTC).

Well there are a number of problems regarding this. First, Wikipedia does not publish original research which, most likely, is what your thesis is. Secondly, depending on the institution and country where you submitted your thesis, the copyright might not entirely be yours (I know this is the case in Canada). Thirdly, Wikipedia consists of mostly short articles. A much better idea is for you to start editing pages related to work presented in your thesis and to share your knowledge of both the subject and the literature concerning the subject. If you have been able to write a thesis, you should be able to make very significant improvements to a number of articles. Cheers, Pascal.Tesson 21:58, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

You probably could post it on wikibooks or wikiversity; they're not limited to encyclopedic writing. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 13:38, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Auschwitz concentration camp

I do fully understand the policies enshrined inWP:BLOCK and in WP:PROTECT. But there are some articles, such as this one, which carry a significant emotive significance to many peoiple, and yet appear to be a prime target for vandalism. Yes, I know it can be reverted, and I spend a fair bit of time doing this. Is it not possible for selected articles, chosen by consensus or by whatever means the community accepts, to be permanently semi-protected?--Anthony.bradbury 23:08, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales on the matter Some pages are sprotected continuously, but I think a very high level of vandalism would be needed to justify it (I haven't looked at this page in particular). Trebor 19:55, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

How high would you classify as very high? This article averages a vandal hit on a daily basis. An addtional point, which I tried to suggest earlier, is that vandal edits here can have a highly damaging emotional impact on people who are/were closely involved; Jimbo's example of George W Bush may well be hit more often, but I would suggest with less damage to people concerned. Except for George and prospective Republican candidates. --Anthony.bradbury 20:42, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Four vandalism edits today. How high is very high, I ask again?--Anthony.bradbury 22:49, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

The current semi-protection policy clearly discourages preemptive semi-protection. However, I think it would be reasonable to tweak the policy so that semi-protection could be used in such cases where typical vandalism is extremely offensive to a number of people. In any case, this is probably something you should bring up on the policy's talk page. Pascal.Tesson 17:04, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I personaly think that this page should be permanently sprotected.

smarter random articles

Why not provide users with intelligent suggestions based on personal usage as well as random articles. It shouldn't be too difficult to implement, a fairly simple neural network would suffice. Pandora.com is able to do it with music, a medium exponentially more difficult to analyze then a web of text data, imagine what Wikipedia can do with all the data it has combined with a person's viewing habits. Assuming ofcoarse the user is logged in while viewing and wiki records which pages are viewed. Vahe.kuzoyan 23:42, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it falls down on the latter - no data like this is viewed. The only user-linked things recorded are edits and similar "interaction" activities; pageviews and the like aren't tracked in any significant way. Shimgray | talk | 23:44, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

• You're after User:SuggestBot's services, I believe. --tjstrf talk 01:08, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I hit "Random article" ten times, and got four sportsmen. That's wholly disproportionate, but at least made me think the current situation over.

One idea was to somehow rate all pages as either main, subtopic of different level or leafs; Hockey being a main topic, NHL a subtopic and Wayne Gretzky a "leaf". I believe, in some part, this is already done, though I'm not all THAT familiar with Wikipedia. Anyway, the next part would be either making Special:Random point only to main or subtopic pages, and/or put a toggle for it in each user's settings.

This is just one possible solution to the problem I perceive with the Random link - that I, after 20some clicks still hadn't found a topic I found interesting to read.

from 16:05, 23 January 2007 (GMT)

I usually get towns. Though 10 clicks just now got me 2 sportsmen, a composer, 3 towns, 2 movies one of which I'd seen (and hated), a river, and Charles Dickens. But there actually is a reason to let Random really be random: it's supposed to show the complete breadth of Wikipedia's article content. Not just the important stuff. --tjstrf talk 23:10, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

or perhaps an option for a simple 'Random Popular Article', which would use page views as criteria for the pool of random articles. Set an arbitrary pageview threshold - say, 5000 in the past 6 months. It would effectively eliminate many small towns, bad movies, forgotten actors, non-legendary sports figures, unimpressive landmarks, etc. But leave the old random article navigator for those who do enjoy finding out about a village in Irkutsk, pop 101. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.142.59.155 (talk) 04:44, 25 January 2007 (UTC).

There is no data available on page views of en.wikipedia.org pages. Given the volume handled by servers, it was decided that this feature would be turned off.

On a more constructive note, it would be nice to have options for random pages: Featured articles only, Featured and Good articles only, articles over a certain size (bytes) only, come to mind. -- John Broughton ^☎☎ 20:06, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

More detailed statistics

Hi, I've recently done quite a few edits to philosophy-related articles - there are a lot of articles there that sure can use some help, even if it is just adding cleanup or warning messages when necessary. So the question for me is: what to edit first? Which articles really need to be good, mostly due to the fact that they are visited so often ergo that they are relied on so much. I've checked the wikipedia statistics but there seem to be none for individual pages - am I missing something?

Secondly, if this could be combined with a rating system for articles (perhaps only for registered users and invisible for normal users, perhaps for everybody) there would be a quick and effective way to judge which pages need work most urgently, namely for a rating of 1 to 5:

(5 - avg rating) * pageviews = urgency

Of course the numbers only make sense when you compare different articles, but I think it would be a nifty feature. Haven't posted it yet to BugZilla as suggested because I'd like your opinions first.

Stdbrouw 14:11, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

For overall statistics, there's the ever-amusing Wikicharts, although you can only see the top 1000-2000 pages. Trebor 16:24, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

And for those top 1000, minor cleanup or warning messages isn't what is needed.

So, to get to the root cause of why this isn't possible within the wiki: the English Wikipedia has roughly 100 million views per day, and the view counter for articles has been turned off for performance reasons. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 18:05, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Hm, good point, didn't know that. It might be possible, though, to get some approximate information with google statistics tho (# of searches of *article title*). Stdbrouw 18:50, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

We have a rating system where articles are assigned a class and importance, which I think is pretty adequate really. I don't think allowing just anyone to rate an article and taking the mean is better, since a lot of people wouldn't be a very good judge (e.g. rating an article highly because it has simple language and pretty pictures). A consensus rating is much better, and I also feel the same about importance (which shouldn't be judged by popularity). All we need is more good editors working on focused WikiProjects. Richard001 18:50, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd basically just like _any_ sort of rating, a system where everyone can submit his rating is merely one of the simpler ones and perhaps interesting for alerting editors when an article is rubbish when previously they might not even have known about the article its existence. Concerning the existing importance/class designations: in general these are useful, but e.g. for editors like myself who concern themselves with a single and limited field (e.g. philosophy) it is possible that all but a few articles are of lower general importance while being, within their field, of a relatively higher importance. But anyhow, a rating system is not of paramount importance of course. Stdbrouw 19:20, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

You could tag it and notify the appropriate wikiproject. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:55, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

links to disambiguation pages

Wikipedia could have a special page that shows pages that have links to disambiguation pages (ie, with the tag), allowing the community to fix up those links. This would utimately make the "what links here" tag more useful.

Hmm - maybe a bot could send a user a mesage if they add a link to a page and that link is to a disambiguation page.

Paul Murray 23:45, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

There's Special:Disambiguations. Tra (Talk) 17:12, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the idea of a bot is a good one; you might want to post something at Wikipedia:Bot requests. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 18:17, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Better Random article

Could someone improve the random article feature? For example, it would be very useful if one could randomize among science-related articles and so. --Taraborn 22:16, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Computer programs can't determine what an article is about. So, it would have to grab it from categories, which excludes articles that haven't been categorized, and it would probably cause far too much server load. -Amark moo! 22:19, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Computer programs can, but that wouldn't be easy to program. Obviously I meant grabbing from categories, anyway. It would be just a filter for articles that don't fit your requirements, I don't think that would cause too much server load. --Taraborn 13:16, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

See also the discussion above: #smarter random articles. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 18:18, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, sorry. Thanks. --Taraborn 10:58, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Read an article aloud

An idea came to me today, though I'm not sure if it has been discussed before. How about creating audio files of good/featured Wikipedia articles so that people can hear the content of the article read aloud. The audio files would only be a snapshot in time, and would be periodically updated by the community. Eventually, the community could work towards making Wikipedia navigable for the blind: one could use a microphone with voice commands to move throughout the website. -- Lasker 00:53, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Spoken articles ;-) --Quiddity 03:35, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Italic text

Wikipedia works very well on lynx and ELinks, so I'm sure it works OK on braille and speech synthesis terminals. But here's a better idea: Why don't we include a picture-to-speech engine as well? It should only take about 1000 words per diagram.--Slashme 12:15, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Disable What links here from transcluded templates

The What links here function, I find, is a very useful tool in building up connections between articles. Its effectiveness, however, has been limited recently by the development of very elaborate navigational templates. Very few of the articles on these templates are actually directly relevant to each other, and navigational templates with dozens of items can seriously cloud up What links here research. So I ask, #1 Is it technically possible to disable the backlinks, and #2 Are they any downsides I haven't anticipated? Thanks.--Pharos 20:35, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I think it would require a special additional parsing, because the tables of links are generated from parsed pages; and you'd need to generate a separate table for non-template links, or tag them as template or not. This is a software thing, so you'd need to file a bug on it. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:21, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks; I've discovered this has been reported as Bug 1392. Please voice your opinion there.--Pharos 07:35, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Dating Of articles

I think that people should be discouraged from using phrases such as "to this date", "recently" and any other of the many phrases that relate to the present. If such phrases must be used users should state the present date, e.g. "Over the last few months (Dec 2006 - Jan 2007) ...".

I have not edited many articles myself but as I read many articles I think about how others will read it in the future and how some of the authors comments will have lost much of their meaning because they have not been dated. Even now when I look something up I read sentences that are meaningless because you cannot tell when they have been written. Sure, the date that the article was last edited is at the bottom of the page but that doesn't mean much in such cases.

A couple of examples:

From Darjeeling tea: "In recent years a high percentage of top quality Darjeeling tea has been bought by Japanese consumers at relatively high prices."

From Total Annihilation: "Although Total Annihilation is over 9 years old it is still played actively today." - OK, this one's not quite so bad but you get the idea.

Is there any way of flagging such occurrences so that the author can go back and fill the date in (or in some cases other people may be able to)?

Mark Speake 22:07, 24 January 2007 (GMT)

You're right, statements that become dated are discouraged under WP:DATED. I'm not aware of a way to mark these though. If you want to change them, you can change them to use [[As of (year)|As of]] instead. delldot | talk 00:40, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

there's also {{update after}} for statements that you know will become dated, like "George bush is the current president of the united states." Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 13:19, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

A caveat: Some people go overboard with this. I was once accused of using dating prose for saying something like, "Jaunde Station was the German name of the city today known as Yaoundé." Now, there is absolutely no indication that that name will change anytime soon, so I fail to see the utility in saying, "Jaunde Station was the German name for the city that changed the spelling of its name to Yaoundé in 1918." — BrianSmithson 08:24, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Proposal: RfC/User Clerks

There have been recent concerns raised about the Requests for Comment - User Conduct process, surrounding the functionality of the process and its results. Because the RfC process is open-ended and essentially uncontrolled, there are questions about its effectiveness in providing a venue for editors to express concerns and ensure that discussions about the actions of their fellow editors are productive and not simply a sanctioned method of attack. As well, the process of certifying RfCs as well as the lack of a closing method may cause other issues.

