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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals).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

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locking pictures in articles

I have raised this issue before but I have to again. One or more users have been using some Wikipedia images, which are otherwise used validly in articles, as a means of vandalising other articles. Sexual images, particularly two images of penises, are being used to vandalise user pages. While the vandals have been blocked over and over again, because of their IP numbers they can only be blocked for short times.

Is there any way that potentially controverial images could have their usage restricted, so that they can only be used of relevant articles? Perhaps this could be done by means of a form of protection on the image, which would mean that, once protected, it could not be added to, or removed from, a page except by an admin? So for example, a protection could be placed in the penis images, meaning that no changes could take place on their file, so preventing the images from being linked to any page not already linked. A lot of time is being wasted reverting the vandal's insertion of the image over and over again on people's pages. Already some minor (but valid) images have had to be deleted because they were being used non-stop on other pages to vandalise them. There is a real danger that the likes of the penis images may end up having VfDs proposed because users see their deletion as the only way to stop the vandalism. Given that they are genuine and useful images when used in context, it would be a great pity to have to delete them. But unless some way can be found to stop their usage for vandalism purposes users may well go the deletion route having exhausted all other possibilities to stop the vandalism. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 05:03, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

File:Potentially questionable foo.png

Another perennial proposal; still well intentioned, still ineffective. I created this potentially questionable graphic in precisely 5 minutes and 38 seconds. (I don't doubt someone else could have done similar work in less time, but then, I'm a perfectionist and currently in thrall to PNG transparency.) Now, you may or may not find this especially offensive -- but would you want it on your user page? Unasked-for?

There is nothing whatever to stop anybody from uploading a potentially questionable graphic or photo -- homemade or swiped from the great sea of images surging about the net. Why, if I were in an exhibitionist frame of mind, I might have taken my camera and -- (but you don't even want to think about that, do you? Sorry.) Indeed, with a little care, I can produce a graphic that appears perfectly innocent and find a plausible justification for its display in article mainspace and stick it on your user page with accompanying text that will have you hopping mad. That wouldn't be very nice, though.

We have a number of disruptive editors and we do need to improve our methods of defending ourselves against these intrusions; we've left the door wide open far too long. But if we remove this method of self-expression from possibility, vandals will just take another way around.

The especially stupid vandal may simply wish to control-click an amusing photo of naughty bits, save it to his own store, and re-upload it under a different name. That's what I did in the case of the notorious Image:Autofellatio.jpg -- which was locked up, though not quite as you desire. (And the old one was better, dammit.)

There is a realm within which technical solutions may operate. This is not it. Besides, try to remember that application of a graffito is a fairly harmless way for fools to declare themselves. Let's leave them that outlet.— Xiong熊talk* 06:55, 2005 August 13 (UTC)

There is nothing whatever to stop anybody from uploading a potentially questionable graphic ... well no, that's not really true. A user has to have an account to upload an image. In cases where a user uploads an offensive image for the purposes of vandalism, we can both delete the image and block the user. This has generally proved effective. Which is why we now have the lesser problem that Jtdirl is refering to, that of anonymous users vandalising using less offensive images that we don't want to delete because they have legitimate uses. -- Solipsist 06:39, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry but having 40 users pages targeted for penises continually, having a penis put on a featured article, having a Wikipedia article that has been sourced internationally in publications changed to replace all its images with pictures of penises and star wars images, is not a minor matter. If it was only a once off, done occasionally we might laugh it off. But we cannot lock up to 50 articles and user pages constantly to stop that asshole. But it has got so serious that people will delete those images off Wikipedia entirely and/or place a long term block on the AOL IPs he uses, even though that would inconvenience hundreds of people. Already one teacher has privately indicated that he can no longer let his students look at our articles in class because he never knows whether a particular article about a historic figure or news event has a penis or a vagina placed in it. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 21:50, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, the children would be scarred for life... — David Remahl 06:09, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

You can make fun, David, or Chmod, or whatever your name is. Imagine if you worked behind the counter in a store. A woman with a young child complains about some porn magazines prominantly displayed behind the counter. You casually slur, "Yeah, the kid'll be scarred for life." -- Now, you know that that woman will never return to this store. Maybe you don't care, you just work here. But the owner of the store, your boss, will certainly care. He doesn't want to lose a potential customer. He will, in this order: 1) Fire you, and then 2) Remove the magazines. You protest: "Hey! That woman was wrong!" and he'll say, "Maybe. But her money just walked out the door. Right or wrong, I'm going to do what she wants." -- Now apply that to Wikipedia. The "money" in this case is actually prestige and respect. If Wikipedia doesn't get that then we're all wasting our time working on it. Now, Wikipedia is either a serious research tool or several thousand pages of graffiti. I'd like to think that it's the former. Your attitude, however, suggests that it's the latter. -- Ravenswood 07:27, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

Agreed, and to elaborate, note what Jtdirl / FearÉIREANN was saying: "... one teacher has privately indicated that he can no longer let his students look at our articles in class ...." I don't think there is much of anything on Wikipedia that would scar children (and I have young children), but I do think there are often things that could get schoolteachers fired. Modern society has placed many educators, particularly at the primary school level, in a very precarious position. But these are among the most important people in introducing children to the world of knowledge and research, etc. We need to respect these people's situation and needs, and, from a strictly pragmatic point of view, we need them on our side. — Nowhither 06:20, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Jtdirl's proposal. Hardly a day passes that there isn't some penis vandalism, and although it's usually reverted very quickly there's always a chance that someone will stumble upon the page before that happens, perhaps a child perhaps not. Either way there's a good chance that that someone's opinion of Wikipedia will plummit. As Solipsist says, it is much easier to monitor the uploading of questionable images than it is to monitor the use of the images already on the site. --Canderson7 01:13, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

I would support having a temporary means to restrict an image to particular page(s). It would have to be limited to say, a week. Even during that time, legitimate requests to cross-post the image must be granted. After that week, another means to control the problem must be found. This would probably consist of blocking certain users. In some cases, a range block might be necessary. Obviously, those range blocks must always be very short.--Superm401 | Talk 18:28, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

I think the restrictions should be permanent, at least until an admin moves/modifies them. We already get these images spammed almost daily, so it's safe to assume that someone will spam them again within 24 hours of the restriction running out, resulting in another immediate restriction. That being the case, a "temporary incident-based restriction" would really end up amounting to a permanent restriction anyway, with the added fun of weekly porno spam and a requirement for constant editor/admin maintenance to spot the weekly vandalism and re-implement the expired restriction. With regards to permanent restrictions, on the other hand, the situations where people need to cross-post one of the nasty images on wikipedia arise so rarely that it doesn't really add much of a burden to anyone to insist that such cross-posting go through an admin; certainly it happens far less frequently than our hypothetical weekly vandalism, and would cause far less disruption. Aquillion 02:09, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

I could accept this if we explain carefully that this ability must not be used only for "obscene" images in the case of extreme vandalism. Other controversial images could not be locked, and images could not be locked simply because they are obscene. There also must be a well-documented place to ask for cross-posting permission. Superm401 | Talk 02:16, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

Everyone is missing the point. I can create and upload potentially questionable images as fast as you put weird restrictions on their use. {chuckle} at the idea that anyone is currently deterred from uploading. Anyway, it's almost as disruptive to stick a fully-clothed Princess Leia on the George Bush page as it would be to put there an illustration of mooning.

Some content needs to be flagged -- you may not like that, but it's a rational compromise. See Toby. As far as uploads and vandalism in general is concerned, it is far past time for us to stop leaving all doors wide open to every passerby. We ought to have learned long ago that doing so means that the first several hundred rooms will have pee in all the corners.

