Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive C

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Village pump (proposals) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals).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

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Wikiproject of the Week?

A lot of the Wikiprojects are dead or near it. Some could be edited to be more effective and some have good ideas that could be implemented. Maybe there should be a Wikiproject of the week similar to the other focused collaboration ideas. I guess there could be a WPOTW Wikiproject. Iunno. It's just one idea to get people interested in some broad topics that they might not ordinarily think to tackle, but might be interested. --Sketchee 06:43, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

I don't see how working on different individual wikiprojects

could get very far in a week.

But about broad topics people might not ordinarily think to tackle, it could be good to have a weekly collaboration that works on current articles without confining itself to stubs. I'd go for that. Maurreen 16:28, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Maybe. Nothing wrong with it if some people want to do it. I would remark, though, that the fact that a project lacks overt ongoing work does not mean that it is a dead letter. For example, about a year ago I started Wikipedia:WikiProject Ethnic Groups. It kind of petered out as a project, but I think it influenced, and probably continues to influence, a lot of people about how to write encyclopedically about an ethnic group. -- Jmabel | Talk

Seconding the latest changes to an article?

Looking at the latest changes made to an article and then reverting to the previous state is a way of saying "I don't agree with what the last person who edited this did to the article. Thumbs down." How about (and again, I'm a noob. This is probably another example of me not finding the proper discussion on the subject, or knowing of a feature (or set of features)or built in systemic logic that essentially would do this) a button in the history tab of giving thumbs up (for logged on or even just especially respected users) to a latest edit? Seems to me (without having given it too much thought) it might be helpful for those looking for vandals or disinformationists. They could list articles with recent changes that no one has seconded. They wouldn't have to look at articles someone else has allready looked at and approved of. --Mikko

Firstly, you shouldn't revert changes made to an article just because you don't agree with them. Reverting is meant for cases of clear vandalism (although it does get used quite a bit more than that in practice). If someone makes an edit you don't like, try to improve the edit, make it NPOV, or make sure it's attributed to one party and give the other party's POV.

We have tried a system of trusted users "flagging" recent changes to show that they appear to be genuine contributions and not vandalism, but it was turned off after a few days. I'm not sure where the discussion of the feature is. I'd like to see that discussion too, if someone could link to it please.-gadfium 00:24, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I should have said editing/reverting. --Mikko.

The way I see it, the fact that anyone can edit any article means that the opinions or data expressed in the article will eventually converge to a stable equilibrium point that everyone can agree with. If it slides away from this point, it will be pushed back into the middle by another edit.  :-) Also, the information here will always be more accurate and more neutral than the information on an average website. Does this help you understand the ideal a little better? You've read the replies to common objections, right? - Omegatron 15:05, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

As an experienced user, I will often add a comment to a discussion page "endorsing" an edit by an anonymous user if I've verified it independently. I'll also make remarks about something seeming likely but needing citation, etc. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:45, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

I would worry that a feature like this could cut off discussion and eliminate compromise. Why try to incorporate and improve someone's contribution, when a few people have already marked it as "bad"? —Michael Z. 2005-01-28 15:13 Z

"Stable", protected, democratically elected version of each article?

How about having two versions of every article; One, which is protected, democratically deemed accurate and NPOV enough (for the time being)etcetera and another, which is the regular kind, edited by anyone,anytime. The version under construction would then be voted to be better than the "Stable" version (or not), and take it's place (or not)? During voting there'd be a third, temporarily protected version so that the anyone,anytime editing would not suffer ... --Mikko

OH, God, no. This is the antithesis of the Wiki way. RickK 07:26, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)

Lots of people have made lots of variants of this proposal. The devil is in the details, and the details are hard. So far, I haven't seen a detailed proposal of this sort that I'd support. jdb ❋ 07:28, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Can you point me to some discussion of this or give a short summary of the devilish details? I realize that this Wiki way of evolving texts is the best atleast in a world with people committed to the truth, but I'd like to be convinced it's the best even in a world with vandals and advertisers and whatnot... --Mikko

It's been discussed in a lot of places. I think the most discussion is at Wikipedia:Approval mechanism; another place you might look is Wikipedia talk:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards (the relevant discussion is probably mostly in the archives), but someone else might have additional suggestions. -- Jmabel | Talk 09:02, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)

Actually, this sounds just like Wikipedia 1.0. apart maybe from the 'democratically elected' bit. Filiocht 11:49, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)

There's a list of relevant links at Wikipedia:Pushing to 1.0. The idea of 1.0 is that there might be a version of Wikipedia that's made available in some other medium, CD/DVD or even paper, and which would necessarily have to be stable. Whether or not that happens, there might be some value in identifying a "stable" version of an article that's been vetted in some way (experts or popular consensus). The stable version would be available via a link from the article. The main version of the article still be openly edited by anyone. JamesMLane 17:11, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The more I look at this Wikipedia (tonight for the third night(sleep during day)), the more it seems to me to be working and I now believe it is headed for greatness even without an expert or a democratic approval mechanism, unless the world turns into an absolute global totalitarian policestate. I guess my contribution here should be seen as a reminder of how some newcomers might think at a first glance... :) Thank's. --Mikko

A "TOP" link

I think it would be nice for some long pages to have a shortcut to the top of the page.
As all the pages have an id="top", why not use it?
Could there be an automated process do do that?
Cy21 16:03, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Conceptually, I like this idea. But alas, the devil is in the details. Perhaps there would need to be a user setting that determined where "top" links are placed, like after every n paragraphs or something like that. --Stevietheman 07:39, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Most browsers have built-in commands to go to the top of the page (e.g. the "Home" key). Given that, why would you want a link in the article? —AlanBarrett 08:26, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Maybe it could go next to the "About Wikipedia" and "Disclaimers" links at the bottom.

But I've always wondered why some people insist that web designers need to spend time duplicating the most basic operating system functions. If someone managed to navigate to the web page, and even scroll to the bottom!, don't you think they can scroll back to the top without even having to give it any thought? Why only on "long" pages; hitting the page up key or dragging the thumb to the top of the scrollbar doesn't get harder if you have farther to go!

For me the top link is useless, so I would just consider it page clutter. —Michael Z. 2005-01-22 17:16 Z

It is not very useful. Anyone can just press the "home" key to go to the top. Also, you can add edit links to the bottom (Help:User_style#Duplicate_edit_links_at_the_bottom_of_the_content_area). (I really wish wikibooks had "next" "previous" and "up" links, though.) - Omegatron 18:00, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

To answer some concerns here... I think Top links are useful for the person keeping their hand on their mouse while casually reading articles. To have someone take their hand off their mouse to hit the Home key is a bit awkward. Of course, one could program a button on their mouse to do a "Home" but most people wouldn't bother. Top links are a regular appearance on web sites and they need not cause any clutter if designed correctly. Further, going back to the top fast is sometimes a necessity if 1) one wants to re-read the basic summary in the article a second time, or 2) one wants to select a task from the left-hand Wikipedia menu. --Stevietheman 19:14, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You can also make the sidebar float in css, though I seem to be the only person who likes this feature, and my rendition is kludgy. See here for the css: meta:Help_talk:User_style#Floating_sidebar. If someone knows css and can help me finish it, I would appreciate it. We could also consider adding the bottom links css and floating sidebar css to the universal skin instead of a top link. Now that I think of it, an unobtrusive up arrow under the edit link for each section does sound kind of nice, actually. - Omegatron 21:39, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

Re: the "unobtrusive arrow", that's fairly close to what I was just thinking today. Put it next to the edit link. And for those who would argue a little up arrow to be clutter, then let's make it a user setting that's defaulted to Off. --Stevietheman 00:14, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. - Omegatron 14:32, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

Article popularity

Chris Anderson (Wired Magazine editor) has a new blog called The Long Tail [1] which discusses the nature of Amazon and Wikipedia and Netflix (and many others) that provide access to content that ranks low on the popularity scale (obscure books, obscure encyclopedia articles, obscure movies) that traditional channels have ignored (compare the number of articles in WP to EB or titles at Blockbuster to Netflix). These obscure titles are the "long tail" on the popularity chart. His most recent entry [2] discusses the nature of "choice" and how we decide which of these obscure titles to read/watch, and the overwhelming variety of choice. He says that we depend on metadata and the wisdom of the crowds-- for example, Google rankings are based on what other people are linking too. Or on Amazon there are item popularity rankings, the circles feature, and other ways.

Wikipedia addresses this problem two ways. First it has Featured Articles to showcase the best articles, and second it relies on Google ranking for the project as a whole. However I contend that these are not enough. For one, Featured Articles is not wisdom of the crowds (more like 10 or 20 people) and is akin to the traditional method of gate-keeping recommendations such as journal editors. Second the google ranking breaks down on obscure titles that may have 1 to none external links to it.

Therefore I propose that a new system of popularity ranking be examined. Wikipedia has close to half a million articles, no one really knows whats here, if you read every article it would take a lifetime. We absolutely must have a system of recommendation.

Because this would involve resources (programming and otherwise) I'm not sure how fruitfull a discussion it would be without input from the powers that be. However, I will say that wisdom of the crowds is the only way to scale such a system. Perhaps one of the easiest and most obvious suggestions would be a page hit counter for each article. --Stbalbach 16:46, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There is a page hit counter, but it has been turned off for a long time because it overloads the servers. 68.237.137.57 03:25, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Until recently there also used to be a monthly analysis of the server logs which could be used to count hits, but these have been halted — also on performance grounds, I believe. — Matt Crypto 09:36, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

My experience running a core Usenet server is that logs take a lot of resources, and eventually it become fiscally prudent to send the logs to /dev/null, so I totally understand with the number of hits Wikipedia get this may not be possible at this time. I do wonder though if there are thoughts or ideas on how to determine an articles popularity? It should of course be possible to look at article ranking at Google, and then add that information to the bottom of the article (all automated of course). This could be done on a monthly or less to keep resources at a minimum, and it could be very un-intrusive on the page. I've done something manually along those lines in my personal articles page User:Stbalbach/Articles to get an idea of what it is. --Stbalbach 17:17, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

No need for a seperate system. I would recommend reading featured articles... Mgm|^(talk) 12:45, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

Featured Articles is not wisdom of the crowds (more like 10 or 20 people) and is akin to the traditional method of gate-keeping recommendations such as journal editors. .. also many of the featured articles are, IMO, not very good compared to many articles where no one has taken the effort to nominate it. I mean, out of half a million plus articles, there are more than 900 good articles. Indeed many of the featured articles have, uh, put on some weight and no longer in shape as they were when they were nominated (and, nomination standards keep improving). --Stbalbach 16:45, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I heard somewhere that a review system is being developed for Wikipedia. That would be very useful in this regard. Couple this with a rating system (and page hit counters when resources allow) and you're home and hosed. Not sure what code they use but lovefilm.com have an excellent rating system (you'll have to register to try it unfortunately). I'd love to see a rating system that attempted to take into account people's political outlook. For instance you could get members to take a political compass test like that on politicalcompass.org before they can rate articles. This would then allow readers to categorise ratings based on where raters see themselves on the political spectrum. —Christiaan - ☎ 16:29, 20 Jan 2005

Those are all great ideas. How do we account for articles changing in quality, for better or worse, over time using a rating system? --Stbalbach 16:45, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That's a really good question. Maybe ratings could expire when a certain percentage (rater determined?) of the article has been modified, at which point raters would be invited to confirm or modify their rating? —Christiaan - ☎ 19:05, 20 Jan 2005

Is a rating system even practical at all? It can't be complicated. Since the articles are in constant flux and change, one can't give an article 7 stars in any meaningful way because in the future, it may be an entirely different article. So for things that are constantly changing, how does one rate it? This is a lot like the problem of ranking stocks, except we have almost no data to work with. The Google rank is sort of the markets vote on an articles popularity. Although I noticed when using the "link:" command in Google, most of the sites linking to a Wikipedia article are from within Wikipedia, a sort of insider trading pyramid scheme. --Stbalbach 19:04, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Um, I don't understand your question, "So for things that are constantly changing, how does one rate it?" Why would you ask that in response to an answer? As for Google rank, that's only a measure of popularity, it's not neccessarily a measure of the quality of an article (especially obscure ones). —Christiaan - ☎ 20:25, 20 Jan 2005

It was rhetorical question. I agree about Google, although popularity is often a guage for relevance, which I think is what most people are really looking for (the reason Google is so popular). If it's relevant to other people, good chance it will be useful to yourself as well. --Stbalbach 04:47, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If articles are ranked, I would propose giving the rankings a weight that decays with each subsubsequent edit. And if one who ranks wants to re-rank at a later time, full weight would be restored to their ranking, and it would begin decaying again with more edits. Something like this is already done on E-thePeople. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Contrib} 16:28, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Prepare yourself for Invasion of the Sock Puppets! —Michael Z. 2005-01-28 16:45 Z

Perhaps a way could be found to work around sock puppets with regards to ranking. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Contrib} 18:56, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ease of editing

I don't think anyone can critisize this idea over any other labor saving ideas. I propose an option that individual users could enable in their preferences area that would allow you to edit any page directly from the article page. Let me explain, when I go to edit a page it takes me to a new screen with a separate window that shows me the wikimark-up. This proposal would enable a user to directly edit a page from the page on which the article is displayed. No separate windows, instead you would just edit the page normally and then click on a "save this page" link. Like I stated earlier, the option would be enabled under a users preferences. It would also make vandalism easier for signed in users, but we don't have many registered vandals. Also, reverting vandalism would be much more streamlined. As well as general over all editing. Yes, you may laugh and shoot my idea down now. Jaberwocky6669 20:22, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

I totally agree with this. The version I heard was to still have an edit link behaving as it does, but have the preview displayed immediately by default (as a user setting, obviously). I think there's a feature request in bugzilla where they said it "was right around the corner!" but apparently was forgotten about, like a lot of other things. You can go there and vote for it if you want. I almost always push preview right after clicking edit, and I know a lot of other people do, too. - Omegatron 20:51, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

I think we could all agree that sarcasm gets us nowhere. Jaberwocky6669 20:28, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

Who's being sarcastic? Hmmm... I can't find the bugzilla thing. Maybe I imagined it. We should submit a feature request. Do we want the edit to appear at the bottom of the regular article or do we want the preview to appear when you click edit by default? I found this one, though, which is similar: [3]. I can't find the discussion, though it was definitely discussed. - Omegatron 22:03, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

There is an idea on the backburner for a Blogger style preview page to be used for editing. It's probably not something to expect anytime soon, though --Alterego 17:15, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)

User-related diff

When I click the diff link on my watchlist, 100% of the time I want to see all of the changes made by the last editor. If he made three edits in a row, I want to see them all at once; the difference between before and after this user's last several edits, yet it only gives me the last edit. We should either:

1. Change the way the "diff" link works to work like this
2. Make it an option
3. Add a separate link, like "Geocentric model (diff; prev; hist)", where "prev" means "difference between current and before the last editor".

I am sure I'm not the only one who clicks hist and goes to the last revision before that user every time. It just makes sense.

Now that I am an admin, I have this lovely rollback link that reverts in exactly this way. So it must make sense to someone. - Omegatron 15:07, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

I agree (I think I actually proposed this before), but I think it would be more useful if you get the diff to the last version since you checked your watchlist. That may be slightly tougher to implement, though, depending on what data is already being tracked. – flamurai^TM 22:32, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

Good point. Let's add a button for all of them!  :-) - Omegatron 22:34, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

IQ Test

Hear me out. I think that before editing users should be given an IQ test. To screen out those people who can only spell and form gramtically correct sentences, without any understanding of the content.--Jirate 20:43, 2005 Jan 31 (UTC)

I THINK THIS IS A GR3AT IEDA1!111! OMG LOL - Omegatron 20:57, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, laugh, go ahead, have fun at my expense. Even though my idea may go nowhere it's still good to keep everything fresh you know? Yuk Yuk Yuk. Well I aints gots me no edycayshun! HU HU HU HU HU DURRR =D Yeap, raise your glasses at the fool! Raise them HIGH! Jaberwocky6669 21:36, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

:-) it's just discriminatory and discouraging and entirely unnecessary. some people ain't got no good grammar. so what? they can still add articles without worrying about being labeled for it. maybe we should make a classification system to rate people on how good their ideas for proposals are. would you contribute more ideas if everyone gave you a big fat 9 for this one? the grammar errors sort themselves out over time. - Omegatron 21:48, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Ok, thank you, I stand corrected. Even though my intentions were good it would still be a springboard that others would use to judge people with. My last gasp for air is this: I just wished there was a way to classify people according to their abilities. If such a system were implemented I understand that it would have to be voluntary and only the results could be listed on the talk-page of the user. Jaberwocky6669 21:56, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC) I'm leaving it to die now though, thanks! =)

It would be nice to have a system for recognizing whether people know what they are talking about or not, technical knowledge specifically. If you doubt an edit, you can kind of guess from their user page or other contributions though. But it would still turn into a discrimination thing. - Omegatron 21:58, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

The easiest way to know if someone knows what they're talking about is if they add references. If they do and you check the reference and it all agrees, then there you go. If their grammer sucks, that's easy to fix especially compared to if the information has been miswritten compared to the source. --Sketchee 23:44, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Sometimes taking the piss is worth 1000 words, on Wikipedia it's about 10000.--Jirate 22:26, 2005 Jan 31 (UTC)

What does that mean?????? !!!! Jaberwocky6669 22:52, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

• Pssst. If any you would like help passing your IQ test, send me 10 USD and I will take your test for you. Guaranteed high score!  :-) —Mike 05:00, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

Haha! That, too. - Omegatron

Proposal: A grammar test that is required for all Wikipedians (hear this one out please)

I propose a grammar test that when taken, which would be required before anyone can edit, that would give a number beside of a wikipedians name that would indicate how well they scored! If someone edited an article and they had a 1 beside their name then you can rest asured that the edit is good, but if they had a 9 beside their name then you can decide whether or not to check the article they edited out! I understand that English is different in American than in England so a red number could indicate American English and a green number would indicate British English (lol). Any ideas, questions, comments? Please refer them to either here or my talk page... Jaberwocky6669 19:01, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

7 Noisy | Talk 19:19, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

I propose that no grammar or spelling tests be required, as this would prevent 99.999% of the internet population from contributing. :-)

If you don't like someone's grammar, fix it! - Omegatron 19:32, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

You say that like stopping them from editing is a bad thing. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:22, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

No, I think you miss my point! It wouldn't stop anyone from contributing, unless they didn't complete the test, it would indicate where their grammatical skills stand. Re-read the original entry please and pay particular attention to the number and color system that I propose. Also, 99.999% of all internet users wouldn't be blocked from contributing. You can't look at net forums and assume that because they didn't use correct grammar there that they do not have the ability to use it anywhere else! Jaberwocky6669 20:26, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

I don't like the idea of labelling some Wikipedians as being better than others according to some criterion or other. Let people's accomplishments speak for themselves. If grammar is your strong point, then fix grammar. If it's not, then you write what you know about and someone else will polish it up.

