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Currency/Money tags and automatic conversion/inflation adjustment?
Latest comment: 17 years ago5 comments5 people in discussion
(copied from the help desk)
I'm sure this has come up in the past but I can't seem to find any of those previous discussions.
I was thinking that a lot of articles contain references to sums of money and many of those are historic. It would be great if there was a currency tag where the editor can input the amount, type and date of the currency and the wiki would automatically convert that to present day US/EU amounts while still displaying the original amount. This could be done pretty easily with a lookup table with inflation and exchange rates for various popular currencies. -Shaocaholica21:24, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Hmm... agreed, a lookup table would be handy for that. Unfortunately, wikis aren't good at making lookup tables (at least not the sort the page parser can read) -- if we do it on-wiki, it'd have to be done with an army of meta-templates. I probably know enough about templates to set it up, if I can get the methods down, although (funny thing) I don't know enough about currency exchange to know the methods -- I'd need at least a crash course in getting that done. However, this sort of proposal should probably be run past the community, before being implemented; the village pump is as good a forum as any (if nothing else, they may be able to direct you to any prior discussions, if they do exist). – Luna Santin (talk)20:01, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
I happen to be someone who's interested in both currency and template. Perhaps I can help. But I'd like to ask some questions first. What is the resolution of this historical exchange rate? (daily? monthly? yearly?) How is it stored in wiki? How do you want to update them? bot? oanda.com has daily historical exchange rate, but only for a few recent years. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 04:10, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Wonderful--I think for out purposes annual would be sufficient resolution; It would be nice to go back as far as possible, but I know just enough to be aware of the really difficult problems here. DGG07:06, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
My comment (eg) the few times that this has come up is that it's really not a good idea. Historical "equivalent values" are very much an art, not a science; there's half a dozen different methods you can use, depending on what the thing being measured is and how much it was, and the results can easily vary by up to an order of magnitude or more; even done by hand, a large number of the equivalent values we have in articles are just plain wrong (usually using a consumer-price index to calculate something that's a sizable fraction of GDP...). I would strongly, strongly oppose any unchecked "on-the-fly" automatic conversion system; it's going to give spurious or misleading values as often as it gives helpful ones. It's not so bad for the last few decades, but for anything before that...
All Wikipedia templates should use small icons instead of large boxes: what do you think?
Latest comment: 17 years ago17 comments11 people in discussion
I just created {{Original research2}} with a small icon, which I think should replace {{Original research}} for the fact that large tags are ugly, bloated and self-referential, among other things, and really do marr the way Wikipedia looks sometimes. If you see what I've written on my user page as well as this discussion based on this essay, I suggest the creation of more such 'small icon' templates (which I will attempt to do if people think this is a good idea) and replacing all large templates at the top of pages using bots, which I don't know how to use and would greatly appreciate if someone made a bot to replace the tagged templates with the icon templates, so that all pages using the {{Original research}} tag would have that changed to {{Original research2}}, for example, although all templates using tags at the top of pages should ideally in my view be replaced with ones with small icons, of course. I'd really like to see this change the way Wikipedia looks for the better, but I thought I'd put it to users here for discussion.--h i ss p a c er e s e a r c h03:06, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
You're taking this too far. Minor issues like Current Events and Semiprotection could stand to have less prominent warnings at the top, but we need something more noticeable than a little icon there for tagged articles with significant issues, and we don't want to hide the fact that our pages have issues when we know about it. People shouldn't go into articles full of biased language or original research without a warning beforehand, thinking they're wikipedia's best work, we need a warning to tell them "yes we recognize there's a problem, watch out for it, and we're working on it." Icons or little single line notices would be fine for current events and semiprotection , but serious warnings like POV, OR, and other major content issues should be the first thing a user reads. A neater cleaner appearance, achieved by sweeping serious problems under the rug, isn't worth it. It's like taking down all the warning signs around a big spill or construction zone because they're ugly. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:31, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Further, using an icon gives absolutely no information about why the tag was added or what it means. We need the talk page link, at least. If you want something less prominent and more helpful, add {{or}} or {{sectOR}} to the specific parts you're concerned with, which both takes away the tag from the top and tells people where the problem is. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:39, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
You can look over the icon and the caption that comes when you hover over it explains everything. This could be told to new users, in some way. If any more icons are created, we'll have to work out a way in which icons don't cover each other up, too.--h i ss p a c er e s e a r c h04:06, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Unviable. Hover boxes are both difficult to spot and a browser-specific feature. And the boxes are there for unregistered readers as much as anyone, to whom we have no prior opportunity to tell these things. Deco06:31, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
A box generates not only a visual feedback, but also a logical division: you must read everything inside this box to get a concept and is, in itself, conclusive, regardless of other boxes around. The icon has a main drawback: it does not give immediate feedback (the user must hover the mouse there). We want to make it public, in the most easier way, that the article has some problem. A small icon does not give the same information as a ugly purple box. -- ReyBrujo04:20, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Because it doesn't talk about content-related tags at all. I agree with the rant entirely (especially about spoilers), but tags that mention potential problems with the content of an article should be front-and-centre so people are aware of the problems before reading. Fagstein06:51, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
I think the small icons on the article pages are an improvement over the big template messages. Too often, the big template messages are used as an article-defacing weapon among editors to display their disagreement over that article. The talk page of an article is the place to discuss and inform each other of our concerns in order to improve an article, that includes maintenance and cleanup tasks (and templates in my opinion). It’s of course good to inform the reader of those concerns as well, but we don’t have to scream it out loud to them with big ugly colorful templates. The icons suffice and keep the layout of an article acceptable. --Van helsing11:16, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
I think top-tags that inform the reader about an article having serious problems with factuality or bias are fine. So, tags like {{TotallyDisputed}} and {{POV}}, are important enough to put on top to inform and warn the readers. But in general we're using the tags too often now and in cases where a simple suggestion on talk would be much more appropriate. {{wikify}}, {{Uncategorized}}, {{Cleanup-rewrite}}, {{Copyedit}}, {{Grammar}}, {{Citation style}}, to name just a few, are all meant well, but they are rather confusing and distracting, and outright irrelevant to the 99% who don't even know what the word "wikify" means. They just want to learn about some part of European history or a poet or a disease. The articles should be about the subject or topic, not about Wikipedia or even about the subject on Wikipedia. Pick any article that isn't featured, and I'll have no problem in finding a tag that covers whatever flaw the article has that keeps it from being featured. We have tags for every flaw now. But do we really want a million articles to start with a big framed self referencing box? I hope not. We should keep improvement-suggestions on talk in my opinion, but as a compromise I'm fine with making most of these tags into icons. Editors will quickly learn what the icons mean, while they will be easy to ignore for those 99% who don't care about editing. Shanes14:13, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Totally agree! Isn't one of the main benefits of those tags that they also categorize the page? I think well-intended non-wikipedians fix grammar and do minor copy-editing whenever they see such problems. I'm very sceptical that when seeing a {{copyedit}} sign, they will stop and copy-edit the entire page, so it makes sense that any notices intended for maintenance should be very discrete. However, as said before, non-compliance tags are very important to even the casual reader. --Merzul18:34, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
The whole point of such templates is to be noticed - a tiny icon in the corner won't be noticed, so you might as well just remove the template completely (and manually add the category). I think the templates serve a useful purpose, though, so I don't think they should be removed. --Tango18:44, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Suggesting improvements to articles is good, and I can understand why you want them to be noticed, but drawing attention to your suggestions by putting them smack on top of articles is bad. You should use the talk page for things like that. That's what we have talk pages for. We would like the articles to be about the topic only. The style manual states that articles should start with a lead section explaining that topic, not with a self reference about that article on Wikipedia. Shanes19:51, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Tango and Nightgyr. Plus, I dislike the icons that are in the top corner already, and wouldn't want to see more. --Quiddity18:49, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
It's far too easy to completely miss seeing icons that are in the corner of a page already - I can't remember the number of times I didn't realize an article was sprotected until I clicked Edit. Per arguments above, cleanup and other maintenance templates are intended to be noticeable - if someone finds them ugly, hopefully that'll be incentive to do something to the article to merit removing it. — PSUMark2006talk | contribs02:44, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Matching entries on the history page
Latest comment: 17 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion
What I think would be very handy on a history page is a method that shows what past entries match the current entry. That way you can tell at a glance if the current entry had been reverted and to what prior date (without necessarily having to trust the comments). So if the matching pages could be hilighted in some manner (perhaps through the background color) it would save having to do as many page comparisons to check for vandalism. That would greatly speed up page watch checks. Thanks! — RJH (talk) 15:36, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
P.S. To save compute time, the required information could be stored whenever a true page revert occurs. — RJH (talk)
Probably checking just a few (five or less?) prior versions would get 90% of the cases; maybe even checking just the last two would get the vast majority. Even then, I'd worry about a bit about additional server load (yes, I know about Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance, but still ... ). Perhaps it should only check if there is an automatic edit summary ("AES" to start the edit summary) or the edit summary starts with "rv" or "re"? (I do agree that this would be useful.) -- John Broughton(♫♫)21:54, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, a check of the last five or so cases would be sufficient in most cases. That would be beneficial. — RJH (talk) 16:13, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
That sounds hard on the servers. However, anyone can download Wikipedia's database and do it, as the license is free you could even sell the results. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me)13:11, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
If you are on Mac OS X, you can export to PDF. Go to File Menu and select Print. On the Print dialog you will see a PDF button in th bottom left corner. Click on it and select "Save As PDF". Voila!—Perceval03:04, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
Disagree. I have in the past submitted reports in PDF as most people do not have PDF editors - making it almost read only on Windows computers. Thus, it was hard to lift your report or edit it to suit another purpose. I, however, disagree with exporting articles unless it is for personal usage. Ronbo7605:33, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Then they can use one of the methods mentioned above! Or use the "printable version" link in the toolbox.
Having editors/processors spend time exporting every diff of every article into PrettyDumbFormat is wasteful... --Quiddity19:07, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Watch Users
Latest comment: 17 years ago9 comments7 people in discussion
This is a feature request that will help vandal patrollers. Currently you can only watch changes made to an article. What I propose is to add the ability to ‘watch’ a user or ip. In this way, when you have spotted some vandalism you can add it to you watch list and keep an eye on it for a few days to see if the vandalism is recurrent.
Currently you could improvise this with some of the third-party tooling some of the patrollers use, but it would be nice to have integrated.
The bot pkgbot on the IRC channel #vandalism-en-wp has the concept of "blacklisted users" (all their edits are immediately reported) and "greylisted users" (like blacklisted, except it's automatically maintained and consists of users who were recently reverted). You can read more here: WP:CUV/Bots#Lists_of_users. It might still be nice though to have your own user watchlists for watching edits of friends as well as vandals that you directly associate with, and if anyone's concerned about privacy, it wouldn't reveal anything not available already through contributions. Deco21:08, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I would love this option, I see not need to limit this to admins, some of our best vandal fighters are not admins. Also, all the information is already available for those who wish to wikistalk, and this feature would make such stalking easier to detect and track. No new information is being made available, just in a more convenient manner. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me)03:51, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
Wikistalking is a bit independent from this, I guess. If you want to follow any particular user you can just bookmark his contributions page. The problem is, I might want to follow 10 ip addresses that are vandal only, but without the inconvenience of having to check my bookmarks every day. Sander12309:07, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, it is a bit buggy. I might also add that people living to the east of the Greenwich Meridian are likely to see less results than people living to the west, due to a bug in the way it deals with timezones. It also doesn't work very well if you use it very soon after midnight, for similar reasons. Tra(Talk)22:45, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Merge GA with FA? A-Class?
Latest comment: 17 years ago34 comments14 people in discussion
See revised proposal section below
I just wanted to moot some discussion here before I did anything rash and MfD'd WP:GA, but it seems to me from reading the GA criteria against the FA criteria, there is a rapid trend in the continually evolving GA project policy towards convergence with the FA process. The key catalyst that caused me to notice this was the relatively recent strict rules adopted by GA requiring adequate citation for all GAs. It appears to me that the only major substantive difference between the two mechanisms is the approval process; for all other intents and purposes the content requirements are nearly identical.
If this is so, why not consolidate these two units together, and gradually review all GAs, a la Wikipedia:Featured articles with citation problems, for promotion to FA status. Because otherwise all I can differentiate between GA and FA is that one is better for instant gratification.
(edit): I'd also suggest that GA's which fail FA criteria in a merge be re-classified as A-class articles. This means that all articles can be individually assessed at any class level, with only one (final) candidacy step in the process, for FAC.
Generally, I agree with this proposal to merge the two, but I would keep separate criteria for each on the same "guideline". (Why are none of the Featured and Good article pages tagged as guidelines?) —Doug Belltalk23:47, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
The difference in approval process is a major distinction and quite likely a useful one. The GA process is far more scalable than the FA system, which is never going to assess more than a tiny fraction of the articles on Wikipedia. We should see much quicker results from GA. We haven't thus far, however, for which one can offer two reasons:
The GA process is bloated. It is not clear why a central candidate page exists, when all the work takes place on the talk page, but having this page certainly substantially increases the difficulty in nominating articles.