I don't want to charge readers $24.95 a month to be Wikipedian Editors. I support openness in general; I even support limited anon editing. But the keyword is limited. We need to throttle anons and new users; we need to put liberal, but realistic limits on what they can do and how fast they can do it. By "realistic", I mean that we must control vandalism down to the point at which we can keep up with it. Obviously -- when complaints of this nature surface and drag on for days -- the problem is out of control.

Just as materialistic concerns cannot be allowed to destroy our ideals, idealism cannot be allowed to destroy our real value to the larger world. — Xiong熊talk* 22:54, 2005 August 22 (UTC)

But there are already many other limits and safeguards in place for uploading images, things that are not there for linking to already-existing ones. Uploading an image involves more time and work overall, and to upload an image, you have to be logged in. More importantly, there is a page that lists newly-uploaded images, and many people who watch it for copyvios and such. If we really wanted to stop image vandalism and damn the price, we could take it a step further and impose a short (say, half-hour) delay on all uploaded images before they can be linked to from any article; that would not only help with vandalism, but would let us catch obvious copyvios before they appear in Wikipedia. It would be a bother to many people, so I don't think it's necessary ATM; but it might be worth keeping in mind if things get really bad. Possibly it could just be used to restrict accounts that are 'newer' somehow (in line with what you said above about limiting newer users), though that is generally open to abuse. Aquillion 20:53, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

I think the real point is that we don't have the ability to watchlist the addition of images to pages from the image end. By watching an Image, we should be alerted not only to changes in the description page, but changes in which pages the image is included in. That is the software change we need to implement, not locking images.

However, in regards to locking specific filenames to specific pages, I think that would be fine(if, as Xiong explained, not particularly effective) specifically because it would be easily circumventable by uploading new copies. JesseW 01:00, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Why not lock image uploads to official users (logged in) then? Or have a dynamic user evaluation, where users can vote for articles and the respective writers get a reputation to gain rights (i.e modify images)? This could also be achieved by looking a the activity profile of a user. --BoP 09:15:49, 2005-09-02 (UTC)

I vote that all new image submissions should be flagged. Then, an admin could 'okay' it to be used. In the case of potentially offensive images, they should be permanently flagged and only show up on pages admins have okayed them to be on. That is, under my proposal, you could upload and use images exactly like you do now, but for A. new images, and B. potentially offensive images, an admin (or perhaps a certain number of votes by regular users) would have to 'unlock' them before they would show up. That way, if you visited an article on say George Bush, and it had a penis picture linked to it, you could have it just display a white background or some message until the pic was cleared.the1physicist 19:30, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

revert of old vandalism

Most vandalism gets reverted in a few minutes, but some remain unnoticed for months. I recently reverted a 4-month old vandalism in Angelina Jolie. I once remember reverting a 1-year old vandalism. I was wondering if there is a meta page which has got entries of vandalisms which are found very late. I could add this entry there. We can also have an association of Wikipedians who would pore through edit histories looking for unrevereted vandalisms. Jay 22:52, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

show protection reason on "view source"

I suggest that when the "view source" link of a protected page is accessed, it should show the reason for protection given by the administrator who last protected the page.

For example, instead of:

"This page has been locked to prevent editing; there are a number of reasons why this may be so, please see Wikipedia:Protected page."

The message should say something like:

"This page has been locked to prevent editing by non-administrators. The administrator who last protected the page gave the reason: visibility reasons."

Pages protected from moves only should show a similar message:

"This page has been locked to prevent moving by non-administrators. The administrator who last protected the page gave the reason: frequent vandalism."

Pages protected by default should have the message:

"Due to the software design, this page has been protected by default."

Also, when you click "view source", it also says "edit this page" in the title. It may be confusing for new users. --Ixfd64 00:46, 2005 September 3 (UTC)

'What links here' to show link text

If I create an article and create a link to 'painting' but put the visible link text as 'art', the reader is going to expect to see an article on art, not painting, which may not be how that article has been written. The destination should either include the expected content or the link be changed. This seems difficult to identify. If the 'What links here' results showed the link text, it would be easier to review article content and links to ensure the quality is maintained. If this takes up too much processor time it could be a new option. Joe1011010 12:27, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it would take much processor time at all. The "what links here" list acts like each entry is saved at the time the linking page is saved. I imagine that is what is actually done. So your suggested modification would require very little extra processing. I am a little iffy on the usefulness of this, though. I mean you are addressing a significant problem, but I am not sure whether you have solved it or not. Maybe more context would be needed to tell whether a link is "good"? I'm not sure. — Nowhither 03:37, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Automatically Generating Category-Lists from Categories

Extended categorys:

 From a conversation on User_talk:Grutness#Category:British_Hills_by_Height.
 A potential example is: Category:British_Hills_by_Height

Can I suggest a change the way a category is handled

• from only: [[:Category:Mountains_by_Elevation_(km)|3000m]]
• to optionally include: [[:Category:Mountains_by_Elevation_(km)|Name={{{PAGENAME}}}| elevation=150m| country=NZ| type=volcano| First Ascent=2005/07/31]] then this could easiliy be incorporated into wiki to generate a category that looks list a list/table: eg.

Name	Elevation	Country	Type	First Ascent
Mount Victoria	150m	New Zealand	Volcano	2005/07/30
Mount Wellington	151m	New Zealand	Volcano	2005/07/31
Mount Albert	152m	New Zealand	Volcano	2005/07/32

AND (but no so easily) a better idea still would be to embed some java script so that this table can be sorted ANYWAY that a user desired by clicking on any one cell in the heading:

Name	Elevation	Country	Type	First Ascent

Frankly, this change would involve recoding part of the PHP engine. I could do this if required.

Any takers?

¢ NevilleDNZ 03:43, 2 September 2005 (UTC) ¢

Here is a wonderful example of what I am thinking. Ironically it is for another planet.

http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/jsp/FeatureTypesData2.jsp?systemID=5&bodyID=7&typeID=27&system=Jupiter&body=Io&type=Mons,%20montes&sort=AName&show=All

¢ NevilleDNZ 04:30, 4 September 2005 (UTC) ¢

That looks very similar to the following proposal:

Semantics: Categories, properties and navigation

It seems that the problem of categories, lists, series boxes, navigation bars etc. could be resolved in a structured way, just by building a basic semantic system. Here the proposal:

1. add properties of lemmata within a category: (i.e. Lemma:Missisippi, category:river with properties: length:..., continent:..., country:..., ..., etc.) Properties might be images as well. (i.e. image of Missisippi)
2. replace/enhance category by template for category: including display of properties and a "sort by" option. This makes lists within articles obsolete and nicely structured
3. replace lists by category templates: lists should only be a part of a category and should not destroy the flow of an article
4. replace "wild grown" property boxes by real category-property-templates: (i.e. within the lemma Missisippi one can just insert the temaplate category:river and everything is nicely laid out, no need to format a huge unmaintainable table anymore.
5. add navigation templates: Allow for templates that can access the properties within one lemma to directly navigate to the appropriate category, select one of the properties, display the ~5 closest entries within the property (including links, of course) - this replaces "wild grown" navigation bars
6. add an option to activate/deactivate navigation bars in the preferences

It would structure the content in an efficient mannor, while keeping it transparent and easy to maintain. This way the mess with categories, lists, navigation bars, etc. would find a "happy ending", finally...