Thus, I would like to propose the creation of a volunteer clerk corps to help smooth the RfC process. A draft of this proposal is available in my userspace (since I wasn't sure where to put it otherwise) and outlines the guidelines by which I suggest such a clerk system should work for RfC, as well as discussing some possible methods by which RfCs could be closed in a productive manner. It's had minimal outside input at this point; Guy has graciously provided some comments and ideas along the way, and I feel (especially after seeing two threads appear on WP:AN this morning regarding an uncertified RFC and a disputed closure) it's at a point where the community can take a look.

Please do note that this is in no way intended to be a bureaucracy of any kind; these clerks would be no more than aids to smoothing the process - they would ensure that assistance is available for opening RfCs properly, certified RfCs are placed properly and uncertified ones are removed (protecting users from claims of inappropriate deletions), ongoing cases are monitored by neutral parties to ensure they remain on topic and don't devolve into attacks, and close and archive those that have reached the limit of their usefulness (again ensuring that users are protected from claims of improper closures).

I appreciate any discussion the community may have, either here or on the proposal talk page. Cheers. Tony Fox (arf!) 17:11, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I would strongly support this idea. At the moment WP:RFC/USER can often end in a mess and as such the process lacks community respect. Making it work better might also ultimately have a knock-on effect in reducing the number of cases that need go to ArbCom. Clerks seem a good way to manage the opening and closing of cases, and to ensure that the RfC process is stuck to. They can also offer help and advice to newer users wishing to start an RfC but unsure of how to go about it, or direct them to a more appropriate forum (e.g. informal mediation). WJBscribe 10:39, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this is needed. This part of RFC functions well as it is, and in fact, with more input and regular maintenance happening than the rest of the RFC areas. Nevermind, I read that as pertaining to the RFC username page (title being RFC/User is confusing), not user conduct. I don't think we need clerks for the username page. Do what you want with the conduct page.pschemp | talk 15:47, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd note that of the bottom six open cases right now, most of which were opened in November, one was idle except for some signings from December 8 to January 25, when a previously uninvolved user added information; one has been edited once since December 9; one was idle from Dec. 31 to Jan. 23, when a user added a couple of signings; one has been idle since Jan. 2; one was entirely idle from Dec. 19 to Jan. 19; and the last was idle from Dec. 30 to Jan. 23. There is also one uncertified RfC - that has a bit of an issue in that it has no certifying editors but a number of editors in agreement with it - that should have probably been delisted almost a week ago. These are some maintenance jobs that could be handled by clerks who have a set of guidelines to work with. Tony Fox (arf!) 22:20, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I feel this is a solution looking for a problem. Right now the volume at RFC is not so great as to require such intervention, and we should not be adding needless levels of bureaucracy to Wikipedia. Inactive requests just prove all the more how little this is needed. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge ( Talk to Me • Neutrality Project ) 22:40, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate the comments. This proposal came about after a short discussion on WP:AN, as there has been an issue noted with the lack of results from RfC. As I state above and in the proposal, there is absolutely zero intention of this being a bureaucracy, and I'm uncertain as to how you might see it as one. Inactive requests, to me, indicate a lack of efficiency in the process that could be assisted through the suggested creation of closing summaries and eliminate situations such as that surrounding the closure and subsequent reopening of the InShaneee case. That case also indicated that having someone to monitor whether an RfC is turning into an attack session or not could be useful. Tony Fox (arf!) 23:52, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I may come off as crass saying this, but instead of creating some process to handle it, why not just handle it yourself? Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge ( Talk to Me • Neutrality Project ) 00:19, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I would tend to agree with Peter; is there a need for a special group to do this? In other areas, the clerks are used to assist users with additional powers (Checkuser, ArbCom), and make most effective use of their time. Here, there's nothing stopping any editor performing these tasks (in fact, isn't that how the usually get done?), so there's no need to assign the tasks to a specific group. Am I missing anything with my appraisal? Trebor 00:50, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not saying that it would not be useful to have editors work together towards this common goal. Rather, I am saying that there is no need for some formal structure as a "clerk corps" would be. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge ( Talk to Me • Neutrality Project ) 01:45, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I think my main thinking here is that there's no real structure for these kinds of tasks right now, so a random editor who wants to close an RFC hasn't got a specific route to take. I've absolutely no idea what to do with that one RFC that's been sitting there since the 19th, uncertified but signed by numerous editors, for example. And, I suspect that a random editor closing some RfCs, even after a period of inactivity, would get bitten. That's kind of where I'm coming from, as well as the fact that the system now has no firm closure to it - most RfCs just sort of stop. Some move to mediation or arbitration, but others just end; having a group who can put together a summary at closing and post it to the participants, to me, would provide an end point. Maybe referring to this as a "corps" is making it look too formal or official; perhaps I should have used "group" instead. I'm not suggesting a secret society or anything, and I apologize if that's the impression that was conveyed. Tony Fox (arf!) 02:08, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, the person closing after a period of inactivity shouldn't get bitten; it says archiving can happen "If no additional complaints are registered for an extended period of time, and the dispute appears to have stopped." If you think these RfCs need more structure (including, perhaps, a closing summary), then suggest it on the talk page and see what the consensus is. But I don't think there's a particular need to have a specific group to do this. Trebor 14:36, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone who has participated in this discussion; it looks like somewhere along the line I misread the interest and need for this kind of service, so I'll withdraw the proposal as lacking community support. Cheers. Tony Fox (arf!) 21:18, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Wiki Translator idea

I read recently how computers translate languages. Some use other text as references so i was thinking that you could make a translator that people can edit. For example you translate a Spanish sentence to English and it comes out all garbled but then you fix the grammar and maybe some of the words then send it back the next time someone translates a similar sentence the grammar would be much improved. After many edits it would work really well. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.179.114.122 (talk) 22:53, 23 January 2007 (UTC).

The problem I see with this is that correct language so reliant on context; a word or phrase can mean something very different depending on what's being written about. So the fixes which work great in one case may be totally incorrect for another. Trebor 22:58, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, and let me stress the complexity of the problem. But first: computers don't translate languages very good – one can achieve a pretty acceptable (but not a poetic) machine translation for a limited topic field, or one can achieve an extremely bad machine translation for any sentence whatsoever, an extremely bad translation that might actually be partially intelligible for the knowledgeable reader. Now: (almost) everything is possible, given enough thought, enough resources and enough time, so we wish to make a translator that can create acceptable translations for any topic. Then we need a machine grammar – not too hard, and we also need a semantic notation for distinct meanings of words – in short: a new special language that unambiguously is able to describe anything of the source language and the translated language. The matter of different meanings of a word is technically solvable, but our special language must contain a distinct word for all those meanings. Now, the central problem is this: in order to make a translator, we need an entire nation of people speaking our artificial language to get enough volunteers to be able to make this dictionary. Rursus 23:11, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

A new concept for the display of time-related Wikipedia information

I have been working on an intuitive display of decade, century and millennia information. It will be presented to the International Technology, Education and Development Conference in Valencia (Spain) on 7-9 March. Here is the gist of it:

Today’s global world is experiencing the interaction between civilizations more than ever before. But the study of history and civilizations is still largely focused on one civilization at a time and does not encourage a time-synchronous view. This is obviously necessary for any in-depth study, but it narrows the viewing field by blanking out what happened in other parts of the world at the same time.

‘Civilizations of the World’ is a web-based application developed to overcome this limitation of histo¬rical study. It presents a time synchronous view of different civilizations that existed since 3000 B.C. It shows the events that occurred and the prominent people who lived different civilizations on a common timeline. The user interface we designed is user friendly and organized in a way that all important information is typically just a ‘click’ away from the client’s location. The application is available on a portable media such as DVD and can be run effectively on any commonly used computer equipped with either Internet Explorer or Mozilla browser and at least 512 Mb of RAM.

The entire package (database, maintenance mode and runtime mode) is supplied as a stand-alone DVD and can thus be used without connection to the internet. By copying the DVD content to their computer users can personalize their copy of the Time Atlas by adding new entries, deleting unwanted entries and modifying entries to their requirements. Alternatively, the Time Atlas can be opened up for data entry by anyone. This will require installation of the Time Atlas and its maintenance facilities on the web. The authors intend to approach the Wikipedia team with a proposal to use the new Time Atlas as a display tool for Wikipedia’s vast amount of information.

The full short paper is available from http://www.es.flinders.edu.au/~mattom/civilizationspaper.pdf for download. Please glance through it and see what it's worth. If there is enough support for the concept I'll try and get a group up to see it implemented. Matthias Tomczak 12:47, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

A coherent stub is better than incomprehensible, machine-translated gibberish

As a regular patroller of the copy-edit backlog, I often come across awful articles that are just dumps from those amazing machine-translation tools out there on the Internet. There's no way one can copy-edit the article into something coherent. Can a guideline be written up that states that a coherent stub is much more beneficial to Wikipedia and its readers, than a long, incomprehensible, machine-translated article? I tend to stub/remove gibberish anyway (see my contributions), but a guideline would be nice to point to on the off-chance some editor goes ballistic after finding his/her few seconds of hard work copying/pasting/hitting translate is nuked to a short summary. BuddingJournalist 12:30, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Isn't Wikipedia:Translation#Caveats sufficient? TERdON 12:44, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Ahh, thanks. Didn't know my thoughts were written down somewhere already. :) BuddingJournalist 12:59, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Special:Upload should link to the deletion log

I want to suggest that the Special:Upload page have a link to the deletion log. That way, when clicking on the red link of an image that used to be there, it's easier to see what happened to it. Where, if not here, can I suggest this? — coelacan talk — 02:34, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree here. It is a paint to have to "create" the link by hand. -- ReyBrujo 02:36, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Make a {{editprotected}} request on MediaWiki talk:Uploadtext with a formatted link. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 02:39, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

crap, I just tried using the link from mediawiki:newarticletext and it doesn't work because the pagename is "Special:Upload", not the name of the image. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 02:56, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I was trying to figure out the syntax and you beat me to it. It does seem to be working now; I just tested it at a place where I know an image once was. I'd only suggest now enclosing the link in <span class="plainlinks"></span> to make it not stand out. — coelacan talk — 03:10, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I propose a brand new section that will help improve and make learning new information more fun; "Wikiquiz".

This is a suggestion about a new section for Wikipedia. Now and again, i like to increase my general knowledge here, but it generally can get boring, especially reading long articles. "Wikiquiz" would help learning become more exciting and enjoyable, and it brings something different to the mix, as it's interactive.