Further, for many articles its purpose has been obviated by effective WikiProject assessment systems.
At the moment the GA process is probably too similar to the FA process to be adding much benefit to Wikipedia. As far as a "merger" goes, it's not clear what that would entail, but assuming that we don't want to change the FA process, it must basically mean scrapping GA. I think it would be worth at least attempting to go back to the original, simpler GA system, thus creating a clearer distinction between the processes. Christopher Parham(talk)01:13, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
I oppose any merger; I think there's a definite difference in actual quality, even if it's not expressed clearly in the criteria. Have a look at GAs which have failed FACs to see some of the differences. Trebor01:52, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't know; I'm not really involved with the GA process (other than putting a couple of articles through). But many Good Articles come to FAC and fail, so there is a definite difference in standards (even if it isn't apparent from the criteria). FACs only work if there is an editor willing to work on the article, and if GAs haven't already been put through FAC then it implies there is not. Trebor15:51, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't doubt that there is some difference, but I am questioning if it is enough of a difference to warrant the entire GA apparatus. At the current time, I'd say not. I'd merge the two projects as per my original comment, and abolish the GA class. This would benefit the assessment structure as well, since the articles can still be assessed as Stub, Start, B, or A class by a single individual, based on criteria. So I'd presume that most of the GA's which fail FA in a merger would likely be recategorized as A-class. So structurally, the article is individually assessed from Stub thru to A class, and then if the article is deemed good enough, it only has to jump through one candidacy process - the FAC. Much more linear, simple, and less bureaucratic. Girolamo Savonarola16:03, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
That sounds less like a merge and more like an abolition of the GA-class and framework, which would warrant an MfD (note I'm not saying I'm necessarily against that, just saying what it sounds like). There has been a slight lack of clarity in the assessment criteria with GA- and A-class being on different scales, and overlapping to a large degree, so it would be good to clear up where they fit in. But a blanket put-through of all GA articles to the (already fairly overloaded) FAC process, regardless of whether there are editors willing to improve them, would be a mistake in my eyes. Trebor17:54, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
fix, don't merge. The GA idea was to have a quick and unbureaucratic way of assessing articles that are clearly good, without meeting the formal FA requirements. Now, it appears a whole bureaucracy has accreted around GA assessment as well. The solution is to get rid of it, and turn "GA" back into what it was supposed to be. There are many, many articles on WP that are good without being likely to become FA anytime soon. "GA" to my mind is a tool to facilitate measuring of the distribution of quality on Wikipedia. I say, leave FAC as it is, an assessment on the very best on WP, and turn GA back into something simple and unbloated. dab(𒁳)16:03, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
No merge. The difference between GA and FA is the difference between one set of eyes and several set of eyes. Hence the FA process is more like a fine tooth comb that can get to the nitty gritty assessment pieces. The purpose and benefit of the GA process is that with a single reviewer you will obviously get assessment and feedback much quicker. Of course the quality of that review is dependent on the quality standards that the GA reviewer is upholding. The push towards stricter citation is a positive development because more articles that are actually good are being recognizes and more articles that are substandard are being improved and brought to compliance with simple policies like WP:V and WP:NOR. The GA assessment process is more approachable than the FA process and is a good way for new editors (or editors new to FA) to become familiar with a criteria similar to FA but only have to deal with the feedback of one reviewer. As the overall quality of GA reviews improve then you will see more GAs succeeding at FAC. AgneCheese/Wine16:26, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
So what would the argument be against simply folding GA into the A-class for assessment, then? Since they both require just one reviewer, and have similar criteria. Girolamo Savonarola17:44, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
Revised proposal
Here is my revised proposal based on discussions above. There seems to be a view that the GA has become overly hampered down with bureaucracy, and to many extents apes the FA criteria and structure to a high degree, with the most notable difference being the single reviewer of GA versus the community of reviewers for FA. GA also has been a curious question in regards to its somewhat incongruous shoehorning into the assessment classes (it should be noted that the GA class was not originally proposed in assessment).
Given the more rigorous GA standards from the past, its single reviewer characteristic, and the unnecessary bureaucracy, what I propose now is a merge of GA into A-Class assessment. The standards for the two, content-wise, are nearly identical, and like GA, assessment only requires a single reviewer to judge the article against the class criteria. It makes article assessment classes more straightforward, with all classes up to A being solely based on assessment, with a final bureaucratic candidacy process only required for the top distinction, FA. Based on the current criteria, it is likely that most, if not all, of GA-class articles would qualify for A-class easily. It is also much easier to implement than kicking up the current GA's for (gradual) integration into FAC, which has been noted would be a problem without an active editor. Reassessing GA's into A-class would not face this problem.
I would support that in principle, although I'm not really involved with the GA process (you may want to leave a message on GA talk). However, the assessment process is fairly haphazardly applied too, depending on the activeness of the Wikiproject (for instance the MilHist Proj seems to have a multiple-user assessment for A-class; others barely assess at all). Given my lack of familiarity with the issue though, I will see what others think (particularly if they can explain the need for, and differences between, GA and A class). Trebor18:53, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
Since GA has already been shoehorned into the assessment system, perhaps the rating can be repurposed as effectively a 'B+' grade. There is currently too large of a chasm between A-class ratings (which are rare, and have an associated process in some wikiprojects) and B-class ratings (in practice used for a large range of article qualities that meet the general description of 'okay', which is not at all consistent with the rating's description). This classification could imply that the meat of the GA criteria are met (neutral, stable, referenced, reasonably complete) while allowing things like omission of minor content details, mixed referencing styles or minor formatting issues, or some prose problems, all of which (I think) would generally disqualify an article from an A rating.
I'd like to see most of the bureaucratic apparatus of GA scrapped, and what remains repurposed for its original intention: identifying excellent short articles. Current practice seems to be to call almost all short articles 'start' or 'B', on the assumption that they need expansion, but some topics just don't require more than a few paragraphs. Current practice also essentially blocks these articles from FA status, with the odd rare exception for a hurricane article. Whether this assessment class should also become part of the rating system is not obvious, as the existing ratings are not length-dependent and the 1.0 project might be too far along to permit adding or removing ratings at this stage. Opabinia regalis17:46, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
You want another rating? Frankly, I think some simplification is necessary. The larger chasm (IMHO) seems to be between Start and B-class. I'm not so concerned with whether or not B and A are massively different, so long as the grading scheme offers some clear identifiers (which I believe it already does, for the most part). These aren't real grades, and no one is being judged, so the need to be so precise is actually adverse to the idea of a grading asssessment (especially given that the articles are constantly evolving). It's a very coarse-grained way of tracking the general progress of a group of articles even moreso than it is used to track any individual one. Any more attention paid to how to exactly quantify the ever-shifting state of an article seems like it would only divert energies more properly spent working on the articles themselves.
The idea is to have a coarse-grained and efficient system requiring a minimal amount of effort. Assessments shouldn't require long perusal of a given article - it should generally be obvious on a quick skim. Making more subtle gradations simply adds more time to the assessing editors' evaluations, and furthermore is likely to adversely affect the willingness of many of them to continue assessments, especially if more rules and grades are being added. The only level at which any prolonged effort should exist is the FAC. Thank you, Girolamo Savonarola17:59, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, yes. There are currently six assessment ratings. Two (GA and FA) have separate processes and can't be assigned by an individual assessor. A third (A) is rarely used, and some projects also confine its use to articles that have been reviewed by multiple people. That leaves an individual assessor with stub, start, and B. Since stubs are usually unambiguous, assessors sort articles into start or B. Surprise! We have an encyclopedia full of start and B-class articles. I'm sure it varies between wikiprojects, but I see much larger variations in quality within than between these two rating classes, and a large gulf in quality between B and A.
So if I were designing the rating system from scratch, it would have five levels available to assessors, of which the lowest (stub) is unambiguous, and the highest (A) is regulated by the corresponding wikiproject. (Obviously FA retains its own process.) That leaves an individual assessor with a practical choice of start, B, or B+/GA/whatever, which I suspect would help in distinguishing between 'usable' articles and 'raw material' articles. It also eliminates the problem of what to assign the current crop of GAs (and GA-quality articles) if the GA process is shut down or reformed. I would not agree that all current GAs are A-class, given the way the A rating has mostly been used. (It's possible, of course, that the problem is underuse of/overly variable standards for A ratings.) Opabinia regalis18:29, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, to be succinct, I believe that another rating is equal to more bureaucracy. If that's the case, then there's no point. I think you also underestimate both what a B article is and what an A is (and would be under this proposal). They should be clearly distinct. And yes, that may mean more clarity on the grading scheme definitions, but that is a lot easier than forcing yet another grade upon everyone. Please also think over my comments above about the process needing to be coarse-grained. I believe that those sentiments were reflected during the actual creation of the assessment schemata. Girolamo Savonarola18:39, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, please! This will significantly simplify the overall structure of the various assessment schemes (since they won't be structured as internal → external → internal → external, but rather as internal → internal → external, going outside a project only for the final FAC) and get rid of the GA backlog/bureaucracy/etc. issues at the same time. Kirill Lokshin18:54, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Does an assessment from one Wikiproject apply for all? For instance, if WikiProject Biography assessed a military figure as A-class, would that be accepted by MilHist? Trebor19:24, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
In general, it depends on the projects involved, and whether they have particular requirements for a particular assessment level. In your specific example, not necessarily, since MilHist has a formal review process for A-Class (it would, of course, be a fairly good indication that the article ought to be submitted to that review); conversely, an A-Class rating from MilHist is often copied by other projects that don't have any sort of formal review. Kirill Lokshin19:30, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Okay, that's what I would've thought. I'm just trying to think things through with regards to rating. One advantage to GA is that articles are centrally reviewed, so GAs are roughly the same quality across the project; considering the difference in activeness of Wikiprojects, A-class could end up being applied rather inconsistently. Although maybe that's not a problem, as you could take into account the processes of the project when considering the "authority" of the rating. (Excuse me thinking out loud here.) Trebor19:39, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
That's true, I suppose. (But GAs do tend to vary quite a bit depending on who's doing the actual reviewing; so I suspect that the consistency is actually pretty similar across both processes.) Kirill Lokshin19:44, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
With the over-reaching criteria thing, a big problem with that is that discussion is rather difficult to start. Not because there's some group of people forcing GA to go one way with things, but because many people involved don't contribute to the discussions unless something really nasty happens, there's just so many candidates on the list it takes up a bunch of time :/. I for one have some things i'd like to change with the rules so that they'd go back to older, simpler versions, but I dunno how to start the discussion when sometimes people don't pay attention, and often times large chunks of rules get changed based on the discussions of maybe 3 or 4 people. Not that anyone's trying to make things bad on purpose mind you, its just discussion of process isn't very good yet.... Homestarmy20:24, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't think that anyone is acting out of bad faith, but my whole point is that the GA process is massively inefficient and in some ways counterproductive to other larger processes. I believe that it has some merits, but it also had the bad luck to be created at about the same time, but with little true coordination with, the assessment project for 1.0. Had assessment been started a year earlier, I wonder if GA wouldn't have instead been the efforts of people to create more rigid A-class standards. And with regard to consistency of A-classification across different WikiProjects, surely we can all agree that this can be much more easily improved with tighter and clearer assessment guidelines? Girolamo Savonarola20:34, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
The thing is, many of the things making it more inefficient resulted from the 3 to 4 people discussions i'm talking about, and when the changes happened, not many people really said much. If there were more people to talk about things then there's certainly several rules I for one would like to see reverted to earlier versions, when GA wasn't really as inefficient. But when sometimes I propose things and maybe one person responds, (Like when I got the MoS criteria changed) it makes me feel like it would be a bad idea to just do something like that and change rules back when not many people might notice, it already has confused things a good bit in the past when that kind of thing happens. Homestarmy20:54, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
This discussion seems to have lost momentum, which is a shame because I think this is worth trying to sort out. Do people have objections to merging GAs into A-class, and think GAs are worth keeping separate? Trebor16:32, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
No objections to deprecating the GA rating in the assessment scheme, though I would oppose default mass migration of GA to A. That's something for wikiprojects to handle. If the goal is to disassemble the centralized GA bureaucracy, the proposal should be posted there, and probably at WT:FA too. Opabinia regalis04:30, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I just saw this discussion for the first time! It arises from the fact that the GA level as in the assessment scheme overlaps with B and (mostly) A, leading to ambiguity and confusion. I am proposing to remove the GA-level from the WikiProject assessment scheme, but have WP 1.0 bot read GAs so that WikiProjects have all GAs listed in their "WikiProject Foobar Articles by Quality" worklists. I think that should keep everyone happy and resolve this problem. Please read the proposal and leave comments. Thanks, Walkerma04:52, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
I suppose merging A-class with GA-class for these purposes. Considering that "A" and "B" are the only letters that the system actually uses (it uses "Start" instead of "C", "Stub" instead of "D", and nonexistent articles would presumably be "F"), rendering their use kind of arbitrary and potentially opaque (especially to people unfamiliar with the A/B/C/D/F grading scale), it might be worthwhile to replace "A" with "GA" (or perhaps "Good", to mirror "Start" and be more descriptive to people unfamiliar with WP:GA), and to replace "B" with something that is also more descriptive. Perhaps "OK"-class. (Another, related problem that is probably more significant is that "Start" and "Stub" start with the same first two letters; this is obviously a very bad idea.) -Silence21:22, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
First link on page ought to be changed
Latest comment: 17 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion
He's talking about <link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" href="/w/opensearch_desc.php" title="Wikipedia (English)" /> - most browsers don't display this, and some can presumably use it to add search box abilities. --Random832(tc) 19:33, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Oh, the html header metadata. I don't know anything about that.