I definitely would second your proposal! But do not forget an option to trunctuate/shift properties that surpass the width of the screen (maybe with Java/ECMAscript?) --BoP 08:31:34, 2005-09-02 (UTC)

As far as NevilleDNZ's proposal is concerned, this argument is an extension of one currently going on at both CFD and, it must be said, on my user page. The basic proposal, as I see it, is to use categories to sort things as lists, which, surely, is what lists are for. Categories and lists currently serve completely different purposes - a category is simply an index of all the articles on a particular topic - a list takes things one stage further by allowing a place for more information about particular items which may or may not yet have their own article. As such, they are much more flexible, and allow the scope to list items not yet with, or never to have, their own article. personally, I don't see the point of creating an extra variant on the category which will be far more difficult to keep track of (A mistake in ten items on a list? One edit fixes it. A mistake in ten items in a category? Open each one to make the changes), less able to store extra information about the items in it, and less clear to read. Compare his Category:NZ Mountains by Elevation with the quickly created List of New Zealand mountains by height, and see for yourself which one is easier to comprehend. Grutness...wha?

I agree with the problem that categories usually are build bottom up, which means that you've got to have an article on these. On the other hand you have to ask yourself if the information stored in the list already makes it worth to have a lemma on its own. In your example the links for the lemmata (i.e. Mount Pirongia) are already in the list, but the lemmata are just not generated, which makes no difference. In the proposal above it was not ment to store the properties within the lemma, but within the category - also to reduce the number of table-lookups. Therfore the List of New Zealand mountains by height would become a - Category:mountains, property:Country="New Zealand", sort:elevation>1000m So all the lookups can be done within the category, even if one wants to add this information into the lemma. In case you want to access the property within the lemma you write:

instead of: {{category_mountain|globe=earth|region=NZ|elevation=0962}} inside the article inside the category "{property:height category:Mountain:Name="Mount Pirongia"}" and get the height updated from the category. This way a change in the list of New Zealand mountains would update all the entries in the lemma. And you can maintain the full list in the category. Templates like "mountains in mexico over 1000 metres" would then be a similar lookup in the category.

I personally think that an article on "mountains in NZ over 1000m" is a nonsense as a lemma and should be a database lookup instead (which is not supported now, but is essential to structured information IMHO). To perfect the idea one would have to be able to update the information also within the article, which would be generated dynamically by the engine:

to update the category entry within the article by stating the obvious: {{category_mountain|globe=earth|region=NZ|elevation=0962}}

If there would be a template for inserting a database lookup, that can be edited from within every call, one could easily place a "list of NZ-mountains" by placing a static lookup into an article (like: {{tablelookup category_mountain|globe=earth|region=NZ|elevation>0962 format:Name|longitude|latitudue|elevation sortby:Name}}), that is expanded by the engine. One can maintain the list by editing the list itself, which would open the editor with the expanded list to manipulate the entries inside the category. An adjustment in the online editor, that gives you a dropdown list of properties for the categories of the current lemma to insert would complete the functionality needed to reduce errors. It is obvious that Wikipedia has to go one step further, not to become frozen in time. We should reduce clutter like formatting statements for table generation and concentrate on content and semantics. --BoP 13:38:46, 2005-09-02 (UTC)

Appearance of links

I happened to be on the German version of Wikipedia; their links are in blue, like the English version, but without underlining (unless the pointer is placed directly over them). I have long thought that with all of the links present (in blue and with underlines) the text in English articles is often not very readable. The text in the German version, with links simply in blue, is much easier to read, as well as having a much better look to it. Can the English-version links be made to look like those in the German one?

I posted this previously in the General Complaints page, but got only a short reply to the effect that the particular editor liked it that way, and that links on the Internet have underlines. That still doesn't answer the question of why the German Wikipedians chose to do things differently. S. Neuman 15:16, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Go to your your preferences and look at the first item under "Misc". I have underlining turned off, but I think that the default should be to have underlining, as it's what web-users are accustomned to. Bovlb 17:46:25, 2005-08-28 (UTC)

I second the proposal, and propose a new item under the mics -- selective underlining.

If I choose selective underlining, All EXTERNAL links (links to resources outside of Wikipedia), as well as EXTRA-BODY links (links in the Category section, table of contents, left and top menus, boxes, etc should keep their underlining, since in those places underlines do not interfere with reading. But all internal links within the main body of the article should be deunderlined.

This will both keep recognizing and browsing important items easy, and make reading large amounts of text easier, without constant underlines.Elvarg 06:32, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categorization/Gender, race and sexuality

From the page: Obviously we should have categories about feminism, race activists, LGBT liberalists etc. That is not being debated here. People who have made important contributions for equal rights should obviously be recognized as such. The issue here is whether it's appropriate to classify everybody as such, e.g. "scientists by race", or if it's more appropriate to combine those into "scientists" since that is the more important trait. See Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Gender, race and sexuality Steve block talk 08:55, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Tally reverts by each registered user

Reverts without real explanations are contrary to good practice. Nevertheless, they seem to be common. However, this problem could be alleviated by upgrading the software to: (1) add a field for explanations; (2) tally the reverts which lack an explanation by each registered user; and (3) post the results for all to see. Thus, a frequently offensive practice might be minimized. 162.84.72.171 02:16, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

99% of automatic reverts don't need explanations, and the use of the rollback function is designed specifically to be a one-click fast solution. No attempt to bog it down should be made. --Golbez 21:32, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

How do we know this percentage? Editors would still be free to explain or not -- real information about the practice would just become available, perhaps for the first time. Or, would you rescind the following? "Be respectful to others and their points of view. This means primarily: Do not simply revert changes in a dispute. When someone makes an edit you consider biased or inaccurate, improve the edit, rather than reverting it. Provide a good edit summary when making significant changes that other users might object to." from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_resolution 162.84.72.171 21:54, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

I spend a ridiculous percentage of my time on Wikipedia reverting edits that range from vandalism to redundancy to just plain ignorance. Most of the editors in question didn't take the time to write edit summaries. When the matter is substantive, I always write an edit summary and often a talk page comment as well, but when it's not, why should I have to take the additional time to write an edit summary in order to fix the mess? -- Jmabel | Talk 06:30, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

I agree that you shouldn't have to take additional time to write an edit summary for vandalism or ignorance, and this proposal doesn't require it. Editors would still be free to write a summary or not. We're not under deadlines here, so we can afford time to respect sincere contributors. While you are apparently not one of the offenders, the proposed change would facilitate identifying them. Unexplained reverts discourage contributors. Registered users seem to revert more frequently than anons. However, registration does not automatically make one a superior editor. And, of course, today's anons are tomorrow's registered users and admins. 162.84.72.171 22:49, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Generic image file names

Quite accidentally I noted unintended "revert wars" on "Image:Logo.gif". People upload a logo without checking what's already there. I uploaded this, instead: File:Pleasedont.gif

and notified a couple of users that used the image, even re-named one user's image on his behalf. I also checked "Image:Logo.jpg" and "Image:Logo.png", and did the same. No links should have been left hanging, except for one user's user pages, and I've informed him/her on the talk page.

It goes without saying that images with generic names must be protected for this scheme to work. Please check here to see if the above image has been changed since I originally posted this.

Would this procedure be a good idea for other generic image file names? (such as "Photo.jpg", "Image.gif" etc.)?

Let's discuss this on Wikipedia:Centralized_discussion/Generic_image_file_names. Thanks! --Janke | Talk 17:33:23, 2005-08-31 (UTC)

Proposal: Editors' Resources "Template Tag"

At the beginning of becoming a Wikipedian, I found that the amount of pages / information about editing and moderating pages so immense. So, I propose that all pages that help on the creation and editing of pages (eg Template Messages) require a "template tag" at the top.