First, I never even implied that it be used to rate someone as being better, it would be a way of making it easier for those who go around correcting grammar and the like. However, you do make a very fine point that does cut my idea down to size though, lol! Jaberwocky6669 20:38, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

What colours will we use for Canadian English, Indian English, Australian English, etc? —Michael Z. 2005-01-31 20:31 Z

With an unlimited color pallete at our disposal I don't think that would be a problem! Jaberwocky6669 20:38, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

It is not unlimited and is limted more by the ability of humans to perseiv colour.--Jirate 20:43, 2005 Jan 31 (UTC)

Grammar is the least of our problems. And I certainly don't want to discourage editing by non-native speakers. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:40, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Also, I would like to add that if someone happened to score the lowest possible score there would be no restrictions whatsoever on what they can and can not do! The same would go for high scores, there would be no special privelages for them. Also, a test like this would have to be timed so that someone can't take the time to look the answers up from somewhere else. They can test only once maybe twice with special permission, which would eliminate the possibility of someone writing the questions down and looking up the answers and then going back and cheating. Jaberwocky6669 20:46, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

No one would be discouraged, if someone spoke a different dialect of english they would indicate such and be given s special test for their dialect of english. WHich as I mentioned would be indicated by the color of the number. Jaberwocky6669 20:46, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

One problem is for people who edit from dynamic IP addresses. Do you want to force them to take a test every time they dial in to the internet and try to edit Wikipedia? They would also quickly recognise the correct answers after seeing the test a few times, and so the actual result would be meaningless. Those of us who edit from a fixed IP address could find a way to sit the test via dynamic IP address so we know what to expect before sitting the test that counts. Finally, it wouldn't be long before someone posted the questions with model answers off-site. To counter these problems, you need a very large pool of questions, with the precise questions asked on each occasion selected at random. All questions would need to be of equal difficulty. This still wouldn't avoid the annoyance factor for the dynamic IP contributor.-gadfium 22:13, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Let's save the "grammer" and "reading" tests for weeding out minorities at the polls. Anyone remember why they stopped doing that? No, I don't think this is a good idea. Grammer problems are minor and I'd rather encourage more international Wikipedians to contribute. This would not only probably discourage people from translating because they have imperfect grammer (although they can convey the ideas well enough), but would discourage information from international wikipedians. Not only that but it will discourage everyone else. I really don't want to sit here and answer a dozen questions to edit an article and I'm already here. Will new users really go through with a lengthy process? If you want to make a voluntary test (ie strike the word "required"), I guess I wouldn't discourage you. --Sketchee 23:53, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

(Yes I realize it's spelled grammar, but you still knew what I meant. :) )--Sketchee 00:48, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

I have let this idea die, but I still don't understand how it would discourage anyone from editing! I say again that I no longer propose this idea, but anyone who has anything to say are encouraged to comment. Back to my point, no one would be blocked from editing any article anywhere on Wikipedia even if they scored the lowest score. Instead, it would have been merely a tool to judge whether or not an article should be examined for grammatical errors. If I see that a user who scored the highest edited an article then I would not take the time to look that article over; however, if someone scored the lowest score then I would definately utilize my time efficiently by checking the article over. Also, no minorities would be specifically discouraged or excluded simply because a unique test would exist for them that would have been tailored to their specific English dialect. Don't turn this idea that I had into something that would be used to discriminate people. I never had those intentions and I clearly laid out the details of how not to discriminate! I'm done. Jaberwocky6669 03:47, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

Let me clarify my old idea one last time. I will then allow the slain beast to die in peace. If an Australian, who speaks a unique dialect, were to take the test, then that Australian would choose which nationality they were from a drop down list and the corresponding test would then be administered. If this same Australian user scored the highest in Australian English then they would receive the highest score; However, the number would be a different color in order to allow other editors to distinguish his specific dialect! This is all. I think the idea could be utilized in different ways by those creative enough to see through to the core of the idea. Jaberwocky6669 03:54, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

Also, what about the people who propose that only articles contributed by people who do not register a name be given extra scrutiny? I'm sure if I took the time I could see all kinds of instances in which people are discriminated and weeded-out. Not saying that discrimination should be practiced by Wikipedians, but that you should go after those instances in which discrimination actually 'is' practiced and not what 'seems' like discrimination at first glance. Jaberwocky6669 04:06, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

It's as simple as this: All that matters is what's in the article, not who wrote it. – flamurai^TM 04:26, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

All you have to do is read through the archives of at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style to learn very quickly that we are often unable to decide which standard to use to determine what is grammatically correct. You can't always say, "this is correct in American English and this is correct in British English, and in Australian English it's like this". Even if we all agreed that this is a good idea, it would be very difficult to come up with grammatical rules that should be included in the test. It's not just that I think that this would promote discrimination; on a purely practical level, it would be a waste of time and energy to implement (we might eventually be able to agree on some grammar to test, but it would take a long time). -Aranel ("Sarah") 02:55, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If Wikipedia is an international effort, then any form of dialect and grammar should be allowed to exist in unity. No one standard should be chosen over another. I envision pages with varying grammars and dialects. Jaberwocky6669 16:16, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)

To expand upon what Aranel said, anyone who has taken the time to read major sections of the Chicago Manual of Style, the Elements of Style (Strunk & White), the New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual, and many other authoritative American style guides (as I have) can tell you that there is no such thing as American English — at least a specific standard. I would estimate the number of variations on American English as greater than the product of the number of publishing houses in the U.S. and the number of pre-college school systems (if not the number of English teachers). I'm reasonably sure the same is true for other major English-speaking nations. You cannot assign countable colors or drop-down list selections to something that can't accurately be distinguished and counted. A grammar test is an interesting idea, even if you could satisfy the many objections, but it just can't be done practically, so there's not much pointing in debating whether it should be. Besides ☺, many people posting here would probably be unhappy with their results, especially if spelling were included. (In fact, the very first line in this topic is ungrammatical in any English system I'm familiar with. Sorry 'bout that, Jabberwocky, but you kinda walked into it. Oh, wait, I just did it, too!) — Jeff Q 11:54, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I do not think this is a good idea since it would rate low-scoring people and prevent users from editing unless they took the test. Also, there are numerous different dialects, even within the United States. Tezeti

Printable version

Hello,

I was wondering if it was possible to have a printer friendly version (or better : directly a pdf or ps file) to be more confortable while reading articles from wikisource ?

In any case, would a wiki to ps or wiki to pdf filter be possible ?

Thanks

I think this is included in the css? - Omegatron 19:30, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Exactly. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:32, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Try doing print preview. Smoddy | ειπετε 21:46, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I sometimes get hosed when I print; some of the words up against the right margin get cut off. Tempshill 03:27, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Printer Friendly is a good idea! This is because when printing a Wikipedia article, part of the page always gets cut off to sacrifice space for the sidebar, which is useless on a piece of paper anyway. Print Preview will not change this. A "remedy" is to select the part of the page that you want to print, and then select the Print Selection option when printing. The problems with this "remedy" are that the resulting page looks funny if there are pictures, and the printer often prints out an empty page at the end, wasting paper, ink, and money; not to mention that it is sometimes difficult to select everything you want without selecting some things you don't want. Several online encyclopedias have a "printer friendly" option, such as The Canadian Encyclopedia. This should be easy to implement. All we have to do is get the designers of MediaWiki to add this feature on their next release. --Munchkinguy 21:26, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Printer friendly exists. What there is is a stylesheet solely for the purpose of printing. This is, actually, very easy to read. This page is a poor example (mainly due to the large table of contents) but 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake shows my point well. Just do a print preview and the text will be eminently readable. Smoddy (t) (e) (c) 16:58, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Template:Disputeabout

Often, long articles are tagged as disputed, just because one subtopic is disputed. A brief message about the nature of the dispute would greatly help the casual user. I created a new tag Template:Disputeabout, which can be used as e.g. {{Disputeabout|the number of deaths}}. The idea is to have a brief message, so the casual user knows which parts of the article should be used with care. See also Template talk:Disputeabout. -- Chris 73 Talk 02:58, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)

Good idea, although I'm looking forward to the point where I see one that says, "the dispute is about what the disputeabout template should say". -Aranel ("Sarah") 22:49, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well, we've already got the {{NPOVNPOV}} template, so why not? --Carnildo 23:45, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"List" namespace

Why don't we give the numerous "List of" articles on Wikipedia their own namespace? Denelson83 22:15, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm curious as to why you think WP should. jdb ❋ 22:48, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

How is this different from categories? - Omegatron 23:45, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

Well, there are lots of non-category "list of" articles: for instance List of Latin phrases, List of shock sites, etc. They tend to provide more information about each article than category lists. I don't think there's any reason why they belong in a separate namespace, however. jdb ❋ 01:12, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The reason is that there are, in my opinion, lots of lists in Wikipedia that may have only little to no encyclopedic merit, or there may be too small an amount of things that have something in common to merit their own list, as in you could not possibly find enough items to put into the list to even warrant it having a WP article of its own. Denelson83 01:58, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Many of these List of ... articles have gone through the Votes for Deletion process, and have survived. Lists are not the same as Categories, in that they can hold red links and also more information than a category. RickK 07:01, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

One of the main virtues of a "List of…" article is that, unlike a Category, it has a Related Changes link (e.g. like this) which can be used as a sort-of-shared watchlist. --Phil | Talk 08:14, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

You might be happy to learn that the Related Changes function now works with Categories. I believe it was part of the MediaWiki 1.4 upgrade. older≠wiser 13:39, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

Lists are superior to categories in that that they can be formatted and sorted. I am generally in favor of important categories having an informative list counterpart. However, a List: namespace may be slightly confusing, and not entirely needed. — Itai (f&t) 21:16, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Templates for deletion

When a template is nominated for deletion, a {{tfd}} is placed on it, and a handy-dandy message appears on its page saying something like "This template has been nominated for deletion". That same message appears on every page that features that template. In some cases, that can be bulk untold multiple truckloads of pages (such as with {{actor-stub}} at present). Is there any way of changing the way this message appars so that it is on the template's page but not on the pages of articles featuring that template? It can spoil the look of otherwise good articles. Grutness|^hello? 09:11, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well it does bring the request to the attention of wider audieence. Often it is the only way that I have found a template is up for deletion. Evil Monkey∴Hello? 09:32, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)

Could we just make a tfd small icon? Rolling over it, the tool tip could have the current message. Would this be effective? It'd have to be a pretty self-explanatory-looking icon though. Clicking on it could either go straight to vfd or to the talk page.

Either that or make the current template into just italicized plain text to be less obtrusive? --Sketchee 10:45, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)

I support the notice appearing in every article where the template is included, so that Wikipedia users will be made aware of the delete process; otherwise, it would be hidden from most people. However, if there's a way to make it less obtrusive as has been suggested, that would be a good thing. We certainly don't want to hurt the aesthetics of the articles where tfd is in play. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Contrib} 18:49, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Simple English Contributors

I believe that a link should be placed in the tasks pane of the Community Portal that says something along the lines of: "Contribute to the Simple English Wikipedia". With only c.2000 articles, great work still has to be done. A note should also be made that contributors can use the English Wikipedia (en) as a starting point. Alexs letterbox 09:42, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

A sampling of articles also suggests rather poor quality. Frankly I think it may just be a bad idea. It's not clear enough who it's aimed at, or why their needs can't be accommodated in Wikipedia, or perhaps in Wikibooks (as a Wikibook aimed at children, say). Rd232 13:09, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree. I don't see what that encyclopedia provides over simply translating en with one of the many tools available --

Alterego 02:17, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)

This is not a section for discussing wheter or not we need a Simple English Wikipedia; we already have one. It was created for people who have English as a second (or third, fourth, etc) language. Discussing whether or not there should be one is irrelevent to the topic. Anyway, if the articles do have "rather poor quality", all the more reason to get people to expand it. I didn't even know about it until recently when I noticed "Simple English" on the "other languages" bar on the left side of the screen. Besides, Babelfish does a really bad job of translating webpages. --Munchkinguy 05:16, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Reciprocal talk comments

This one is almost certainly beyond the available technology's capacity, but I'll put it here anyway. I notice that when a two-way conversation is going on on user talk pages, it is common for replies to be posted on both the talk pages concerned. (eg if User X says something on user Y's talk page, then User Y will put a reply on both his/her own talk page and on User X's. Then User X will reply in the same way on both pages, and so on). It would simplify the process (again using the same example) if User Y could type a reply once, but have it simultaneously added to both talk pages. As I say, it's almost certainly beyond the reach of the technology, but it would be useful... Grutness|^hello? 11:24, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The tech is there: templates or subpages. However I don't see this work. User:Anárion/sig 12:59, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Someone else just asked for this, and I think it would be great, too. Some people don't want their replies on their own talk page, apparently, but that can just be an option. - Omegatron 23:35, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)

TOP 1000 SCIENTISTS FROM THE BEGINNING OF TIME TO 2000 AD by Philip Barker and American academy of Arts and Sciences

I should like to write an article about the above mentioned topics but as I am new should appreciate advice.My email jfconnolly@mailcity.com

Good idea, but it seems to conflict with Wikipedia:Neutral Point of View. However, it would be a great project for Wikibooks. --Munchkinguy 05:27, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Power Users

This may have been proposed in the past but I believe it's a useful idea. I propose that a new permissions level of "Power User" be created. These users would have normal permissions except that they would have access to the rollback link. They would not have the admin powers of blocking users or deleting pages. A user would become a power user after hitting a threshold of 500 edits (or 750, 1000, the exact number would need to be agreed upon). If the Power User violates the 3RR or abuses their rollback power, they would lose their Power User status.

I believe establishing "Power Users" would allow users to revert vandalism more quickly and easily. It would also allow users to prove themselves ready for adminship by providing them with a relatively harmless admin power. Carrp 16:06, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea, but I wouldn't base it on number of edits, as a number like that has little to do with the quality of edits. I would favor an application/nomination process, however. --Stevietheman 18:02, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I completely agree that a set number of edits isn't an ideal system. The edit threshold was an attempt to come up with an automated system that wouldn't put additional responsibilities on admins or bureaucrats. Since adminship is supposed to be "no big deal", my opinion is that becoming a Power User should be almost automatic. The reason I don't think all users should have the rollback function is because it's too likely to be abused by new users. Perhaps the threshold should be based on time (1 or 2 months?) instead of edits. The specifics would certainly need to be discussed. Right now I'm just trying to get support for the idea of Power Users. Carrp 18:37, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I like the idea of a time-based system. - Omegatron 20:56, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)

Seems like a time-based system would make a lot of inactive ID's into "power users". BigFatDave 23:12, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I believe there are plans to incorporate something like this in MediaWiki 1.5. One of the planned Wikipedia:User access levels is the rollback ability. —Charles P. ^(Mirv) 20:52, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't like to based it on time, because a user might have signed up for a long time but did very little. So this user would be no different to a new user. A combination of a time and edit based system maybe? Also, maybe we should give power users immunity to autoblocking as well (but still can be blocked directly), since they've proven to be genuine contributers. This will save us dynamic IP users a lot of headache. --SunTzu2 04:25, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

e.g. "after 50 days on which the user made at least 10 edits"? dab (ᛏ) 11:17, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That would probably work pretty well. There could be a query run daily (or weekly) that would assign the Power User permissions to all users meeting the criteria. Admins (or maybe just bureaucrats) would be able to deny these permissions to abusive users at any time (before or after meeting the criteria). Carrp 13:12, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Conditionals in templates

It would be great if there were a simple way to do conditionals in templates. It would be great even to just check if a variable existed. For example,

|-
|| Release date:
|| {{{release_date}}}
{{{{if awards}}}}
|-
|| Awards:
|| {{{awards}}}
{{{{endif}}}}
|-
...