Latest comment: 17 years ago5 comments5 people in discussion
I have being distressed, especially lately, but in fact throughout my tenure as a Wikipedian, by the number of fellow Wikipedians who have left our community. By that I mean those who have chosen or being forced to leave due to personal attacks and vandalism, either of their home pages or articles.
Its being my experience that ALL of those who fall under this category have being people who have added tremendously to our project, both in scope and depth. It is therefore a source of anger that ahmadans, who's tenure here is bellicose, offensive and in no way a meaningful contribution to Wikipedia, has driven so many invaulable colleges away.
Therefore, I wish to open a discussion on effective ways of dealing with such abuse. For my own part I would like to see such abusers (as opposed to the general Wiki user and contributor) banned very quickly indeed. Attacks by such abusers usually have being on-going for quite some time before a warning is given, and further time elapses with furthing warnings before a ban is evoked. Yet even then such bans have a finite duration.
My proposal is to replace the first warning with an outright infinite ban on any and all abuse. I would like to see this apply in the following cases:
1 - Where abuse has occoured on several occasions (i.e., more than twice) prior to it being brought to the attention of the wider Wiki Community.
2 - Where an apology for bad beheaviour and promise of future good conduct has being asked for and not given within a set time-limit.
3 - Where an apology for bad beheaviour and promise of future good conduct has being given and broken (no time limit on such a promise).
In my own experinece, an Infinite Ban on abusers is the only course of action open to us. We have all seen that if a given 'contributor' begins such beheaviour they will continue with it whenever and wherever they please. Therefore, simple warnings are just not good enough. Action must be taken as soon as any abuse is detected. As with illness, prevention is better than cure. And while we cannot perhaps repair the damage abusers have committed (and which we were unable to prevent) on our fellow Wikipedians in the past, it is only in our common interest for each other and Wikipedia that we do so in future.
I would like to remind, regarding this proposal, that no one is without the potential for reform. People can grow out of ridiculous vandalism, and the reason Wikipedia is successful is because of the diversity. Aceholiday17:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I, too, suspect that a blanket ban would end up (1) not solving the situation and (2) giving the real trouble makers (who know the rules and how to exploit them) another weapon to use. semper fictilis17:59, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Can there be any systematic topic for the discussion of tourism entrepreneurship development?
Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Assuming I understood your question properly, my answer is that discussions taking place on Wikipedia should revolve around its development as an encyclopedia, the development of articles, the Wikipedia-based actions of users or otherwise be located at the reference desks. Thus, unless you're talking about creating an article called 'tourism entrepreneurship development' for the purpose of presenting encyclopedic information, then I think the answer may be 'no'. --SeansPotato Business14:50, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Regarding the multiple Account creation
Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hey,
I am a student at the Indiana University. I usually look up wikipedia and its sister webpages for many of my projects and class related activities. It is of great help to me. Thank You.
The problem, rather a suggetion I would like to tell, is that you could integrate and make a common Username and password to your verious websites of the Wiki. This is a very small thing, but creating a username and password for each and every Wiki site and its sisters, like the Wikiversity, Wikimedia and others, is really a wierd feature. If it were common, it would prove useful to the users of Wikipedia and to you too. It would save some space in your servers, instead of a person having 20 records of usrenames and passwords for using wikipedia, wikiversity, wikipedia(in other languages), etc.
Latest comment: 17 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
You guys should add a feature so that content can be marked as dynamic. For
example, many numerical references in the encyclopedia are continuously
becoming obsolete. If there were a sort of programmability to the pages,
certain information could be collected from the internet every time the page
is loaded. For example, a reference in a wikipedia entry on TUMORS to the #
of hits returned by an online medical database with the search of TUMORS
could be dynamically checked by the wiki page, and then the info is always
up-to-date. wikipedia is amazing. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.143.218.127 (talk • contribs).
I can't see how the specific example you gave would be of use (maybe it wasn't intended to be useful, and was just their for clarification) but the idea sounds good. The function should be able to retain the last available information in the event that the other website is compromised or something. There might be some technical problems. I would be worried about reliability of sites that WP has no control over but at the same time I like the idea... --SeansPotato Business23:30, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
There will be quite a lot of uses. Returning no. of hits isn't one, because normally you don't just want to look at the number but to view the results. I don't think there is presently any restriction on an external link that sends a search query, but in my experience such links need checking every few months. As Quiddity says, we will need to be careful in choosing the sources--and I think we'd need a new policy for live links. I would accept official government sources, and major associations. DGG04:14, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
With the continuing growth of all the Wikipedias, I feel that the "20,000 articles" mark is too low a cut-off point. I suggest that the point be changed to 25,000 instead, which (separating out those that make 50,000) would look like as follows:
This Wikipedia is written in English. Started in 2001, it currently contains 6,904,917 articles. Many other Wikipedias are available; the largest are listed below.
Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I would like to suggest adding an etymology field to the anatomical entries of
Wikipedia which are in Latin. For example: "latissimus dorsi" Etymology: New
Latin, literally, "broadest (muscle) of the back"
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.239.234.91 (talk) 13:14, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
WikiProject reform
Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
After a period of inactivity, I have come back to edit Wikipedia - I was formerly ACEO, and am now ACEOREVIVED 19:50, 26 February 2007 (UTC). Can I please copy the username page of ACEO, copy and paste it on to ACEOREVIVED 19:50, 26 February 2007 (UTC) and then delete the former page? Please do not accuse me of Wikipedia: Sock puppetry, because I am not really interested in being an administrator of voting - I just wanted to edit articles on psychology and allied fields. ACEOREVIVED19:50, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Personally, I think it would be best for you to continue editing under your old username. If you do not wish to do this, however, you could probably copy and paste the contents of your old userpage over (since you already have a new userpage) and make the old userpage into a redirect to the new userpage, or ask an admin to merge the page histories of the two pages. To avoid problems of sockpuppetry and impersonation, if you remember the password from your old account, you can log in under that account and state that you have moved to the new account. Tra(Talk)22:41, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Groups for deletion
Latest comment: 17 years ago9 comments5 people in discussion
According to WP:MULTI, discussion about the same thing in different places is not a good idea. Yet that often happens with XFDs—for example, a template that has the purpose of classifying a page with a category and notice (like {{PD-old}}, if it were to be nominated for deletion, and speedy kept :) ), or the CC series (see here and here), or a list and category that are interrelated (see here and here). It would be an option at a GFD to request the deletion of some items, an not of others. Because XFDs should be discussion and not mere polling, having all items separate would restrict this true purpose.
Listing something on GFD would entail creating a dummy entry on the XFD pages (on which each individual component would already go), that would link to the GFD. In addition, the GFD entry would list what XFDs would be involved. Sure it's instruction creep, but this level of complexity is even more so existent with nominating multiple cross-namespace items for deletion.
An alternative to this proposal would do such deletions on MFD. In addition, GFDs may be extended to all group nominations of pages not in the mainspace. Any thoughts? GracenotesT § 04:58, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Why would we need a new policy to do that? Just transclude the discussion on each of the seperate pages, and pick a random XfD process to be in the page name. -Amarkovmoo!05:02, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Considering the very sparse attendance at all the processes except AfD, perhaps it would be time to reconsider the decision to split the different XfDs. I wouldn't want to add yet an additional segment. A simpler rule is that the Cats and Misc wait upon the AfD, for the Afds are where the action is.DGG05:05, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Amarkov, that can't be done because XFDs other than AFDs and MFDs don't use subpages for every proposed deletion; rather, things nominated on the same day are always on the same page. In addition, any standardized way to do these sorts of nominations (not just my proposal) would work. So regardless of whether GFDs float your boat or not, there's still a problem that probably needs to be fixed. If you want to use MFD for group nominations instead of this proposed process (not policy, by the way), that's fine too. GracenotesT § 05:10, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, that's how it's usually done. But things are regularly subpaged already if they get too long, so another use of subpages won't be a huge deal. Of course, I don't have any sort of objection to this, but I don't think it's necessary. -Amarkovmoo!05:12, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
As an MFD regualar, I'd be fine with hosting these on MFD, but TRANSCLUDING them in to the other approriate areas if needed. We frequenly attach RFD to MFD content. Even on pages with per-day logs, it is trivial to tranascluse an mfd page in there, done it many times for improper listings. — xaosfluxTalk02:43, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Children and young editors
Latest comment: 17 years ago12 comments11 people in discussion
This isn't about young people accessing Wikipedia and possibly being corrupted. This is about when they click the "edit this page" link.
A while back I was reverting some edits by User:Ronleilaraymondfan (born 1996), and I had noticed that on the talk someone had slapped a {{test4article}} before realized that they were dealing with a kid and therefore toned it down and added a {{welcome}}.
Now, I'm noticing some edits by User:Fbs. 13 that require reverting or revising (e.g. factual errors, removal of content in talk pages), and the person is apparently 12.5 years old. If the person was older and writing like this, I'd honestly start slapping test templates left and right, but I feel hesitant in laying the smackdown on some kid who I think knows a lot less and is less mature than he believes.
So maybe we really should have some disclaimers when users register. I can't say that banning young editors is a good idea, but it seems that sometimes they doing stuff more associated with vandals, but we can't really slam on some kid who doesn't know any better, right? I'm sure if I was still 12 years old, I'd think I know enough to contribute and would end up doing a lot of stuff like this. Kelvinc03:30, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
As someone who was 12 not that long ago, they aren't as clueless as you think. If a 12 year old repeatedly vandalizes, they aren't doing it in good faith any more than someone else would be. And what kind of disclaimers would we put, anyway? "You may be blocked if you do bad things"? -Amarkovmoo!03:41, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm worried by an under-13 editor including his real name and age on his user page. I think that might even make Wikipedia run afoul of some sort of US laws. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 18:37, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
We want editors of a certain maturity, not a certain age. If a ten-year-old is productive rather than a poopoohead, great. If a thirty-year-old is a poopoohead rather than productive, block them. Easy enough. >Radiant<13:01, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, the tone of {{test4article}} is harsh. But, look:
Thank you for experimenting with Wikipedia. Your test worked, and the page that you created has been or soon will be deleted. Please use the sandbox for any other tests you want to do. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. You may also wish to consider using a Wizard to help you create articles: see the Article Wizard.
This is your last warning. The next time you create an inappropriate page, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia.
There's a progression of these things. And, since AIV requires a sequence of warnings, if no-one adds a last warning they'll never be blocked. If some leeway should be given in certain cases, it should be given regardless of age. --Random832(tc) 13:47, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I do not support discrimination against the age of users. I was 14 when Wikipedia began in January 2001; I discovered it at 17 in early 2004. However, as with all new users, they should be guided into making constructive edits instead of ones that violate Wikipedia's major policies such as WP:ATT and WP:NPOV.--h i ss p a c er e s e a r c h17:13, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
We already have a policy about "biting the newcomers". IMO, if an editor comes here looking to create trouble, whatever their age, they deserved to be disciplined. For a child, this can actually be quite productive, as being kicked in the butt early often means that they will shy away from undesirable behavior permanently. They may not return until they are older, more mature, and able to apperciate why they got "spanked", but they is actually what we want in a case like that!
I can't remember the name of the person, but there was an excellent tennis player who was always emotionally somewhat out-of-control and who would even shout at the referees if he disagreed with a call. One day, a referee chose to penalize him, the player got ruder, and the next thing he knew the referee had booted him from the match. (Actually, the referee declared the next game to be forfieted, but that gave the set and match to the opponent.) Afterwards, the player calmed down, and later said that looking back, it was a shame that noone had dared to stand up to him earlier, and gotten him to be more mature earlier. The point is that being tough early on someone can actually do some real good, and people should not shy away from doing so when it is needed, especially in the offender is a child. --EMS | Talk20:31, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
As a twelve year old, I would say block the child, however, depending on the vandalism, if it wasn't things like blanking pages and replacing them with *#&$, I would say maybe turn autoblock off and allow account re-creation. --TeckWizParlateContribs@02:05, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Retain deprecated templates
Latest comment: 17 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion
See Template:citenews for how this might be done. I think that older templates should at least be kept readable (maybe replaced with an emulation in terms of their replacements) so that old versions of articles that use them can be read. --Random83217:27, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
My understanding is that if a popular template is deleted, a bot is run that converts it to a new form, or the category of articles that use the template is emptied out before the template is deleted. In the case of citenews, "what links here" shows only one article using the template in that form, so seems preferable to me to change that article and delete the redirect. CMummert · talk20:02, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Removal of current usage only cleans up the current versions. Old versions of pages which have deleted templates neither look nor function well. (SEWilco07:59, 27 February 2007 (UTC))
This is a good point. It does interfer with reading older difs and can be annoying. It also seems to arguably violate the spirit of the GFDL (or it does at least to me at 3 AM here) since someone will not have access to what the prior versions actually assembled as with the template. JoshuaZ08:04, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
getting IP info on anons should be easier.