My "template tag" is this:

As you can see by the above template proposal, I also plan to create an Editors' Portal. This will give the low-down on different pages (Templates, Tutorials etc.) that an editor can use.

Also, because all pages that display that template will link to the editors' portal, one can use the What links here feature to see a complete list of Editors' Resources. My proposed portal preview is available below.

Why not link just to the Community Portal? Because so many pages already link to it. If just editors' resources link to it, then the What links here feature will just contain editors' resources. Proposed portal will contain certain major editors' resources grouped into boxes.

Not a bad idea, but why the "nomultilicense" image? ~~ N (t/c)

Sorry, mistake. now changed. --Heebiejeebieclub 19:15, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Update - I'll go ahead with that, and use the redirecting page, as explained below. I don't think there's a need for another portal. I'll also put the tag in the templates area, and start putting it on "editors' resource" pages. --Heebiejeebieclub 16:56, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Further update Only put tag on a few pages, just wanted go-ahead before continuing.

I'm confused by this(probably my problem): Isn't everything in the Wikipedia namespace other than policy and guidelines, discussion and debate pages, humor and fun, a Editor's resource? Isn't that the default status for a page in the Wikipedia namespace? While creating a nice list of resources is useful (and we already have quite a few({{welcome}}, Category:Wikipedia(although this still needs quite a bit of cleanup), the Manual of Style, and Help:Contents), it is not(AFAIK) difficult to identify a page as being "to help edit pages". Could you expand on this? JesseW 05:11, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Another Option

An alternative to the portal idea is to have the editors' resource pages link to a page that redirects to the community portal, along with a separate link: "Complate list of er pages" which links to the What links here of the redirect page.

--Heebiejeebieclub 18:47, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Open Letter to Wikipedians

Found at User_talk:TheMessenger and moved here - The Uninvited Co., Inc.

Greetings and salutations to my fellow Wikipedians. I am writing to you today as an appeal for higher standards of editing here on Wikipedia. Today Wikipedia is filled with infighting, vandalism, trolling, and the insertion of false information into otherwise good articles. If the current course of Wikipedia remains unaltered I fear the project will soon fail. There are steps we as Wikipedians can take to prevent this course, but I do not think the community at large will take them without drastic measures. This brings me to why I am here.

I represent the Cabale de Wikipedia or CDW. Yes, we did purposefully choose our name to mock the fictious Wikipedia Cabal. Our purpose here is simple: since Wikipedia has not listened to reason or properly dealt with the threats it faces we will dedicate ourselves to making it see what needs to be done through other means. Discussion has failed, consensus has failed, it is now time for action.

Let me admit up front that our means will be in direct violation of WP:POINT. We realize this and it makes us very sad. We will deserve to be banned from editing. Those of us who hold administrator powers will deserve to have it stripped. It's taken a long time for all of us to come to an agreement, but finally after witnessing the recent Willy on Wheels resurgence we feel we have no other choice. We cannot allow Wikipedia to remain the sort of place where this can happen. Action needs to be taken. If we need to bring Wikipedia to it's proverbial knees to prove what needs to be done, so be it. We are willing to do what needs to be done.

What I am talking about is a Reign of Terror on Wikipedia by the CDW. We've taken months to write scripts to aid us in severly impedeing Wikipedia's progress, we've recruited almost a hundred users, and we have many administrators within our ranks. We are poised to vandalize Wikipedia in such a way that will make Willy on Wheels seem a minor nusiance in comparison. Think of what Willy could do with administrator rights. That will happen. Think of what would happen if suddenly from fifty or more servers world wide, the GNAA decided to vandalize Wikipedia. That will happen. We will bring Wikipedia to a standstill.

But again, we don't want to do this. That is why we're sending this message, and why we're going to tell you what must be done. We promise not to start our proactive campaign until after October 1st. If the needs of Wikipedia have been met by then, we will call off our crusade and turn ourselves in before we begin. What we want is only what is best for Wikipedia.

Here is a list of our requests:

1. Anonymous editing should be blocked. More harm than good comes from this.
2. All accounts should be tied to a unique e-mail account to discourage sock puppets and to hold users accountable for their actions and behavior.
3. No quarter or forgiveness should be shown to trolls and obvious vandals. Any obvious vandalism and trolling should be dealt with without any sympathy or second chances.
4. Administrators who abuse their power should be stripped of it, with no second chances.
5. Administrators who show extreme POV tendancies should be stripped of their power, with no second chances.
6. Finally and most importantly (the above are open to discussion but this is not) a rollback button needs to be implemented for all user edits within a given time frame. If this alone is implemented, we will discuss calling off the campaign. If it is not, Wikipedia has no hope. Willy on Wheels has proven why this is necessary.

I invite all users to discuss this message, but request it be left intact. Someone will no doubt VfD this article. It probably should be VfD'ed. But at the very least people need to read this and start discussing what needs to be changed on Wikipedia.

Until October 1st, TheMessenger 18:41, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

• I agree with some of your points, however I have to disagree with the idea that all anonymous editing should be blocked, and that accounts should be tied to an e-mail. In my experience on rc patrol the reverse of what you say about anonymous edits is true. Most are legitimate. As for e-mail accounts. There are a number of reasons that this could be problematic. First of all, there are various legitimate bots and role accounts in use. Users would have to get an e-mail just for these. Also, this would be a problem for users who are adding information that people don't want to get out, or to users under restrictive regimes. CAPS LOCK 18:45, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
  • As I said, we feel some of these are negotiable. We just feel that discussion and real work to improve the situation will not happen without a very real threat. It's an issue with many sides and many opinions. Maybe not all anonymous edits should be blocked... but I disagree. As per e-mails, don't keep the e-mails on record, just hash them a value and compare hash values on new accounts. Yes people could still have multiple accounts on multiple e-mails, but it would add a layer of security. TheMessenger 18:48, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

I was with you up to #5. #5 is one of those "what's a POV" things that is the very source of a lot of the paralysis that keeps the vandals running free and the trolls well fed, and trying to make a no mercy policy on that is hard, if not impossible. The rest seem cool to me, but so long as democracy is necessary for any change and quorum is not and democracy is responsible for any move that reduces the democracy, there's no hope. There is no power structure in place that could meet these demands because there is no power structure in place that would have made them unnecessary. Geogre 18:23, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for respecting our processes.

No offense, but you're a bit of an odd one, you know that? :/ CAPS LOCK 18:42, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:How to create policy for the constructive way of getting things changed. The "demands" presented here have been discussed before as proposals and rejected. In particular, "anonymous editing should be blocked" has never gotten any significant support. The "campaign" threats are irrelevant and disruptive, but while they're confined to your talk page I'm certain nobody will overestimate their importance.