I don't know what the best syntax would be, but this would really be helpful.

– flamurai^TM 21:31, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

I found a way to do what you want. There's no way for checking the existence of a parameter and any template will output garbage if a parameter it needs is left undefined. It is however possible to do some equality testing on the value of a parameter. I created Template:ifdef which outputs one text if a parameter is the empty string, and another if it's anything else. I made a demo template, User:Rorro/sandbox:

• {{User:Rorro/sandbox|param=42}} outputs "

Mount Everest
Height	8844
Range	Himalaya

Mount Everest
Height	8844

".

• {{User:Rorro/sandbox|param=}} outputs "

Mount Everest
Height	8844
Range	Himalaya

Mount Everest
Height	8844

".

This won't work in your case, since the pipe characters break the template syntax, but it's not difficult to make something similar which calls a template. _R_ 02:12, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Tables should have their own namespace / We should make a better table editor

The selling point - an alternative table editor

This has been moved to Wikipedia:Proposal for intuitive table editor and namespace. Please contribute comments and criticism. - Omegatron 00:16, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)

Verbal explanations and pronunciations

At the recently reopened Museum of Modern Art the audio guide has ad-lib discussions of notable pieces by current "experts" in the field. They aren't scripted - it is just someone who knows something about a subject talking about it and putting it in context with history, other pieces, artists, modernity, etc. Further, M-w.com has verbal pronunciations of many words, indicated to be available by a small speaker symbol (example).

I am proposing a somewhat mixed integration of these two ideas, and the Ogg Vorbis audio codec would probably suffice, although I admit to having not used it myself. We would openly invite those who feel comfortable with speaking, with a certain subject, and also with licensing a snippet of their voice under the GFDL, to simply speak about a subject and upload the file. This could be concerning a work of art being displayed inside an article, an entire article, a clarification of some point, or anything the speaker wishes. Because some people would find the small speaker symbols annoying, their could be an option in the user preferences to turn them off, or they could hide them with CSS as is often done here. A limitation would be that they could not introduce facts not already indicated in writing somewhere in the encyclopedia.

This is further expanded to Wiktionary, where it would be highly useful to have open source pronunciations of words in many regional accents of english speakers, and appropriately for other languages as well. --Alterego 00:26, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

I think the concept of having sound is a good one for pronunciations as you mentioned and pages on music. – flamurai^TM 04:29, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

This would be great, especially for the wiktionary - Omegatron 23:32, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)

Wikicalendar

I have just come up with a fantastic new idea for a "Wiki" website: Wikicalendar! I got the idea from typing years (like 2005) into the Wikipedia, and learning different facts (like that 2005 is the World Year of Physics). It could either be part of Wikipedia, or on its own. The idea is an open source calendar where people can add holidays and onto the calendar. Then, you coul click on the hyperlinked holidays, and it would take you to a page with an article about that holiday. Another cool feature might be that one could view different formats of calendars (Gregorian, Jewish, Muslim, etc.) --Munchkinguy 20:03, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hmm...nice.....and don't forget the Chinese calendar. However, it does sound like a lot of coding involved, especially all the tables (I hate making these things on Wikipedia). It can be done by regular wikipedians like us though...just need to be really hard working, even just to get things started. One question: how do want this to look like, especially the part where we put several calendars togather? Not all calendars have 365 days a year you know. SunTzu2 03:36, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I also belive that tables are evil. I was thinking that the current day would be highlited on the calendar, and clicking on the link to other calendars would take you to the current day on that other calendar, with the day highlited on that calendar. I was hoping that somebody more technologically inclined than myself would come up with the coding. --Munchkinguy 20:58, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well...guess I have to learn to make these tables sooner or later...... I got 5 1/2 months holiday ahead of me anyway. I can help with the 2005 Muslim calendar, the Chinese calendar and the Gregorian calendar (lol, who can't?). Before I get things started, a few issues to settle:

1. Coding the thing to show the highlight date automatically. I got no idea how to do this.
2. Crossing the language barrier. How do we present other calendars, which may be weird to just romanize them, especailly names of months, or in some cases (like the Chinese calendar), years as well.
3. Dealing with existing articles. What do we with it? Especailly these: 2005, 2004, 2003...ect. Without being rediculous for reinventing the wheel. SunTzu2 05:05, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I suppose that somebody will have to change the highlited date every day. To colour in the backround of a cell...

hello

... you type this... <table border=black> <td bgcolor=yellow>hello</td> </table>. I think that the calendar should be created under a new article called "Wikicalendar", and then put a link to it on the "Calendar" article and articles for the years (2004, 2005, etc). As for the cross-language stuff, it is probably good to transliterate, except for the years, in which case they should be translated. I hope that made sense. --Munchkinguy 21:20, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

lol, manual labour it is then. As a standard, the dates should be in UTC. I don't know about other calendars, but the chinese year might be tricky to translate. Half of it (see Heavenly Stems) has no meaning, the characters used there is almost exclusively for calendars only. No problems with second half though, just names of animals. btw, I get an eerie feeling we're alone in this, lol. SunTzu2 12:04, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Tada~~ here comes Wikicalendar: 2005. Needs a lot of work though, so I listed it for expansion. What kind of holidays should we list there? National holidays? State holidays? Religious holidays? Cultural holidays? School holidays? (just kidding on the last one). Do we put all the holidays in every calendar or do we put them in the calendar that marks the occasion only? SunTzu2 15:37, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wonderful! My brainchild has been born. Bwahaha! I think that any important holiday from anywhere in the world can be added. That way, each day will have a holiday. Just one thing... (please don't get angry) ...I think it might be better if the weekdays were at the top of the calendar. --Munchkinguy 20:52, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You got to be kidding me......*faints*. Don't forget that's my sweat we're talking about, I've got a huge headache trying to get the tables to the right spot. And you haven't answer me about what to do with the Heavenly Stems. SunTzu2 02:47, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Okay, here's the deal: I deleted my "Edgar Allan Poe Birthday". I don't really know what you should do with the Chineese Calendar beacuse I don't know anything about it. You should probably write the months phonetically. Just go with your intuition. I will try to rotate the calendar so the weekdays are at the top, but I won't make any changes until it looks perfect in preview so don't worry. --Munchkinguy 18:49, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Can I just ask why you haven't done the tables in Wiki markup, because the other usages are deprecated? (See m:Help:Table.) Noisy | Talk 19:11, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

Sure you can! It's because I can get most of the work done in HTML with MsFrontPage. You've seen how much coding it involves right? And after I'm done with the Gregorian Calendar, I still have the Islamic calendar and the Chinese calendar. (Nice thing about living in Malaysia is that you get 4 in 1 calendars, the other one is a Hindu calendar, not sure which variant it is though.)SunTzu2 07:06, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

50% of my work is done now. I found a HTML=>Wiki converter and cut down it's size, but it's still almost 40kb of codes, hope it's worth all the space it's taking. Meanwhile, I need help adding all the holidays, linking pages to and from Wikicalendar and Wikicalendar: 2005, updating the dates daily, and discuss which other holidays to add. (See dicussion page for more info) I'll finish the rest of the Chinese calendar and Muslim calendar myself, in stages. --SunTzu2 11:04, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Aaah! I am very confused by your Chineese Calendar. It starts with 23, and then 1 is in the middle, and then some of them have Gregorian month names. --Munchkinguy 20:12, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I'll add a manual or something, lol. --SunTzu2 04:29, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I just think that the Chineese New Year should be on the first day of the first month, instead of having the Chineese months congruent with the Gregorian ones. --Munchkinguy 21:18, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Any suggestions on how else to allow people who are unfamiliar with the calendars to tell when is when? At the moment I'm the only one moving the yellow box daily, and that's several hours after midnight (UTC). I might not be able to keep this up after my holidays come to an end. How do we move the yellow box when it's no longer 2005 anyway? By then there'll be no boxes to move, just a calendar. I just want people to be able to easily determine which 2 days are the same on different calendars even with little maintainence. --SunTzu2 07:49, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well, after 2005 is over, we can make a Wikipedia: 2006 page. Remember, we can put links for every year on the Main Wikicalendar Page (sort of an archive), and put the current year at the top --Munchkinguy 04:56, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

UK chapter?

A user posted this on my talk page. I thought it would bet more of a response here. Rmhermen 16:00, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

funds heres a thought. if you wer a registered charity in the uk, you could apply for UK lottery funding and EEC Social Fund Single Payment funding. All you need is a UK branch of Wiki.

Wikipedia 1.0

What if we forked development of Wikipedia and locked it. Then trusted contributors get access to the fork first to ONLY FIX PROBLEMS DEALING WITH CORRECTIONS. Then you go higher up, with more trusted admins dealing with major NPOV disputes (as voted on by the members in the unlocked "talk" pages). Then contact university professors to ensure that everything works out. After 1.0 releases, you start on the 2.0 fork. I would love to have a CD of Wikipedia (which I am intending on doing on my Laptop, by Installing Apache for Windows and MySQL then downloading the english site) but I need to know it is as accurate as say Encarta. -Nick Catalano 06:36, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Did you independently arrive at the "Wikipedia 1.0" term, or are you referring to the existing Wikipedia:Pushing to 1.0 effort? -- Cyrius|✎ 14:19, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've never dealt with WP 1.0 before, but I think forking it and then only fixing problems is probably the only way. I am also of the opinion that for this to be managable, WP 1.0 must include only, say, the 100,000 most popular articles - those with the most inner-wiki links to them. — Itai (f&t) 08:25, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This idea is anti-wiki. Maurreen 08:38, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo has stated somewhere that any fork of the 1.0 material would happen near the very end of the process. -- Cyrius|✎ 14:19, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A level between administrator and normal user

One thing thats been turning over in my head is that the distance between administrator and a normal user is too large. Administrators are the most trusted members of wikipedia, and they (rightly) yield alot of power. Expectations on them are understandably high and there is a rigorous process to elect them. My problem is that administrators should be concentrating on administrative issues and not be responsible for content, that should be left to the community. I am thinking for instance of the main page, the community should be responsible for that and not just the administrators. In this regard I suggest that there should be a level between administrators and normal users, called a "Trusted" user. The only difference between normal users and trusted users is that trusted user can edit any blocked articles (ie, they can't block pages/users, unblock pages/users, and all the other things administrators can do, just edit blocked pages). The expectations of trusted users should be very high, and there should be strict rules that should be enforced ruthlessly (i.e no changing of content to articles blocked due to edit wars, any hint of vandalism or 3RR violations should result in immediate revoking of trusted user-priviliges, etc.) This would take the load of administrators to update the main page, make sure that articles blocked due to vandalism still gets updated, etc. It should ofcourse be alot easier to become trusted than to become an administrator, and also more frequent. Does this sound like a good idea to anyone besides me :P? I do realise that it would take some devoloping implementing this, but im just floating the idea right now. Oh, and sorry if this has been discussed previously Gkhan 23:10, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

Or ""super user"" like in Unix? Good idea. Some long time editors just want to write and not do admin work.--Jondel 11:21, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The problem, I think, is that if locking an article won't be that poignant a measure, it might be done a lot more often. Then again, I agree that not being able to edit the main page (the templates linked thereof, at least) is frustrating, and it might help preventing people from wanting to become admins simply to be able to do this - that is, it might help ensure that only people who truly wish to become admins, with all associated responsibilities, will undertake to become ones. — Itai (f&t) 12:41, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I really don't think this would result in an increase in locked articles, articles will still only be locked because of edit wars, repetead vandalism or because of visibility (wiki logo, main page templates, ...), and a few others like copyright tags etc. But you do state my point exactly, one should not become an administrator for his great writing skills, if one is to become an administrator one must shoulder much more responsibility. That is why i think we need a middle-level. Gkhan 04:27, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

I suppose you know that there is such a thing as Bureaucratship, which - to some extent - is an intermediary level between the two? (Well, not quite - but close) Grutness|^hello? 05:53, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Actually, Bureaucrats are a level above admins, rather than just below them... See the page you quoted... Smoddy (t) (e) 13:10, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

How to deal with page move vandalism, such as repeated attacks by Willy on Wheels

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Requested moves/Min edit count

Problems with Wikipedia's Interaction Design

I thought this would be a good forum to bring up some interaction design problems with Wikipedia.

These are some of the problems I found as an active contributor who also happens to be an interaction designer.

• Wikipedia shows only the last edit of an article in the watch list. This leaves the writer no clue of the edits that took place from his/her base lined version. (Base lined version will generally be the user's last edit on the article.). Some kind of visualization technique on all the edits only can give the writer a sense of the course taken by the article.

• Too many entries in watch list make it very difficult to clear them on a day. Some kind of prioritization needs to be done...like ignoring the minor edits...or flagging
  • the articles which are more prone to vandalism or
  • an article where some real interesting edits are happening or
  • articles on which some of your trusted buddies are working on...

• When you work on more than a few articles, it is very natural that you might find a same set of people working on those or similar articles. Wikipedia could encourage collaboration by allowing me to watch any articles edited by my buddies. (Of course, only if my buddy agrees to it, which I would think he would, for it is a chance for both of us to write a quality article.)

• When you start with an article, it is very probable that you would be interested in editing related articles. e.g.: If you start with Satyajit Ray, you might be interested in editing/reviewing the articles for Bengali cinema, or Mrinal Sen or Italian Neo-realist

Cinema or the Apu Trilogy. One simple heuristic that could help meet the similar goals would be to allow the user to watch all the articles that link to a particular article or watch all the articles that have been manually grouped as categories. The feature "Related Changes" tries to do something similar, but lists the changes to the articles listed only on your watch list.

I believe that encouraging people to collaborate better and giving users better idea of how articles are changing over time would help Wikipedia improve the quality of articles tremendously.

- Kesava 20:46, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

All good ideas. I suspect that they don't yet simply because no-one has coded them, or because they would be too burdensome on the database (probably the former). jdb ❋ (talk) 06:27, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

These are not just some _nice-to-have features_ but they'll become necessary as Wikipedia grows in both size and popularity. With out controls like the above, most of the articles will become just unmanageable as people might giveup going thru their long watchlists paving the way to spoilers. --Kesava 00:32, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Evidence of moving Georgia (country) to Georgia

For nearly a year, I've been checking to see how much evidence there was of something relating to Wikipedia article titles that I felt so worried that it was going to happen soon. This is somebody's proposed move of Georgia (country) to Georgia. According to what I found, most early evidence (late 2003-early 2004) didn't make evidence of this so strong, but that it was beginning to get strong in the late spring of 2004 that it became so strong by summer. The moving poll says those who don't want it moved are still in the lead as of now, but not so much as the early days of the poll. In several lower sections of Talk:Georgia, I tried whatever way I could to keep there from being too much evidence that the page will be moved, but it couldn't be accepted too easily. As a result, I now feel so worried that the option of moving Georgia (country) to Georgia will likely be in the lead by mid-2006, and that by the fall of 2006, the answer to the question "Will Georgia (country) be moved to Georgia??" is a very likely YES. Anything to say about this move that I feel so worried will happen?? Georgia guy 19:18, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hopefully it /will/ happen soon, as the Wikipedia becomes less-and-less US-centric. User:Anárion/sig 08:35, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what Georgia guy means by “evidence” – it doesn't make sense in the context – but what exactly is the problem here? What does he think is wrong with moving Georgia (country) to Georgia? he seems to think that it's so obvious that he doesn't need to explain, but it's not obvious to me, I'm afraid. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 13:45, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Erm? I think it should be moved, but why does it matter? Both link to the other, so there's little room for confusion. The Recycling Troll 10:12, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Underlining of links

Looking for information on Michelangelo, I stumbled upon Wikipedia in Italian. It surprised me to see that the text was easier to read (I do speak Italian) than the English version, and then I finally understood why:

This part is a little bit slower to be read than this latter part is.

It figures: letters and fonts were created to be easy and fast to read, but underlined reading was far from the top concern.

As Wikipedia becomes more and more linked (as we hope and strive for), its text also becomes more and more intermittently underlined. It is not clean, and it is not natural.

This seems to be of minor importance -- it is not. Wikipedia's primary function is to be read, so such experince has to be as good as we can get it to be.

Please compare the English and Italian versions and figure out which one is more natural to the eye.

So, I propose that English Wikipedia's links are to be recognized by color, not by the redundant use of color + underlining, as the default.

--Subramanian 08:10, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

There is a user preference for that: Special:Preferences → Misc settings, deselect Underline links. You are probably requesting the default (also for non-registered users) to be changed: I would oppose that, as otherwise many people may not be aware these are links. User:Anárion/sig 14:11, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A simple movement of the mouse hovering close to the link shows people it is a link. The emphasis of wikipedia should be on reading - This is what an encyclopedia is for. Don´t underestimate people. It is absolutely easier to learn that those blue words are links than to learn where to change preferences - something only registered users can do. But do you people find it easier to read intermittently underlined text than clean text? What´s you opinion on that? Also check the BBC news - no underlined links, hundreds of thouds of people know where to click every day. It´s becoming an internet standard. --Subramanian 20:29, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I wish I could agree with you, but to <AOL!> lusers a link must be underlined (and blue) for them to recognize it, or clearly be labelled as such. These newbies must be held by the hands before they begin to learn that not all hyperlinks are underlined. This will lead to them not realizing many words in the Wikipedia are hyperlinked, and we may lose some potentially good future editors. Wikipedia should cator not only for legibility but also for ease of use.