What it would comprise is you read through seperate small to medium random passages (or from a specialized category) You read through it, and you have to memorize it, click to the next page and then answer the questions corressponding to that passage, and then you get a mark of the ones you got correct out of so many questions. Now it could be the sensible users(not open to edit for non-users) who make the questions up, or in some computer generated way, i don't know how, i'm not that knowledgable technically. There is really nothing like this on the internet at present.

I think this is a great idea and would be a great addition to Wikipedia. I hope you value my opinion and consult it with other users, and the administrator, or whoever is in charge of this site. This will enhance memorising skills as well as expanding your general knowledge, because simply reading articles can get too boring over time. 172.202.245.129 18:20, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

There have been games and contests like this in the past; you might try looking at this page to start with.

~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 20:01, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, i never noticed this link, however you would say it's limited(only one round in wikiquiz)I'm talking about something that has questions for nearly every topic, and allows you to memorise facts in the same article, which helps young people's revision skills. We're talking about something more widespread. You could have potentially a questions tab for an article, and it will be very accessible to get from one random topic to another. So i'm not the first one to come up with the Wikiquiz game lol, but that doesn't matter.

Hall of Fame

I request everyone's input regarding this idea, to create a hall of fame to celebrate the editors who've made lasting, non-revertable contribution to the Wikipedia project and deserve some permanent form of recognition, which may serve as an inspiration to the growing community of newer editors. Rama's arrow 18:05, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

https secure wikipedia

Would it be possible to set up an https server for wikipedia too? --Timmywimmy 16:37, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

It's here. Tra (Talk) 17:04, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Picture of the Year/2006/banner1

Does this belong in article space? Corvus cornix 23:03, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

It has been moved to template space. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 18:19, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Corvus cornix 17:29, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

AfD new articles with "awesome"

I am virtually certain that this idea will be jumped on from a great height, bu It make it because of my extreme irritation generated by new page patrolling. Is there any way in which any new article containing the word "awesome" can automatically be listed for deletion review? Any editor who does NP patrolling will recognise this phenomenon immediately.--Anthony.bradbury 23:33, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I do WP patrolling, what happens if the article mentions awesome from an independant review? there are many words like awaesome which come in new articles, however there are also legitimate uses for these words and tagging for deletion would be unfare to these RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 01:06, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I did say deletion review, not deletion, but ok, fair point.--Anthony.bradbury 20:44, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that a bot to list articles at AfD is a good idea; if nothing else, a human is better at reviewing an article to determine if speedy delete is better than an AfD, and better at explaining why whatever kind of delete is being recommended is in fact appropriate. -- John Broughton ^(♫♫) 00:29, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Suggest "awesome" be added to the various vandalism/bad new article watching bots/programs out there. User:Lupin has one, the IRC anti-vandalism folks have one, there may be others I haven't thought of... JesseW, the juggling janitor 06:25, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

"You have new messages"

I changed MediaWiki:Youhavenewmessages and MediaWiki:Newmessageslink so the new messages bar read "Your user talk page has been edited (last change).". I made these changes because not all edits to user talk pages are caused by the posting of new messages. I have since reverted my edits because two people didn't agree with them and I'm starting this discussion so more people can comment. J Di 19:26, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Most (the vast vast majority) of the time it does correspond to new messages, and saying "user talk page has been edited" is less obvious to people who aren't familiar. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:31, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I tried to change the message earlier (look at the history) but people wouldn't go along with it. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 20:52, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

If memory serves me, there are are two links in a row in that yellow box. It could possibly be made clearer if we added the word(s) "see" or "see the" before the 2nd link.

It is very often the second "meta" interaction users have with the site, after creating an account or making a first edit; leading them to welcomes or warnings. "(last change)" by itself might sound confusing. --Quiddity 20:56, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

You have new messages (see last change)

I think the message should definitely be understandable for new users, and 'you have new messages...' does just that. Most new users won't understand what a user-talk page is. There is a risk that the infamous orange box will just be ignored by users if they don't understand it. --ais523 16:52, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

What I think causes a lot of confusion is that clicking on "last change" doesn't clear the message bar - users continue to see until they click on "new messages". I think something like this might cause less confusion:

You have new message(s) at your user talk page (option: see just the last change to that page)

-- John Broughton ^☎☎ 19:21, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Last change clears it for me. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:41, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikimedia sister projects

I'm not sure if I've come to the right place, I guess this could be placed under technical discussions too, though it is a fairly general sort of request.

I frequently want to visit a related sister project page - for example I'll be editing the slug article and I'll notice it has no commons link, so I'll go to commons and look it up. But from the wikipedia page there are no direct links to the commons page, or even commons itself. I suppose I should have bookmarked a few of the sister sites I visit more often, but wouldn't it be easier if each page had links somewhere to the other projects? The first place I considered was linking simply to the sister projects as on the main page right down the bottom left, with tiny thumbnails on the right of the Wikimedia project logo. The other possibility is linking to existing pages on other sister projects down the left hand side above or below the language links. This may actually be a better idea, as links could be placed in a similar fashion to languages.

Perhaps this a proposal that should be taken to meta, or perhaps it has already been suggested before by others, I don't know. Just thought I'd put it forward and see what response I get. Richard001 20:32, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

There are templates for linking to sister projects. {{commons}} and the rest of Category:Interwiki link templates. Integrating it into the software would be a bit less flexible, since there isn't much room in that column for a description of what you're linking to. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:19, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, adding the links manually would basically be a less effective form of what we have at the moment now that I actually give it some thought. How about a collection of links to the other project's main pages from the bottom left corner, perhaps under (or to the right of, in some screens such as the editing layout) the Wikimedia project logo? Do you think it could be worked into the layout, or is there not really room for such?

They are only a click away, and I've moved the ones I use most often onto my bookmarks toolbar anyway, though it could still be a useful addition to the layout if there's room, and by using small icons of each project's logo they may fit in. Richard001 08:52, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

(See also these templates: Wikipedia:Sister projects#Several/All Wikimedia Sister projects in box)

Something like the following mockup; but I also would've thought it had already been suggested? and hence either rejected or bug-requested?

this topic at

• Wiktionary
• Wikiquote
• Wikisource
• Commons

Feedback? --Quiddity 07:44, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

This is Bug 708, there is also a mockup at the top of the bug page (very similar to yours Quiddity :-).--Commander Keane 03:23, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Perfect! Thanks :) Duly voted. --Quiddity 21:44, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Userbox policy/guidline

I am proposing that we have a userbox policy or guidline, there have recently some rather heated discusions at the admin noticeboard as to what is acceptable and what isn't for a userbox. These discusions can be found here and here. This policy would bring clarity as what is acceptable and not and mean that these debate would not be as heated RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 22:44, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

That would be something like Wikipedia:Userboxes, Wikipedia:Proposed policy on userboxes, or Wikipedia:Userspace abuse? -- John Broughton (☎☎) 01:35, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Naming issues with new category

I'm not sure this is the right place for my question, but I couldn't find a better place. I was thinking about creating a category for sports structures/surfaces, like tennis court, football pitch, cricket field, boxing ring, baseball field, volleyball court, basketball court, dojo, dohyo, hockey rink, etc. But what to name it? Category:Sports fields? But many of these are not fields. Sports pitches? Same problem. Sports structures? That would seem more appropriate for stadiums, not for the sports "fields" around which the stadiums are built. Sports facilities? Same problem. I'm lost for ideas. Does anyone have any suggestions? Aecis^Brievenbus 11:39, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Sports playing surfaces? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 00:48, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the suggestion and the help :) I must say that "playing surface" makes me think of the substance that the rinks/fields/courts/etc. are made of (e.g. grass, astroturf, gravel), not the rinks/fields/courts/etc. themselves. I think Sports fields ("An area reserved for playing a game") comes closest to what I had in mind. Aecis^Brievenbus 12:00, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Semantic-Web edition

We could make a Semantic Web edition of Wikipedia. It will be immensely useful in Artificial Intelligence. --Masatran 10:04, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

• Just like the Semantic Web has been. *snicker* Seriously, it's easy to read hype about the Semantic Web and assume it can do things it doesn't do, such as organize a body of knowledge as vast as Wikipedia and successfully do any reasoning with it. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 11:09, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
• There are projects specifically intended to do this. See Semantic wiki, and there are also specific tagging schemes in place for things like biographical data. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 16:46, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (news)

In a recent deletion debate about an article on someone who was murdered, there were several calls for a centralized discussion of whether a news story about a murder, a disappearance, or a human interest feature, which met the requirements for verifiability and multiple independent coverage in reliable sources, technically satisfying WP:V and [[WP:RS} by widespread coverage for a relatively short while, might still not be encyclopedic. To allow this proposal be discussed, I have created the proposed guideline Wikipedia:Notability (news), and comment and contributions are welcome there. Thanks. Edison 21:47, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I think it needs to be expanded quite a bit, however in principal I think its a good idea. My only concern is, that in it being a news item, wouldn't it simply automatically come under the juristiction of wikipedia:Notability? If its in the news, theres going to be plenty of reliable sources to back it up RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 21:52, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

This topic came up in discussion a little while ago, and I think there is a need for something like this. We live in a source-heavy time, where meeting the multiple non-trivial mentions in published works isn't especially hard, but most people still feel relatively small news events should be deleted. GabrielF had some ideas for how to measure the notability of recent events. Trebor 22:00, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

That one was deleted because it was already covered in the article, and didn't suffice for its own because of narrow scope. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 23:16, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

This proposal is contrary to the fundamental meaning and purpose of Notability on wikipedia. It's a low bar; we're not paper, and major news events deserve coverage. You can talk dismissively about anything, and that's why our notability isn't subjective. We don't care if things are worthy of what an encyclopedia ought to cover; we just care if we can cover them to our standards. WP:UA is nothing but articles that a typical encyclopedia wouldn't have. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:04, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

But the last couple of times this came up, consensus seemed to be there was some limit. The example used previously was that of a fat cat, who had got caught inside a doggy door. It was a slow news day and multiple news services had covered it, so it was verifiable and notable. Under existing guidelines and policy there was no real reason to delete it. But is anyone arguing that this story is encyclopaedic, that it is worth its own article? Of course not. Not everything that is covered by the news, even by multiple news services, can seriously be considered notable. Trebor 23:10, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Single days events counts as single coverage. If the only thing the cat ever did was get stuck in a doggy door, then no article. If it's recognized by the mayor and gets the key to the city or something, then we've got more and we can get an article on it. Why not have an article on it? We don't have articles on people's pets because there's nothing we can say about them without violating policy, but we can write a good article on such a pet with sources and everything. Since we're not paper, it's not hurting anything else. Wikipedia's notability is not subjective, we can include anything that meets our policies, whether you think it's notable or not. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 23:11, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Observing other comments, it would be a really good idea to have a seperate news notability guidline, as I've said already, it needs to be expanded. I'm already thinking of the {{db-news}} template now! RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 23:17, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