The proposals contained in this message have been brought up many times, and they've always failed (see Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)). You're free to start yet another discussion on them at the village pump, provided you do so without threats of vandalising or disruption, which I will revert on sight. If you feel "discussion" and "consensus" have failed, you're free not to edit Wikipedia. You are not, however, free to vandalize it, or threaten to do so. Troll in your own time. JRM · Talk 19:00, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

You seem to misunderstand. Discussion has failed. We will vandalize Wikipedia to make our point. This is not negotiable. Several users have realized this failing, RickK being one of the most prominent. There is no other choice. We have formed a consensus as to our course of action. TheMessenger 19:19, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Right. See you around, then. I'll be ready to block you if you vandalize. That, too, is not negotiable. JRM · Talk 19:42, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

"Since Wikipedia has not listened to reason or properly dealt with the threats it faces we will dedicate ourselves to making it see what needs to be done through other means." Like, for instance, creating your own fork of Wikipedia, making your own rules for it, and showing the rest of us how to do it right? FreplySpang (talk) 19:27, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

I suppose there is another way: simply keep going, reverting vandals as they come, and leaving the project when you feel burnt out. If you feel burnt out, this doesn't mean Wikipedia has failed. It just means that you need a wikiholiday. Wikipedia has not "failed", it is prospering. Yes, WoW is a nuisance, we don't need any more disruption to agree to that. As long as there are people willing to clean up after him, fine. What if admins just boycott the cleaning-up for some time? That would put pressure on the project without qualifying as WP:POINT. If enough admins simply went on strike with such demand, it would have some effect, and nobody could blame them. Your 'main' demand, rolling back of all edits by a particular user, within time limits, is a decent proposal for a software update. That's up to the developers, you cannot pressure the editor community into a software update. dab (ᛏ) 20:12, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, and I want a pony. Tim Rhymeless (Er...let's shimmy) 21:42, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

But seriously..why would you want to do this in the first place...you could be writing scripts to do the exact opposite that you're apparently intending to do. This looks more like an excuse to do something naughty, looking for any excuse, no matter how paltry. Believe me, I know that from experience. I imagine you want to feel justified by doing this. I just hope you know that there's no looking back when it comes to this. I'd wish you luck, but.... Oh. Yeah. I don't. Tim Rhymeless (Er...let's shimmy) 21:46, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, as dab says, we are powerless to implement new tools. That's up to the developers; you could try contacting them. As for anonynomous IP editing- that is one of the major strengths of Wikipedia. If we started limiting editing priviledges, articles would develop much slower. Most anon IP edits are good; only a small percentage are problematic. Also, I do wish you wouldn't threaten mass vandalism; this blackmail will not accomplish anything, besides getting yourself blocked and creating more work. Thanks! Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 21:49, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

This is just some kid trolling. Probably the same one who claimed that vandalism would start on the 25th August. (I av't remeber the username of that one) Theresa Knott (a tenth stroke) 22:20, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

It was Socknet, and I agree. No way they have an admin on their side. Even if their threats of WikiTerrorism are true, they'll be dealt with by some rapid developer work, no doubt. ~~ N (t/c) 22:44, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Hehe. The same way the developers have rapidly put a stop to Willy on Wheels? Aquillion 19:58, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

WoW is a manageable problem. If this proved not to be, they would be forced to do something - go temporarily read-only, even, while a solution was implemented. ~~ N (t/c) 21:08, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Is anyone else reminded of a combination of John Gault and a sooky, overzealous 6-year-old? Slac speak up! 05:08, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

What is the best community response?

I wonder whether perhaps this is User:-Ril-, who has always been fond of claiming ownership of an account with administrative rights, and who is fond of ascribing POV motives to the actions of admins. In any case, the threat rings hollow, since it implies that the pro-disruption group includes two or more admins, which I doubt. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 22:22, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Here's the best community response: don't feed the trolls. And that's all I'll say about the matter. JRM · Talk 22:35, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Awww, can't we tell him to just BRING IT ON_TINC pweeeease? *innocent look* Kim Bruning 23:17, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

"Whatever."? Noisy | Talk 23:59, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

LOL.—Encephalon | ^ζ  03:33:19, 2005-09-01 (UTC)

A bunch of thoughts

Several thoughts about this discussion:

There seem to be some fallacies here. First, we cannot measure impact of anonymous editing on Wikipedia, by what fraction of anonymous edits are beneficial. Vandalism in general (in the real world) is this way. One million people gaze at a famous painting and move on. One person lights a match under it. No more painting. The vast majority of people did not hurt the painting, but the painting was irreparably damaged anyway. Now, what TheMessenger said was, " Anonymous editing should be blocked. More harm than good comes from this." I cannot say whether I agree, but noting that most anonymous edits are beneficial does not refute his statement.

Second, there seems to be an idea that e-mail addresses are somehow a good way to authenticate people, prevent sockpuppets, etc. Thus, TheMessenger wants to require them in order to better hold editors accountable, while CAPSLOCK seems to be arguing that this would be an undue hardship for bot owners, and also for citizens of countries with restrictive governments. Well, I did an experiment: I went to a free e-mail service, signed up for an account under a false name, activated it, went to Wikipedia, created a new ID listing my new e-mail, checked my e-mail, chose a Wikipedia page to edit, went into edit mode, made a random change, and previewed (but did not save!). Total elapsed time: 4 minutes 40 seconds. And that was on a dial-up connection. E-mail addresses are very easy to get and use, folks. Requiring them might discourage stupid vandals (which would be worth doing), but they are useless against determined, knowledgeable people, as an authentication measure, or as sockpuppet prevention. And requiring them would be only a very minor inconvenience for anyone (compared to the work of writing and running a bot, hardly any inconvenience at all).

Now, about the requests/demands: I don't think #1 and #2 matter much (see above). #3-#5 are cultural changes. All three are worthwhile, I think, but they are not something we can just implement and then say, "It's done". It would be more of a gradual evolution, but one I would welcome.

#6 is the only substantive one on the list. And it is an excellent idea. Of course, it would take work.

Concerning the "Reign of Terror", consider that there are lots of jerks on the net. Large scale automated vandalism will happen. I repeat: it will. If Wikipedia cannot handle it, then Wikipedia will die. If Wikipedia cannot deal with such an attack without giving in to demands, then Wikipedia is open to control by anyone with a DDOS network.

This leads me to an interesting conclusion: I rather welcome the threatened attacks, since such things will come someday, and we are probably much better off if they come the first time from someone who at least thinks he has Wikipedia's best interests at heart. Think of this as a test. Can it be dealt with? We shall see.

I also end up with mixed feelings about the demands. Most of them are good ideas that I would like to see implemented. On the other hand, Wikipedia must not implement such things based on threats, even if they are carried out. Actually, the developers may need to implement #6 just for protection, if the threats become reality.

— Nowhither 05:51, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Large-scale vandalism

Agree with Nowhither , at some point, large-scale vandalism, possibly originating from a stolen admin account, will happen sooner or later. Hopefully WP syadmis are preparing for this. Are they? Who knows?

Meanwhile, much of the burden of revieweing edits could be improved with better tools. For example, I would love to know if one of my trusted collegues has already reviewed the same edit I'm reviewing. This would greatly reduce my review burden, and allow me to monitor many, many, many more articles. linas 23:35, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Excellent idea. How can we provide information about approval of an article in a concise format that it burdensome neither to the user nor the server? Ideally, I would like to have a list of "reviewers that I approve of", and I would like to check whether any of them has reviewed the latest version of an article in question. — Nowhither 18:27, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Start your own fork

If you think you can do things better, then by all means, give it a shot. There's nothing preventing you and Willy from running your own en.cabalepedia.org with whatever rules you want. Copy all of our content over to it. It's free, remember? Use your supposed script-writing expertise to mirror any changes made to the real wikipedia into a buffer on your site, where they can be reviewed before going live. Keep the things you like and throw away the things you don't. Restrict people from editing, only allow editors with PhDs, give everyone the ability to delete pages permanently and ban each other; no one is stopping you.