What I find easier to read myself is not an issue: I am not a newbie. User:Anárion/sig 20:39, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Indeed what I see on the web is that links are becoming less and less underlined. Underlining is a remnant of the old mechanical typwriter, where underlining as the only possible emphasis. Now we have italics, bold and color at our disposal there is no need anymore for the graphically ugly underlining. Especially with descenders like g j p q y where the underline intersects the letters, readability is damaged. But thanks for pointing out the preference setting, which I now have changed for my account. Most readers do not have such an account, I guess. --Woodstone 21:40, 2005 Feb 21 (UTC)

Studying histories of pages with hundreds of edits

There could be a few (this will increase as time goes by) Wikipedia articles that have had too many edits to study particular sections in using the table above that says "show last 50 100 250 500 edits". I suggest that we replace it with a new table saying:

Show last few edits since __ __ __ where the blanks are for a month, a day, and a year (for example, March 24, 2004.) Any comments?? (Note that I don't know whether hundreds of articles of this kind exist yet, but I'm pretty sure there will be by about a year from now.) Georgia guy 00:48, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yetinother Footnote Proposal

Please see Wikipedia:Footnote3 for autonumbering footnotes implemented with simple short templates. Your comments appreciated. The proposal article also serves as a demonstration. Mozzerati 23:11, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)

Categorization proposal with examples

(note: This proposal is also at Wikipedia talk:Categorization)

There's been quite a bit of discussion about the way we've been setting up categories. There are several problems that need to be addressed somehow. But I think most of this stems from three conflicting attributes of categories:

1. Multiple hierarchies of categories exist and some categories become subcategories in several hierarchies.
2. Current policy states that articles should not be put in both sub and super categories.
3. Categories get removed because of "too much overlap".

If the three of these continue, many categories will become fragmented to the point of being unusable, and in some cases some very unwanted side-effects will be created.

Here's an example of a side effect: Category:African-American actors is a subcategory of Category:American actors. Thankfully, all the actors are on both lists. But, according to "the rules" they shouldn't be. The reason for this is because there are really two hierarchies here: There is a hierarchy below category:African Americans that is then broken down by professions, which leads to Category:African-American actors. There is also the hierarchy of Category:Actors which is broken down by nationality to Category:American actors. When someone decided that Category:African-American actors was a subcategory of Category:American actors then according to the rules, all the African-American actors should have been removed from Category:American actors.

As I see it, because our system does not distinguish which sub-categories are part of the hierarchy and which are "related", whenever categories "collide" problems like this occur. I think three things could be done to alleviate this problem:

1) At the top of each category, I propose that we add links that maps out the hierarchies that include the category. I'm calling this CLASSIFICATION. This is possible now without any need for a software enhancement. I've created an example, in Category:Bridges in New York City right at the top it has:

Classification: Bridges: by country: United States: New York: New York City Classification: Transportation: by country: United States: New York:New York City: Bridges

This example shows that there are two hierarchies that converge. Putting the classification on the category page makes it very easy to jump to the top of the hierarchy. Notice I did not include Science, Applied science, engineering, etc... in the 'Bridge' hierarchy. I think there is a natural starting and stopping point for each hierarchy.

Showing the classification also helps make it clearer which categories are RELATED categories and which are part of the hierarchy. In the example above: Category:Toll bridges in New York City is a related category because it is part of a different hierarchy.

2) I'd propose that the software be changed so that when users are looking at a category page, they could distinguish which sub-categories are part of the hierarchy and which are just "related" categories. This could be accomplished by making something like [[CategoryR:xxx]] to designate the category is a related category. The subcategories would be displayed in two groups: SUB-CATEGORIES and RELATED CATEGORIES. (There might also be a need for "Related article" entries in categories, but that is another discussion.)

3) I propose that we change the rules. I would first propose that the "no duplication of articles being entered in both super and sub category" rule be amended to say "... in the same hierarchy." The reality is that the status quo is constantly broken, and for good reason. Look at the acting categories mentioned above, and also look at Category:Bridges in New York City. I've added all the toll bridges into this category. They are still in Category:Toll bridges in New York City, but it is now clearer that they are part of a different hierarchy.

Categories are still evolving. By loosening the rules further, some creative changes are possible. I'd like to amend the rule above to say "no duplication of articles should be entered in both super and sub categories in the same hierarchy UNLESS THERE IS A GOOD REASON."

One reason, perhaps, why there was a move to make more and more subcategories, and to remove articles from a category whenever they could be found in a subcategory is because only 200 entries can be shown on a category page. Recently, we have found a way to make templates that create a table of contents for large categories that make this a little less of a problem. Perhaps we can work out some other ways to make categories more useful and easier to use. I'm offering this as a start. -- Samuel Wantman 10:33, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Maybe good in theory, but too complicated. Maurreen 01:30, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

New messages, part II

Another thought about that "You have new messages" alert. There have been occasions when I have had two new messages between log-ins, but have only noticed the last one because the banner remains the same no matter how many messages you get. How difficult would it be to add a number to the front "You have x new messages" if there is more than one new message? Grutness|^hello? 00:00, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Very difficult, because there's no way of telling if any given edit to the page is adding a message. Yes, edits made using the '+' link are new messages, but in my experience, half the people out there don't use it. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:25, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Go to your user talk page, click history, and compare the newest version of the page with the one you last read.

Sell Featured Pictures

Maybe Wikipedia could sell its Featured Pictures and use the money for its purpose and maybe some money goes to the photographers. Roscoe x 07:12, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Does not work. Wikipedia has the images under a certain license, and will give the images away for free. We cannot change the license under which the image is released by the author. I.e. a GFDL image of mine could be sold, but it is still under the GFDL license, whihc is available for free on Wikipedia. Changing it to a non-GFDL is not an option for Wikipedia, only for the author and original copyright holder. Why should anybody pay for an image that (s)he gets for free here too under the same license. -- Chris 73 Talk 07:22, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

I suspect that Roscoe x means that Wikipedia could sell prints of the pictures, with a portion of the proceeds going to Wikipedia. It's a neat idea--a way to support wikipedia while getting something tangible in return -- but most of the photos are, I assume, uploaded at far too low a resolution to make nice prints. jdb ❋ 07:26, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

❊ Mugs, ❋ mousepads, ❀ t-shirts. These products allow pictures of relatively lower resolutions. 800 x 600 at 300 dpi is 2.66" by 2". This is usually good enough for these silk screen printed items. I don't think you need more than 100 dpi to print a t-shirt. The only quetion is: can it REALLY make money? This is a business question. I love these Unicode dingbats ❁❂❃❄❅! -- Toytoy 08:01, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, they're great, but not everybody can see them. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 17:02, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Yes print it out, as a map, beautiful picture, t-shirt, sticker, poster, etc(as mentioned above). We just need to pick the printing companies, around the globe. And the buyer, of course...Roscoe x 08:37, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Fact vs Fiction

I've just been reading an article about a fascinating battle - full of details - then I realised that this simply was a fictional battle. It is probably labouring under several categories before eventually becoming part of Category Fiction. Would it be sensible (and I realise that this may involve a technical proposal) that we could produce some explicit method of signifying the fictional attribute of an article - say an icon or a particular-coloured background? At the moment, unless I follow the correct chain of categories, I have no quick and easy way of determing the factual or fictional status of any article; and this method may not always be foolproof. If this is suitable, then it should be possible for a robot to cascade any such property down from Category Fiction, but we would need some method of adding this property into a new article. Again, it may be possible to identify orphan fictional articles. (PS: Apologies if this or similar has been discussed before) Thanks, Ian Cairns 15:27, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Lead paragraph should always make it clear if it is fictional, but I think your idea of an icon is a good one. Question: was this a matter of you not reading closely, or was it really unclear in the article? -- Jmabel | Talk 18:51, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a problem best solved by good writing style (yeah, easier said than done). To document fictional events as if they were real doesn't sound very encyclopedic to me. Out of curiosity, which article was it? —Michael Z. 2005-02-17 20:47 Z

I admit I was speed reading. Maybe I could have taken it more slowly. I think the article was about some Battle within the Gundam(sp?) Wars - I admit that I lost interest when it became apparent that is was one of these made-up universes. Some of these make-believe worlds take great pride in the way they are written / the amount of detail that is present / their 'realism'. I'm happy to include these fictional pages as articles - but I also believe we need to make them much more distinctive - otherwise Wikipedia's authority will blur the edge between reality and fiction. I'm usually a slower, more pedantic, reader, hence the Wiki addiction. My point is that I needed to look very carefully and identify the lack of actual dates, the context and other cross-references to reality to determine that this article was fiction. I seriously doubt that many of our more casual / younger readership would necessarily have the ability to locate these pointers, and as such the Wiki factual pages and fictional pages would blur. Ian Cairns 23:16, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Gundam is not a problem. So far as I know, no one on this planet is sending killer robots to the stars. The problem is with these actual war-based fictions. -- Toytoy 08:13, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Not a problem for you (you clearly have the critical faculties). Not a problem for me (eventually). Have you seen the recent surveys where some young people didn't know that WWII had happened? Some youngsters are going to read these articles as if they were factual. Ian Cairns 14:41, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What article is this that you are talking about? --Munchkinguy 23:19, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Probably one in Category:Gundam Wars.--Patrick 13:10, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

Let's hope Stephen King is not going to join us! :) Then we will have 500,000 articles each with a unique haunted house located somewhere in Maine. I've seen a great article that looks like the contributor had seen the two men fought each other to death in Vietnam. -- Toytoy 08:07, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Third opinion

I've just had an idea. Say two Wikipedians are arguing over some obscure page, watched by no one but them. (This has happened to me.) All they need is a third opinion - someone to break the tie. Hence, Wikipedia:Third opinion. This will be a constantly changing page on which controversies involving only two Wikipedians are listed, so that a tiebreaker may be found. If a third opinion is provided otherwise, the controversy should be delisted. If a user decides to provide such a third opinion, he should remove the controversy from the page. This will ensure that the page will not be cluttered, and will allow for third opinions to be delivered with haste. What do you think? — Itai (f&t) 00:15, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Surely this is just the same as mediation? GeorgeStepanek\^talk 00:26, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

No, mediation is more complex and takes more time, and other steps are supposed to be taken first. I like this this idea a lot. It's like a streamlined version of WP:RFC. Maurreen 05:29, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

No, more like small-claims court. Neutrality^talk 16:37, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

It doesn't matter just what it is, but yes, the idea is to allow conflicts to be resolved quickly. "Controversy", by the way, is maybe too strong a word. I was thinking more along the lines of "content dispute". — Itai (f&t) 21:02, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've made the page and copied this discussion to it. Maurreen 12:38, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Building a new computer

Okay, this is my first post so I'm hoping it is in the right place. I'm hoping to upgrade the RAM on my computer and so read the appropriate wiki page. Whilst informative, it lacked practical information that I, as an utter novice, required. Is there a page on how to build/upgrade a computer? This relates to my confusion over whether RAM on a desktop should be "balanced", apparently what you have already affects what amount you can add. This answer to this still eludes me.

I just wondered if anyone else had, when dealing with a specialist subject, found that the information, whilst comprehensive, assumed considerable background knowledge. I have found this with the mathematics section also. Perhaps a new addition to wiki, if not found already, might be a series of idiot guides for self-confessed ones such as myself.

Wikipedia isn't a "HOWTO". Whether your RAM needs to be balanced depends on the design of your motherboard; some accept RAM in odd increments, some do not. Try the motherboard manufacturer's website, they often have a manual you can download for the model of motherboard you have, and this should contain all the information you need to carry out the upgrade successfully. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 13:16, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wikibooks is where you'd find will find how-tos. In particular try wikibooks:How To Build A Computer. GeorgeStepanek\^talk 23:43, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

In addition to reading Wikibooks:How To Build A Computer, you are free to ask questions at Wikipedia:Reference desk. Taco Deposit | Talk-o to Taco 01:22, Feb 23, 2005 (UTC)

"You have new messages"

The "new message" box at the top of the screen is a wonderful thing, but has one drawback: It always takes you tot he top of your User talk page. If the new message is part of an earlier thread in a long talk page it can take a while to find exactly where the new message is. Could an arrow system offering the choice of taking you straight to the edited section (similar to that used for articles on watchlists) be added somehow? Grutness|^hello? 00:07, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Or maybe add a "(diff)" link in the message box. —Michael Z. 2005-02-9 00:39 Z

A diff link in the box would be very useful! The only drawback I can see would be the confusion factor for newbies, but if it were small and inconspicuous I don't think it would be a major issue. — Catherine\^talk 14:01, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

That would be a great idea! But if you're having a lot of trouble findig your stuff, if may be that your talk pages are too cluttered. Move them to a page called something like /Talkarchive1. It should put it under your user namespace. --DoubleRing 06:29, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

I do that regularly, but I get a lot of mail :) Grutness|^hello?

If we are being advised about new messages then, imho, should always go to a diff if possible --Vamp:Willow 13:36, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Adding World Coordinates to make Wikipedia Mapable

Thanks for the input, I'd like to move further discussion to Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates Also see my page for my idea of how world coordinates should look. --Plowboylifestyle 02:10, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Buddling wikipedia with some Linux distribution

Its reasonable to say there is a match between Linux distribution copyright and wikipedia content copyright. In some countries, for example Kenya, telecommunication isn't that good and its therefore not possible for us to spend time on line. It therefore happens that most computers over there are highly under utilized since they are not networked. Buddling wikipedia content would automatically increase the value of such a computer. Anyway to organize such a buddling? I know it can be done, but i am suggesting a straight forward solution such that one can send a couple of CD over there and expect somebody who can install an operating system, but not much else would be able to set it up? It could be one of the optional application when installing a linux distro. An operating system update could also involve updating wikipedia content. And to avoid using too much space, the content could be compressed like the linux manuals. Everybody benefits, the linux distro in that, the distro have more value, users, in that his or her PC becomes more valuable and wikipedians gain in that its a good tool to recrute future contributors. A potential problem, how would one handle a PC with a local cache of wikipedia, but well connected to the Internet?

A "stub" finder

If we could use the wikipedia search engine and modified it to find articles less than certain length of words, those articles could then be reviewed and looked for for stubs that have been missed. There should be an option to ignore already marked stubs. From there, maybe someone with some coding experience could write a dll that would function as a bot? Furthermore, it would be nicer for wikipedia to have a more advanced search engine. --DoubleRing 06:24, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

I've written some basic instructions on how you can perform MySQL queries at w:Database Queries. You can easily get a list of all the stubs with this method. --Alterego 17:07, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)

It's already done - see Wikipedia:Shortpages, which is the result of just such a query. It hasn't been updated in several months because there were database problems for a while; maybe someone will attend to that soon. Still, most of the "short pages" listed there are still short, and many may still be untagged as stubs -- care to have a look? As for the search engine, I believe there are things in the works -- give us a couple of months.... — Catherine\^talk 13:57, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

External links must die

<rant warning>

"External links" must die. Both the section title and the tendency to add links arbitrarily and without descriptions.

The standard section for further information should be called "Further information", because the distinction between web-based and printed resources is artificial. Web links are of course special because the user can access them immediately. However, this makes no sense for eventual printed versions of Wikipedia articles, and thanks to the ISBN mechanism even books are "linked".

"Further information" is also superior semantically because it reflects the purpose of the section, not the medium. "External links" is comparable to the link title "click here", which similarly lacks semantics and is unnecessarily medium-specific. On a minor note, the "external" label is confusing when we need to link to pages in the Wikipedia: namespace.

We should avoid links that don't point to specific documents or document collections because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a web index. We should definitely provide links to things like relevant fan sites and web forums, but not in Wikipedia. Instead, we should start a Web directory project and create a nice, shiny sisterproject box that can be used for the "Further information" section in Wikipedia articles. Important websites, such as certain official company websites or major fan sites, should have their own articles or sections.

Needless to say, web links should always be described, including information about author, publisher and date (where applicable). The primary purpose of a "Further information" entry must be to identify a resource, not link to it. URLs change or go away; document titles and author names do to a lesser extent.

(I prefer "Further information" over "Further reading" because the latter excludes audio and video.)

</rant warning>

Fredrik | talk 20:36, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Your rant suggests that IBM should not link to http://www.ibm.com/, but instead to a separate article about ibm.com on some other project. This makes no sense to me. -- Cyrius|✎ 23:12, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, no, the separate page should be called "IBM". In either case, Template:Infobox Company deals nicely with official company websites. In fact, official company websites aren't really the problem, so I should perhaps revoke that part. Fredrik | talk 00:32, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What stops you from adding descriptions to external links? I have done it several times myself. As for books, I have usually added them under the title "Books".

Of course, you are free to begin your own web project whose only effective purpose would be to serve as massive amount of redirects to infoboxes that list only external sources and would make it necessary for every new contributor to learn appropriate infobox syntax instead of just adding material in text format ("Mere text is boring, right? There must be more complex syntax to handle this, right? After all, we absolutely have to use large amount of hypertext links through different parts of the server net, right?"). Just do not expect me to approve. - Skysmith 12:13, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Would you then say Commons and Wikiquote are a bad idea because users have to edit another site and learn infobox syntax instead of just adding images or quotes directly?