"Single days events counts as single coverage." Do they? I haven't seen that before. Bug going back to the Beckham transfer (mainly because I've only just noticed your response). It was covered in a lot more detail in the specific article than in the other related articles and since when was "narrow scope" a reason for deletion. It happened over several days, it involved a lot of media attention, yet people still felt it should be deleted. Trebor 23:20, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Like having articles on single regularly football games where all you can say is a play by play and are better off being merged into a seasonal article. A detailed article would be excessive, so narrow scope counts for deletion or merging there. A single event, the single move, can and is covered in about as much detail as is possible without getting into trivia in the main article, so a specific article for the event has no reason to exist. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 23:29, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

But trivia is relative to the topic at hand. What may be trivia in David Beckham might be useful or pertinent information in the page specifically related to the move. Same for the judgement of how much information is excessive. I'm seeing your point (and I agree with most of it) but I think something somewhere needs to be changed to make it clearer. It's perhaps not necessary to create a full notability guideline, however it would be nice to have something more objective than the debates on the issue at the moment. Trebor 23:37, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the propsal would put asside any major news articles, it would simply create a guidline for entry. There should be a guidline in place to stop minor news artilces getting into wikipedia due to reliable sources. Some thought to WP:RS should be given though RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 23:26, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

WP:RS is a guideline of its own. If they can't meet that then use that as an argument for deletion. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 23:29, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't opposing it! I was saying that it should be an additional criteria to gain entry via reliable sources. There would be reliable sources to meet news articles. The new guidline would mean that no minor news stores were added RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 23:36, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion

How about we move it out of wikipedia space and try and work on it to make it acceptable as a guidline, then we can re-propose it. I am more than happy to work on it RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 23:41, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Notability (news) might be a good place. And see there the internationally carried story over a 2 week period of Molly the cat, who got lost or stuck in the spaces inside the brick walls of an historic New York deli. Multiple international coverage for 2 weeks or so. Encyclopedic? Edison 00:23, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

We've got plenty of crazy stuff. Whether anyone feels it's encyclopedic is irrelevant. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 00:57, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Being allowed to nominate ones own photos as "Featured"

I think this is dumb. This one guy has over 1/10 of all the FP on WP. He nominated every single one of them (at least that I have seen.) I think WP users need to PULL the nice pictures they come across towards the community, not the nice photographers PUSH his or her photographs at the community. Does this make sense? --Indolences 05:44, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

No, not really. It's not like people here have enough social status that they can cause a featured picture discussion to end up however they please, unless the picture truly deserves it. So what's the point of banning people from nominating their own pictures? -Amark moo! 05:46, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

It just seems kind of stuck up to me. If it's good, someone will probably nominate it. Otherwise it just seems like a popularity contest. OH LOOK AT ME I HAVE 46546 FEATURED PICS!

I do have some strange opinions, however. --Indolences 05:54, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

For some reason I sense a certain amount of envy. Anyway, the decision is ultimately made by other editors as to whether or not an image is featured. Nominating your own photo might be vain at most, but it is not against policy. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 07:35, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

As said above, the judging is objective. A couple of users do account for a lot of the FPs, true, but that's not a problem. Considering the majority of pictures nominated are promoted, the alternative is to have a bunch of featured-quality pics not being promoted until someone "notices" them. Trebor 11:39, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Considering I know the guy you're referring to (this guy), I don't think it's dumb at all. It's like editcountitis. Do you see people going "Hey guess what. I have 5000 edits". That seems ludicrous as the article says. Image count is no different. We should be thankful that we have high-quality photographers, drawers and the like, rather than dismissing them for being "too good". Harryboyles 11:50, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Net contribution in bytes

Would it be possible to create a feature that shows a user their net contribution (in bytes) to Wikipedia? This feature would show the net contribution by namespace (Main, Talk:, Wikipedia:, Wikipedia talk:, User:, User talk, etc.) and the net overall contribution.

Even more useful might be showing the net change in bytes for each edit on the history page.

This would just be an extension of an existing feature on certain pages (Special:Watchlist, Special:Recentchanges) that shows the net change in bytes made to an article (+ in green, - in red). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Twas Now (talk • contribs) 05:18, 31 January 2007 (UTC).

Hehehe, so we could say "I have contributed 761 mb to Wikipedia"? :-) I think this cannot be done with a simple query, so don't expect anything like this, though. -- ReyBrujo 05:20, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

IIRC any implementation of this will not be as easy as it looks, because the Recent changes database table stores data only for a certain number of changes total. With our large number of changes per day the table stores data for only a month or so. Flyingtoaster1337 05:42, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to see this for certain editors with obscene edit counts. -Amark moo! 05:47, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Reverting page-blank vandalism would result in the numbers getting ridiculously huge for little effort. --Random832(tc) 17:04, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

The perennial question

This question gets asked very often, and for good reason. The watchlist page is self-explanatory except for those spunky numbers, which are not what anyone would expect to see in their browser bookmarks, etc. -- and we need a link on that page (as well as on Recent Changes) that anyone can click on and get the answer instantly. For each person that bothers to ask about it, there are probably a few dozen who don't. So I beg the powers that be to put in an explanatory link. Thanks. Xiner (talk, email) 03:22, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

If it is so troublesome, I would suggest changing the global css to hide the numbers, and only show them with custom CSS. -- ReyBrujo 05:21, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

How's this? (And that page is linked directly from everyone's watchlist, via the "... pages on your watchlist (excluding talk ..." link) I think that's enough, but maybe making it more prominent somehow... JesseW, the juggling janitor 06:53, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist lines could be modified to read (for example) "(+389 bytes)" rather than "(+389)". The six extra characters wouldn't result in an extra line in almost all cases. That should be a trivial change to make, and I'd predict these questions would essentially end. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 02:14, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Removal of admin status after inactivity

I recently came across User:GregRobson who has been an administrator since 2005, however, he has had less than 30 edits in the past year. I propose that administrators are stripped of there tools if they are inactive for long periods of time (maybe a minimum of 50 edits per month?). Wikipedia changes quickly, and inactive admins are suseptable to making poor decisions due to not following changes to wikipedia policy and guidlines. If User:GregRobson was to go to Rfa now, he would definately fail. This would only be a minor change as the majority of admins maintain good contributions RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 03:01, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

This has been discussed before. No one has ever given any example of an inactive admin coming back and making a very bad decision. The consensus seems to be that such a policy in this form at least would be needless policy. JoshuaZ 03:10, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Its just my opinion that when you go to Rfa, you go there with a certain number of edits per month (along with many other things) and you should alway be able to show that you deserve admin tools. There are plenty of people who go to Rfa who are simply refused for the number of edits they have, or edits in particular areas or simply, they are not active enough. I just think there should be a recall process for admins who don't use their tools RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 03:17, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I think edit-count is a fair reason not to give somebody admin status, but not to take it away. I mean, it is a good reason not to give someone a driver's license if they have not driven much, but it is not necessarily a good idea to take away someone's driver's license if they have not driven much recently. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 03:36, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Agreed with Twas. The reason people are opposed for inactivity isn't that being an inactive admin makes you bad, but that inactivity does not allow a chance to judge if you'll be any good at adminship. -Amark moo! 03:42, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Without naming names (unless you insist), I do recall an instance in which a Wikipedia sysop returned after an extended absence and instigated a significant controversy by violating a policy that had changed during that time. In my opinion, it would be reasonable to request that administers inactive for an arbitrary duration brush up on various policies (and learn of any changes) before making use of directly relevant sysop tools. —David Levy 04:10, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

That would certainly be reasonable, but a problem is finding out about those changes. Wikispace is huge and there is no central change log or anything. >Radiant< 16:03, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

For example, before the sysop speedily deletes a page, he/she should re-read the relevant CSD. Or if the sysop intends to block a user for a Wikipedia:Username violation, he/she should first re-read that page. —David Levy 22:11, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Well maybe a template should be created that can be placed on seamlingly inactive admins user talk page advising to reread over policies before making any further admin descisions. A long period of inactivity will mean they most probably will not be familiar with policy RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 22:21, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Demote inactive admins (this is a proposal I support, BTW). -- Rick Block (talk) 04:41, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Conflict of interest question

Is it allowed to create/edit the article of an organization one belongs to? I know people who have article about themselves and are recommended not to edit them. --Indolences 17:40, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

There's an entire guideline about that; see WP:COI. --ais523 17:43, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for notifying me of this. Would someone be interested in taking a quick look at the page? I tried to create it as objectively as possible. It's the page for CATESOL. Thanks! In defense 20:50, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I think this information should be a section in the TESOL Inc. article. I will post further at Talk:CATESOL and I suggest any further discussion be at that page. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 02:25, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

At least ALLOW email notification when my created page is altered

I realize that email notification for changes to pages is currently not a feature, since that would mean some admins would be getting hundreds a day. Some of us lesser mortals, however, have only created one or two pages. One of mine is for a professional organization I belong to, and they're concerned there may be vandalism. So I'd like to know each time someone (anonymous or not) makes a change to it, without having to open my browser and go to the page myself.

Why isn't this an option? Not allowing this seems to undermine a very democratic form of transparency. Admins who don't want the excessive email could just turn off the option. In defense 22:51, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

The technical people, I believe, say we simply don't have the resources to cope with even a relatively small number of people turning it on.

However, if all you want is one or two pages to be watched this way, we do provide the capacity for RSS feeds of all edits to a given page - the syntax is http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=PAGENAME&action=history&feed=rss

Is that any help? Shimgray | talk | 22:55, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

It would be a great help if I knew how to implement an RSS feed! ;) In defense 20:50, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Email notification for watchlist edits is in MediaWiki, but not enable on Wikipedia due to potential volume. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 23:01, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Is there a big difference between opening your browser to check your Watchlist and opening your browser to check your email? − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 03:41, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Indeed there is: I don't use web-based email for exactly that reason - I don't like to have to open my browser for it. Instead I leave Eudora on in the background. In defense 20:50, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Signature timestamps

Howdy. I have come to notice that the timestamps in signatures are rather distracting on talk pages. ~~~~~ currently produces 14:30, 29 January 2007 (UTC) Would it be possible to change the standard display, perhaps use <small></small> tags, and get rid of the "(UTC)"? For those opposed to this, perhaps we could display "Coordinated Universal Time" when a user rolls over the stamp. (like over the abbreviation's in this table).