Since your methods are so superior, they will naturally lead to a migration of editors from here to there, your 'pedia will reach critical mass and will start growing faster than ours! Before long you'll be the first result in google searches. Then you will have won and we will all be proven wrong! (Hell, maybe we could "compromise" with them by hosting such a "social experiment" fork on our own servers. They can have their own little 'pedia for free in exchange for not having an incentive to vandalize (as if the incentive to vandalize actually had anything to do with this...) If they prove that their way is better by example, we can implement the same changes here.)

There are lots of people who agree with your ideas (I agree with some of them), but they're not going to be implemented like this. Sorry. If no one will listen to your demands through normal channels, then your demands are probably unreasonable. Try challenging your own ideas instead of trying to force them on everyone else.

Threats will get you nowhere. Good luck with your stupid crusade. Thanks in advance for wasting everyone's time. Omegatron (talk) 23:55, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

• I have to agree with Omegatron on this one. If wikipedia is as awful as your say, I have two sets of questions:
  • (1) Why are you so committed to Wikipedia? Why commit so much time and effort to a site that, as you put it, "will soon fail?" Are you so committed to keeping the site alive that you're literally threatening a Reign of Terror on those who use the site? Are you so convinced that you are right and that the entirity of the rest of wikipedia is wrong (barring an unspecified number of unnamed compatriots) that you're willing to force your views on the rest of us? If this last is the case, that's quite a case of zealotry you've got there. I don't mean to impune you personally; I'm sure you are taking these actions with the best of intentions (to improve wikipedia). I also don't mean to say that drastic measures aren't sometimes necesary. However, I do believe that this is neither the time nor manner for such action.
  • (2) Just to echo Omegatron: why not just start you're own wikipedia? If you have "fifty or more servers worldwide," surely you should be able to house at least a skeleton version of wikipedia, at least enough to demonstrate its superiority. While it does have problems, wikipedia seems (to me at least) to work well at least three-quarters of the time, if not more. If you create a system that can show itself to me as better, I would gladly switch (or at least give it preference).
• Just some thoughts. Here's hoping that, whatever you decide to do, you are happy with your choice and yourself when it's all done. =) (The Swami 08:41, 30 August 2005 (UTC))

Rollback for all edits from a user within a specific period

You know those months you spent writing scripts to vandalise Wikipedia, and gathering an army of hundreds of editors ready to unleash a catastrophe on the project like never seen before? Maybe those months would have been better spent actually writing the feature you're asking for, rather than attempting to extort someone else into writing it for you.

Of course, this isn't the first time someone has threatened Wikipedia with total destruction unless their demands are met. Who can forget the Wikibomb? Well OK, maybe lots of people can forget it, since it kind of failed to go off. I found both that threat and this one pretty amusing. -- Tim Starling 04:23, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Tim, and I have full confidence in the entire team of janitors to be rolling back your edits, blocking you, locking the database if necessary, etc. Remember, there are two sides to this. There's the side which are pure scum; vandalising, trolling, etc. and there's the relentless reverters; the anti-vandals. The people who dedicate a lot of time and effort into preserving a free resource for human knowledge. You just crossed the line from being the latter, to being the former. Rob Church ^{Talk | Desk} 20:31, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Permalink in the sidebar

I would like to propose adding a "permalink" in the Sidebar. Since permanent links to the current version are now possible, I think it would be a useful addition for people who want to link to a version that they can be guaranteed is not vandalism. See meta:MediaWiki:Permalink-url. Angela. 06:32, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

I agree; it would be nice to have an easy way to link to a guaranteed vandalism-free article. However, I have two concerns. First, it is clear that how Wikipedia works is generally highly misunderstood. By doing this, we would be encouraging links that violate what Wikipedia is all about. And people won't know that. I can imagine lots of people saying, "Look at this lousy article", with a link that is still to the bad stuff even after the article is fixed. Second, what about permalinks to copyvio's? This is already a possible problem, but encouraging permalinks may make it a big problem. — Nowhither 08:12, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't quite understand what this is, Ang; do you mean someone would pick what permalink to go there? Or would it be a permalink to the current version displayed? --Golbez 09:35, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

The permalink would be to the current revision, using the {{REVISIONID}} variable. See also permalink. Angela. 11:32, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

Hm... maybe clicking on the 'permalink' could send you to a page with a copy-pastable block like below.--Pharos 13:11, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

[http://permalink.whatever Wikipedia article X as of 16:13, 21 August 2005]

Or we could just put this in the MediaWiki box at the bottom of every article, where the time of last modification is already listed anyway.--Pharos 13:16, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

A "permalink" URL can be retrieved from the page history already, by clicking on the last revision, but wouldn't it be most useful to display the "permanent" URL on the page itself somewhere, rather than having to click a link to get to it? -- ALoan (Talk) 13:43, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that was the aim - to make it easily accessible. Most people wouldn't know to look in the history, especially those familar with older versions of MediaWiki where you couldn't get a permalink to the current revision. Angela. 19:10, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

What about a box between the search box and the toolbox labeled "Cite this article" or something similar. It would have three links - "Help", linking to Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia; Dynamic url (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barmy_Army ); Static url (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barmy_Army&oldid=19708530 ). The terms for these might be improvable.

I think we should also make the text at the top of old revisions and link to the current revision more prominent, and also include a link to a page that explains the revision system. Thryduulf 14:57, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

I was thinking a link in the toolbox, next to "printable version", since functionally, that's where it fits. It's live now as a demo. What do you think? -- Tim Starling 18:44, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

I think calling it "Permanent link" might be a little more explanatory. BTW, where's the MediaWiki page for the toolbox?--Pharos 19:03, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

I think permalink is the more common term. It has far more Google hits and is likely to be very familiar to anyone who reads blogs since they generally have permalinks on every post. Angela. 19:10, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not just for people who read blogs. "Permanent link" is understandable to everyone, while "permalink" is only used among a specialized community.--Pharos 19:17, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree, we should avoid the use of neologisms in the interface, please change it. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason (talk) 17:14:05, 2005-08-25 (UTC)

Permalink. This is probably a stupid question, but where is the "toolbox"? Could I have switched it off? -- ALoan (Talk) 19:14, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

I think in the default skin "toolbox" is displayed on the left side, under the "search" box. The first entry in the toolbox is "What links here". (SEWilco 19:45, 23 August 2005 (UTC))

And in the classic skin ... ? -- ALoan (Talk) 19:53, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

It's not part of the classic skin yet. Angela. 20:24, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

If viewing a "diff" page, should there be a "Permanent link" and what would it link to? (SEWilco 19:12, 23 August 2005 (UTC))

I don't think it's needed since a diff already is a permalink. You can just copy it out of your address bar. The advantage of a permalink on current revisions is that the link changes whenever someone edits a page. A diff between 2 versions (unless you're doing diff=0) should never change. Angela. 20:24, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

It should be noted that "permalinks" don't work for categories (the list of members may change) even though they misleadingly show up on category pages. -- Beland 02:18, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

And for any article which uses a template, since the template might change. Same for images. --cesarb 02:48, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Ævar has changed "permalink" to "permanent link" in CVS. I created the MediaWiki:Permalink page with "permanent link" since that's what it was, but I prefer the more common word "permalink". It can be changed at MediaWiki:Permalink by any admin. Angela. 02:19, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

Please keep it as Permanent link, I only understood what you were talking about once the name changed... (but a good idea though, I think the experiment should continue) Physchim62 02:27, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I am against this. It's totally anti-wiki, and I don't think it solves any real problem. gpvos 20:06, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Section level watchlist