And yes, I sometimes add descriptions to external links myself. But I don't see why books should be listed separate from (relevant and high quality) web resources. Fredrik | talk 15:31, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I don't agree with the claim: “the distinction between web-based and printed resources is artificial”. Aside from anything else, printed resources, being more likely to be peer-reviewed, are considerably more reliable (I don't say that they're wholly reliable, of course). Looking at some of the external links in Wikipedia articles, this is a significant issue. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 13:34, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The solution is to have a higher standard for external links. How about "include only links to sites and documents that conceivably either could be used as a reference, or written about"? Fredrik | talk 15:31, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Your free to edit the pages. Why don't you do the work?--Jirate 15:55, 2005 Feb 3 (UTC)

Was that aimed at me? Fredrik | talk 17:39, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Here is a nice way to format external links. Rather than external link genocide, start a wiki project that adds meta information to them all like so:

• Falt, Jack. Bibliography of MBTI/Temperament Books by Author. Retrieved December 20, 2004.

--Alterego 17:12, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)

I agree that "External links" is a poor section name, but it's far, far too late to change that. It's on damn near every page in the DB; even a robot wouldn't be able to tackle it in any reasonable time. On the other hand, I do believe we have a problem with no clear requirements for external links. Sometimes I find myself at a loss trying to explain why I removed a seemingly useful but unauthoritative and underdeveloped resource from External links. Deco 19:03, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

In some cases, readers don't find out about valuable online resources on their topic because of Wikipedia's 'not a web directory' policy. Though this policy was implemented for important reasons, in some ways, it may be functionally inferior to a more lenient policy.

If we had a web directory sister project, it would also be functionally inferior to have to always be clicking on the additional link before having access to these resources. Could it be possible to have a web directory sister project that piggybacks on the end of articles? Maybe simply editable just by scrolling to the bottom of the edit box (i.e. where the last section of the page is)?--Nectarflowed 18:51, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Square kilometre

Right, at the moment, there are a whole load of pages linking to square kilometer, which is a redirect to square kilometre. I am considering changing all these pages. Does this seem like a good idea? Any objections? Thanks. --Smoddy | ειπετε 21:44, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia policy is to not change spelling from American to British or vice versa on articles which specifically relate to one culture. But if the article is culture-neutral, then I have no problem with your doing all this scut work. RickK 00:11, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)

I would recommend just using a piped link. (But I don't really see that it's worth the trouble.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 02:47, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'd expect a whole lot of squawking if you go ahead with this--folks around here tend to view systematic changes to spelling like this as some sort of cultural imperialism. Besides there is absolutely nothing wrong with appropriate redirects, and there are far more helpful sorts of Wikipedia:Maintenance you could do than this, IMO. older≠wiser 02:52, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)

It's my opinion that we shouldn't have any wikilinks to unit of measurement articles unless they are especially relevant (cubits or other archaic units, for example.) Neutrality^talk 03:55, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)

User:Neutrality makes a good point. I second that. Bobblewik  (talk) 21:57, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

User:Neutrality makes a point. I third it. Bart133 (t) 21:52, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It seems like a lot of effort to me. There are multiple dialects of English, and changing a bunch of wikilinks won't change that fact. Let's celebrate the diversity of English instead, and keep a mixture of spellings. sjorford:// 23:52, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Right, I concede the point. However, just to clarify, my intention was not to change the wording in the article, just in the link itself (as I dislike redirects when not necessary). As I say, I bow to consensus (& reason!). Smoddy (t) (e) (c) 17:41, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Why do you dislike redirects? Is it the extra time taken to load? I'd not have thought that that was significant. If it's the mere existence of a redirect page, that would have to stay anyway, because of the likelihood of people searching for variant spellings. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:11, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

a) They take longer to load. They do. Don't argue.  :) b) I dislike the little line at the top. I know they need to stay, but I feel piped links are a far better way of linking in articles. Each to their own.

I agree with you on b) — I change redirection links to piped links whenever I come across one. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:28, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Please don't change all redirects to piped links — sometimes a redirect may be changed into an article, and in this case we want the links to refer directly to the article. Deco 19:07, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

For information only: Wikipedia:Offline_reports/This_is_one_of_the_most_linked_to_redirect_pages is more than a little out of date, but Square kilometer is there at the top. Ian Cairns 23:41, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Autodetect deletion vandalism

A popular type of vandalism is to replace the whole article, or a whole section, with the word "pwn3d" or the like. This kind of vandalism could be autodetected: If an article size decreases by some large amount - perhaps a threshhold could be 20% of the section or article being edited, or 3000 characters, whichever is larger - then the article's name is automatically placed on a list that can be quickly peer-reviewed in the same way that Wikipedia editors currently routinely review new edits.

Possibly valuable because it decreases the chance that 'deletion vandalism' will slip through the cracks unnoticed, and if someone feels like monitoring this list on a particular day, the time-to-revert will also be decreased. Tempshill 21:52, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me. I had once brought up the idea of not allowing anonymous users to change an article by more than a particular percentage, but I think your idea has more merit. To make it better, I think, the list maybe should not include those size decreases where the article is replaced with a redirect. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Contrib} 02:14, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This idea would work as it still requires review by human users. However, such a system would need to be trialed to find which percentage (personally I think 20% is too little) works the best. Alexs letterbox 05:17, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Reasonable. I can think of several other vandalism-detection heuristics: insertions of the seven dirty words, insertion of leet, and the like. Summary-list edits by anonymous are also suspect, albeit less so (one might combine this with weaker heuristics, like single-word insertions, to screen out false positives). If these were displayed in a list, or flagged in RecentChanges, it would make them easier to catch. jdb ❋ 05:55, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Knowing a dramatic change in size content might also be useful for other purposes. Most any article changed by a large amount probably needs a quick look over. --Sketchee 00:00, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

In regards to the seven dirty words, some consideration must be taken for articles which actually use those words. -- AllyUnion (talk) 12:19, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

See Feature Request 958: Proposal to extend Recent Changes flags (and related discussion on User:CXI/RC flags proposal) -- comment there if you like the idea. — Catherine\^talk 04:07, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I like this idea a lot — in fact, let's take it a step further. Some version control systems include in the information about a submission how many lines were added and how many were removed ("+5 -2"). How about we include something just like this beside each edit in RC, the watchlist, diffs, and so on? Lines might not work for us, but maybe characters or words. It would allow you to quickly identify how big an edit is without relying on the "minor edit" box (indeed, that box might be able to disposed of). Deco 19:14, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I agree with all above comments. Why don't we make it all into a special page e.g. Special:Possiblevandalism and include it in Recent changes too? Bart133 (t) 04:49, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Anon users

In the interests of trying to reduce vandalism, can we have a message at the top of the edit page (for anon users only) which says something like "Yes, you really can edit this page right now, and it really will appear on the website when you press Save. Please don't modify the page just to test this - there is a sandbox for this purpose here. We welcome useful contributions from anyone - but please don't vandalise Wikipedia!". The ickle sandbox message at the bottom, below the Save button, really isn't sufficient IMO. Rd232 08:35, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As far an vandalisim caused by ignorance goes, another warning message won't help much. Alternative : Anon. users can only save after previewing? Could that be set up? BigFatDave 23:01, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Since there is a similar option for logged-in users, it seems possible, but even that wouldn't stop real vandals. However, we probably should put a bigger sandbox message than the ickle one at the bottom up there somewhere anyway. Bart133 (t) 04:29, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Vote on the naming of Gdansk/Danzig

There is a multi-year dispute about the proper name of Gdansk/Danzig and other locations with a Polish/German history. Unfortunately, lots of discussions were unable to find a compromise. We are trying to finally resolve this dispute with a vote. The vote has two parts, one with questions when to use Gdansk/Danzig, and a second part affecting articles related to locations with Polish/German history in general. An enforcement is also voted on. The vote has a total of 10 questions to vote on, and ends in two weeks on Friday, March 4 0:00
Please vote at Talk:Gdansk/Vote!
Chris 73 Talk 00:08, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Votes for Deletion explanation poor

I know the VfD procedure is involved, but it is poorly explained on the VfD page. In particular, nominating a page for VfD is just possible following the stuff at the bottom of the VfD page - but the fact that there are two procedures there is confusing - can the two procedures be hived off to separate SHORT pages.

And more importantly, nowhere does it tell you how to vote! After ages of clicking here and there I eventually sussed that you don't vote on the VfD page. Instead you go to the page in question and select the "this page" link in the delete message box and edit that page. This needs clearly stating.

I also spent half an hour trying to locate the source texts for the VfD pages on the off chance that they were not ptotected and that I could edit them to include such an explanation. I failed to find the shortcut sources - where are they? -- SGBailey 22:42, 2005 Feb 16 (UTC)

How hard is it to click the section edit link next to each and every entry's heading? Listing new things is convoluted, but voting is really as simple as it has ever been or could be. -- Cyrius|✎ 03:08, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What section edit link? I don't have any. See Image:VFD XMPL.gif -- SGBailey 09:33, 2005 Feb 17 (UTC)

Go to Preferences > Misc settings and check "Enable section editing via [edit] links". I'm pretty sure it's enabled by default. -- Cyrius|✎ 13:04, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Only if I know that this is what I have to do. Which isn't explained in the VfD procedure. I went to preferences to Turn them off cos I don't like the clutter. Once they are off you don't know they are there and can't click them. I now know to click the article and go to its "this page" deletion discussion page - But nothing tells me to do either. Instruction is required on the VfD page. -- SGBailey 15:29, 2005 Feb 17 (UTC)

Animations

I have recently come across the use of animations which I consider to be inappropriate to an encyclopaedia. The animations are "pretty", but run too fast to readily follow or study and cannot be rinted out - you just get diagram 1 of the set. Please see my comment on Talk:Octagon. I expect it applies to many other articles in the polygon category. On the other hand, the Asian Tsnami animation seemed right because I don't see people wanting to study individual frames - just to watch the overall flow. Is there an animation policy? -- SGBailey 21:44, 2005 Feb 16 (UTC)

Encarta, Comptons, The Canadian Encyclopedia... They all use animations --Munchkinguy 23:22, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Policy for Main Page

I think we should lock the main page and all article that link to it to prevent vandalism in the future.

The main page cannot be edited by normal users (Notice the "view source" instead of "edit this page"). utcursch 11:00, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)

"Graffiti Walls"

I've had an idea that if high-profile, often-vandalised articles like Tony Blair could have a Tony Blair/GrafWall or similar, that people were freely allowed to "vandalise", it would save a lot of vandalism on actual pages. People vandalise for a number of reasons:

1. They want to test the syntax - the sandbox is for them
2. They want to have their vandalism seen by others and nobody actually reads the sandbox's content - this system could work for them too
3. To make a page of someone they don't approve of look really silly - this is for them
4. They want to cause disruption - OK, this isn't good for them.

Every now and then, GrafWalls would be reverted back to the original version (to make this easier we could create a Category:Graffiti Walls or similar) and a template to put at the top of a graffiti page and at the top of it's (hopefully) vandalism-free counterpart to say that there's a graffiti wall for that page. The wikitext of the original page could be copy-and-pasted into the GrafWall to start off. In a minute or two I'll begin making a draft WP: page about it at Wikipedia:Graffiti Wall. Do reply and comment here rather than on Wikipedia talk:Graffiti Wall. Thanks,--AliceCrypto (Talk|Contributions) 07:21, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Totally inappropriate, do not attempt this until you get consensus from the community. Until then, I will delete all attempts at imposing this unilaterally. RickK 08:15, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)

Do try to get decent spelling. You put "consensu" instead of "consensus". And don't be autocratic. You don't have the right to thwart any attempts to make WP a better place.--AliceCrypto (Talk|Contributions) 08:18, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

AliceCrypto -- it's a nice analogy to what some urban areas have tried. However, WP should not be a forum for unstructured spew, so I don't support the propsal. RickK -- Maybe you should take a deep breath ;). jdb ❋ 04:02, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think it's a bad idea. What if someone wanted to libel Tony Blair? We could be held responsible. I don't think it would even work. Most vandals would continue to vandalise the high profile article IMO. If someone wants to make a political statement, add a funny photo of someone, makes jokes etc they can do it on their user page. We allow users to do this because most users who log in make enogh good edits to warrent a page of their own to do (within limits) what they like. Most vandals don't make any good edits, why should they get a space to take this piss out of someone? We are not a free web hosting site, we are an encylopedia. Theresa Knott (The snott rake) 08:54, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I agree that this is a bad idea. If people want to rant about, say, Tony Blair, let them do it elsewhere. Wikipedia is not a forum for unregulated free speech, nor is it a playground. —Charles P. ^(Mirv) 04:14, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Bad idea. I concur with Rick, Joseph, Theresa, and Charles. Neutrality^talk 05:10, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

fun or not, it's not conductive to building an encyclopedia, which is what WP is still about. Some silliness is fine, but it should in general be kept out of article namespace. dab (ᛏ) 08:00, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It's good to brainstorm innovative ways to tackle vandalism, so thanks for thinking about this. However, on balance I don't think "Grafitti Walls" are something we really want in WP. — Matt Crypto 15:23, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

standard for "gate" pages

I have noted that some pages are not simple lists nor are they complete articles; they are somewhat gates, overviews, which explain some basics and then redirect the reader.

The problem is that contributors don't know how to name them, and therefore readers have a hard time finding those. The exemple I have is the mess of looking for current subdivisions within Hinduism:

• Schools of Hinduism (Overview)
• List of Hindu sects

The List of Hindu sects is clearly not a plain List in the Wikipedia style; and the Schools of Hinduism (Overview) is a good title if I know that I should look for an "... (Overview)" article.

Could we have a standard?

The title Schools of Hinduism (Overview) is incorrect. The overview article should be at Schools of Hinduism, plain and simple. Fredrik | talk 07:30, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Www.wikipedia.org

(excuse me for the english, I am italian). Why we can't have a page like Google, which changes his contest from the browser's default's language? [Anon.]

May I guess that this means "changes its context"? -- Jmabel | Talk 21:20, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC)

...or "content", perhaps. --rbrwr^± 21:30, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Automatic browser detection of languages is not reliable enough for that, and is annoying to those who work on more than one language. There's a proposal to allow visitors to www.wikipedia.org to voluntarily set a cookie which will remember their language preference -- discuss or help out at meta:Talk:Www.wikipedia.org portal. — Catherine\^talk 22:10, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

New level for mainpage wikis

Now that the Japanese wiki has reached 100 000 articles, and that several (the French and Swedish, maybe a few of the most rapidly growing below 50 000) can be expected to grow up to that number in 2005, how about adding a 100 000 articles level to the main page? --Circeus 11:48, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC)

Locked database suggestion

As occasionally happens, the database has just been locked for a while, and I (and no doubt countless other wikipedians) have just been idly looking at a few articles until editing was enabled again. To find out whether it was,, I'd simply click an edit link and see what happened (in this case on four occasions), again, as others have no doubt done before me.

May I suggest that - while the database is locked - some tiny signal that it is locked could be used on articles, so that we know not to bother trying to edit them? Maybe the "Edit this page" link could be changed to red, or a little image (such as one of those mock-up roadsigns with a red bar diagonally through a letter E) could be put at the top of the page. That way, when editing is re-enabled, it is possible to tell as soon as a new page is opened. Grutness|^hello? 08:16, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

That will be really helpful. It's really annoying when I've 20 Wikipedia tabs open in my Firefox and I find that I can't edit those pages. utcursch 09:15, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC)

Topic specific article howtos

I just wanted to create an article about a movie (and about a composer of the music from that movie), and (since I have never written a new article, iirc) I realized, that I would like to have some page which could be both used as an example how to write about specific topic and would also contain all the tips you need to write quite good (or even featured) article. Since Wikipedia is always growing, it's getting more and more difficult to remember/find out all the topic-specific templates, lists, categories and guidelines that people create here. If these could be found in a single place, it would decrease burden to other editors. So I would propose to create a list o specific topic howtos (containing list of common things like animal, spaceship, disambiguation, artist biography, movie, etc.), which should be accessible from the page offered when you create new article. The howto would contain suggested text (for us non-native speakers, I have trouble with style) and formating and other guidelines, how to fill templates, ideas what to include, related lists and categories and stuff like that (maybe there could also be a subpage, that you could copy to editing window, before you start editing). This would also help to unify overall style of Wikipedia. Samohyl Jan 18:05, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This is an excellent idea. Some of it is already covered by Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles, which lays out the basic form of a good article, and the various suggested formats of the different WikiProjects (examples: Wikipedia:WikiProject Language Template and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Countries#Article template). No doubt this could be extended to other subjects as well. Currently they are scattered and difficult to find; some kind of central index that lists all the recommended styles for types of articles, linked to from MediaWiki:Newarticletext, would be very helpful to authors. —Charles P. ^(Mirv) 18:24, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I found Wikiproject pages contain some of that information after I wrote my comment, but still these pages are often dealing with technical issues, so it's hard to find this information here (the article howto should really be a separate page). Samohyl Jan 18:36, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A good starting point is to search for a similar featured article and use it as a sort of template. Quite frankly, though, many things aren't very standardized in Wikipedia and aren't likely to become standardized any time soon. However, this might help encourage dominant article forms by example. Deco 18:40, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Graham Hancock.com Newsletter link

Hi I am the web editor for the Graham Hancock site, I was wondering if we could put a link to our upcoming newsletter at this site? Do you have a links area?