I saw User:Jorcoga's signature, and I rather liked the way the time is displayed, in a different font, so it stands out, but not in an imposing way:

Jorcoga Hi!08:28, Monday, January 29 2007

Maybe we could make this a standard? I wouldn't know how to implement this, but I hoped you guys would - Jack (talk) 14:30, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a mediawiki thing, so you'd need to either find the appropriate mediawiki page for the timestamp formatting, or put in a bug to request that feature is added to the software. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 15:27, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

How do I do that? Sorry, I know virtually noting about MediaWiki... - Jack (talk) 12:57, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that the timestamp is less distracting than gaudy signatures. Perhaps we should disable those as well? CMummert · talk 13:02, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

That argument was running in about 3 different places recently, and eventually the MediaWiki developers were requested to develop a feature for shortening/disabling/reducing length in edit box of signatures. Nothing seems to have come of it yet, though. --ais523 13:06, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

My last comment was mostly written to point out that User:Jrockley, who is asking how to make the date smaller, has a signature wrapped in <big>. I don't mind the date being in a regular font; I usually don't read that far when reading comments. Maybe my sarcasm was too subtle. CMummert · talk 13:13, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm working on changing my signature to incorporate all of this, but back to the mediawiki thing, how could I take it up with them? - Jack (talk) 11:19, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Get an account on mediazilla: (which, unfortunately, will end up revealing your email address, so you might want to get a temporary email address), and file it as an 'enhancement bug' (something which isn't an error but which would still improve MediaWiki if fixed). The change might eventually be made if a developer is interested enough to write the relevant code. --ais523 11:24, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

As far as getting rid of "(UTC)" - is there any reason they [timestamps] can't be displayed in the reader's local time? We do have timezone in preferences. --Random832(tc) 14:25, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the main reason is to ensure that everyone is looking at the same times, and don't get the sequences confused. Allowing times to be reformatted could lead to someone referring to a time that another doesn't see. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:43, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Edit requirement for new page creating

Would it be possible to make it so that making new pages (not counting user and user talk pages) has a requirement of about 500 edits or so. I was looking at the next edition of the signpost, and it was mentioned that editcount could be used for this type of thing. Looking over the people who create most of the articles that are speedy deleted, they temd to be people with very few edits. THat is why II beleive that this addition to current policy would be a good idea. The Placebo Effect 14:07, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

• Editcountitis is evil. Enforcing it is worse. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 14:18, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
  • understood, but as I said, most SD articles are created by people with a negligable amount of edits. The Placebo Effect 14:21, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
    • How many good articles have been created by people with <500 edits? A lot. We can add all sorts of hoops for people to jump through, or we can assume good faith and give them the chance to produce good stuff or crap. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 15:45, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
      • Realistically, we're talking about making newer registered editors go through Wikipedia:Articles for creation rather than being able to create articles directly. The pluses and minuses involve whether this would deter some users from creating useful articles; whether being able to instantly create an article encourages a registered user to do more on Wikipedia; whether the screening process for proposed new articles is better or worse than the review by the new pages patrol (in terms of accepting good articles and rejecting bad ones); and the extent to which the screening process for proposed new articles requires less time and effort than the new articles patrol process combined with subsequent AfDs and admin work to delete an article. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 17:56, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
        • My first edit to the wiki (I think) was adding a article about:. Making it an editcount thing can be a form of biteing and can discourage new users. FirefoxMan 21:20, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
        • You've already said that you're basing this on speedy deletions, but speedying an article is a couple of clicks and a couple of lines of typing; articles for creation is significantly more work. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:50, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
    • It could be worth considering to prevent sleeper vandal accounts; if they need a few edits, then they would be seen before they can create/move pages. But currently this is allowed for 4 day old accounts; 500 edits/4 days = 125 edits/day for a new, active user to be equivalent to the current policy. Wouldn't 10 or 20 edits be sufficient? -Steve Sanbeg 18:03, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

This idea would just make it so vandals would have to make a bunch of edits in addition to the end result of a spam article. And 500 edits is an insane amount for such a plan. I would put it at more like 10, but then again I don't like the idea. Plus it's easier to get rid of articles than it is edits. One can delete an entire thing as opposed to a little portion going unnoticed. What's next, 1,000 edits to upload an image? -Indolences 18:21, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I disagree - whatever limit is placed is necessarily arbitrary, and a determined vandal can easily get around it. How long would it take you to visit 250 pages, open for editing, insert a comma, then revert? We have bigger fish to fry, like middle school kids spending their mandatory internet research in class time, trying to find pages they can anonymously vandalize? Besides, what types of edits would you count as being "valid" toward the count? All edits? All edits that the editor himself has not flagged as being "minor"? would you treat a series of edits to the same page in one day as counting as one edit? Cbdorsett 06:03, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Encyclopedia Dramatica

Why did you take the article away?

I propose bringing the article back.

It has no reliable sources. Please provide reliable sources if you want it recreated. -Amark moo! 05:11, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Semi-protection of "day" pages?

It seems to me that the "day pages" (e.g., May 30) get a considerably above-average amount of vandalism, and almost everything useful that is added to them is added by registered users. Would we lose much if all 366 of them were semi-protected to allow only registered users to edit them? Grutness...wha? 05:16, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Semiprotection should not be used for long periods. FirefoxMan 21:15, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Any reason why not? Grutness...wha? 02:15, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Firefoxman's reasoning is probably that it undermines the definition of a wiki. Cbrown1023 talk 02:23, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not clear how that could undermine the definition of a wiki any more than anything listed at Wikipedia:List_of_protected_pages/Long-term_protection. If other long-term protected pages aren't against the spirit of Wikipedia, how could these be? In any case, anyone would still be able to edit the pages if they've been editing for a while with a user name. It's hardly deadlocking the door. Grutness...wha? 02:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

What about the other 364/365 days of the year where there is little vandalism? The idea of long-term protection is for pages that suffer constant, wide-ranging protection and where short semi-protection would only be a bandaid fix. A lot of these are relatively controversial articles that are prime targets all the time. Day pages, I think, would really only suffer when it is the day the article is about. Harryboyles 11:23, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand... are you saying that there is only likely to be vandalism on the day itself? There have been 28 instances of vandalism to the May 30 article in the last month - an average of almost one a day, and I doubt it is alone in this. of those, all but five were by anons, and anons made only one constructive edit. Multiply that by an average year, and we'd have over 300 instances of vandalism per day page, over 80% of them by anons. And that's even if there is not an increase around the day itself. Which there would appear to be, judging by the flurry of recent vandalism to articles like January 30. Vandalism to day pages is a year-round problem for all 366 of them. Grutness...wha? 22:59, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Notability of albums proposition

I have created a suggested guidline for notability of albums in my userpage due to confusion of this policy in recent Afd's (Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Side_Show_Freaks). The proposed addition can be found here; User:Ryanpostlethwaite/WP:MUSIC (album). This addition would bring clairty to the what is acceptable for inclusion rather than just taking it as read that an album is notable if the artist is notable regardless of how big the actual album was. Please feel free to edit my userpage if you feel anything should be added/removed. Please note that this would be an addition to WP:MUSIC and not a seperate guidline as WP:LP was RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 23:23, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Why will this be an addition to WP:MUSIC rather than WP:LP? − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 23:58, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I just think it would be simpler to keep everything music related under WP:MUSIC, also, albums are already included in WP:MUSIC RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 00:01, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

FROM PROPOSAL PAGE:

• Comment - I think this is great! Suggestions:

• "Charted" is a bit vague. Any chart, any position, any (one day) period of time?
• Does "gold" status vary by country?

Good work! Rklawton 00:03, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd make the "primary criteria" distinction clearer. For example, primary criteria would be coverage in secondary sources, like reviews. Other criteria indicate that such coverage is likely, and charting, going gold, winning an award, or coming from a notable band are all likely indicators for that, but not always sufficient for an article in themselves. Also, I'd prefer if you used the primary criterion from WP:LP (I wrote it. :) Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:08, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

It already does have that (Criterion 1). Please check out User talk:Ryanpostlethwaite/WP:MUSIC (album) for some expanded criteria I have proposed. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 03:53, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Make AntiVandalBot a sysop!

can we make User:AntiVandalBot a sysop so he can use the admin rollback tool to faster revert vandalism. Since he run on the toolserver it's properbly safe to do so.

Laffo. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 04:10, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

NO WAY... the user in question has never made a positive contribution to any article... it's always delete, delete, delete!  :>) Blueboar 02:44, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Music Sharps andFlats

Instead of the things you are currently using (♯ for sharp and ♭ for flats), could you use a number sign (#) and a lower-case 'b'? These look just as good, and all computers can recogize them, contrary to the two aforementioned signs, both of which look like a box to me. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by The Jeff Killer (talk • contribs) 01:39, 2 February 2007 (UTC).

Many pages contain a variety of Unicode characters, and (IMO) there's really no going back to plain ASCII. Some browsers are better at this than others. There are some suggestions at Help:Special characters. The bottom line is you need to install a better font (or buy a Mac :) ). -- Rick Block (talk) 02:22, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

A^bB^bC^bD^bE^bF^bG^b A^#B^#C^#D^#E^#F^#G^# You know, plain ASCII with the SUP /SUP tags looks decent. Not ambiguous, and compatible with any browser, I'm assuming. The difficulty, of course, is that natural signs (♮) don't seem to have a ready ASCII analogue. I don't think things are going to change anytime soon. dreddnott 22:04, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

yes, why change... Mozart's Cantata for Kazoo in D(box) is one of my favorites! Blueboar 15:57, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Enhancing references

What are the technical implications of creating some sort of "enhanced" reference tag? What I'm thinking of is having a way to "tag" sections of text, thus linking them to a particular reference. (It would probably have to be a named one.) The purpose of this would be to allow a display what text a given reference supports.

An example might be as follows: first, define your reference:

<ref name="test">Really Strong Reference Source (Notable Publisher Ltd.)</ref>

Second, mark the text it supports:

<ref marktext name="test">This text is highly dubious, but my reference material is iron-clad and will dispell any doubts you might have.</ref> This claim isn't supported by anything in particular. <ref marktext name="test">This, however, is validated.</ref>

Other editors could then click on a "show ref" button (or something similar) to go to a page that has all of the article's references, and the text they support:

1) Really Strong Reference Source (Notable Publisher Ltd.)

- This text is highly dubious, but my reference material is iron-clad and will dispell any doubts you might have.

- This, however, is validated.

The idea is to make it easier to validate text, perhaps cut down on the number of citation numbers in an article (esthetics, for avoiding¹² excessive³⁴⁵ markup⁵), and reduce the need to search through entire reference texts trying to find if that text supports the article, while not being sure WHAT text you should be looking for. Thoughts? --Ckatz^chat_spy 04:52, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

see meta:wikicite Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 07:15, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

An example similar to what you describe can be found at Harpers Weekly Review. Click "Sources" (in the top right of the content-column) to have the source links shown within the article.

Personally, I like being able to see the superscripted ref links within an article; it adds/denies probable-credibility at a glance.

As for having all the text of a reference available for verification, that might be handy. It'd be easy if the material was at wikisource...! --Quiddity 03:59, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Color preferences

I propose having options in the user preferences for changing the color of the background/text/links/etc. on all pages. Sounds kinda frivolous, I know, but it would really be nice to be able to browse the site in a dark room without having my retinas burned by the light contrast — especially since I spend more time here than on all other websites combined. Personally, I'd set my color scheme to something friendly like:

The release of Pink Floyd's massively successful 1973 album, The Dark Side of the Moon, was a watershed moment in the band's popularity. Pink Floyd had stopped issuing singles after 1968's "Point Me at the Sky" and was never a hit-single-driven group, but The Dark Side of the Moon featured a U.S. Top 20 single ("Money"). The album became the band's first #1 on U.S. charts and, as of December 2006, is one of the biggest-selling albums in U.S. history, with more than 15 million units sold.