I would like the ability to watch a single section instead of an entire article. I made some minor changes to huge articles, like Tea and Terrorism:Talk. I would like to be notified if the sections I changed are touched, but don't want to be inundated each day with dozens of changes elsewhere in the article. Not having to sift thru all that would improve my Wiki contribution efficiency considerably. What do you think, should we propose this to the developers ? StuRat 23:05, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

At a technical level, I think this would require having a separate timestamp for each section of an article. Article sections don't currently have an immutable identity (the existing section edit tags refer to a section by a number that might refer to a different section tomorrow if someone inserts a new section). I fear this may be one of those things that looks like it should be reasonably straightforward, but ends up getting mired in a gazillion unobvious details starting with "exactly what is a section?". IMO, there are many more pressing issues for the developers to be worried about. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:13, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

I think this would require an overhaul of the way things are tracked in the Wiki engine. I very much doubt it is worth the trouble. StuRat, since you are a programmer, you can program this yourself. All needed is to have a script which would each day download the article you care about, delete everything but the section you care about, see if that section changed, and if yes, send you a message. Python or Perl would be the tools to write such a thing. Oleg Alexandrov 02:06, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree. It's not worth the devloper's time. Superm401 | Talk 18:07, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

I think it could be done in a much simpler way. The section name is already reported under the watchlist, now there would just be a filter to only report those sections on the watchlist. For example, if I am watching "Common bean;(→Green beans)" it could report:

Common bean;(→Green beans)

But not:

Common bean;(→Sources)

If the section is moved, this should still work. If the name changes, it would work for the rename operation, but after that, the user would need to add the new section name to the watchlist (unless we also automated this process). StuRat 01:29, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree, that looks like a possible way to do it - and it should be implementable as a user script - why don't you add it to the list of requested scripts, or, if you can, start off a script... I would love to see this, also. JesseW 01:21, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

I would love to write such a script, but your link is broken. Where do I go to get started on writing a script that I intend to make available to everyone ? StuRat 21:16, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Note that the section heading won't appear in the edit summary if someone edits the whole article, including your section. If your section is the last one, then you will likely pick up the addition of new sections and changes to categories. Bovlb 19:37:02, 2005-08-30 (UTC)

Time references, both hard and soft

I am trying to figure out how to make this suggestion:

All time references should include either a direct reference to either the time actually referenced or a direct reference to the time from which the relative time reference is made. Soft time references ("soon", "recent past", "a little while") should try to be avoided due to the ambiguity of the time referenced. If a soft time reference cannot be avoided, the time referenced from ("soon" from what time point?). For example, "now" should always be referenced to the time written, if that is what is intended.

To simplify the reading of the articles, it's possible that the time references can remain soft or ambiguous, but they should (must?) include a hard reference within the "meta data" such that the time referenced or the time relative anchor is shown as a rollover in a normal web browser.

The article that prompted this suggestion is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EM64T where it references "soon" with no "time anchor".

My apologies if this is in the wrong location: this is my first ever post to wikipedia. (signature added upon request) GSmith 21:16, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

This is a good idea, IMO. Instead of "now" I generally say something like "as of 2005" or "as of September 2005". Of course, the page history provides metadata so one can always determnine when a "soon" was put in, but in a frequently edited page that can becoem quite tedious to uncover.

I think this discussion would be better at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style with the goal of putting this guideline into the MoS evnetually.

By the way, on talk pages, and other discussion pages such as this, please sign your posts with four tildas (like this ~~~~). This expands to your user ID or designated signature (or IP address if not logged in) and a timestamp. Thank you. DES ^(talk) 20:31, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

I am copying this to the WP:MOS talk page. DES ^(talk) 21:43, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Arabic/Hebrew bidirectional issues in interwiki links: a proposed workaround

When an Arabic or Hebrew interwiki link is a disambiguation link (with a part within parentheses), the parentheses don't display properly in the browser text editor due to Unicode bidirectional algorithm issues.

For a proposed workaround, please see: Village pump (technical)#Arabic.2FHebrew: a proposed solution to Unicode bidirectional algorithm woes in the text editor

Ideally, interwiki link bots should be aware of this workaround and not tamper with it (not remove the embedded HTML comments within the interwiki link).

-- Curps 12:21, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Rename multi-X to multiX

Proposal:

Rename all articles containing the string "multi-" to the shorter form "multi", in other words, multi-X to multiX.

Example: rename the current article Multi-paradigm programming language to "Multiparadigm programming language".

Reasons:

This already seems to occur in Wikipedia. See the case: Multi-platform redirect to Multiplatform.

In English, at least in US English, hyphenating after the prefix "multi" is unnecessary, except when the subject word starts with the letter "i", or is a proper noun starting with a capital letter. (I am not a grammarian or English instructor. I am a part-time newspaper reporter.)

Is this the correct or best place to post such requests, or is there some more suitable location?

Thank you.

This is a correct place, but the best place is at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. --cesarb 21:58, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Rulerlists article name policy

Does any policy/guideline exist for the naming of such list? Because currently everything is a real mess

Variants include:

1. List of Sultans of Brunei
2. President of South Yemen
3. Heads of state of Algeria
4. Rulers of Tuscany
5. Duke of Aquitaine - several styled themselves "King" (+ 1 duchess)
6. List of Serbian monarchs - Perhaps the one most widely used on Wiki now, but such as the one bellow creates problems
7. List of monarchs of Naples and Sicily

(for a larger sampling see User:Fornadan/slby)

I think a consistent naming of these lists should be strived for because often you are interrested in comparing several of them. Currently you usually have to guess the right name. IMO they should be moved to "List of rulers of X" or "Rulers of X" since then you'd avoid problems with changing titles & female rulers Fornadan (t) 12:36, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

CSD A7 clarification proposal

CSD A7 (non-notable bios) has come up for discussion a good deal during deletion and undeletion debates. At Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Interpretation of WP:CSD A7 (non-notable bios) is a proposal to clarify the interpretation of this critrion, and particularly the meaning of "Claim of notability". Please read it and comment if you are at all interested. DES ^(talk) 00:32, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Vandal Highlighting

Having spent some time reverting and reporting vandals I think it high time we had a better way of identifying them. I would like to see any vandal who has been blocked to be tagged so that in future use of the account or IP is highlighted so that vandal edits are obvious. Indeed these edits could even be streamed to a new vandal change page. There would of course be a way to remove the vandal tag but it would require some significant contribution (and retribution). --Rjstott 10:02, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

One problem with this is that often IPs used by vandals are also (at different times) used by good editors. Also, many people on RC and new page patrol, and looking for vandalism generally already treat any IP edit as suspicious. I don't think this is either needed or wise. DES ^(talk) 14:48, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

We already encourage such good editors to create an account. This would be a further incentive. Treating all anon. IP as suspicious is time consuming and doesn't identify those vandals that have a user name. This solution improves both situations. There must come the time when some qualification will be required to be a bona fide wikipedian, indeed admins already have some esteem above the rest of us. All I ask is that iidentified vandal IP and usernames are obvious. It is a matter of degree perhaps as to when bad behaving individuals are identified?--Rjstott 04:26, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

We do not block vandals; we only block accounts and IPs. Since anyone (vandal or not) can get a new pristine account in less than a minute, I'm afraid I don't see the point of your suggestion. (I don't see the point of blocking non-admin accounts, either, for the same reason.) — Nowhither 06:29, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

I thought there was a correlation between vandals and account names as well as the accepted expectation that anon IP are frequently vandals beacuse they can't be bothered to create an account. This lack of basic identification wastes my time so I guess the answer is to ignore vandalism unless I actually encounter it on articles I work on. I can see why we originally encouraged contributions, I no longer believe we should encourage vandalism!--Rjstott 07:09, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps someone might comment how often vandals re-offend after a block expires as this would estbalish whether this change has value! Looking at the block logs it definitely happens.--Rjstott 07:17, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Cheating vandals