Best

Steve

We have no pages devoted specifically to external links (Wikipedia is not a web directory), but you are welcome to add relevant links to the article on Graham Hancock. —Charles P. ^(Mirv) 17:56, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Actually we do -- please find the appropriate section of Wikipedia:Friends of Wikipedia, and list your site there (one time only, please). Thank you for asking. — Catherine\^talk 23:00, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Search page

Sometimes you get the wiki search, sometimes the google/yahoo alternative. There are occasions when the google/yahoo alternative is more useful. Would it be possible / sensible to effictively add that script at the end of the wiki search results page - say after the check box block. That way if you didn't like the results you got from wiki you could repeat the search on google in wikipedia or even on the web? -- SGBailey 22:34, 2005 Feb 10 (UTC)

I second that! I was actually thinking about that a couple of days ago and think it would be a great idea. — Brim 22:21, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)

Hello! Help is needed

Hello, anybody interested in helping in the West Bank Article? Unfortunately, a highly extremist POV is been expresing withouth giving anybody else the chance to achieve a more appropiate NPOV. I would be glad to hear another ideas User name: Messhermit

You may want to put it up on Wikipedia:Requests for comment if you feel a dispute is unresolvable. Inter 10:38, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Distributed Computing

I'm no expert on this topic, but a lot of projects have taken advantage of unused computer cycles, like SETI@home, the World Community Grid Project, and Folding@Home . Wikipedia has been, off-and-on slow to load recently (and for as long as I can remember) - its growth has understandably been more than a set of computer clusters can handle. Wouldn't it make sense to make use of the unused computer cycles of Wikipedia's users to help host Wikipedia? Does anyone know if this is feasible? Salasks 15:21, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

It the wrong type of problem. For the right type of problem you need a small amount of data which needs a large amount of processing. --Jirate 15:25, 2005 Feb 10 (UTC)

Some of Wikipedia's work can be handled by third-party servers. Editing relies on the central database(s), so that obviously can't be shared out, but most of our users only require read access. We already have a small number of subordinate Squid cache servers in France, and more cache servers can be linked into the system. Also, don't forget the extent to which the Wikipedia mirror sites reduce the load on the main Wikimedia system. GeorgeStepanek\^talk 23:55, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Then today I saw that Google and Wikimedia are working on a deal for Google to use its servers to help host Wikipedia. Irate's right - distributed computing isn't the right word (or concept), but it seems Wikipedia does need storage space and I'm sure plenty of users/supporters have plenty of storage available they would be willing to let Wikipedia use. Is there no way to connect the supply of extra storage space (by the users) and the demand by Wikipedia? Do we have to resort to hosting on the servers of a public company? Salasks 17:07, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)

Distributed data basing is more like it and with the various caches and proxies that is what the current situation is. If users want to run a Web proxy then I imagine that can be done now. The problem is you need to have all of WP on your proxy otherwise the overhead of finding the site with what you want becomes prohibitive. If your prepared to set up a proxy I think WP should help, if an ISP does it for their subscribers they could also use the same route. Provided Google don't have an exclusive or any content control I don't see the problem.--Jirate 22:20, 2005 Feb 12 (UTC)

Automatic Reverse numbering

We all know how to use the extremely useful numbering system implemented in Wikipedia.

1. first entry
2. second entry
3. third entry

But has anyone ever found that they need a reverse number list? I have. One of the best examples would be a contribution's page. You want to list it so that people see your latest entry, but to label that number one is kind of weird. It also would make it easier to see how many edits you have done. I don't know what symbol we could use...maybe the ^ or & sign?

--DoubleRing 06:25, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

I've never needed to do that, but I see how it could come in handy. It would be a good idea to add to Wikipedia if it's not technically difficult. — Brim 22:36, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)

Time

Another suggestion... for several wikipedia pages (e.g., Wikipedia:Categories for deletion), you need to know what day it is. (I know what you're thinking, but give me a moment). Because we use UTC, the day changes over at different times of the day for different groups of Wikipedians (for me, at 1 p.m. now, and noon in southern hemisphere winter). When it's very close to the change-over from one day to the next (when I do a lot of my editing), the easiest way to see whether the day has changed, Wiki time, is to type five tildes on whatever I'm typing and preview - a cumbersome process. Is there any way of adding something like "page opened at 00:00, Day, Date" onto a page in much the same way as the "page last saved at" message? Under the Wikipedia globe, perhaps? Grutness|^hello? (erm, at 05:32, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC))

Very good idea! --Munchkinguy 23:25, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Tools

I have translated the toolbox for the experienced users in Wikipedia, which is originally created by User:Mountain in the Chinese Wikipedia. Users can use this template in your user page. And users can edit the toolbox to improve the toolbox functionary. Shinjiman 14:28, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Pronunciation

What about inserting the pronunciation of the words. Of course I am referring to the title words. English commons words, such us the one whose pronunciation could be fuond on a normal dictionary, can be left out. I am referring to the name of people, country and so one. In the article Salvador Allende I found a footnote with pronunciation. A more general standard way would be better. A link to a sound resource could also be consider, but for the moment I am proposing a textual description of the pronunce via the usual standard description mechanism. AnyFile 11:34, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

We really need that. A common pronunciation key and a standard template should be created. utcursch 12:51, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

It is always acceptable to add the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) pronunciation of a name, etc. I wouldn't recommend doing this for excessively, but if you stick to things that might reasonably be in doubt, go for it. -- Jmabel | Talk 17:41, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (pronunciation). —Michael Z. 2005-02-8 18:12 Z

I am sorry but I could not understand Wikipedia:Manual of Style (pronunciation) easily. More than this, it seams to me more a tools to print some non-standard characters. What was I wanted to pointed out was 1) I usually do not found pronunciation in wikipedia article 2) I would not know where to put the pronunciation. Is there a standar way of doing it? AnyFile 17:13, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

KNOWMORE.ORG Seeks Wikipedians that want to fight Corporate Crime!

this site is going to be an amazing resource when it goes up in a month or two... please help out with the effort to compile & organize information :)

www.knowmore.org

Wikiportals

I've made a sample Wikiportal (which is intended to work as a main page for specific subjects) here: Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Biology. The idea of Wikiportals was first introduced in German Wikipedia, and then it spread to French, Dutch, Polish, Hebrew and Japanese ones. I hope more Wikiportals will follow at en:. Ausir 23:17, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I like it. I also looked at the ones in other languages linked from there. Pretty good idea. I hope we adopt these more widely for the English Wikipedia. --Sketchee 23:46, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)

Very good. violet/riga (t) 23:55, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Nice. Does this material go at the top of the category page? —Michael Z. 2005-02-6 00:20 Z

Instead of actually placing it into the category page, we could place {{Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Biology}} on Category:Biology. That way we could keep it seperate and have a Category:Wikiportals. --Sketchee 20:12, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)

Excellent. These could be even better than the category pages we now have for browsing on the main page. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:46, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)

I started Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Art. Hope a few people will look over it and edit anything that could be improved. A couple others have been started but there's plenty of other areas that can be introduced. :)

I don't know how actively I'll be able to maintain the art one and there isn't an Art Wikiproject or anything similar (comics is the closest thing right now. --Sketchee 06:22, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

I also added a few Requested Wikiportals --Sketchee 06:27, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

WOuldn't it be cool?

IS anyone familiar with the KEO project? If not then here is the link, http://www.keo.org/ Wouldn't it be great if all of Wikipedias articles made their way onto KEO? Not as a substitute for any other source of information. Just as something cool to think about because Im a dreamer =) Jaberwocky6669 16:30, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)

By the time that thing launches the most compressed and optimized version of the encyclopedia (text-only) will be ~700-800mb, fyi --Alterego 17:04, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)

Pronunciations of non-English words

Hi all, Wikipedia is great...i get to read about a lot of famous people and the works of great authors. But unfortunately i cannot pronounce most of their names. It would be a great help if you guys could add pronunciations of non-English names/nouns/verbs/etc.

Thank you.

It's a good idea in principle, but there are problems in practice:

1. What system should be used? The obvious choice is the international phonetic alphabet, but how many editors would be able to use it? There'd have to be a cadre of phoneticists whose job it was to go through Wikipedia adding pronunciations. And how many readers would be able to make use of it?
2. How would one decide which words needed the treatment? The author (or pronunciation-guide czar©) would have to second-guess the reader's knowledge or lack of it.
3. It would be strange to apply it only to non-English names and other words, if only because Wikipedia is used by many non-native English speakers.
4. Which pronunciation? North German, South German, Swiss, or Austrian German? Australian , Yorkshire, Ulster, Surrey, Canadian, or U.S. English? And which further regional or class variants of those? I don't just mean for obvious words like buoy (British English: bɔɪ; U.S. buːɪ) or scone (skəʊn or skɒn) — many if not most words have more or less subtle differences in pronunciation, depending upon the regional (or other) dialect, or idiolect. The thought of edit wars over the correct pronunciation of kilometre or controversy brings me out in a cold sweat.

Perhaps I'm being unduly negative; I hope so, because as I said at the beginning, it is a good idea in principle. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:45, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Definitely IPA. It's not trivial, but we learn as we go along. Most words have a phonological pronunciation that can be listed; it's more-or-less independent of regional dialects—sort of a "canonical" pronunciation. Your examples are some of the many that have two or more accepted pronunciations (it's /ˈkɪl.oˌmi.tər/, of course, and in certain regions we just automatically pronounce the final /r/ as [ɹ] or silent).

Shouldn't that be a rhotic 'e'? /ˈkɪl.oˌmi.tɚ/

Darrien 06:58, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)

I think Wiktionary intends to systematically list the pronunciation for all words. In Wikipedia IPA is used routinely for linguistics articles, and occasionally when explaining the pronunciation of problematic names. —Michael Z. 2005-02-4 19:27 Z

Ah, thanks for the practical demonstration of how I should have done the IPA coding. In the case of “kilometre”, in fact, I was thinking about the stress pattern; the pronunciation that's beginning to become standard here is /ˈkɪləˌmitə/, but I was brought up to say: /kɪˈlɒˌmitə/. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 19:43, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Me too (with a bit more "r" at the end), but a while ago I realized that there's no reason it shouldn't rhyme with millimetre, centimetre, and in parallel with kilolitre and kilogram.

Template:IPA has just been developed recently to work around MSIE's font-display deficiencies—documentation is at Template talk:IPA. —Michael Z. 2005-02-4 20:41 Z

A Suggestion...

I have been working from some time to start a project similar to this one... But it some twists:

-Authors should adhere to norms in their Learning Material.

-Learners should pay lots of "points" that they use (a "point" per each K of text) to gain access or possibility to copy or print text, text is visible in screen but Select/Copy doesn´t work, also they pay a "point" per minute, for playing educational games or getting in-line tuition.

-Authors produce: text, educational games, translations, researchs, power point presentations, on-line tuition, etc.

-A percentage of the Income from Learners, should go to the Authors of the accessed learning material, the rest of the income is for the portal operation expenses.

-This will permit willing educators, that have knowledge but are: jobless, disabled, parentes of disabled kids, retired, etc. to earn some adittional income, and will promote quality in submissions, to be attractive and useful to Learners of course, authors names should be prominent, and some will become famous.

-What is your opinion? I will be grateful for brief & practical answers to this post.

---

Ing. Dagoberto G. Flores-Lozano Ex Research Fellow and University Professor (UNAM, UVM, UIA) Post Degree in Academic Administration, UC at Berk. --Dagoflores 17:21, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC) Hear me out. I think that before editing [Authors] users should be given an IQ test. To screen out those people who can only spell and form gramtically correct sentences, without any understanding of the content.--Jirate 20:43, 2005 Jan 31 (UTC)

You need to realize that you could never prevent a dedicated user from "stealing" information from an encyclopedia. Disabling copy and paste are only available through javascript, which can easily be disabled. Even if you make javascript required, they can just navigate to the page and then disable it. One way you could do it is through flash, which would disable copy paste. However, it's not to difficult for someone to find the url of the flash file and save it. Just check out the Homestarrunner Wiki (I believe that should be hrwiki.org Cigarette). They post the locations of the actual flash files used on the site. Of course you could use the infamous Brittanica method: only displaying a few words of the article and forcing you to buy the rest, though i doubt it will work in this case. Lastly, the best path that I would take would be to program an application that would communicate with the parent server, bringing back the articles as they were requested. The only way to make money, however, is to use the Britannica method. The disabling select/copy sounds very innovative, however, few people, except plagarizers, directly copy and paste from encyclopedia articles. You've got a good idea though! Don't give up on it. --DoubleRing 05:23, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

Sounds very nice. I bookmark this. Agreed about the copy/paste though, it's impractical. Perhaps limit access to nicened diagrams, updates mailing list, animations/movies/audio? r3m0t 18:13, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Limiting access? This discussion has nothing to do with Wikipedia, right? - Omegatron 18:36, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

Goodness gracious me, of course not! This new project would be people writing text for a particular level (imagine a normal 12-year-old trying to understand Static electricity) and the information on it would not be Free-as-in-speech. r3m0t 08:55, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Advice to and help for non-native-speaker editors

(I can't see this mentioned anywhere else; if it is, I apologise.)

I've noticed a number of articles that non-native speakers have edited or even created, in the process introducing useful and informative content, but creating problems because of their grammar, spelling, inability to judge the correct tone, etc. The next native speaker who happens along can then correct it, tidy up the errors, etc., but that might not happen for some time. Not only will the damaged article have been on display for that period, but there might be passages too obscure to be understood, so that the new editor needs to contact the original author for help — and the original author might by then have disappeared. (I've had various experiences of this kind: for example, see Talk:Lentienses and Elgoog.)

Might it be a good idea to advise non-native-speakers (not only in the English version, of course) who recognise their linguistic limitations to add or explain their additions on the relevant Talk page instead of directly in the article, with a request for a native speaker's help? There could be a central page (like this one) on which such requests could be posted. If it is agreed to be a good idea, how easy would it be to set up? I'd be more than happy to lend a hand (or, if it's relatively straightforward, to do it myself). Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:48, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This can be useful. My english is poor but my ideas are rich. Even if I write with a dictionnary next to me, i'll be glad sometimes to have some advises on the correct sentence structure to reach my purpose. Lvr 09:55, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia:Help desk and Wikipedia:Village pump (assistance) can satisfy this purpose. —Michael Z. 2005-02-3 17:40 Z

I think it would overwhelm those. Certainly would overwhelm Wikipedia:Village pump (assistance); I don't deal much with Wikipedia:Help desk.

It would probably be worthwhile for someone to start a Wikipedia-space page or Meta page discussing options for working on articles outside of one's native language. Certainly Mel Etitis' idea would be one of those options. I suppose it ultimately belongs on Meta, but I think we might "incubate" it in Wikipedia space. How about calling it, for starters Wikipedia:Contributing to articles outside your native language? -- Jmabel | Talk 19:20, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that's the sort of thing that I had in mind, perhaps with an area for people to add requests for native-speaker assistance on particular articles? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:54, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've made a start on what I thought could be said on the page. It could do with being made a bit simpler and clearer. Can anyone think of good, general advice that would be useful for non-native editors? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 17:37, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Could editors unsure of their English prowess perhaps use a category tag to signal their edits to an article that they'd like reviewed (e.g., [[Category:English cleanup]])? That would be a quick way to automatically collect articles, so that interested editors with a better command of English could check the category page for potential work. It'd also be less obtrusive than a cleanup template that may unreasonably impune an entire article for the sake of a questionable section. (P.S. Votre anglais est meilleur que mon français, Lvr.) — Jeff Q 12:34, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me (though I should say that I hadn't envisioned using cleanup templates; just a note on the Talk page and a request on Wikipedia:Contributing to articles outside your native language).

Now that the page is up, how best to publicise it? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 13:01, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Votes for deletion - format change

A roughly a month ago, the votes for deletion process was changed in how the VFD pages were handled. At the current moment, when an article is nominated, it is put at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Article name. Where on that page, === Article name === is placed and all the information as to why it should be deleted is placed on that page.

Then it is placed on a VFD day page, a subpage which goes by the UTC date, like today's would be found at: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 2 and tomorrow's would be found at: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 3, and yesterday's would be found at: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 1 and so on.

So, on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 2, a transinclude is placed there, specifically, {{Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Article name}} under the section where the date is placed. In this case, under the section label: == February 2 ==.

Then, from there, transincludes are placed on the main Wikipedia:Votes for deletion page, containing only the pages linking to the dates, thus only having a list of days like: {{Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 2}}

This allows automatic linking using the variables in the MediaWiki system, and a direct way to link to the current day to place a VFD vote.

Prior to this system, everything was placed on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion (main page). This meant that all the subpage transincludes, specifically, {{Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Article name}}, was placed on the main page VFD. So you'd have the section dates on the main page VFD, and each section date would contain the transincludes for each VFD nomination. The only problem with this system was that it could not provide direct linking to the appropriate section to add the VFD nomination to the page.

Several users have made some complaints regarding this, and wish to revert the system back to what it was prior to December 25, 2004, before the inclusion of the day to day subpage transincludes. A vote is now taking place at Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion#VFD_One_Page_a_Day. Please make your comments there, and make any suggestions regarding this issue. -- AllyUnion (talk) 22:51, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Short diff in change lists

I'm curious as to whether anyone would find one of these two related features useful. I certainly would.