What say my fellow Wikipedia denizens to this idea? --G Rose (talk) 11:22, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Caught my eye while going through this page. Dunno if that's a good thing though. Just H 02:52, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

You could probably do this by making the appropriate edits to your Monobook (don't ask me how to do that but I'm sure someone will know). However, a limited set of preset colour options in user prefs could well be beneficial, best solution would be a new skin for this accessibility purpose.--Nilfanion (talk) 11:32, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I say "yuck" to those colors, but that's just me. You can edit your own personal stylesheet for Wikipedia, at Special:Mypage/monobook.css, and just add something like:

body { background:black; color:green; }

...or whatever else you'd like. Tutorials here. —Down10 ^TACO 11:36, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I guess that'll keep me pacified. It would still be a lot more convenient to have it in the prefs, though. --G Rose (talk) 11:47, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Why limit yourself to a few set preferences when you can use any colour you like through coding? The monobook method is far more versatile. --tjstrf talk 13:33, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

As is often the case, it's a trade-off between flexibility and ease-of-use. Why should we force people to learn (even a little) CSS in order to change their color scheme? –RHolton≡– 12:45, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

You can use a premade skin from meta:Gallery_of_user_styles. Superm401 - Talk 06:36, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Yay for pre-made skins! By the way, it takes more than just a little CSS work to adequately customize one's monobook. I still support having color settings available in the preferences. --G Rose (talk) 00:23, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, it depends how much customization you want. I think the pre-made skins are a fine compromise for now. Superm401 - Talk 20:38, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

IIRC, yellow on black is supposed to be the best combination of colours for dyslexics to be able to easily read print. If that is right, some kind of colour options would be useful. Grutness...wha? 05:14, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

How about you turn some lights on! 72.140.201.32 06:07, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Stability of infobox templates

The stability of infobox templates is being discused at Template talk:Infobox Writer#Stability of infobox templates. Please contribute to the discussion. Carcharoth 19:18, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

cite newsgroup

I intend to make sweeping changes to {{cite newsgroup}} and wanted to discuss them here and get consensus before making them. The changes I intend to make include: (further suggestions welcome)

• Add support for "first", "last", and "authorlink" in line with other templates.
• Change title hyperlink to the "url" parameter or automatically-generated google groups URL rather than to the message-id (rationale - news: URLs are unlikely to be active for very long, and when clicked)
• Show the message-id, when given via the 'id' parameter, in plaintext (possibly hyperlinked to the news: URL) in angle brackets
• Add support for multiple newsgroups for crossposted articles (how to do this is an open question, i'd be grateful for suggestions).

--Random832(tc) 08:24, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

The current look is like this:

• Someone (January 1, 1970). "Re: Stuff". alt.whatever. (Google Groups). Retrieved on 2007-02-04.

I'd like to change it to:

• Someone (January 1, 1970). "Re: Stuff" <news:msg123401@example.com> on alt.whatever. Accessed 2007-02-04.

--Random832(tc) 20:53, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

These changes look good. For when the message-id is given, it might be better to specify it as <[news:////msg123401@example.com news:msg123401@example.com]> rather than <[news:msg123401@example.com news:msg123401@example.com]>. As for crossposted articles, I'm not sure there would be any real need to give several places where an article was posted. If it is really important, you could probably just put in two separate citations. Tra (Talk) 22:26, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

You should also discuss this in Wikipedia talk:Citation templates to help ensure consistency with other templates, and citation-involved people monitoring that might not notice this discussion. (SEWilco 04:32, 5 February 2007 (UTC))

citation team

Following up on a discussion over at WP:BOTREQ, I had an idea to start a wikiproject to check references and put citations in the proper formats using WP:CITET. Although, citations formats are important, I think the most important function of such a project would be fact checking. I have found a number of links that claim to back up a particular statement when in fact they do not. Would anyone be interested in joining such an endeavour? --Selket 23:04, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Fact-checking is never a bad thing, and having more eyes on the subject would be great. But I see two issues to be careful of that jump out from this post:

• According to WP:CITE, using the citation templates "is neither encouraged nor discouraged by any other Wikipedia citation guideline" and converting articles from one citation style to another without consensus from the local editors is unnecessary trouble. Regularizing inconsistent citation style within an article is likely to be helpful, but blindly reformatting is not.
• Please be careful when fact-checking articles in specialized fields, if you intend to do so. (Though I think this project would be especially helpful digging through BLPs.) An individual fact-checker with a limited understanding of a very specific or technical subject could unintentionally introduce inaccuracies, or could be unaware of what sources are considered reliable in the field. Opabinia regalis 17:28, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

See m:Wikicite for more suggestions about fact checking. (SEWilco 19:23, 4 February 2007 (UTC))

In what way would the proposal be different from Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check? (SEWilco 21:59, 4 February 2007 (UTC))

Cleanup template idea.

After looking at the Karl Pilkington article, the amount of wiki-templates that are used to imply a cleanup are frightening. Is there not any possibility that there could be a simple, SINGLE template on pages which allows you to specify exactly what is wrong with the article, and then have the more in-depth templates on the talk page?

As a quick mock-up (just a quick explanation of what i'm on about)

Wikipedia editor(s) have expressed concerns about this article : Factual inaccuracies Non-wikified layout etc..

Just an idea, don't bite my head off J O R D A N ^[talk ] 15:01, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

An issue with this idea is that it wouldn't add the articles into the categories that the individual ones do, attracting users who deal specifically with things like NPOV probs to the article. SGGH 16:56, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Further issues with it may include lack of "tagged since" messeges, and corresponding links to clarify each task. Michaelas10 (Talk) 18:00, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Disagree. If you look at the rating articles; i.e the one for WikiProject Physics, you can use {{Template|x = y}} and a template is used there, which flags up the article in the start-class physics articles cat and others. Perhaps this could be done with the cleanup templates. At the moment, it's off-putting, even for a neuroscientist, to see about 5/6 blue/green/yellow/orange boxes at the top of an article. J O R D A N ^[talk ] 11:19, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

It could have a series of arguments indicating the specific cleanup items, which could be used to categorize appropriately. I kind of like the idea of having a single multipurpose template rather than lots of single purpose ones. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:43, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm liking this, like the new template added for FA history on talk pages. We could just make them cleanup parameters. However, issues like factual disputes, NPOV, and NOR violations should not be lumped in with general cleanup, because they reflect deeper problems with fundamental policy, rather than stylistic ones. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:51, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

"I am under construction, check me in 5 days"

Hey, as my experience of patrolling new pages and recent changes grows, more and more often I am coming across articles that in their present form constitute speedy deletion candidates for original research, lack of content or even just spam. However, in many cases, the user who has created the article has later got back to me complaining that they had just started! I have seen and participated in AfD debates where users have said things like "this article isn't likely to grow into anything, delete". Indeed I was prompted into putting this idea forward by a user who (allbeit mistakenly) thought I had prodded an article that he was half way through.

All these things have made me think that there is a significant portion of new, well-meaning users having their first wiki articles crushed under AfD, and thus being so de-motivated that they never contribute again (or at least not for a long time). I know we have "in use" templates somewhere, but I have never seen these used, so I propose a slightly different system:

Could we create a template that states that the article is under construction, thus giving the inexperienced creator the time to drag his or her new article out of AfD-candidate-ville? This would perhaps encourage more users to stick around. And to counter the intelligent vandal who just sticks this new template on what is actually a spam article, a bot could be set up who, after the new template has been in place 5 days, places the article in question into a new category which is regularly patrolled by Admins who check if the article is actually being built, or whether it is just spam?

Simplified: A new users creates the trembling bedrock of an article, and places this new template on it. The AfD's stay away, and eventually the article turns into something worth keeping. The next day, a vandal creates a worthless spam article and places the tag on it, 5 days later it is placed in the thoroughily patrolled category, where an admin sees that it hasnt been evolved, and deletes it.

Just a suggestion, but what do people think? (Knowing my luck, this already exists, but I am being honest when I say I've never seen it if it does). SGGH 21:14, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

this is the purpose of {{prod}}. It gives the article a chance to improve, while simultaneously indicating that the article in its current state is deletable. 5 days is long enough to recover and article and contest a prod.

speedy deletion on the other hand is meant for cases of articles with no redeeming qualities, like articles about some high school student by the same high school student, articles with nothing but hate for it's subject, unkeepable copyright violations, and totally blank articles. If something with redeeming qualities is speedy deleted, that's something that needs to be taken up with the deleter. i kan reed 21:46, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

The prod on your first article still seems to disinterest some newbies, maybe we should have more faith in their robustness. My idea was to attempt to keep all deletion tags off on what could become a decent article, also helps to lower the prod or afd debate backlog...SGGH 22:03, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

You mean like this? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 00:54, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Ah yes, it's the rarely seen invocation of Wikipedia:Edit lock. There is an alternative, of course: Wikipedia:Userification - take the article out of play until it's fixed.

I've thinking about another approach, somewhat similar to userification: a new namespace, call it ArticleCandidate, for lack of a better name. Instead of 4000 articles a day added to Wikipedia mainspace and 2000 a day deleted, new articles would be reviewed in this new (holding) namespace, with the goal of (a) making them acceptable before promotion to mainspace or (b) killing them quickly because no one can find reliable sources and/or indications of notablility, with the ones inbetween (c) being userfied. (There would be a limit - say, 30 days - for an article to sit in this namespace.) -- John Broughton (☎☎) 01:31, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

How about going the extra mile and monitoring the article yourself so, if after a few days it still lacks redeeming qualities, you can do something about it then? Philwelch 06:36, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that would bring up man power and man hour issues. Unlike the more automated ideas being suggested above. SGGH 16:53, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

It's a nice idea; but if you're gearing it at newbies making all sorts of blunders with their first article, how on God's Green Earth are they going to find the under construction template you propose? ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 20:29, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Maybe have it mentioned in Wikipedia:Your first article. (SEWilco 20:45, 2 February 2007 (UTC))

This is the second prong of the idea, it would have to be well publicised. But this bot thing is important I feel, because it helps clamp down on the vandalism opportunities that this template would otherwise create. This idea seems to be aquiring a little bit of support, is it enough to leave it sitting here for admins and such to notice and possibly take to the next stage? SGGH 21:17, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

is it enough to leave it sitting here for admins and such to notice and possibly take to the next stage? Umm, no. Admins play no special role in changing policy, and this is a change. If you want it to move forward, the next place it should go (I think) is to the talk page of Wikipedia:Speedy deletions, since that is the policy that would change if the template were to carry any weight with admins. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 05:14, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Cheeres John (hope you don't mind, i moved your comment down so it wasnt stuck to mine, just so it doesn't confuse) I think I'll wait to see if there are any other contributions here before perhaps setting up a link to this discussion on the talk page of speedy delete. SGGH 16:03, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't just happen to newbies. Every once in awhile I run into someone with a trigger finger. They comb through the new posts because they are easy prey. I haven't run into the problem lately so maybe there was a policy change I don't know about. I spend more time watching articles than monitoring policy changes. Five days may seem like a lot to some people but my schedule can be variable and I may be a month or more before I go back and add something to an article.