Latest comment: 17 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
The user pages of anons who haven't had a message posted to them yet, like User talk:69.153.37.62, should display the same IP information toolkit at the bottom as others, like User talk:65.28.166.83, do. It's a pain to have to post to the page in order to get access to the toolkit, or copy and paste the IP into a tool manually. I know there's a MediaWiki page somewhere where I can make this suggestion more directly, but I don't know where. Help? --— Preceding unsigned comment added by Coelacan (talk • contribs)
The toolbox is there, you just have to go to the user talk page itself, rather than the edit page you get taken to automatically - just remove "action=edit" from the URL. --Tango22:46, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Okay, that helps me, but it doesn't help anyone who isn't reading this. It would be useful for many people to have the toolbox added, even if it's just at the very bottom, to the "Editing" page, since that's where everyone ends up; there are no clickable links to the page with the toolbox on it. — coelacantalk — 03:51, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
I've just gone through Special:Allmessages, which is a list of all the customisable bits of the MediaWiki interface, and I can't find one for just editing user pages (MediaWiki:edittools). It seems we have to have the same information on all edit pages and can't change it by namespace. It might be possible to do is with parser functions, but I'm not familiar enough with them to try. I would support the change if anyone knows how to make it, though. --Tango23:39, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Making vandals wait...
Latest comment: 17 years ago13 comments11 people in discussion
How about this: if an anonymous editor makes a change that: (a) blanks most of an article, or (b) inserts an obvious vandal phrase, why not make them wait a while and then go through an extra confirmation step? I.e. the system makes an extra check for anonymous edits, taking a little extra time. If the revisions fit some criteria, after 10-15 seconds the editor is given a notice and asked if they really want to make the change. I'm betting that an immature vandal is not going to enjoy the extra wait as well as the additional confirmation, so the amount of vandalism is (hopefully) greatly reduced. — RJH (talk) 16:10, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
It sounds like a great idea, as long as it errs strongly toward "allow". Better to let some vandalism through than to inconvenience and piss off well-meaning anons. — coelacantalk — 22:31, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
The problem is, such a confirmation page would have to say something like "Your edit looks like vandalism", which would violate WP:AGF and WP:BITE. The first time an anon user vandalises we treat it as a test, rather than a malicious act. If the vandalism is obvious enough to be spotted by this, it's obvious enough to be reverted by the AntiVandalBots, anyway, so it's not very important. --Tango22:50, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
It wouldn't have to be phrased in such a way. How about show the diff and say "Your edit has been detected by an automated system as being potentially unproductive due to [e.g. "deletion of significant quantities of material"]; are you sure you want to continue?" and wait no more than five seconds before enabling the submit button. This would even help in the case of mistakes by experienced users. Maybe also add something like "If you would like to test the ability to edit pages on this site, please go to the sandbox." --Random83218:55, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, the message could be pleasantly neutral. It's primarily the wait that I think would be of benefit. Longer waits based on higher certaintly of vandalism would be even better. If it passes the vandal check a wait shouldn't be needed, so most valid edits should (hopefully) be unaffected. Thanks. — RJH (talk) 19:54, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
This sounds like a great idea. The volume of anonymous edits has grown so large lately that it is becoming harder and harder to stop vandalism from getting through (in the good old days all you needed was a tabbed browser and Special:Recentchanges). AntiVandalBots are a help, but I don't feel like they've been enough. Rather than always depending on our ability to catch bad edits after the fact, I think we should really be looking for more ways to prevent them in the first place. This proposal would frustrate malicious users and direct experimentative users to the proper venue.
Tango makes a good point about biting new users, but I think the result of this proposal would be just the opposite. Rather than being reverted and warned by frazzled RC patrollers, new users would be directed to the sandbox before they even made the bad edits. My guess is that they would feel less harassed and conflict would be reduced down the road.
Running a phrase based filter would likely be costly for the servers, but a byte based filter wouldn't be as bad. It could be more along the lines of "You are making a very large change to this page, please review the change below (queue preview pane) and click confirm to commit this change". — xaosfluxTalk02:46, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
The concerns I get about suggestions like this are that the phrases would need to be stored on-wiki somewhere, so trivial for those determined to avoid and size based/blanking moves the "casual" vandal onto more subtle changes. Realistically the obvious stuff like blankings are the least problematic of vandalism, I'd rather not force people into doing other vandalism instead. Stable revisions is a better option. --pgk07:32, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't think a wait will really deter many people, heck I have to wait for the Wiki servers to catch up to me during primetimes as it is! It seems to me that this system would pretty much catch the really obvious stuff that gets cleaned up by bots and RC patrollers in very short order anyways. Then there's the chance of biting newbies who are being bold and making large edits- like deleting some bonehead who added poop a hundred times to an article. IMHO this would be a lot of server load for not a whole lot of gain. —Elipongo (Talk|contribs) 09:36, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Well I've seen too many bot (and manual) reverts do an improper job—usually when there are multiple vandalisms intermixed with solid edits. So it ends up needing to be manually checked anyway, if you want to do a proper job. While the bots are helpful, they don't really reduce the amount of checking needed. But if you make a vandal wait, that reduces the number of vandalisms they can perform in a given span of time. Plus this hasn't been tried, so I have to contest your assertion about the number of people this will deter. Has it even been checked whether there is a lack of correlation between system performance and the number of vandalisms? Maybe those prime time slow-downs are having an impact on vandalism. If it becomes clear to the vandal that their performance will suffer as a result, I can't see it not having an impact on some percentage of the vandals. And that's what this is really about; reducing the amount, not eliminating it. — RJH (talk) 19:45, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Variation on the concept
How about this... if any edit would trigger an automatic summary (you know, the "replaced page with X" stuff) then have that edit require a captcha. Should be fairly simple... wouldn't worry real people much, but it should confound bots and slow down editors who want to blank a bunch of pages. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 03:48, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Merge IMDB Database and wikipedia
Latest comment: 17 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion
Can anyone help ? I have been wondering about how one would go about converging the IMDB database with Wikipedia.
I am not clear about what the implications are, but believe that the outcome (if it were succesful) would be very beneficial.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.144.251.120 (talk • contribs)
The first problem would be copyright issues. I'm sure they'd claim even just their list of film names, cast and crews of those films, and information like runtime/country ratings was copyrighted, and quite possibly would object to Wikipedia mass-importing it, since it would devalue their main draw. Another problem is that IMDB is, in essence, a directory. Many entries (probably most) on IMDB have nothing more than cast and crew information, and that wouldn't be acceptable for Wikipedia. --W.marsh00:12, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
What other commercial databases (IMDB owned by Amazon) are there that would benefit from an opportunity to consolidate with Wikipedia ?
Please list:
IMDB
It's not at all clear that you understand that Wikipedia is (a) completely free content, and (b) run by a non-profit organization that has no interest in monetizing the value of this encylopedia. Exactly what a "consolidation" would consist of is totally unclear; commercial databases are already free to use Wikipedia content, as does Google for its maps. -- John Broughton(♫♫)22:46, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
The raw stats from IMDB are not the sort of thing Wikipedia would carry. Any actual blocks of text would be copyright. I don't see how we can automatically gain information from IMDB without exceeding the scope of our project or violating copyright. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me)22:50, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I think it'd be neat if there were a "Random Recent" link/function, which would show you a random article chosen from the pool of articles that have been changed recently. Perhaps if possible with a callout or second column showing the change, or perhaps changes highlighted.
-:)Ozzyslovechild03:26, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Why? You can just click on the "Recent changes" link on the left (in the navigation box) - the most recent 50 edits are about as random as one could want. -- John Broughton(♫♫)22:58, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Language bar
Latest comment: 17 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
In an attempt to make the search function even more user friendly I’d like to suggest a function which makes me able to redo my search in another language. For example; often when I conduct a search I type it in from the Wikipedia window in my Firefox toolbar. Naturally, this gives me an answer from the English database. If, however, the item I’m looking for is more common in the country I’m from, it’d probably give me a more extensive answer if I search that database instead. So, if it’d possible for me to redo the search just by clicking on my country’s name or flag, that’d be a great time saver.
You can add search engines to Firefox very easily. See this page of Wikipedia-specific addons. Even niftier, is any webpage that has a searchbox will automatically let you add its search: In the Firefox searchbox, click the icon on its left for a dropdown box to get a "Add (current pages search)" option! --Quiddity23:16, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
Another (and perhaps better) solution is the search engine Qwika [1], searching in 1,158 wikis and (machine-)translating the text into English or another language of your choice. JoJan08:37, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
Still, it might not be a bad idea to have a 'search in other languages' button on the search results page. I don't think that's possible by modifying MediaWiki space (except by messing with the site-wide JS), so if anyone wants this feature they could open a new feature request on mediazilla:. Such proposals can be discussed at the proposals village pump. --ais523 11:24, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, just noticed that this is VPR. For some reason, I thought it was the Help Desk... --ais523 11:25, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
Lists for weekly box office charts?
Latest comment: 17 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion
In the article KRS Film Distributors, there has recently been sections that document the top ten films in the box office each week. Not knowing what to do with this, I've been leaving it in so far. However it's getting to the point where it is dwarfing the article about the company, and I know I've got to do something about it.
The best solutions would be to either remove it or split it in a new article. But I cannot find any such articles from any country that show lists of the ten popular films for each week.
I have the feeling that it would be encyclopaedic and suitable for Wikipedia so long as it originated form official sources and it is well referenced, but I'm not too sure. What is your opinion on this? ~ ► Wykebjs ◄ (userpage | talk) 18:37, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
We should avoid recentisms, remember and encyclopedia should have information that is timeless, not information that will be obsolete in a few weeks. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me)22:56, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the responses, sorry for not responding earlier. The movie does not break the rules under WP:RS (it is sourced in notable places such as the Maltese Independent and di-ve, I just haven't got round to sourcing them yet), and I cannot seem to find anything regarding the collection of indiscriminate information in WP:NOT. Sure, most of the time it is not worth adding to Wikipedia, and I certainly don't think we need the list of films shown on Children's Day for example, but there may be some useful research purposes for these charts, if not top tens then perhaps just the number one films by country. ~ ► Wykebjs ◄ (userpage | talk) 18:56, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
New idea with AfD
Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
This was originally brought up at a notability discussion, but I moved it to Wikipedia:Deletion policy#New idea, from the notability discussion as it began to stray from notability. The proposal is explained in detail on the linked page and I would prefer comments/concerns/support be included there. In short, it is a proposal to create a new AfD comment that would put deletion on hold for borderline (weak delete) cases to allow time to bring them up to standards. If you think this would be better left on Village Pump (policy) either copy and paste it or leave me a note on my talk page. Mr.Z-mantalk¢Review!23:41, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
Latest comment: 17 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
This is an automatically-generated list of cross-namespace redirects, copied from here. XNRs are generally considered to be not a good idea, although there are some exceptions if they are useful. So most of the XNRs on this list should probably be deleted.
Since this list is rather long, dropping all of them on RFD is probably not the most productive approach. Instead, let's take a leaf out of WP:PROD. I am going to advertise this list widely and leave it in place for two weeks. During those weeks, anyone who objects to a redirect's deletion should remove it from the list below (and optionally, list it on RFD for further discussion). After two weeks, the remainder could be deleted. >Radiant<09:29, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
I just fixed a couple that pointed at categories by pointing them at better targets. One had a valid history. Watch out, this could be a minefield if there was a legit article there. SchmuckyTheCat11:44, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Remember to remove them from the list when you do that so that other people don't end up duplicating your effort. --tjstrftalk11:49, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Return to Wikipedia with a new username
Latest comment: 17 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion
After a period of inactivity, I have returned to editing Wikipedia, but under a new username. I was formerly ACEO and am now ACEOREVIVED. Please do not accuse me of Wikipedia: Sock puppetry, as I do not have interests in voting of Wikipedia administration; I simply wished to improve some psychology articles and to edit articles on fields allied to psychology (I was especiall keen to improve the article on locus of control). As I am now under a new username, albeit as some one who will, generally, be reading rather than editing Wikipedia, can I copy and paste the information that was on ACEO on to ACEOREVIVED, and then take things from there after deleting ACEO? ACEOREVIVED20:43, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
You can copy anything you want from another user page. You probably shouldn't copy postings on the user talk page; these were directed to another account. And you certainly shouldn't delete anything on another user page or user talk page; it's simply your assertion that you were in fact the other person/user.