• Hovering the cursor over a change in a watchlist or Special:RecentChanges causes a floating window displaying the diff (if it's short) to appear. (See the wikilinks in the wikipedia clone [4] for an example -- hovering causes an unobtrusive popup of the linked page to appear)
• Articles without an edit summary could have the diff with the last version shown just after their entry in the change list (if the diff is short).

If a change created a long diff, a truncated version could be shown instead. (oops -- forgot to sign. :: jdb ❋ 21:06, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC))

Removing Cleanup from Recentchanges

Since the Cleanup page no longer functions like it did originally, does it really serve much of a purpose to keep it on the Wikipedia:Recentchanges page? I'm thinking about removing it, but not without discussion beforehand. RickK 00:07, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)

Maybe link to the Category:Wikipedia cleanup with the list of pages would be better... AlbinoMonkey ^(Talk) 23:19, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Display of subcategories

Take a look at Category:American_actors as an example. It's a category page with numerous articles and numerous subcategories spanning several pages. At first glance it appears that Category:African-American actors is its only subcategory ("there is 1 subcategory to this category"), but lo-and-behold if you click to the next page, you'll see another subcategory, and so on. This isn't very logical. The problem is that the articles are listed alphabetically such that a page shows all articles that begin with A-C, for example — which makes sense — but the subcategories (which are usually far fewer in number) are divided the same way as the articles, which doesn't make sense. I think a more logical system would be to display a Category listing that lists all subcategories first, followed by all articles. Is it feasible to implement this change? — Brim 23:22, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

I second that! I've ben working on geography stubs, and for a long time it looked like the only subcategories began with A or B. There is a way of kludging it (by giving all the subcategories an alphabetising marker (e.g., [[:Category: Geography stubs|*Zambia]]), which would list them before the start of the alphabetical listing but, as I said, it's a kludge. Grutness|^hello? 23:33, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Along similar lines, articles in categories should sort by namespace, then by alphabetical title of articles. This way, all main namespace articles will be listed first, then images, then templates, etc. – flamurai^TM 23:35, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to third, fourth, or whatever this request. It's very difficult to figure out where an article belongs in an unfamiliar category tree if you can't see all the subcategories on the first page. -Aranel ("Sarah") 02:46, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Absolutely. Does anyone have an idea whether this is a significant technical undertaking? I can imagine exiting algorithms where it would be trivially easy to make this change and ones where it would be quite tough, and I have no idea which we are using. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:15, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Contrib} 02:11, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Agreed -- this would make working with Categories much easier. (For that matter, I wish "What links here" sorted by namespace too....) — Catherine\^talk 04:35, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It would still be great to sort by namespace, but a temporary solution to the alphabetical problem has been found -- insert {{Template:CategoryTOC}} into any large category to insert a functional table of contents. — Catherine\^talk 22:49, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by birthyear

I was thinking it would be interesting to see what Wikipedians would be in each age group and whatnot. In much the same way that Wikipedians haves lists by interest and location, how about one for birthyear? I have searched for it and have not seen anything resembling one.

However I have another one of my great ideas (which may or may not be agreed with). Why don't we make a new set of category for Wikipedians to assemble them? (i.e. Category:Wikipedian 1980 births|User:Wikipedianguy). But if this seems like too much, then I am fine with just a list. Just floating this idea in the air. -- Riffsyphon1024 05:15, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Can we lie about it?  ;) Chris 73 Talk 05:25, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

You can find this (very incomplete) list here JoJan 09:03, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Seeing how many lists at Wikimedia there are, I should have never asked. Still, why would I want to sign up again, just to sign my name? -- Riffsyphon1024 09:50, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Substub Templates

In my opinion, there are numerous substubs, which need to be categorized. What is you opinion on making substub templates? тəzєті 03:47, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

I think topic related stubs will be fine, but substubs may be pushing it. But then, I did not like the Template:Substub to begin with -- Chris 73 Talk 05:28, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

Please coordinate this with the folks at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting. —Korath (Talk) 05:53, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

Please do not make substub subcategories! They will almost certainly be deleted by Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting, as they just get in the way of the sorting process. The best things to do with substubs are (1) work out whether they need to be on vfd, merged, or enlarged; (2) if they need to be enlarged, add a little to them to turn them into stubs - THEN use a stub subcategory. Grutness|^hello? 10:48, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Adding stub templates?

How do you create a stub template? I want to add a template for pharmaceutical or drug releated stubs. googuse 07:24, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

In the search box, type in the name of the stub you want, preceded by Template:. I suggest Template:Pharma-stub would be appropriate. There, paste this in:

{{subst:metastub | article=[[pharmacology]]-related article | id=pharmastub | category=Pharmacology stubs}}

Creating this would require creating the Category:Pharmacology stubs page, which would need doing, considering the breadth of pharmacology. (I presume, by the way, that pharmacology is the appropriate area.) You could also follow the procedure at Template talk:MetaPicstub to create a stub notice with a picture in it. When the template is created, use {{pharma-stub}} to place it in articles. It would also be worth listing it at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types. If you need any more help, drop me a line. Smoddy (t) (e) 14:49, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please check with Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria first - there are some guidelines for creating stub templates now in place (to stop categories overlapping, for example). It is quite likely that any pharmacology stub would overlap greatly with Template: treatment-stub, for medical treatments and drugs, which was recently created. A separate Template: Drug-stub was debated but not created, after it was discovered that too few stub articles were currently listed for it to reach the guideline threshold for creation. (Actually, if you're keen on making new stub templates, it would be good to join in at WP:WSS anyway). Oh, and please do not use Template talk:MetaPicstub - it is being phased out as it puts too much strain on the servers (100 stub templates use it, and each of them is on 100 articles, so it's basically being used in 10,000 places on Wikipedia!) Grutness|^hello? 10:59, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Uncategoriced images

Now, we are using the category system to know the licence of the images. A page of "Uncategoriced images" would let us find the images without licence. Llull 21:07, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The trouble being that unless you got a bot to do this, it would be necessary to find all the images without a licence so as to add them to the category. Something is being done about such images at WP:PUI, as and when people come across them. You can also add {{unverified}} and {{unknown}} to a picture with no source or licensing information to flag it up as such. — Trilobite (Talk) 23:45, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Untagged images is where the action is on this task. We queary every so often for untagged images, and then tag them.

Sources Revealed: bibliography and footnotes

I think it would be beneficial if contributors were able to supply their sources through a footnote/bibliography feature. This would provide a natural link to off-line resources and allow contributors to reference coryrighted material, providing a scholarly legitimacy that wikipedia is sometimes accused of lacking. It would also aid fellow wikipedians in further research, editing, and contibuting to articles. -- The bibliograpghy/footnote feature could be removed from the text for the printed wikipedia

See Wikipedia:cite sources. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:02, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

Word Dictionary

When studing a new subject like life and health insurance i find there is a whole aray of new volabulary. My thought would be able to list each new word in a formated screen and it search out the difination so One could study a sheet of defind words. This would be most helpful to the student in all grades and walke of life.

I'm not sure quite what you have in mind, but it sounds more like something for Wiktionary than for Wikipedia. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:24, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

I belive he is referring to a glossary abaut a particular subject. Yes, pheraps more appropiate to Wiktionary. AnyFile 15:26, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This can be done in Wikipedia. It already is. For example, see the article on Hostile takeovers in which there is a long list of terms. Just do the same thing in the Insurance article. --Munchkinguy 20:20, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Other Wikipedia languages are impossible to find!

Hi,

I suggest that you make it possible to find other Wikipedia languages from the main page. I knew it existed, but had a heck of a time finding it!

Thanks for the good work, Chris

There's an icon on the top right of the Main Page and all of the languages listed at the bottom of the page. I can't imagine it being any easier to find without disrupting the primary function of the English Wikipedia Main Page (that function, well, being the Main Page of the English Wikipedia). Cigarette 14:32, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Not only that, but http://www.wikipedia.org is purely concerned with helping you navigate your way to the language edition you want, so if you recommend Wikipedia to anyone who might be interested in more than one version, you can give them this address. As for finding other languages from the Main Page of the English Wikipedia, as has been said above, it couldn't be much easier. If you had a "heck of a time finding it", you may wish to switch your computer's monitor on. — Trilobite (Talk) 23:37, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hm,... I guess you're right. You see, the german main page has all languages listed on the left. So where do I look for it in the english page? On the left :-)! I find this a lot more "visible"! On a page which is so crowded with text I scroll to the very bottom, expecting to at least find other main sites down there (on the english site). I didn't find it, of course (yes, my monitor is small). And by the way - where's the link to www.wikipedia.org ? It should be at the bottom as well - or on the very top. Just like any home page (main page). Chris

Wikipedia: a vast multi-verse - NEWBIE ALERT

Geez Guys, I just dont have time to become an expert on policy et al, so, please forgive me if this should have gone under another area of the pump and also if this issue has already been addressed. If I sound fearful, it is because you guys can be kinda harsh, but I do admire the high standards maintained here. Ok.

I propose that when an article is deleted - especially one that is controversial and has generated lots of talk (e.g. Young Creationist stuff)- that you indicate the justification for its removal. Because, if a user runs across some mention of it (I noticed this in various areas) it appears as if you have no tolerance for the NPOV (have I used that term correctly?). Well, I think you get my drift here. If Wikipedia is truly democratic, no POV should be axed without some really sound policy behind that decision (I know there is, please indulge me) and the policy/justification should be cited (so you don't seem like a bunch of fascists) and available for review in a kind of article graveyard (not the articles themselves, just the titles and the justifications for their removal, so we can all sleep better at night.

Oh, and why cant there be a spell check on the spiffy tool bar right on top of this window? Apparently, I am not the only one who needs it. Thank you for your time, attention, and for this opportunity to join this wonderful wiki. I am barely out of the sandbox and I'm having way too much fun here! much platonic love --Lamusette 19:01, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If you want to know why something was deleted, you could look it up in the deletion log. --rbrwr^± 20:03, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Items are not normally deleted without spending several days at Votes for Deletion and you can see the debates on them there. The ones which are deleted without going through this process are mostly nonsense articles or abusive.-gadfium 22:43, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

'no POV should be axed without some really sound policy behind that decision'...I don't mean this to sound harsh, but how about the policy that this is an encyclopedia and therefore shouldn't contain mere opinion? --Ben davison 12:40, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

To counter all the Britannica claims, etc...

Perhaps we could embark on a major project in which we go through the Britannica and verify that we have a Wiki article for each of theirs, and at least as thorough as each. It'll take a long time, and is obviously subject to problems, but if we pull it off we can counter the standard Britannica argument that our articles aren't as good as theirs.--Etaonish 19:23, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

Here: Wikipedia:List of encyclopedia topics - Omegatron 19:59, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

Interesting. Thanks.--Etaonish 01:56, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

I'm afraid I'm fairly new here, so I don't know what “all the Britannica claims” refers to; could you explain please?

The short of it is that Britannica has been running a bit of a campaign to point out shortcomings in Wikipedia. Some of these are inaccuracies, others are omissions. While this would do little to address the inaccuracies, there are many periods of history and many regions of the world where their coverage is simply much more thogough than ours, and this could help to address that. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:09, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I suppose that it's quite sweet that the Britannica is worried enough to run such a campaign. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 18:15, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

But there are a great many areas where our coverage is superior to theirs. Also we are able to cover topics which used to be in EB which they have dumped to make room for modern ones, such as biographies of significant but minor historical characters. Also where does Britannica's campaign of pointing out our shortcomings occur?Apwoolrich 19:23, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What's to counter? If Britannica makes representations to market their service, sobeit. If they point out shortcomings in the Wikipedia system, that is more information available to the public. I might consider contributing to a free encyclopedia if I trusted the motives of those who run the thing, but I don't trust a group who, for no fiscal interest, seeks to discredit the concerns of a historically respected publisher. Counteradvertising by a volunteer project reeling from unprecedented build-out seems more like unrestrained adolescent ego or grandiose narcicism than service of a legitimate mission. I usually avoid search links that point to Wikipedia unless no other source is available, then I only use the information as a lead in further searches from reputable sources. I can think of no legitimate reason anyone should rebutt my skepticism or attempt to enforce faith in the accuracy of this untested -- yes, academically untested -- media. Let the work speak for itself.

And if mistakes are found in Wikipedia, at least they can be edited quickly. If mistakes are found in Britannica, they presumably have to wait till the next edition to correct it. --Ben davison 12:31, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

World Factbook Integration

Hey. Lets copy the CIA World Factbook into Wipipedia (Say have an Article named (for example) Factbook:Fiji or Fiji_Factbook). Sometimes going into the factbook is rather tedious when you are just searching for instant information. It is in the public domain, might as well post it all automatically. Nick Catalano 18:00, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You're several years too late. Most of the country articles have CIA World Factbook entries as a large part of their "heritage". Many of the subsections of the Factbook entries have been split off into their own articles, with a standard naming scheme (used for redirects even if the article's not there). See Military of Mexico for an example that hasn't evolved very far past the Factbook entry. Many are probably in need of updating though.

A straight unaltered mirror of the Factbook would belong at Wikisource if anywhere. -- Cyrius|✎ 21:14, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Song Lyrics

I believe that song lyrics fall under fair use and may thus be added to Wikipedia. Wikipedia could become a safe place for people to search for song lyrics.--Mb1000 17:11, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

They do not. Does no one remember the International Lyrics Server? -- Cyrius|✎ 19:07, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This is not to say that all song lyrics are copyrighted (just like anything else, if they are old enough they are public domain) or that copyrighted song lyrics are immune from fair use (for example, you can quote a line from a song as readily as you can quote a line from a novel). However, no, a repository of contemporary lyrics would basically be one big copyright violation, and even old songs -- traditional folk songs, forexample -- generally belong in WikiSource, not Wikipedia. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:21, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

Family Relationships

I'm not sure if this is best covered by "proposal", but none of the other sections seemed quite right either. Please see Talk:Family where I outline a scheme of pages I would like to create. Please add comment on it there. -- SGBailey 15:39, 2005 Mar 21 (UTC)

Quality information to the reader(s) and feedback to the writer(s)

Never wandered if the article you are looking at (before starting reading it) is new, old, complete...?

It should be technically easy to add to each article indicators about:

• How often it has been visited
• How often it has ben updated

This informtion should be take in account more the recent events.

Moreover it is possible that the writer(s) tell us their view on the quality of their articles and their completeness (e.g. in a scale from 1 to 5). In the same way the readers should be able to leave the same kind of information for future readers.

Anybody agrees? Any reason not to do this? 22:12, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)~

At the top of every page you'll see a tab that says "history". Follow this link and you'll be presented with the full list of revisions the article has gone through, when it's been changed and by whom, a summary of the edit they made, and you can click on the links there to see what the exact change was and how a past revision differs from the current version. It's all there. Number of page visits would be a great thing to include, but counting them places an unbearable load on the servers these days. Any reader or editor can leave comments on the article on its discussion page (again, link is at the top). A more formal process of article validation is regarded by many as the next step in Wikipedia's evolution, the logic being that first we concentrated on quantity, and now it's time to focus more on quality with the aim of finalising a "first edition" of Wikipedia. A system like the one you propose has been talked about endlessly and will likely appear in some form in the future. In the mean time, you're very welcome to leave feedback about an article on its talk page. Thanks for your comments. — Trilobite (Talk) 23:06, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Current surveys

• Halló! Wikipedia is a labyrinth. A Category:Current surveys would make life easier to find acutal Wikipedia:Current surveys with Special:Recentchangeslinked/Category:Current surveys. Regards Gangleri | Th | T 21:39, 2005 Mar 19 (UTC)

alternative name Category:Wikipedia:Surveys

interlanguage links nl:Categorie:Wikipedia:Stemmen pt:Categoria:!Votações ro:Categorie:Sondaje sv:Kategori:Wikipedia:Omröstningar

Regards Gangleri | Th | T 10:37, 2005 Mar 21 (UTC)

Number Stubs

Some integers have enough encyclopedic information about them that they warrant their own article, but in some cases it's just a stub. Why not consolidate these stubs into an article titled, for example, "Numbers 101-110"? Each number could be its own subheading. Lkjhgfdsa 16:18, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikimedia Collaboration of the Week

Wikimedia COTW on Meta is a proposal for a weekly cross-project collaboration similar in process to the Wikipedia:Collaboration of the Week (COTW). To trial this idea, I suggest adding a WM-COTW box to the English Wikipedia Community Portal.

Plase comment on this proposal at:

Wikipedia talk:Community Portal#Proposal: Wikimedia Collaboration of the Week

If this leads to people actually working and voting on the COTW, I will then proceed to propagate the idea to other projects. Ideally, the current WM-COTW would be prominently featured on all the sites, and lead to lots of activity on important tasks such as MediaWiki documentation and Wikimedia promotional materials, as well as an increased group identity, raised awareness of Wikimedia and Meta, and more exposure for our smaller projects.--Eloquence* 00:21, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)

Linked/Bookmarkable Special Search Page

I would like the Special Search Page to appear in the list of Special Pages, and/or be linked from en.wikipedia.org, so I can bookmark it, go right to it and get my search result without an intermediary step telling me that "Wikipedia search is disabled for performance reasons. You can search via Google or Yahoo! in the meantime." For instance, when I search for "US Congress" from the search box on en.wikipedia.org, I am directed to the the Special Search Page with the above error message and the option of using Google or Yahoo to search Wikipedia or the Web with "US Congress" filled in, in the search box. I would like instead to go directly to the Special Search Page with no search term typed in, so I could type in "US Congress" as my search term, check the Wikipedia option, hit the Google search button and thereby go directly to a list of results headed by "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_the_United_States", which is what I'm looking for.