What is really frustrating is that it seems I'm expected to know some complex tagging system. Such and such a tag should be put on before a certain event but not after some other event but only by the original poster not to be confused with the other tag that should not be touched by the original author. I would rather work on the article and give the article a chance to be discovered by other people who can add to it than spend my time playing tag games.

Just leave the article alone for a few weeks and do some research on the topic before deleting. You might not get the kill rate you want but that shouldn't be the point. Gbleem 02:32, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

People don't leave articles a few weeks, because you run the risk of it just getting lost and unfinished, I'm trying to propose a system that gives articles that may produce quality a chance to do so, without letting them drop off the radar. SGGH 12:10, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Note that a New SD bot proposal is in the works, though this one is intended to warn authors when mistaken delete-on-sights by Admins makes articles "silently" vanish. (Yes, SD brings all sorts of newbie issues.) If your above mechanism employs a bot, it might be better to add functions to any already-debugged bot rather than to start from scratch. --Wjbeaty 07:02, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

prok

A "Proposed Keep" template that can be placed on an AFD page if after one day, there are no delete !votes besides the nominator. If the template is not removed by the end of the usual period, the result automatically becomes keep. If it is removed by someone other than the nominator before then, discussion continues where it left off. The advantage to this would be to signal to people who want the page to be kept that there's no serious support for deleting it, therefore they don't need to waste their energy (such wasted energy is the only credible argument I've seen for the controversial WP:SNOW "propessaydeline")

(if this is successful, maybe some {{kb-*}} templates to follow - of course, speedy keep would need to become a policy [though, it's already appearing in closing reasons])

--Random832(tc) 16:59, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

• So basically a "Snowballed!" template that leaves it open but makes it clear what the outcome is? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 17:52, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Yes, the general idea behind this proposal was to try to come up with a compromise on WP:SNOW. But I think the idea has merit in its own right - the very existence of SNOW demonstrates that the idea is one whose time has come, this is an attempt to implement the sentiment in a way that's a lot less unsatisfactory to those who disagree with SNOW. --Random832(tc) 18:06, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Do you have a mock-up of the template anywhere? ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 19:33, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Not yet, i'll throw one together in a minute --Random832(tc) 19:48, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

How about simpler wording:

Except for the nominator, consensus is currently unanimously in favor of keeping this article. Further comments in favor of keeping aren't necessary. If you disagree, remove this template and add your comment.
This template should only be placed on debates that have been open for at least a day, and the debate should remain open to offer a chance for additional comments.

Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:49, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Here's a revision to the revision, trying to keep this simple. I've added a minimum to for the number of "keep" opinions (must be at least three), and have weakened the language that tells editors in favor of keeping the article that (essentially) their opinions have no worth:

Except for the nominator, consensus is currently unanimously in favor of keeping this article. Additional "keep" comments at the AfD may not be necessary. This template is only for debates that have been open for at least a day, and have at least three "keep" opinions. Should two or more editors post "delete" opinions, this template should be removed from this article.

-- John Broughton (☎☎) 01:51, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I think you need to make it less number focused, and the two more deletes implies that someone agreeing with the nom is not enough. Also, it's a debate, not an article. "Should two or more editors post "delete" opinions, this template should be removed from this article." should be changed to "If an additional editor besides the nominator supports deletion, remove this template." Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 04:20, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I see now, this is for the article. There should be two, one for the debate and one for the article. I think the article one should directly reference "the above nomination." Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 04:22, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

• I disagree with the proposal. The present AFD process works ok without this inclusionist feature. There is such a thing as a "snowball keep" already. Edison 06:21, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm with Edison, although "prok" is an awesome name. Philwelch 06:33, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

This is actually less inclusionist than snowball, because it doesn't close the debate, and it leaves the article open for anyone who actually believes it should be deleted to have a say. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 06:53, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

• I pretty much fail to see what problem this would solve. Unless that is demonstrated, it'd be instruction creep. >Radiant< 13:08, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
  • It solves the problem of people using WP:SNOW as a reason to close early by allowing people's energy to be focused away from the debate while not preventing anyone from speaking up (which closing early does). --Random832(tc) 13:23, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
    • And please cite evidence of that happening a lot? >Radiant< 13:33, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
    • I don't really see that this is a problem...the point of AFD isn't to give people a chance to speak up, it's to decide whether or not to keep articles. Snowball closures occur when the issue of keep/delete is already decided, thus there's nothing more to talk about. If someone actually has new information to bring up, starting a new AFD not tainted by the (obviously flawed) original nomination would be the best option. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:16, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
    • The problem is if someone who did have new information didn't get a chance because it was closed too quickly. And, a previous decision being particularly recent can be prejudicial against a re-nomination, a review, or whatever. --Random832(tc) 02:43, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
• Have you considered bringing this up at Wikipedia:Speedy keep? --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:50, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
  • It doesn't really fit speedy keep, since its only effect if any is to keep an AFD open for longer. --Random832(tc) 21:22, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

On this one, I'm with Radiant! -- I don't see a real problem going on here that needs more templates and instructions to "fix" it. If it's clearly an early keep then someone'll SK it, if not then it'll last the 5 days, either way a template is either not helpful or stating the obvious. A template change on the AFD header to read "An editor has expressed the view that..." would be good though, so that obvious keeps sitting out their time on AFD don't looki like they are prejudged as to deletion outcome. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 16:12, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a wine guide

This is my first stab at making an essay so any comments and criticisms would be appreciated. Any constructive editing would be even better, especially if it can help gauge what the Wikipedia community would like to see in its wine related articles. Thanks in advance for your time and consideration! Agne 06:48, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it turns out that wine quality is quite measureable.[1] The wine industry is trying to keep this quiet, to avoid being run over by synthetic wines. --John Nagle 07:23, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

That's a good source for the Enologix article (which needs some work) but I'm sure that the "terrorist" would disagree with that news clipping. I don't think there is any worry for synthetic wines though, in my personal opinion, Yellow Tail comes close. :p Agne 07:38, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

And, of course, there is always WP:NOT - specifically, Wikipedia articles should not include instructions or advice (legal, medical, or otherwise), suggestions, or contain "how-to"s -- John Broughton (☎☎) 02:08, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Some wiki would certainly make a great wine guide. This statement has no bearing on whether WP should be one. :-) CyberAnth 07:10, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

"introduction" headings

Where can I find the discussion surrounding whether to use a heading for the introductory paragraph (as is done on ru.wikipedia.org)? I looked on "perennial proposals" and didn't find anything there.

I hate having to edit the whole of a huge article because I want to fix a typo in the intro (and yes, I know it would break "popups", but it would be easy to fix). --Slashme 12:10, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

You can put code in your monobook.js to add an "edit" link for the introductory section. CMummert · talk 12:12, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Various scripts to do so are available at WikiProject User Scripts' script repository. --ais523 13:06, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

That's nice, and I will do that now as a temporary measure, but sometimes I use ELinks to edit, and it doesn't do javascript. Also, if anonymous and new users could have access to an edit link for the intro, this might save bandwidth, and make it clear in "recent changes" if only the intro paragraph has been changed.

Why don't we have a heading for the introduction? Surely this is such a fundamental issue that it has been debated to death by now, so if someone knows where the debate is archived, I'll go check it out. --Slashme 13:19, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Because the intro is section 0, you can edit any other section and in the address bar replace section=xx with section=0.

I am already doing that since checking the code to the monobook extension.--Slashme 10:21, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Anyway what would you call the header. Introduction?

Maybe nothing! I've just taken another look at the ru wikipedia, and they seem to have an edit link on the top section by default. Check out ru:угол for example. Maybe we can just do what they're doing.--Slashme 10:21, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Then again the introduction should be plain obvious.Harryboyles 11:29, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't quite understand that sentence, please explain?--Slashme 10:21, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, since no-one has redirected this to a prior discussion, let me just recap my points of why we should have a default link to edit the introduction:

• We want people to edit the introduction as a section if that is the only place they're changing:
  • It saves bandwidth
  • It makes it easier to see what was done
• An edit link for the intro makes it easier to edit:
  • You don't have to patch your monobook script
  • Casual users who don't yet know what monobook is, text-browser users, and anonymous users will be able to edit the introduction without hacking the link (a nice trick but one which few will ever figure out without help)

So why aren't we doing it yet? --Slashme 10:21, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Rename Wikipedia:Wikiproject to Project: or Wikiproject:

We can rename the Wikiproject namespace, if people want to do so. Please chime in with your opinions here or on wikien-l. Regards. -Ste|vertigo 09:32, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Or at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject#Rename Wikipedia:Wikiproject to Project: or Wikiproject:, for those of us who don't want to have three discussions on the same topic. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 13:34, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Optional tagging

I suggest adding an optional tagging feature to wikipedia. Allow users to tag articles with words or phrases, either from a list or of their own minds. Then allow searching and sorting based on the tags and their weight(number of times they have been assigned to each article.) There is more of a description on my user page, and on my website which is linked there. While I agree that the articles should be neutral point of view, I think there should optionally be some order to the articles. Which articles share the same underlying meaning. Which articles are more popular than others. At the least I would like to see this option added to the base wikimedia software as not all wikis should be completely npov. My 2c. Wubitog 07:05, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Color coded Wiki Editing Text

Hey, does anyone know a way to make the Wiki editing text colored by default? Anyone interested in working on it? Let me know on my talk page if you are. Bmunden 22:49, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Have you tried wikEd? --TheParanoidOne 06:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

User:Durova/Community enforced mediation

This proposal would create a new experimental option in dispute resolution. Advance reviews have been favorable so I'm opening this up to general feedback. Please reply at the proposal's talk page so the discussion is focused in one place. Durova^Charge! 23:27, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Favicon

Hey, ... I would like to suggest to get Wikipedia's favicon, the one next to the site name and url to have a transparent background, ... not a white background, ... it would look nicer, ... thats just my opinion, ... if u want me to do it i would, ... have a nice day. - KrickeT [e-mail removed] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.99.93.8 (talk • contribs)

I have removed your e-mail address to prevent spam. Tra (Talk) 21:22, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposed Wikiproject template

I've noticed that a lot of new editors here at Wikipedia are overwhelmed by the size and depth of Wikipedia, and they are often unsure how to get started and contribute constructively. Many new users bring in lots of outside knowledge, but they are unsure how to turn their knowledge into articles. I'm a frequent new-pages patroller, and whenever I see someone creating several articles on a certain topic, I leave a message on their talk page, inviting them to join a Wikiproject I have no affiliation with. I think that a simple template message should be created for this purpose, so that regular users can guide others towards Wikiprojects. Here is the boilerplate message I have been using:

Hello, I've noticed that you've written quite a few articles on whatever. If you're looking for more ways to expand Wikipedia's coverage of whatever topics, I suggest joining WP:WHATEVER. A Wikiproject is a group of editors with common interests who come together to write more articles, organize, review, and expand coverage of their chosen subject. They will have more articles you can work on, and other interested people who can help improve and expand your own articles. Thanks for your contributions.