Also, you should note that WP:SOCK doesn't forbid multiple accounts; it forbids using them maliciously, including for the purposes of evading blocks and bans. Since that doesn't apply in this case, you should feel free to do anything that any other user does. -- John Broughton(♫♫)22:43, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
If you want you can simply change your old userpage to a redirect to your new one. You are welcome to use multiple accounts when you're open an honest about the issue, as you've been here. >Radiant<10:57, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
Thank you, it is good of you to give full responses. Since coming back to Wikipedia editing, I have primarily devoted my attention to editing the article on locus of control theory, which certainly needed attention from an expert in psychology. My other main contribution has been to add a new category, relating to Sigmund_Freud. I guess that I come down as being more exopedian than metapedian, although if I were 100 per cent exopedian, I would not be visiting the Village Pump, would I? ACEOREVIVED20:16, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Giving detention to school-based vandals!
Latest comment: 17 years ago12 comments11 people in discussion
It has been surmised that a considerable quantity of vandalism arises from misuse by school children who are less inclined to appreciate the importance of the project. Since these edits are sometimes traced via their fixed IP addresses to specific schools, I suggest that these schools are contacted with details of the vandalism that has arisen from their IP, and perhaps a selection of their useful edits, if any exist.
They could hold a school assembly on the subject of Wikipedia (they may even be thankful for the idea - I've sat through separate assemblies whose main topic consisted of a watch, a glass of water and a two pound coin where the teacher must have been really scraping the barrel!), condoning constructive edits and condeming damaging ones (ideally with threat of detention). If a response is asked for and received, it might be possible to keep a list of Wikipedia-friendly schools so that further vandalism from that IP address is dealt with differently. --SeansPotato Business23:24, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
I can just imagine that. How about student-led dramas?
John: Oh boy! How I love vandalizing Wikipedia for the lulz!
Jane: John, have you no remorse?
John: No! It gives me great pleasure to replace pages with the words "PENIS PENIS PENIS".
Jane: What kind of pleasure?
John: Well... ever since I lost my mother and father when they were trying to fulfill a {{reqphoto}} request for Iron maiden (torture device)... [sniffles]
Jane: [hugs John] It's okay, John. But why do you take that out on others?
John: I don't know... I feel as though I can hide behind this barrier. I'm not John... I'm 70.101.175.243. Or whatever other dynamic IP I am.
Jane: Look at it this way, John. Is this who you're trying to hurt?
[reveal Wikipedian, eyes glued to the screen, gathering sources for Cleveland steamer]
John: [gasps] What a pitiful creature!
Jane: And how delicate, too. John, I'm shocked that you would try to destroy free knowledge.
John: Yeah, how else would I write my research paper.
Jane: So before you edit Diminutive and replace it with <div style="text-decoration: blink; font-size:1000%; line-height:1em; position:absolute;">[[LOL|I did it for the lulz]]<div style="position: relative">I did it for the lulz</div></div>, think of all these things.
Entire school: [replaces Diminutive with said text]
Okay, so this proposal may be sound like a good idea, but most people don't share the same appreciation of free knowledge that we do, and there's also WP:BEANS implications. Plus, many teachers dislike students that use Wikipedia, either because it's too easy to reference, or sometimes inaccurate. The Wikimedia Foundation is not-for-profit, and for it to have sponsors (like schools) seems odd. Plus, not everyone likes Wikipedia, so how would a parent react if his or her student were being held in detention for hurting an organization in which they don't believe? Fun idea, though. Maybe when we get legislation to arrest Cplot will we be able to slip this in the bill. GracenotesT § 01:47, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Legally speaking, if a DA could ever be convinced to take the case, it would be possible to prosecute under the recent internet harassment statutes. No DA would waste the time, but it's a possibility as far as I understand. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 03:56, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
I suppose if it was reported to the school and there was a sufficiently strict administrator, they could arrange an assembly to order all the students not to vandalize Wikipedia, whereby every student will do just that at the next opportunity. —Dgiestc08:03, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
So you're all rejecting my proposal on the basis of exagerated, made-up ideas of what might happen if the entire student body was made up of hopeless delinquents? --SeansPotato Business23:39, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
My mother is an elementary schoolteacher. I caught one of her students vandalizing Wikipedia, and she revoked their school internet access for a month. So it has happened once. --tjstrftalk20:42, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Why stop at schools? Why don't we send a request to the US Congess (as they have been blocked for vandalism) asking that Congressmen be censured for vandalism relating to their or their opponents articles? Mr.Z-mantalk¢Review!20:34, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
If ever I found that the Canadian Parliament had some blocked IPs for vandalism, I think I would be writing a letter to the Globe and Mail quite quickly. Of course we should try to crack down on vandalism using "real world" methods! The way I figure, such a presentation to a school wouldn't have vandalism as its primary focus. It would point out wiki principles and philosophy, and portray vandalism as futile, pointless, and pathetic. Another issue to address, though, is this one: a couple of my friends who I believe to be generally reasonable, intelligent people insist on vandalising Wikipedia by adding disinformation, citing that it will be removed in seconds. Somehow, we must address that attitude at large. Falcon01:02, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
It would not be perfect - but, is it possible to require that everyone create a user name to post something, and require that they be signed in. True anyone could change their user name or location, but it would add to the effort to vandalize pages, hopefully reducing such. As stated by Falcon intelligent people insist on vandalizing Wikipedia by adding disinformation, citing that it will be removed in seconds. This is like the people in Disney World who drop a cigarette butt, or such to see how long it takes for it to be removed, usually quite fast. It exists in society in whole and that is a part of the problem. I had read where there is another site overseen by editors who check every post, and I am sure that is not what most would want with this site.Kidsheaven01:32, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Advertising sellout vs. a reliable site
Latest comment: 17 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion
Anyone else sick of how much time Wikipedia spends crashed? Though it is a minority of the time, we still seem to be one of the least reliable sites on the web. I'm sure this will infuriate a few people - but - would it really be so bad to have a few discrete adverts, if it means we can buy a few more servers..? There's a nice patch of whitespace on the left side of the larger pages that could fit a nice little moneymaker. If we force companies to use our colour scheme, it shouldn't distract too much. With us currently being the twelfth most vistied page on the whole web, think of the revenue! Jack · talk · 14:13, Monday, 26 February 2007
I myself will think of all of the Wikipedians that will leave the project because advertising violates WP:NPOV and WP:EL. Ads won't have any effect on Wikipedia being free in the way that "free" is meant, but you might want to check out Category:Wikipedians against advertisements for who would be upset! Can you imagine the ads that would appear on Abortion? Actually, http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/ads?format=160x600&client=ca&adtest=on&url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion these ads would appear there. Not that accurate, really. (By the way, Yahoo once donated servers, but it was full donation, not borrowing.) In short, this proposal has been rejected by the community. GracenotesT § 14:41, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Eep! That's a few! Though, c.800 against isn't that many in "3,675,933 registered user accounts". I like how the pro-advert category is virtually empty! I'm writing an essay at Wikipedia:Advertisements, if anyone wants to help out? I even have a cool picture :) Jack · talk · 15:29, Monday, 26 February 2007
Um... I'm confused. Since when do we spend lots of time crashed? In my six months of editing, I have seen it crash once. For 10 minutes. -Amarkovmoo!01:23, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Ach, it crashes for me all the time. At least once every few days (sometimes more), forcing me to go out and socialise. Bah! ...maybe it isn't Wikipedia's fault, maybe it's this proxy, but it could be my distance from the 'pedia servers? Whatever it is, I'm sure money will fix it Jack · talk · 02:42, Tuesday, 27 February 2007
Define "crashes". I have seen a full server crash once, maybe twice. No longer than 40 minutes though. However, I have seen database locks and save errors more frequently, but hese generally last only a minute or less. Mr.Z-mantalk¢Review!20:37, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Latest comment: 17 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion
Its pretty obvious when you visit other sites that "Matrixism" is a farce and no doubt the reason it is restricted from being created as an article here. But there is an appropriate place for it which in my opinion is the uncyclopedia so I propose that instead of simply preventing the creation of a "Matrixism" article here that a protected redirect be placed (possibly with an official disclaimer) in the "Matrixism" article space which redirects users to the "Matrixism" article in the uncycopedia. (Even though there is nothing that can also be done about this.) Nocternal19:36, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
I was under the impression that farces could be included so long as they are notable enough, and are written as a page about said farce, rather than about the farcical topic (recording a farce as bring a farce and explaining its nature) just like hoaxes. There must be more too it if it's banned from recreation.
I don't know. I guess I could find the deleted copy somewhere to see if it inspired the same objection as it did for the person(s) who deleted it but in the meantime a redirect would seem to be the civil solution. Nocternal21:36, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Deletion of uncomfirmed images sourced from Stock.XCHNG
Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
These have been lying around for a while, so I have listed them all at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images#SXC images. I figure 14 days should be more than enough to contact the photographers for any of these images we want to keep. To help out go to the category, pick a few images, then follow the source link to the image page on SXC and click the "contact user" icon (you need an acount there to do this) and request that they release the image under a suitable free license. Then put add the {{contact|~~~~}} template on the image to make sure we don't send multiple requets to the same user. Images in the category with no comfirmed free license after a couple of weeks then be deleted (I think the standard is usualy 48 hours these days, but I can't be bothered to contact all the uploaders personaly, so I figure 14 days is a fair timeframe in this special case.
Most people fortunately disagree with you, name one good reason why allowing images in signatures would help improve the ensyclopedia... By the way, if you absolutely must transclude a subpage as your sig at least subst: it, template sigs are not allowed either. --Sherool(talk)12:50, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
The problem is, somebody can replace that image with something nasty and it is suddenly shown on thousands of pages with your sig. That is why templates are not allowed either. I think that is why it was originally disallowed. For example, someone could go to the {{yellow}} template you have in your name and change it to say anything they want, you signature would change to that everywhere you left it. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me)16:11, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
That's not the real problem since Wikipedia isn't censored in any way, and templates can be reverted. The problem server strain and annoying the hell out of users with a 8000x10000 pixel picture. Koweja23:13, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
No, but that doesn't mean it isn't bad to have obscene images pop up everywhere you've commented. Of course, server strain is a problem too, but large images could be disallowed, just like disruptively large text signatures are. -Amarkovmoo!23:18, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Please no. Your signature is already violating our guidelines by using templates without substituting them and for being very hard to read without highlightening it to also add flags and icons. -- ReyBrujo23:29, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
No one said colors where not allowed, just that your yellow text on the standard background is impossible to read, and the guideline do say that your signature should be readable. --Sherool(talk)18:42, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Calling a health psychologist
Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I have edited the article on locus of control, given that this required expertise from a psychology expert, but this article still requires attention from a health psychologist (for example, a Chartered Health Psychologist in the British Psychological Society or a professional member of Division 38 of the American Psychological Associationwho could cite some empirical data in relation to health locus of control. I believe that there is such a thing as Wiki-project: Psychology - if they could turn attention to this article on locus of control, I shall be appreciative. ACEOREVIVED19:58, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Latest comment: 17 years ago40 comments13 people in discussion
The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
The result was Parker's Adminship was Closed Prematurely, and it was decided to speedy keep the misc desk. --Parker00704:20, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm not so sure, Parker. There's an awful lot of rubbish which could not be slotted into the other desks with any degree of ease. Clio the Muse20:07, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
What kind of rubbish? Could you please direct me to some rubbish in the current misc desk? I am just trying to figure what you mean by rubbish questions? As if they are not signed they can be deleted on sight, if it is rubbish, as they have not followed the rules mentioned above (sign your posts)--Parker00722:23, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, Parker, rubbish is an expression of personal prejudice on my part, I freely confess. But where would you place questions on masturbation, matrixism, stool colour, cannot rid myself of spiders, car emblems, UK road signs, reading upside down, sheep and lights in the window, all subjects I plucked out at random from the current MD? I would hate to see this trivia block up the Humanities Desk, where I do most of my work. Clio the Muse23:19, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Parker, not everyone knows how to sign their name, so that rule seems a little tyrranical. Also, what if I don't know where to post my physics equation question, science or math? Don't you think that we should seem welcoming? - AMP'd22:51, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Parker could argue that masturbation, stool colour, cannot rid myself of spiders, and sheep could be posted at the science desk. UK road signs and lights in the window could be deposited at the humanities desk (and help clutter it up). Reading upside down (depending on the actual question, too lazy to check) could be posted either at the language desk or the science desk. Nonetheless, I have very strong feelings about keeping the miscellaneous desk. As Clio and AMP'd pointed out, an everything-else category can be very helpful to the person asking a question here. Currently, I'm happy with the number of desks, if it needs to be trimmed down, the entertainment desk would be the first to go in my book, but I'd prefer keeping it too. ---Sluzzelintalk23:36, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Entertainment Desk serves the purpose of keeping entertainment questions out of Humanities Desk. Sometimes I see very interesting questions in Misc Desk, which is usually ignored, which could have been at an appropriate desk. --Parker00701:10, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
I certainly agree that the Entertainment Desk has acted as a useful filter. But can't you just move individual questions where you feel they have been misplaced? I certainly think that the Otto Frank question recently posted on the Miscellaneous Desk would have been better placed on Humanities. Clio the Muse02:03, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. But please look at the items on the current MD one by one. Do you really think you could place all of these, the good, the bad and the ugly? How much more time consuming that would be, and I still think, in the end, you would be left with detritus. Clio the Muse02:22, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Regarding Signing Names, why cant we make it bigger font like how it is for No Medical Advice right now? --Parker00701:14, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
People ignore the no medical (and legal) advice thing too - so changing the font size clearly doesn't work. Nobody ever reads instructions...trust me, you won't ever change that. Plus a lot of these questions come from inexpert users - that's why they are frequently unsigned. SteveBaker01:22, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Questions regarding masturbation, matrixism, stool colour, cannot rid myself of spiders would be placed in the Science Desk. --Parker00701:16, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Matrixism is a religion question - which proves the need for a misc desk - even we "experts" can't agree on where every single question should go. SteveBaker01:23, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
We could. Or, if we really were serious about it, we could actually make a proper, clean proposal to delete the reference desk, rather than throwing in the same old hints and comments every now and then. ---Sluzzelintalk01:36, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Strong keep - I believe the miscellaneous desk serves a useful purpose - there are an immense number of questions that don't fit any of the other desks and the trolls will troll the other desks if they aren't trolling this one - so it's not gonna be a big deal either way. It's not much extra hassle to patrol the misc desk along with one or two of the others. SteveBaker01:22, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Strong Keep - Without the miscellaneous desk, we would have nowhere to keep questions that don't fit in to other categories (i.e. "cannot rid myself of spiders") or questions by people who are directed to the reference desks by an external source. (Also, please stop bolding words in your sentences...) - AMP'd03:31, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Strong keep for God's sake! Some things do not fit neatly into the available slots, and a question can be moved to the appropriate desk if it would fit there. Hiprcrite's suggestion to remove all reference desks looks like a pretty clear case of disruptive editing. 06:56, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
My opinion as an outsider is that, if questions are being placed on the misc desk, then this proves that it is needed, if only by those disenchanted few that (apparantely) don't have the gift of being able to manipulate their questions to fit other desks. I feel that the only plausible reason to delete a desk would be if it had extremely low traffic, which the Misc desk certainly does not have. Martinp2309:53, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Keep of course - eliminating RD/M makes about as much sense as eliminating Category:Uncategorized. --hydnjotalk 16:43, 4 March 2007 (UTC) -- addendum: And ...007, WTF is this all about? - "Its too time consuming to move individual questions from the misc desk to appropriate desk. --Parker007 02:10, 4 March 2007 (UTC)". That being the case then don't do it.. You don't need to move questions yourself, some of the other "few" of us will find the time. --hydnjotalk21:46, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Keep. Reasons given for deletion just aren't good enough IMHO. So what if some questions aren't categorized correctly? I bet most of the questions at WP:RD/M belong there, rather than somewhere else. Also, we need a place for questions like "How do I get from Sollentuna to Sergels Torg?" or "Where can I buy buttons near Edsbergs Centrum?" --Kjoonlee18:37, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Comment
Sometimes I see very interesting questions in Misc Desk, which is usually ignored, which could have been at an appropriate desk.