Of course it would be good to resolve the Wikipedia Search performance problem too, but, in the meantime, the above would do just fine.

As a workaround you can use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=_ but you have to overwrite the underscore in the box.--Patrick 12:54, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Style guide proposed revision

• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/proposal would be a major revision. See Differences with the current style guide, Wikipedia:Manual of Style/proposal, and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style.
• Proposed changes include:
  • Changing the style regarding quotation marks.
  • Removal of references.
  • Removal of the style:
    • For serial commas.
    • Against contractions.
    • Against i.e., e.g., or n.b.
    • About Possessives of singular nouns ending in s.
    • About "alternate" and "alternative".
    • For "U.S."
  • Removal of: "If a word or phrase is generally regarded as correct, then prefer it to any other word or phrase that might be regarded as incorrect."
  • Weakening of the "Identity" section, including the style to "use terminology which subjects use for themselves".
• Reducing the section on "National varieties of English",. This would include changing "Articles that focus on a topic specific to a particular English-speaking country should generally conform to the spelling of that country" to &quot;Where an article is on a topic closely-related to one part of the English-speaking world, that article should be written in a form of standard English used in that part of the English-speaking world."

Maurreen 07:46, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Translator

I think that there should be a Wiki web translator. 152.163.100.66 03:00, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)CRB

I think there should be a big pile of gold coins on my doorstep. Oh, and world peace. Do you have any more idea how to move toward your laudable goal than I to mine? Or are you just saying? -- Jmabel | Talk 05:01, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with 152.163.100.66 --Alterego 07:09, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

Request for comments

• Wikipedia:Categorization policy is a bold proposal to make WP categorization more consistent and stable.

Poll about the use of Bible vs Christian Bible

There is currently a poll at Talk:Bible#Opinion_poll_--.3E_Bible_vs_Christian_Bible, you are invited to vote there. Jcbos 23:39, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

On reading this I have put a POV warning on New testament and one should go on the Bible entry as well, as they appear to be extremely pro-christian POV.--Jirate 15:00, 2005 Mar 16 (UTC)

Interwiki redirects

Interwiki redirects are missing a way to edit the redirect page. They should have a 5-second delay or the "(Redirected from en:TeX help)" or whatever implemented. - Omegatron 21:04, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

You just have to type the editing URL explicitly: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=FOO&action=edit. Is there somewhere we explain this in an appropriate help document? We should. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:07, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)

Indexing Wikipedia by timeline

I'm looking for feedback on the practicality of starting a new chronological index to articles, using a logarithmic timeline approach. I happen to have created a full-length (1000-line) timeline [5] that turns out to be very easy to convert-- a demo page is here.

I'm picturing inviting people to add as many articles as necessary to each line-- this duplicates the function of the categorizations by year and decade, but fits a lot more articles onto each index page, and by using the logarithmic line-numbers it provides an intuitive 'big picture' view of all of history. --robotwisdom 15:22, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

History/User talk link?

I've occasionally wanted to talk to people about edits they've made on articles, and every time I've wished that user-talk pages as well as user pages were linked in article histories. Would there be any way of adding link to those as well? Grutness|^hello? 23:33, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Search engine for categories.

I've noticed that when I find an article that I want to assign some category, it is very difficult to find the proper category. There are tens of thousands of them. Searching through the Special:Category page for the right one would take literally forever. Would it be possible to implement a search engine for categories? Or does this feature already exists, and I just don't know about it. DaveTheRed 07:43, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This is a problem. When the Wikipedia search is working, you can search just the category namespace. Also, I've written a program to generate graphs of the links between categories, so if there's a specific category which you want to see all the parents or children of, just let me know on my talk page and I'll cook up a graph for you. JesseW 01:52, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A simple solution is to open another window with a related article that you'd expect to find in the same categories. Say you're working on the article on Tonga and you don't know what category names to type. Open up the article Fiji and you'll see several that will probably apply. Grutness|^hello? 11:56, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Web to print

I've noticed sites like AlwaysOn[6] have gone from online to print—and there are a few more as part of this phenomenon. Is this a worthwhile article for Wikipedia? (Feel free to move this if I have put it in the wrong place.) Stombs 05:16, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Providing Wikipedia articles in audio format

Wikipedia is a great source of information to people around the world, but there are thousands of people who would love to be able to hear the content rather then read it, for instance people with eye problems or people that have trouble reading or people who don't want to waste their time listening to the radio or watching television when they could be listening to a world of knowledge, this will be possible when articles in the Wikipedia are made into audio files and made available for download, this concept is not new it was done with a book written by Lawrence Lessig called Free Culture http://webjay.org/by/lucas_gonze/lessigfreecultureaudiobookproject, several people made audio files of one of the chapters and made them avable to download as a podcast. Having the Wikipedia in the audio format would be a truly marvels resource.

Yes, it would be good. However, it would probably be a huge resource on our servers, so I would say that it is not a project for WikiMedia to apply themselves to. However, I would say that it could be done by an external source, taking the page from Wikipedia on the fly. I don't think this is feasible for us to do. Smoddy (t) (e) (g) 14:36, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me. — Matt Crypto 15:08, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The German wikipedia already has several Featured articles in audio format and .ogg-files don't take up all that much space. Nice idea. I support it. Mgm|^(talk) 17:18, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)

The other trouble is, unless we have on-the-fly generation (which is what my above reply was referring to) we are essentially creating forks of the page. It would only be possible to do this with articles that were essentially complete, which is against the wiki-spirit. Smoddy (t) (e) (g) 17:24, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

We could make it only in specific article, like the most visited page. And we could place information about the audio file, like "audio according to revision (number) on (date)". Roscoe x 22:35, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There is that. Would be better if we could have some kind of regular updates, though. Smoddy (_t^g_e^c) 23:54, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

wouln't it better to just text-to-speech what you want? You get to hear any article, up to date and don mess anyones servers space.--Alexandre Van de Sande 00:35, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

By combining podcasting with bittorrent it is possible to place the more of the bandwidth load on the people who are downloading the files, and as broadband becomes ubiquitous the bandwidth issue will become trival.

Text-to-speech is good but the voice lacks expressiveness also a some of the material in an article is not compatible with TTS so its not as good as a good reader, but as TTS becomes more refined these problems are sure to disappear. a good reader currently is far better at keeping most peoples attention then TTS and even a moderately good reader is better then TTS in that respect.The way to spread knowledge to the most people is to get them interested in learning so the more attractive the information is the more people will be interested in getting it remembering it and using it. most people will watch TV rather then read a book or read a blog its not that the books are not interesting so much that the TV uses audio video stimulation to capture peoples attention what we have in the wikipedia is so much better then what people have in the main stream media so lets see what we can do to make the information more attractive to more people.

Table namespace and editor

I added informal voting to the Proposal for intuitive table editor and namespace page. Please add your vote. Do you like it? Is it stupid? - Omegatron 16:34, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to move this page to meta and get more attention to it. How do I do this? (Where do I put it? Where do I announce it? etc.) - Omegatron 14:56, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Baseline revision

I have started off our first attempt to find a baseline revision for Common Unix Printing System. The proposal is here and is locked in to stop vandals from editing the URL to the revision: Common Unix Printing System/Proposed baseline. See the talk page to see the objections and review for the proposed baseline revision. - Ta bu shi da yu 02:59, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

AMD

I've had an idea in mind for a long time which I think can now be realized within the Wikipedia framework.

It's really pretty simple...an Audio Music Dictionary.

Just as its name implies, it would be a music dictionary with (mpeg) audio examples. Since music is often called a "language" in its own right, it makes sense to me that Wikipedia would be the right place for it to reside.

If you like the idea and can help me find a mentor to get this organized and underway, please respond here.

When I had the idea originally, I worked at it briefly with a Macintosh and HyperCard, but I was always thinking of the day when universal networking would make the project really possible.

BTW, I'm not clear on the signing instructions, but I'm reachable at 207.62.243.195 00:44, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC) carlnoe@gmail.com and the date is March 10, 2005

The main problem with this is liable to be copyrights. Even where works themselves are public domain, most recordings are copyrighted.

Also, if you are planning to spearhead a project, you really should open an account. It will make things simpler all around. Among other things, it will let you watchlist the relevant articles. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:56, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

A related project would be Wikimedia Commons, collecting free files. While there are mainly images, there is also a section for Music (commons:Category:Music). However, everything there has to be free, i.e. Public Domain, GFDL, Creative commons, ... Sorry, no Britney Spears. But, e.g. Enrico Caruso would be good. -- Chris 73 Talk 01:07, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I'll get an account Saturday and look into those things. (I'm on a library computer at a school right now.)

I think Chris is right...no copyrights would be needed on these sort of musical examples, and no copyrighted material would be allowed. As no one would copyright individual words in a dictionary, no one would copyright musical terms/examples in an AMD.

As an example, think of the word "flute" linked to an brief mpeg of an open-hole note played on a flute.

We use .ogg format on the wikipedia, as it is free from licensing and patents, etc. - Omegatron 16:34, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

Maybe this music thing should go in the Wikimedia Commons --Munchkinguy 19:34, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

please consider this idea about collecting ideas from everywhere

Consider all the people in the world, many of them thinking up new ideas or inventions from time to time. You know, the 2 a.m. brainwave that we have neither the money nor the training to bring to completion but that has some merit nevertheless.

How about building a data base that intakes ideas and idea fragments from all over the world, continuously, with a user-friendly and intelligently organized front-end. The data base itself has to be very robust, and also very intelligently organized. All ideas will be assigned to one or more categories, with many characteristics attachable.

The coolest part, and the reason for doing all of this, is to provide free access to any and all who wish to mine the database. Think of the synergy! This project could have tremendous impact on the development of the human race!

This project would provide enormous challenges for the people who organize it and make it interactive. What a fantastic and worthwhile enterprise, sort of like the Glass Bead Game a million times over.

The part I would like to play in it is to help create feed-in points in all countries and communities in the world. People submitting ideas could provide data about themselves if they chose to do so. This would permit others who found their ideas useful to contact them, or at least to know something about how the idea came about. And over time, the data would provide amazing information about the generation of ideas, the context in which they arise, and so on.

Anybody up for making this Idea Gathering Project a reality?

Linda Golley linda_golley@yahoo.com lgolley@u.washington.edu

This would be more appropriate on Meta. Maurreen 06:39, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sort of like www.halfbakery.com or www.shouldexist.org But yeah, I was thinking the same thing; that a wiki would be a great way to collaboratively invent things. - Omegatron 02:36, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

Although this would, yes, be more appropriate on meta, I can't help but comment that the tendency of humans to withhold their best ideas so that they are not stolen would be bound to limit its usefulness. Deco 10:43, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Limit, yes, destroy? Maybe not. Even if only 0.1% of the bright ideas that readers have were harnessed in this way, it might still provide the spark necessary for something positive to happen. It could become the world's biggest think-tank. Grutness|^hello? 12:02, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Someone just asked something similar. Check out halfbakery and shouldexist for similar websites. And you can always start your own if they don't want to on meta. Let me know if you do. :-) - Omegatron 00:09, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)

There is already such a wiki at http://inventions.wikicities.com/ (Wikicities is a wiki hosting company operated by Jimmy Wales). It's currently blank, maybe you can use it to develop your idea.--Eloquence* 00:17, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)

Proposal to control racing greyhound breeding numbers

Throughout the world we are witnessing major problems arising from a surplus of racing greyhounds. The greyhound has a very short racing career and only its suitability for breeding may save it from ??? There cannot be any justification for destroying a dog simply because it was too slow,too old ( 5yrs), too placid,too expensive to feed or any other feeble reasons proffered. I am full of praise for those wonderful people who run Greyhound Adoption Centres but alas I feel They are losing ground and it is now time for our Countries administrators to take action to protect these warm,wonderful but defenceless creatures. I am sure everybody connected with the sport would welcome controls to help alleviate the dark side of their pusuit.

To User:144.134.102.30: This is Wikipedia, an encyclopedia. We do not influence breeding programs of greyhounds. We only write about it if it is worth an encyclopedia article. While i in general are against the killing of animals just because they have outlived their usefulness, this is the wrong place for that. Sorry -- Chris 73 Talk 11:50, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

After the Tsunami in Asia, there was a link on the Wikipedia page that linked to a page talking about how to help out (donating money, etc). More people die every day from HIV-AIDS than from the September 11th Terrorist Attacks. Why is there not a "How to help with HIV-AIDS Releif" link? or a "Stop killing dogs" link? --Munchkinguy 15:50, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

More people die every day from heart disease than HIV-AIDS. Why not have a Stop smoking and lose some weight! link? Because this is an encyclopedia. The tsunami link was a rare exception. Helping those with HIV/AIDS is a great cause, but this just isn't the place to promote it. Carrp | Talk 17:16, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think the anon may have been confused by the idea of this page being for "proposals". Smoddy (t) (e) 17:21, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Question: Why/How was the tsunami link a "rare exception"? --Munchkinguy 19:32, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It is perfectly reasonable for an encyclopedia to explain and examine controversial and/or politically charged issues and other causes. It is perfectly reasonable for Wikipedia to have links to organizations working on those causes. The only thing we should require is that issues are presented in a NPOV way. That said, I think it would be good to have links to everything mentioned in the comments above -- without the inflammatory language. -- Samuel Wantman 03:51, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Go and Search buttons

(I use the classic skin) Would it be possible to get the Go and Search buttons to do their stuff but open in a new window if right clicked? -- SGBailey 09:36, 2005 Mar 9 (UTC)

WikiGalleries

I had a thought. With the new gallery syntax from MediaWiki 4, it has become very easy to create pages of images. These can be very useful to illustrate certain subjects where pictures can say as much as words, but where it is far harder to fit an adequate number of images into the text. An example of this would be Ancient Greece, but I am sure that many more could also be made. I guess this could be a use of the Commons, but I would consider it more of an encyclopedic thing, rather than being resources. Smoddy (t) (e) 19:24, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'd rather have large galleries on the commons. Articles should have images, but not be overloaded with images. -- Chris 73 Talk 05:30, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me. An Ancient Greece in pictures supplementry article would seem useful and encylopedic.--LukeSurl 18:17, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Image ALT text

The article on Australia has a couple of images with captions that include wikified links. The generated ALT text is the caption text, excluding the text contained within anchor tags ("[John Howard], the [Prime Minister of Australia]" comes out as ", the "). Surely it would be better to include the anchor text, and just exluded the anchor tags within the ALT text? Josh Parris 01:24, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• This is addressed in a wikipedia bug report. Josh Parris ✉ 00:43, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Modular electronics diagrams

Moved to Wikipedia:Modular electronics diagrams. - Omegatron 23:44, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

WExCUp

Please see and comment on Wikipedia:WExCUp, a new idea to organize a group of Wikipedians in a way to resolve various cleanup issues. - RedWordSmith 06:19, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

I like the idea. Thumbs up AlbinoMonkey ^(Talk) 15:18, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Yep, you've got yourself a member. Mgm|^(talk) 15:50, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

Using subpages to share sections of articles

• Article #1
  • Current: Kurdistan Workers Party
  • See: User:Coolcat/Kurdistan Workers Party
• Article #2
  • Current: Abdullah Öcalan
  • See: User:Coolcat/Abdullah Öcalan

Material on both articles are incorporated into each other, the Conviniant edit link provides easy edit. As far as the reader is concerned, Abdullah Öcalan did not change aside from a new {edit}. While PKK had some of the material in Abdullah Öcalan added as the man is relevant to the organisation.

Someone deleted the templates. Just asume that the information is pluged in to both articles. --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 00:38, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The subpages transcluded in are:

• User:Coolcat/Abdullah Öcalan/Abdullah Öcalan
• User:Coolcat/Kurdistan Workers Party/External links

User:Coolcat originally refactored the regular articles using templates for several sections; articles have since been reverted and templates deleted.

nb: Template:Kurdistan Workers Party/Timeline is still extant and used by both Kurdistan Workers Party && User:Coolcat/Kurdistan Workers Party

Examples in userspace reworked by — Davenbelle 06:36, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC) —  There is also a discussion on User talk:Davenbelle.

Tab names

I propose going back to the old names for the tabs. The new names which might be valid are very POV and need to be more neutral. I don't think I'm in the minority in wanting to go back to the "past", but if there is a consensus on keeping the new names it's okay by me. 172.192.204.47 05:14, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Um...check today's date ;) Philwelch 05:50, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It was an irritating april fools joke, I will find it funny in precisely 73 hours 43 minutes and 4 secconds. :P --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 07:01, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Agreed, the whole thing went overboard. I'm glad the front page now says it's a nihilartikel. r3m0t ^talk 09:54, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)

What did they say? I missed it... AlbinoMonkey ^(Talk) 02:46, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ranking

Discussion Moved to: WikiProject Rankings

A prosoposal to User:Dysprosia

Oh, may I marry you? r3m0t ^talk 23:01, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

A need for more interconnectivity between Wiki sites

It would be great if there were a Wiki.org (or whatever) that just shows all of the icons for all the Wiki sites. There should also be a navigation bar at the top or bottom of the screen that gives easy access to the other Wiki sites.