I would like to hear others' opinions on this, as well as any pointers, as I have no experience creating templates. GhostPirate 18:40, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

• Sounds useful. Note that you can request templates at WP:RT. >Radiant< 12:23, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Should WP:BK be made a guideline

Sorry for the cross-posting... There is an ongoing discussion on whether or not the long-standing proposed guideline for the notability of books should be tagged as a guideline. Everyone's input would be really appreciated as past discussions have often involved a handful of editors, making it hard to judge consensus. Pascal.Tesson 16:47, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be good to have a guideline, but I don't think WP:BK is there yet. It still needs clean up, not the least of which is the Self-publication section's reference to a non-exisitant "criteria 6." --Selket ^Talk 17:15, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Well I would appreciate if you could make more specific comments on the talk page. Pascal.Tesson 17:19, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Changing the Undo message

Using MediaWiki's Undo| function, currently the message is "Undid revision $1 by $2 (talk)". I would like to make this into the more standard "←Reverted revision _________ by Username (talk) using 'undo'. See MediaWiki_talk:Undo-summary for details. -137.222.10.67 06:06, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I realize this change has been implemented; but the problem I have with it is that it's longer, leaving less room for elaboration. I like to elaborate on why I undid. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 21:02, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

You can always delete/trim the default message.. --Quiddity 21:21, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Standardize of some wording on dispute and AFD templates

Several of the warning templates express views such as:

or {{Unencyclopedic}}

The structure being:

• "An editor has expressed a concern that (problem)."
• "If you can fix it do so | the matter is being discussed (here)"
• "If this cannot be remedied then likely action is (results)"

I like this format. Especially, the wording of "an editor has expressed concern" may seem far more approachable to new editors and readers, than the statement "This article is proposed for deletion" etc which implies that "the powers that be" have made this judgement.

Would people object to this style of wording becoming more the norm, on XfD and dispute tags? Thus: "An editor has expressed the view that this article does not meet relevant Wikipedia criteria, and should be deleted. The discussion is here... etc"

I think it'd be a clearer communication. Do others like it? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 20:05, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• Sure, sounds good. >Radiant< 12:08, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
• Agreed, sounds good. However, I suggest "the matter is being discussed (here)" to be added as optional. Issues such as notability problems or POV aren't usually being discussed among the editors and this might seem unnecessary. Michaelas10 (Talk) 14:08, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

In a few cases I agree, there won't be specific need for discussion (eg, where its more a request for help in adding missing stuff like cites or coverage). In many cases, like notability and POV, there is discussion and it tends to happen on the talk page. It's more the general style and approach of such templates which I'm thinking of. Within that, it'll vary case to case what specific information and links are useful and where to direct users for discussion (if any). FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 16:24, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Blacklisting vandals

What if we could categorize/list all warned vandals into a blacklist, and make it selectable to only view edits by blacklisted users in Special:Recent changes? How do others feel about such a proposal? Would this be practical? — Tutmosis 16:47, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, VandalProof already has a feature somewhat like that. But to categorize everyone who's been warned would be biting, especially if done from the first warning. -Amark moo! 16:50, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Well that's true but I was referring more to obvious vandalism. I say this because IMO blocks are extremely weak, if anyone ever has done any vandal fighting they see a portion vandalism is coming from returning vandals after their short block expires with a whole talk page of warning. Therefore easily spotting users with vandal records would only benefit the encyclopedia. Also VandalBot does not revert all vandalism and we can't rely on the bot alone. — Tutmosis 17:05, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

How about only those who have a {{test3}} or {{blatantvandal}} on their talk page instead? i kan reed 17:08, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Accounts that are only used for vandalism are routinely blocked indefinitely. Short blocks for people who do only vandalism are the exception. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 17:41, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes they are, but that does mean they have little time to continue to vandalize. People who block/revert them don't have time to follow them around everytime they return from a block and sneaky vandalism is hard to spot without blacklisting the user as "trouble". — Tutmosis 17:48, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

How would this blacklist be maintained? Obviously if it's based on warnings on a user page, the vandals are likely to delete those (as is considered, currently, to be acceptable), particularly if the warnings generate a category (Category:Blacklisted users not yet blocked?). And if the list is undated whenever a warning is posted (again, exactly how?), what prevents a troll - or an irritated vandal - from spamming a bunch of pages to get a bunch of admins on the blacklist? Or, in an edit war, editors threatening each other with (say) a level-3 warning that puts the other editor on the blacklist if they continue to insist on their point of view? — Preceding unsigned comment added by John Broughton (talk • contribs)

It can be based on the block history and it doesn't necessarily have to rely on categorizing the way we do it now. Wiki software can be designed to maintain the list internally. Many different option if you think about it. — Tutmosis 19:36, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I support the proposal, because it can prevent repeated vandalism. Currently, someone can vandalize different pages from the same IP address, and the editors of those pages would consider these separate acts of vandalism, and so will not block the IP address. On the other hand, if vandalism is tracked more centrally, repeated vandalism is easier to recognize. Then editors can discuss whether to send messages to the vandal, suspend the account or block the IP address. -Pgan002 01:45, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Edit page link to useful tags and templates.

How often editing some article does one want a quick popup page for the right template?

Can this be added to the pages and inserts that are quickly accessible from an edit page:

Templates: general headers | maintenance | cleanup | talk page | user talk | all (all open in new window)

Note that dispute, source and similar templates which can be gamed or abused, are not directly listed (WP:BEANS). They're quickly found under "all" if needed, though. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 11:47, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

You probably know, but the page in question is MediaWiki:Edittools (which has a single link to "(templates)" already).

I'd support this idea, if the page as a whole were compacted through some method like the drop-down box used at commons:MediaWiki:Edittools, as I suggested at MediaWiki talk:Edittools#Reducing the overwhelming size - use Commons version?. --Quiddity 21:52, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Antal

please address the proposal of having multiple pages for Antal, i.e., "as noted near the bottom of the page for Anthony, Antal is the Hungarian version of the Latin name Antonius. Being a "brother" of Anthony, Antonio, etc., it is a rather common name in Europe and various parts of the world. As such, this meaning of the word requires treatment, perhaps via a disambiguous page."

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Antal)

Thanks.

Sure: write an article about the name Antal and link it from the main Antal page. Then, depending on how good the page is, we can talk about whether there should be a disambiguation page. Note there is already a link from Antal to Antal (Surname). -Pgan002 01:22, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

New Search Engine

Seeing the inacuracies in the wikipedia search engin (WSE) [2] and the better results you could get with Google [3], I think the WSE should be replaced by Google (done here at www.tip.it/runescape) This would help searchers find what they want, faster, more efficiently (and google puts redirects WAY down on the line). I don't know what the technicalitys are, but I'm sure they could be easly sorted out with Google. Chris5897 (T@£k) 14:40, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

That search within Wikipedia is poor is well known - that's why there is are alternatives such as this: Wikipedia:WikEh?.

More to the point: either the Wikimedia Foundation pays for an internal Google search appliance, to avoid ads, or they subject readers and editors to ads on Google when doing a search (and can be accused of favoring Google over its competitors). I'd like to see the Foundation do the first, but I've been told that it tries to use free software for everything, and certainly a Google search applicance would cost money, which the Foundation doesn't have much of. -- John Broughton | ^(♫♫) 15:00, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I have never found any problems with the Wikipedia search engine when it's working. The main problem is the number of times it chooses not to work. -- Necrothesp 15:27, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

So don't use it. Use Google. User:Zoe|(talk) 04:41, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Well could we at least make a link to popular search engins (done here on the french wikipedia). This would give people who are not used to the code needed to search one site, the chance to get two or three searches. The foundation could also make money by charging search engins to have their link there. If they can do it on the french wikipedia, they can do it on the english wikipedia. Chris5897 (T@£k) 12:39, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

The Google search engine would be a fantastic feature to the site but as mentioned above it is probably not feasible. However, it can be argued that with almost every page in Wikipedia now being in the top three search answers in Google there isnt such great need for it. Anyone with some common sense would surely use google to search through wikipedia than using its own search engine anyway. --Capt underpants 01:17, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

There is no need to change the WSE and incur the extra costs. The WSE is acceptable, and individual users most likely know how to use Google. -Pgan002 01:18, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Sort languages automatically?

If there is an article that is in many other languages, those languages should be sorted in alphabetic order automatically, I think. --212.247.27.49 21:43, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Good idea, but it sounds like a low priority. Cbdorsett 05:55, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Many of the bots (AWB, for one) sort the interwiki links automatically. But whether those articles get hit by the bots is totally hit-or-miss. Caknuck 07:46, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Video on wikipedia

I'm not sure if this has been brought up before, but I would like to propose video content being available as part of wikipedia articles. It would allow wikipedia to become more interactive instead of just simply relocating to videos. I would suggest that a new player is created for wikipedia, using GFDL codes so there are no copyright infringements. A similar guidline to wikipedia images could be used and implemented (with the use of bots) so that unsourced videos, or similar copyright infingement would be sppedily eradicated RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 01:06, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

It's already possible. Just upload it to the commons as an Ogg and insert a link to it in the article. Annie Oakley has an old clip of her shooting, for example. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 01:55, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

What I actually meant was, instead of just a link to a video, how about incorporating video's within the actual page, so when play is pressed, the video can be seen on the page. As I've previously said, this would increase interactivity within wikipedia mainspace RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 23:02, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

It was brought recently at the other village pump. -- ReyBrujo 23:11, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Let's focus on getting decent video content first, before we bother to build an inline player. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:07, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. I remember when Encarta was installed with PCs, for me it's biggest coup it had was the video content in the articles - which made it a much more comprehensive source of information than a published encyclopedia.

Also, what prompted me to look for this discussion, was that yesterday, I was watching Sky News, and they were using video from YouTube during one of their reports on Italian football hooliganism.--Macca7174 10:47, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

unwatch

How about adding a button on the watchlist like diff and hist that would unwatch a page? Would save the step of going to the page to click it out. Tvoz | talk 09:38, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

This functionality (and more) is in WP:Popups. I'm not sure whether it's necessary to put it in by default: We have lots of links in the watchlist already, and new and unregistered users (i.e. those who don't use popups) typically don't have big watchlists. --Slashme 15:01, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm neither new nor unregistered, but I don't use pop-ups. And I have hundreds of articles in my watch list - would seem like an easy enough fix and not controversial, but then, when is anything here not controversial. Guess I'll take a look at popups, so thanks Tvoz | talk 00:51, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

There is some code you can add to your monobook.js file to add an "unwatch" link to your watchlist. You can find it here. I installed it a few weeks back, and haven't encountered any problems to date. --Ckatz^chat_spy 03:02, 7 February 2007 (UTC)