"So, I know that there are people in the U.S. who follow the lives of the British monarchy for whatever reason and they're called Anglophiles. So is there an equivalent word for people who follow the American scene? Amerophiles, maybe?" could have been better placed at the Language Desk. Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Miscellaneous#Ameriphile.3F. --Parker00720:09, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Geesh Parker, in about that amount of time you could haved the moved the questions to whatever desk you wished. --hydnjotalk22:16, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
Babel box categories
Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
There is a discussion on Wikipedia talk:User categories for discussion#User en, but there are not presently many participants. I have posted on Wikipedia talk:Babel and I'm now posting here to try to gather more people to build a consensus. Issues being discussed are: Category naming conventions (should it be renamed to "Wikipedians ... etc" and if so, how in particular), and whether some of these categories should exist at all (do the -0 categories, in particular, aid collaboration in any way?) It is important to note that, first of all, this is NOT a UCFD nomination and it may not lead to one, it's just a discussion to try to get input on where to proceed next on this issue. And, second, no-one's suggesting deleting any babel boxes, only changing what (if any) categories they will add to the pages in which they are included. --Random83217:06, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Wakipedia
Latest comment: 17 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Create a mirror site called "Wakipedia", one that allows editors outside your circle to create terms and explanations. Monitor occassionally to make sure nothing on Wakipedia actually makes sense! Especially if it makes more sense than Wikipedia.
To avoid Wakipedia cogency, perhaps restrict Wakipedia terms to those that do not appear on Wikipedia. That way, your editors still get to gatekeep the "standard set" of terms people consider important. Then, though, you should have no authority to edit Wakipedia. Just to make it fair.
Nope, this isn't what Uncyclopedia if for Dan T. He wants to create a site to view WP without actually being on WP. NO! - User:Patricknoddy/sig 12:26, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Latest comment: 17 years ago7 comments5 people in discussion
I am wondering if it is possible to hide information that is contained on a page between two spoiler tags. This way a person would need to click to read the rest of the text, and would prevent people from accidentally reading information they did not want to read.--NeilEvans00:40, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Considering that people already dispute that we should even have spoiler tags, I doubt there's any chance that people are going to consent to hiding the text between them. But it is quite simple, from a technical aspect. -Amarkovmoo!01:19, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
It'd be easier if the spoiler tag put its content in a box (if not a real box, then some sort of structural element - a div by any other name) - obviously, the existing tag can't be converted to this, but maybe a new version like {{spoiler-top}}{{spoiler-bottom}} {{spoiler-inline|some text that spoils}} --Random83204:11, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Except that that could break page layout, and have additional complications for the people (including myself) who use CSS to hide those spoiler tags. >Radiant<13:05, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
How would it break page layout - the whole point would be to have it be _new_ tags so that it will only be used in places that it wouldn't break the page layout. And the actual visible tags could have the same classes as the existing ones. something like <div class="spoilerarea">{{spoiler}} for the beginning tag, and {{endspoiler}}</div> for the end. --Random83213:59, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure the existing tags have css div tags in them which you can write some custom CSS or javascript to hide. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 04:51, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
They use a div tag for styling, but what would be required for this would be for the spoiler tag to contain an open div tag which the end spoiler tag has a close tag for. --Random83218:36, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Random Article Navigation Upgrade?
Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I would like to suggest an improvement to the "Random article" navigation feature. If the following feature or something like it is already available, how do I use it? If it is not available, could someone please create it?:
PROBLEM: When using the current random article feature, I find myself spending a lot of time skipping past two line biographies and descriptions of towns in the middle of nowhere, which although certainly random, are of little interest.
PROPOSAL: Enhance the random article grab with the option of excluding certain categories/types/sizes of articles from the results (for example: no biographies, no articles less than xx lines, etc). Alternatively, it would be useful to be able to retrieve random articles from within specified categories (for example: only biographies, only articles greater than xx length, etc), rather than the entire Wikipedia.
Another realated idea is a "Suggested article" grab for frequent users based on past page viewings.
JUSTIFICATION: (Controlled) Serendipitous discovery is a major research tool at hard copy libraries, and has undoubtedly contributed greatly to the development of human culture and technology. Wikipedia is the perfect vehicle to take this tool to the next level.
Thanks! Serendipitous Rex08:01, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Counterproposal: Randomly generated lists of articles
It's a funny a thing that you should mention this now, because I was just going to post an idea that occurred to me. I have, essentially, created a program that spits out the title of every 1000th article or so from the February data dump. I've discovered two things:
- The subjects of most articles bore me to tears. It really is an encyclopedia, you wouldn't want to read it from beginning to end even if it were possible.
- I was still able to get some good value from the list, because I was able to reject looking at articles that I knew weren't going to be interesting, as opposed to Special:Random which loads an article and then lets you judge if it's interesting or not.
Would other people be interested in such a "random" list? How should this be implemented? As some sort of 3rd-party script hosted offsite (I might be in a position to do this), a bot that will place the list onto a user page like User:SuggestBot, a patch to MediaWiki, or what? - RedWordSmith21:12, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Unique Wiki Labeling on *All* Consumer Products and Ads
Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Would this *consumer product wiki labeling* initiative be appropriate for Wikipedia.org to participate in?
WikiPPP (Product,Planet,People) will be petitioning trade organizations and governments worldwide to require a *unique* wiki website on all products, and advertising related to all products.
A unique wiki web address/URL on every product's packaging, or in a product's advertising would help consumers find and contribute environmental, humanitarian, product details, and company information about any product. Un-developed product pages would automatically be redirected to product category pages.
Some of the advantages in creating a wiki article for every product would be:
encourage informed and ethical consumer purchasing benefiting humankind and the environment
quicker access to the product and 'product category' research, issues, reviews, pricing and availability
easier access to related info provided by the company
product pages could be accessed while in a store via cellphones with web access or store kiosks, or at home via the web
more consumer and citizen participation in product development and standards
The unique wiki website required on all products and in advertising would be the main wiki URL followed by either:
the product and the company name (preferable)
the UPC (universal product code)
For example, the unique wiki address for any product might be "WikiPPP.org/" or "WikiConsumer.org/" followed by the product-model-company name, or the product's UPC code. Such as, the URL posted on a Schwinn made bicycle, and on its shipping box might look like "wikippp.org/bicyle8851schwinn". The names could be abbreviated when needed.
Because "bicyle8851schwinn" would be a file established under for the www.wikppp.org website, it would *not* be necessary for the Schwinn company to buy a domain name for this product, or any of their other products.
In cases where companies change their names or the product name, an old page with a product's old name or a company's old name in the title could be easily redirected to the updated product page with the corrected title. This is one argument for using the UPC code to create the unique URL for products.
Some companies might prefer to buy a top level name such as www.Wikibicyle8851schwinn.org to save space on their packaging and encourage participation in the Wiki. As such, they would still be obliged to point their domain to the central "www.WikiPPP.org/bicyle8851schwinn" page.
Each of these product's wiki articles would initially be set up the company. However, the company would be obliged to leave a product page "blank" except for entering the Product Name and model, UPC code (if applicable), Product Category and Company Name. This product name followed by the company name would become the page title. Depending on the Wiki's guidelines for allowing companies to edit, it may be determined that companies would be allowed to include weblinks on the discussion page (or, dare I say, even at the bottom of the main article page). These company added links could point to product details, environmental, humanitarian, manufacturing, financial and/or other product related info pages that are owned by the company.
Of course, wiki volunteer editors can add the company's weblinks to the main article page.
As long as a specific product page remains blank after its initial creation, the product page would be redirected after ~15 seconds to an existing wiki article that describes the *category* the product is in.
The 'long' ~15 second wait before redirecting to a product category would:
allow volunteer editors a chance to click on the 'edit' or other links
allow readers to click on the 'discussion' link to see volunteer talk and/or links a company may have posted
allow time to click on other page links, such as the preconfigured search links described below
allow readers a chance to click on company and product related links at the bottom
Once a wiki volunteer has edited the article to include product or company related information and links, the volunteer could then stop the automatic redirect to the product category page. Environmental, humanitarian, specifications, history are examples of product related material that an editor may want to add to the page. The editor would also make sure the product was accurately categorized.
A few of the features that might be nice on each product page include:
a search button for other products in the same product category
a search button for other products in the same product category from the same company
a search button for other products from the same company
a button that goes to a wiki page covering the company
These buttons would automatically be created and configured for the page using a script that would use the info inputted by the company when the page was set up.
Because many consumers would not be familiar with the wiki concept, the fact that anyone can edit these pages *may* need to be stated more clearly on product pages.
Editable product templates could be used to edit multiple similar product pages for a company. Plus, if companies could set up their "blank" product pages into the wiki via a "product tree" designed to categorize similar products, it would be easy to use product templates to edit multiple similar products for a company.
Guidelines could be established to exempt companies with "simple" products that are low cost, produced in limited numbers and with little variability from similar products from other companies.
An online petition will be set-up soon that consumers can sign to request *unique* wiki website on all products, and on all advertising related to products. It will probably be located on www.ThePetitionSite.Com.
Latest comment: 17 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
The "My contribution" or "User contributions" link in the toolbox is very useful, but sometimes I'd like to take a list of articles that I (or a particular user has created. It doesn't seem like there is a filtering mechanism in place to view just those "created pages", is there? I don't think it's particular hard to add such a functionality, but it would help in fighting vandalism as well as determining a user's constructive contributions to Wikipedia. Minh T. Nguyen23:55, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
user:Interiot runs a tool on toolserver on request that does this if you're interested in articles you've created. I suspect he won't run reports on other users for you. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:09, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Proposal and challenge to end anonymity
Latest comment: 17 years ago17 comments12 people in discussion
In light of the Essjay debacle, it is clear the policy of anonymity here must come to an end if Wikipedia is ever to have any credibility. At a bare minimum, anyone with authority (from admins on up) should be identified to the foundation and preferably be required to give basic information about themselves to the public as a whole. Additionally, any and all contributor's should be required to submit an email address in order to open an account and an account should be required in order to post (this is basic at any other web site). As a challenge to the community, I have decided to identify myself at my user page. In my opinion, the current situation is ripe for abuse and Essjay's action's have badly damaged the credibility of Wikipedia and I no longer have complete faith in the organization and it's decision-making process. Thank you for listening. --Jayzel04:17, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Welcome to reality... I find it somewhat funny that everyone is wailing and moaning over how shocked they are by Essjay's actions. What did you expect? Of course someone lied about who they are, and what their credentials were. I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner (actually, since I am sure it has... let me change that to: I am surprised that it hasn't become public sooner). This is common on the internet, where people can hide behind usernames, and create what ever persona they want for themselves. We should never assume that people are who they say they are. A healthy scepticism is a very good thing when you can't look the person you are talking to in the eye.
That said, there is no way you are going to get people to fully identify themselves on line... especially when doing so can open the door to identity theft and cyber abuse. What you suggest is a great way to kill the project. Very few admins would be willing to opperate under those conditions.
As for the credibility of Wikipedia... where have you been hiding? It never had any credibility to begin with. Why do you think all those high schools and colleges don't let their students to cite to Wikipedia. The basic concept is flawed. As long as "anyone can edit"... then "anyone" will. Not just smart, well-informed, honest people... but also fruads, idiots, and the ill-informed. My advice... sit back, have fun creating articles, and stop taking it all so seriously. Blueboar17:05, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
This proposal seems completely bass-ackwards to me. If we force people to give us information, then clearly we'll have more people making it up, not less, since the people who don't want to give us personal information will just make it up. Even if it were otherwise, a) people are uncomfortable about revealing personal information on the Internet - most basic guides specifically advise against it - and b) while Wikipedia is a safer place to reveal your name than your average cybersex chatroom, certain groups have shown themselves to be very willing to use personal information to harrass editors in real life in order to achieve their goals. Requiring contributors to publicise personal information to this extent would reduce our editing population to that of Citizendium very quickly. --138.38.32.8418:18, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Uh, please read before commenting people. I said anyone given authority at Wikipedia should identify themselves to the Foundation, not to the general public. And this very concept is being given serious consideration over at User talk:Jimbo Wales as we speak. --Jayzel19:49, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Actually you said as a bare minimum.
Whilst in principle I can see where your arguments have some attraction I think that realistically many contributors would choose not to do so. THose of us who participate in contentious subject areas, and even in some non-contentious areas where we have knowledge, would not want our personal information available in any depth.
Let's face it, there are some crazy people out there. Do we want our employers to find out we angered some vandal? I sympathize with your concerns, but privacy problems are probably even a bigger issue on the internet than some encyclopedia. Xiner (talk, email) 22:11, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
You said ...preferably be required to give basic information about themselves to the public as a whole. Short response: no. Longer response: Hell no. A quick perusal through my user page history will show how many vandals are less than enamored with my work. There is no way I would give any of them even a shred of information that they could later use to find and harass me outside of Wikipedia. Nor would I want my family to have to deal with the repercussions of my editing here. Information for the foundation...possibly. Information for the public...no way. IrishGuytalk22:41, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
As far as I have seen, anyone registered with Wikipedia as a user, is at very least less likely to be someone who vandalizes pages. They would need to keep changing their name and password. The one listing here of a multi-use IP address is the only one under this heading, and it's comment page posts what is true-those users may register under any name and that will work with most any computer. Adding real names to the site would place extreme limits on who posts what, I have seen other sites that have done so, they work, but also info posted on the whole site is far less than here.
It would seem the most problems come from non-signed in IP addresses, it would seem we could live with a few users who need to be blocked by user name. Is there any problem known with the false use of a registered user name- I.E. Spoofing the site under another user's name?Kidsheaven23:02, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
There have been far too many people, admins and non-admins, who have been literally stalked in real life for this suggestion to fly. You would find far too many people abandoning Wikipedia if they had to reveal their real names. Corvus cornix23:11, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Frankly, I find the paranoia of people too much. Simply telling fellow editors your first name and letting us know your sex and age range isn't giving anyone any tools to track you down any more than introducing yourself at a party in real life puts you at risk. And frankly when I go to dispute resolution over a complex issue in a complex article, I do not want the mediator to be some 17 year old kid. They way things run now, that very well can happen. Anyway, without a doubt I think people in authority positions here should be required to ID themselves to the foundation. Anyone unwilling to do so should be stripped of their status ASAP. If you're THAT paranoid or secretive, we don't want you. --Jayzel23:31, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Pardon me for asking, but are you personally in one of those positions of authority you speak of? Do you honestly know how many times those editors have to deal with harassment? Besides, how exactly would one provide ID to the foundation? Fax something? That can be faked. You can't seriously expect everyone in an admin on up position to fly to the foundation and present him/herself in person. IrishGuytalk23:43, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict)"If you're that paranoid or secretive, we don't want you." Speak for yourself, I and many others don't think it matters in the slightest if you don't divulge your identity. As has been confirmed countless times at RfA, what matters is a person's edits, not their personal identity or lack thereof. The Essjay problem would have been avoided just as easily by a policy forbidding users from claiming personal authority as one forcing them to prove it. I additionally would like to remind you that age is no guarantor of wisdom. --tjstrftalk23:48, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Haha, no. Remember what Jimbo said: If Essjay had merely used a pseudonym, everything would have been fine and understandable (what with people like Brandt seeking to cause real-life problems for admins). The problem is that he was a trusted member of the community with access to tools that required a great deal of trust, while at the same time he used his pseudonym's credentials during content disputes. Using a pseudonym wasn't the problem, it's using it in an unethical way during a content dispute that was the problem. (which has always been true... I'm sure a number of admins have sock puppets... this is totally in line with policy, as long as they don't use the sock puppets to try to drum up support in a content dispute or AfD) --Interiot23:45, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately, we all have just learned people are only judged here by how good a game they play. --Jayzel01:27, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
As said above, judge on contributions. Sysops, after all, are not employees of the Foundation (and I would be astonished if people who ran the Foundation didn't have to submit CVs and stuff). I will be scared the day WP:RfA candidates are rejected "because this guy isn't who he is". After all, if one uses his/her credentials to justify something, it implies they know more than them, and unless it is sourced, isn't that violating WP:OR? Anonymity is one of the reasons some people contribute to Wikipedia, and I think it should stay that way. x42bn6Talk19:06, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
"Did you mean" feature
Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I propose for Wikipedia EN to add the "Did you mean?" feature to the search box similar to the one Google uses. It's great because, for instance, if you are trying to look up the biography of say health guru Jack Lalanne and you type "jack lalaine" thinking this is a close enough spelling of his name and only get 6 results that aren't related to him at all because it's not
exact correct spelling his name. Then you go to Google and type "jack lalaine" and it immediately asks "Did you mean: jack lalanne," the name even being a hyperlink" and still lists the hits it finds below that for the mispelling.
It's an extremely powerful feature because not only does it help the user to get to the correct file, but it also makes the user want to go to your site in the future if they're merely trying to find the correct spelling, those giving you more exposure. But mostly it's just great to not have to know the exact spelling to find what you need. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jmaruca (talk • contribs) 01:27, 7 March 2007 (UTC).
This sort of functionality exists in the underlying search engine, but it's disabled for performance reasons (unlike Google, Wikipedia basically has no source of funds for hardware other than donations). You can use Google to search Wikipedia by adding "site:en.wikipedia.org" to your Google search string. There's a bit more discussion about this at Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Better search feature. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:10, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Capitalised Improper Nouns
Latest comment: 17 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion
I've noticed a really large increase in the number of improper nouns with capitals, such as the capitalisation throughout an article of its title wherever it appears in the body text, or perhaps that of various entities highly relevant to it (such as if I were to say Improper Nouns right here). Perhaps someone with more knowledge of SQL than I ought to start a wikiproject to this end. Articles with such things in them most likely need attention anyway because if they had recieved any amount of editing, they would soon have been cleared of these mistakes. Falcon00:51, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
I spent a full day correcting the capitalization of japanese songs (especifically, Namie Amuro discography). Unfortunately, there is no way to determine when capitalization is right and when it is not, so I believe there is no "magic query" to save us. -- ReyBrujo02:58, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
I see lots of cases where Japanese song and album titles are in all caps. That seems to be a standard, at least here. I have no idea if that's a real-world standard. Corvus cornix21:04, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
It has to do with the fact that foreign words in Japanese are written with the katakana alphabet, and by custom katakana words are written in capital letters when translated to English to differentiate them from native words. While it is an accepted practice, Wikipedia naming policy establishes we must not respect the trademark if it is in uppercase. -- ReyBrujo03:35, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Current Events
Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest comment: 17 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion
I assume this would be more a guideline than a policy, but I'm curious to know if any guideline etc exists regarding culture neutrality of WP articles? In particular, many articles appear to conform to a default American cultural POV, and I'd like to know if instances of these can be corrected inline with any particular guideline or policy? As an example, American placenames are often given without qualifying that they are located within the United States; US organisations etc are referred to directly without qualifying that they exist within the US and so on. In some ways I was able to read an ideal of cultural neutrality into the existing NPOV policy, but it goes a little beyond that in pursuing a cultural neutrality that doesn't make assumptions regarding the cultural POV of people reading any given WP article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 211.26.1.167 (talk) 11:49, 6 March 2007 (UTC).
Neutral means what you think it should mean: we have no idea where our readers may be, and unwarranted assumptions may make articles useless to them. We have a template for adding to (the many) articles written from a particular national/regional position: see Template:Globalize. It's far from being a US-specific problem. I'd reserve the template for the worst cases. For less bad examples, you can mention problems on the article's talk page. Angus McLellan(Talk)
Or fix them. Though be careful. I think there's a style guide about place names, you might want to check that for that issue in particular. And many "US organisations" are multinational; and even if not, it's often sufficient to name them with (at least one in the article) link to their article, without having to say "The US company $FOO" every time it's mentioned anywhere. For their articles themselves, the location can be mentioned in the lead paragraph. --Random83218:05, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
One thing about placenames - while it would certainly be arrogant to talk about Cambridge, it would be less so to refer to Chicago. How unique the name is, how well-known the place is (on its own or vs other places with the same name), are all factors in how much qualification is needed. Context matters, too. One might simply say Los Angeles in talking about the american city, but it would generally be inappropriate in talking about the Chilean one, though contexts where this would be appropriate certainly exist. A perhaps related issue comes up in terms of highway signage near where I live, where exits only a few miles apart give you a choice of Columbus or Columbus, OH. --Random83218:18, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
It's not so much a matter of arrogance, as it is a matter of avoiding assumptions on behalf of WP's audience. For example, if I referred to Uluru, a majority of Australians would know exactly what I was speaking about. Most non-Australians, presumably, wouldn't. But beyond placenames, I've encountered content a number of times in articles where the cultural POV of the writer was very obviously American (not that it should matter what particular cultural POV it is, just that it's not a culturally neutral POV). An example would be these couple of lines from the entry on Gardasil: "On 2006-06-29, a panel of experts, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, gave their approval for the vaccination of Gardasil on children as young as nine years old. The ACIP recommended that Gardasil be placed on the childhood immunization schedule at the eleven to twelve year old visit." After a Google search it became obvious that the ACIP is an American committee, and therefore its recommendations would be applicable to American children. So, culturally neutral POV isn't simply about being pedantic, but about providing contextual relevance.--Planetthoughtful06:48, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Is there any point having an orphan page warning on a disambiguation page? It sounds good to me that ppl link the right page, not the disambiguation page. Eg, FPLC. Hence I suggest a bot deal to these pages with orphan page and disambiguation categories. Any reason why not?
PS I have no idea how to make a bot, just a suggestion for someone else.
You can request that someone writes a bot at WP:BOTREQ. --ais523 09:22, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure what the usefulness of this is. Ideally all disambig pages will be orphans, since links will be fixed to point directly and they'll just be there for people who type in the name. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 16:55, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Standard maps
Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hi, I know the idea of wiki maps is too complex... but could we at least adopt one high quality map with appropriate markings as the common map for all geographical locations. I often see small and incongruent maps on the pages of cities, etc. Can we find one very good map and just have all maps get cropped from the good map? That way we have a good map standard. Even better is if each wikipage on a physical location have longitude and latitude, and the maps be automagically cropped off the good clear map and then used as the map. It would be good to have a large scale context map and then a more zoomed-in one on the actual place
check out the difference in map quality:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakhalinhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pusan
There are already fairly standard blank maps for many countries, which can then have dots added to them by a locater template. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 16:39, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Redirecting city names
Latest comment: 17 years ago6 comments4 people in discussion
This falls into the overwhelmingly obvious category but I didn't see it at "perennial proposals." I get really frustrated when I type in "worcester MA" and get no results, type in "concord nh" and get a list of results (of which "Concord, NH" is the first), and so on. Why isn't this standardized? Why doesn't "town state" automatically redirect to "Town, State"? Why does "town state" sometimes give you a list of results and sometimes nothing? Is there a way to automatically create redirects so that for every location in the USA, "worcester ma" and "Worcester MA" and "Worcester, MA" and all other variations of capitalization and comma usage lead you directly to the correct article? Is this just too onerous to do? -204.52.215.921:29, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Considering there are over 30,000 US town entries - yes, it's a touch onerous. "worcester, ma" will work. It might be something to do in the future, but with such a huge workload, I'm sure no one is going to make it a top priority. Then again. maybe they will. As for "why does 'town state' sometimes give you a list of results and sometimes nothing", it's not giving a list of results - it's giving a list of possible results. The search failed, so the search page is bringing up what its meager algorithm thinks you MIGHT have meant. It's not intelligent by any means, but it sometimes hits it right. Sometimes. --Golbez21:38, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
I guess I was wondering if there was a way to do it automatically, like via a bot or something, to avoid having to create 5 redirects for each of 30,000 articles. -204.52.215.921:47, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
I'd be careful with this, though, because there are many parenthetically disambiguated ones, and also potential for confusion. You might be best off going straight to Ram-man, since it was his bot that created the articles. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 16:52, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Latest comment: 17 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion
In the years I've been editing Wikipedia, I continue to see many examples where editors have chosen to remove another editor's contributions, citing reasons such as NPOV, weasel words, etc. In so many of these cases, the reverting editor could instead have reworded the contribution. I would like to see this established as a policy on wikipedia, if only to allow editors to quote this and to spread the idea that reverting generally discourages editors (especially new ones) from contributing in future. --Rebroad12:01, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
there's already a similar suggestion at WP:1RR/WP:0RR; this would never make it as enforced policy, though, because what happens if someone completely mangles an article in the process of adding information that doesn't even belong? The appropriateness of reverting is too subjective to ban it entirely. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 15:08, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
As an editor I don't see my primary task as the encouragement of new editors. Sorry. When an edit reduces the net quality of a page, a revert qualifies as an improvement. — RJH (talk) 21:20, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Latest comment: 17 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Wikisuppression of free speech? What is the point of wiping active discussions from Talk:NOR? We are discussion *whether* we should be allowed to post *to* that page? How can *that* be discussed anywhere else? The question isn't, at this point, whether we should or shouldn't be discussing it there, the question at this point is, why is the discussion being suppressed and wiped? Wjhonson00:40, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes but the question isn't discussing the historical policy page. It's discussing whether we *can* post to historical Talk pages whatsoever. Can we? Or is that forbidden by some policy? That's the question. Wjhonson00:55, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
Latest comment: 17 years ago7 comments5 people in discussion
I've started an essay on the subject of honesty as it relates to the project. It never seemed like the sort of thing we needed before, but perhaps there's some value to gelling community input on the issue. If you have an interest in the subject, please visit Wikipedia:Honesty. Your insight and improvement is welcome, and I hope it can be something positive. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 22:35, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
I have read the article and I agree in the usefulness of it. Wikipedia should have an article on the importance of honesty in the edits people make to it. The only problem I see is that it may be redundant to have an article about honesty because people should know to only put true information on Wikipedia when they edit. Captain pandaInvinoveritas22:48, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
I started it, but in reading over WP:AGF for ideas, it seems like it's going to fork much of that content. AGF has a lot of things for *you* the individual to do, which seem to go to the new AIGF (if I may be so bold as to suggest the acronym). Probably should get some of the the AGF editors to help divide the text.Wjhonson07:56, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Who was Onetas? Well, if You look in Wik(english), You will find two pages of search-hits for "oneta" - but Onetas? Nothing. (For the curious, go to "Ephialtes.: Kdammers05:43, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
Proposed policy: Template prod
Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest comment: 17 years ago10 comments9 people in discussion
Every now and again, someone passes around a link to a vandalised version of an article and passes it off as truth, and people get very alarmed; or people somehow stumble across history and get thoroughly confused by all the old revisions.
Thing is, when you look at it, it really isn't very clear that these revisions are actually old - we know well that they may be vandalised, or incorrect, or simply bad and not representative of our beatiful, beautiful prose... but the casual external reader doesn't, as all we do is list a small bit of text at the top, and if you're not familiar with the MediaWiki UI then it looks exactly like a live article.
19:57, 15 March 2007, last edited by Shimgray (Talk | contribs | block)
..it doesn't actually say "this is an old version", does it, or explain anywhere what kept revisions are? This is, on the whole, unhelpful to our readers. Useful for our editors, but we need to remember we're not the sole audience.
I've made a somewhat more verbose explanation - see MediaWiki:Revision-info - and comments would be appreciated. What I'd like to do is get the UI to display this obviously - say, visually something as striking and apparent as the new-messages bar. Thoughts? Shimgray | talk | 20:42, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
There is some kind of coding problem presently. If you go to the History tab and click on the most current version, it gives you that same banner message. It already is the current version. Qxz wisely brought this up on the relevant talk page. Until this can get tweaked proper, I think I'm against it. Mahalo. --198.185.18.20712:43, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
With no offense to Flcelloguy's boldness, it looks horrible. Merely an aesthetic judgement, but I do not want to look at text that is basically as annoying as this when looking through consecutive versions of a page and trying to concentrate on changes. Or even with current versions. I realized the latter and brought up on #wikipedia, but the discussion sort of fizzled out after a while.
Really, there is no way to make this fail-safe. I believe that if there should be no disclaimer templates on present versions of a page, they shouldn't be there on past versions, since there is no guarantee that only the past version will have a problem, and only the present one won't. (And when using "permanent link", look, there's a disclaimer template built into the interface! This is against the spirit of the guidelines, and redundant with the link below.) GracenotesT § 15:56, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Then it should say "old" not "archived" and "problems" not "vandalism, cowbell, and much ado about nothing." I think it is entirely appropriate, and recommend that everyone see Carnildo's recommendations at MediaWiki talk:Revision-info. --Iamunknown17:47, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Disambiguation Namespace:
Latest comment: 17 years ago7 comments4 people in discussion
Would it be possible to create a disambiguation namespace for all the disambiguation "Articles"? That would make the article coint more accurate. It would just have the now title redirect to the diambiguation namespace, which then links you to hte right article like diasambiguation pages do right now. The Placebo Effect12:10, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Probably not really needed. The disambiguation pages are a proper part of the encyclopedia and contain explanatory text. Standardised text to be sure, but still stuff written out by hand. Dabs pages and redirects are like the blind entries you find in paper encyclopedias. The number of disambiguation pages can be tracked with the template and associated categories. So this would seem more hassle than it is worth, in my opinion. The current system works well. Carcharoth12:21, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Only if we create a Redirect: namespace (since those are non-articles in mainspace too), and a List: namespace (since most lists contain no introduction and are otherwise generally prose-free), and an AFD: namespace (since AfD's are the largest ever-growing group of articles that threaten to swamp out the Wikipedia: namespace), and along those same lines a MFD: and RFA: namespace. No... not needed. Disambiguation pages are already clearly marked by Template:Disambig and Category:Disambiguation... if you need a more accurate count, then just count up how many pages are in that category, and subtract from the total. --Interiot02:14, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Latest comment: 17 years ago5 comments5 people in discussion
I'm not really sure what exactly to call them, but the Polish Wikipedia has some very handy links under the edit summary box for automatic edit summaries. As I don't speak Polish and I was just there to add an interlanguage link, I don't know what most of them do, but some are:Interwiki, stub, redir, infobox, and image. These could prove helpful here. Mr.Z-mantalk¢Review!22:27, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
I'd really like to have this. Or maybe some kind of keyboard shortcut. For example, typing 'ce' in the edit summary would expand to copy-edit. GfloresTalk14:46, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
With respect to your article on my father, Jesse L. Lasky: there are several errors and insufficient data. I would be pleased to submit corrections if you are receptaive. Betty Lasky —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kaleideon (talk • contribs).
You can make those corrections as anybody can edit the articles. But if you don't know how to do that or don't want to edit, send me your suggestions, and I'll see what I can do for you. Thank you for your appreciation. NCursework07:50, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Latest comment: 17 years ago3 comments1 person in discussion
I don't know if I should make this suggestion here or on Technical. I have already made this request over at WP:BOTREQ but it never went anywhere. Is there anyway we could get a clone of commons:User:FlickreviewR here on en.wiki? It would be best if all images taken from Flickr were uploaded to the Commons, but many new users aren't aware of the Commons and so en.wiki gets a lot of Flickr images. Because of this, we get a lot of Flickr images that aren't allowed on Wikipedia due to their license. But, a lot of these are missed since they have to be manually caught and checked by human editors. I propose that Wikipedia adopt similar measures that exist on the Commons:
Add Flickr options to the license drop down on the Upload page;
Have these options automatically tag the Flickr image "to be reviewed;"
Clone the above mentioned bot to en.wiki and have it check these images;
Images that fail should be deleted, images that are indeterminate should be reviewed by an admin, and images that pass should be tagged {{Move to Commons}}.
Hmmm....apparently that bot hasn't run in awhile. Don't know if it is broken or the owner of it just hasn't ran it in awhile. Nevertheless, if it is not broken, I'd still like to see it cloned here. If not, I still think the appropriate options should be added to the license drop down on the upload page which would add a "to be reviewed" tag to the article and a either an admin or trusted editor could review the image and either move it to the Commons or mark it to be moved. We would have to collaborate with the appropriate people over at the Commons so images the have passed review on en.wiki won't have to go through the process again at the Commons.↔NMajdan•talk19:38, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Latest comment: 17 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
here is a suggestion: put up a page where you can search discussions, view the newest comments, show the most heated discussions, show the most frequently updated discussion and so on...It would also be nice if new coments were automatically highlited in each article. Maybe a special ***Pedia can be created for discussion of specific topics, maybe even put up so that new guys can discuss seperatly from more expert users. thanks. hovru --68.122.82.1302:49, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Well you can already search discussions (special:search make sure the right boxes are checked at the bottom, or failing that google if you include site:en.wikipedia.org with your query.) As for a wiki of specific topic discussion, have you heard of http://wikireason.net , http://debatepedia.org and wikia:pov? For recent (article) discussions you can see here. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by new comments highlighted. For on wiki discussions there is meta:DPLforum, but that's never going to be enabled on wikipedia. On wikinews we use n:template:flag to highlight important discussions, but I think there is just to many for that sort of system to work here, as well, wikizine, wikipedia-l and the signpost keeps everyone well enough informed of important happenings. Also the talk pages here are not really meeant for discussions unless they help the article develop. Bawolff00:28, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
True, I didnt know of the other sites, what i ment by the highlight was like comments made that day would be highlighted in a color so they would stand out, maybe 3 colors: one for 3 days ago, one for 2 days ago, and one for that day, or something simillar. A bot should be able to do this, or it could be an optional standard format for comment makeing. Thanks hovru 68.122.20.19505:47, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I suggest that when we place {{SharedIPEDU}} on talk pages, that we include the link to the school or school district's website. Ideally, the link would go to their computer use policy, if they have one online. A list would have to be compiled for User:SelketBot to include links when automatically adding this template. The place where such effort would be coordinated I think is WP:CVU, so I posted messages there about this to discuss whether this is a good idea, worth the effort, or other ideas. - WP:CVU#School admin contacts and web links --Aude (talk) 21:18, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Sounds like a good idea. Perhaps a template per school so they can be updated easily? —Quarl(talk) 2007-03-17 07:46Z
Proposal: Complete the shortcut alphabet
Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
The chart below needs the blanks filled in. Some of the missing shortcuts exist, but didn't seem appropriate to add to this list (either because of lack of scope, lack of worldview, etc.). This seems like an issue for the community to resolve, as it may entail reallocation of existing shortcuts.
Just to be clear, the following shortcuts are at issue here:J, L, S, V, W, X, Y, Z.
WP:L stands for logo, for instance, but it is hardly used. A much higher-traffic page is Wikipedia:List. Perhaps "L" should be reallocated to "List".
WP:S leads to statistics, but several other "s" pages have much higher traffic, and perhaps deserve the letter designation.
WP:W goes to "watch" rather than Help:Watchlist, which is more mainstream.
Where an appropriate page does not exist (J, X, Y, Z), the community could discuss the creation of useful pages with appropriate titles.
WP:V stands for "Verifiability", but that page is no longer active. So perhaps this shortcut should be reallocated. Though it's probably still in high-use, so maybe reallocation of it should wait.
By looking through the numbers of links to those shortcuts in Special:Whatlinkshere, I think only shortcuts with very few links should be changed, in order not to disrupt any talk page archives etc. Therefore, the shortcuts you mentioned of WP:L, WP:S and WP:W are all suitable for renaming, as well as WP:E, WP:F, WP:H, WP:K and WP:Q from the alphabetical list. WP:V and all of the other shortcuts are probably unsuitable for changing, as the have so many backlinks. Tra(Talk)23:56, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Good idea to give popular pages short shortcuts, but I don't think we need to go at it from the other end - it's okay for some letters to not map to pages. —Quarl(talk) 2007-03-17 07:49Z