I was reading how much time and effort is spent on reverting vandalism and I had an idea. I'm a layman in all things software related, but still I wonder if this would be possible and would like to hear your thoughts about the it's effectiveness. The idea is this: every time a vandal was blocked from editing he would still see the "edit this page" on the page and be allowed to vandalize whatever pages he'd like. Of course in reality the changes he'd make after he was blocked would only appear to him on his screen and wouldn't in reality be saved on the wiki. This could potentially waste a big amount of vandalizing time and effort, but if the flagging of a vandal isn't accurate this could also mean that a lot of legitimate edits would be lost. Anyway, I'd like to hear what you think about it, would it be practical, is it possible, would it be a deterrence? Serodio 04:47, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Is this possible? Absolutely. Should it be done? Hmm, I worry. The general approach is actually used quite a bit in the general security community; see Honeypot. However, honeypots are easily deployed if the only possible users of the systems aren't authorized to do so, and that's not the case here. As you noted, you risk losing edits, and that would be extremely bad. Even worse, vandal-blocking has lots of false positives; perfectly good people often get blocked by a vandal block; in the current scheme they quickly notify people and it gets fixed, but that would not be the case in this alternative. A variation would be to create some sort of delay.... you could store the edit, but not show the edit to others until someone who is "trusted" approves it. It's not clear who will want that task (I guess it's happening anyway, but since "good" people won't know to complain, it might be much more work than the current approach). That greatly complicates the software, too. Maybe there's a good idea here, but I'm a little skeptical. I'd certainly be cautious about it. Dwheeler 22:11, September 12, 2005 (UTC)

If it comes to it, an approach I prefer would be to require a user log-in before an edit can be made. At least that way, vandals can be positively ID'd and dealt with through the current mechanisms, including sock puppets, etc. — RDF ^talk 23:05, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Add topical navigation menu to every Wikipedia page

After about a month of editing articles at Wikipedia, I’m finally getting a general understanding of how the articles are related to each other and how to navigate to them. And that’s only because I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure it out. Now, you might say that I’m just particularly slow in such things as finding my own aspects of the situation, but I dare say the navigation structure of this web site deserves at least half the credit. It’s not that a very impressive amount of thought and effort hasn’t gone into addressing the issue, but I believe most visitors would agree it still needs a little work.

The categorization schemes at Wikipedia:Category schemes focus on Wikipedia as an encyclopedia that happens to be on a web site, while navigation schemes focus on Wikipedia as a web site that happens to hold an encyclopedia. Categorization schemes focus mainly on the logic, while navigation schemes focus mainly on the usability of a web site. As a web site, I would expect Wikipedia to have a top-level navigation scheme, based on the primary categorization scheme, that would help me move about logically and quickly.

I expect there at least three general ways to add a topical navigation menu to every page. The first way is “simple.” Add template:Categorybrowsebar to the top of every Wikipedia page. The amount of useful information crammed into these two lines is invaluable and should be available from any page. If it’s placed at the top of every (or at least one) style sheet, and possibly reduced in size a bit, it would be universally accessible and take up a minimum of page space. Most importantly, novices and experts alike would have the full range of Wikipedia’s category schemes at their fingertips no matter which page they were reading.

A second way would be to add the eight main categories plus “Other indexes” to the box in the navigation sidebar. That might be the easiest to implement, but space might be an issue (not that it isn’t with the other options too ;-).

A more sophisticated version of implementing the "navigation menu on every page" suggestion would be to use a drop-down menu. If I were going to merge the categorization and navigation schemes at Wikipedia, I would place a drop-down menu that contained the main categories and subcategories (whatever they happened to be at the time) across the top of every page. As a “ninth” category, I would add a “Browse by” button that listed the second row of the Category browse bar, plus maybe a few more, since the space issue would be addressed by the drop-down structure of the navigation menu. If this version is more difficult to implement than either of the other two, perhaps they can be implemented in stages. – RDF 21:23, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

---

I have made a user script to add Template:Categorybrowsebar to the top of the page.

Example removed because of very long line. See here. Bovlb 15:18:47, 2005-09-10 (UTC)

If you want to keep the normal sitenotice text, remove the "//" from the last line. If you want the sitenotice to be before the template, change the = sign after innerHTML to =+ --pile0nades^{talk | contribs} 21:02, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Wowee, thanks!!! Now, I'm sure you can read my mind on my next question... Exactly, where and how do I add this function? Any more great tips you can offer will be greatly appreciated! :-) — RDF ^talk 21:34, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Copy and paste it to your monobook.js if you use the MonoBook skin (the default one). It is at User:RDF/monobook.js --pile0nades^{talk | contribs} 22:58, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, now it's time for the "good news" and the "bad news." I copied the function over to User:RDF/monobook.js okay, but when I saved it, I got a "Done, but with errors on page" message. :-( I checked my IE advanced Internet options page and the Java box was checked. Any other suggestions? — RDF ^talk 01:31, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

I tested it in IE and am not getting any errors. What does it say when you click the icon next to the message? And click the "Show Details" button if it does not show the text box. --pile0nades^{talk | contribs} 18:17, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Line: 5

Char: 3

Error: 'document.getElementById(...)' is null or not an object

Code: 0

URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RDF/monobook.js

Thanks for your help! :-) — RDF ^talk 19:29, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

I have fixed the script. It didn't work because it depended on the siteNotice div which apparently has been removed. So it now inserts the HTML before the first h1 element in the page. It can be found here: [1] It is the one at the bottom. Just copy the function and replace yours with it. --pile0nades^{talk | contribs} 02:57, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, now it runs without error, but no menu appears at the top of the page, even when I hit <Ctrl>F5 or go to a new page. :-( — RDF ^talk 03:52, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Pile0ades, now it works!!! :-) I also made a one-line version to save a little space. — RDF ^talk 08:55, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

---

Thanks to Pile0ades, we now have at least one working example of a topical navigation menu bar at the top of every page for all Wikipedian users! It looks like the template at Template:Categorybrowsebaroneline. Now, who would actually decide whether or not to try this out at the global level? — RDF ^talk 08:55, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

I am just wondering if you are interested in the proposal Semantics because it would drastically help for lower ranked category navigation. --BoP 09:51:50, 2005-09-11 (UTC)

Yes, I can't say I follow all of the nuances, but I'm all for anything that helps users navagate all of the great information available here. :-) — RDF ^talk 22:17, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

In a related conversation ([2]), R.Koot preferred having the categories across the top and the browse pages in the sidebar navigation box. That works for me too. A question that still remains for me is, who decides to implement something like this that requires modifying protected pages? — RDF ^talk 22:17, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

button for adding '''{{subst:PAGENAME}}''' to text area

It would really help if there was a button that adds '''{{subst:PAGENAME}}''' to the text area (for editing pages). This would really help people who are starting articles in the main namespace. It would greatly benefit lazy editors, such as me. :) --Ixfd64 09:31, 2005 September 10 (UTC)

You could just bookmark this

javascript:insertTags('\'\'\'{{subst:PAGENAME}}\'\'\'','','');

Angela. 14:14, September 11, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, let us not be wrecked on the rocks by the siren-song of creeping featurism :)--Pharos 19:39, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedian of the month

Is there (scope for) on of these Wikipedia:Wikipedian of the month things? Where the creme de la creme get a monthly pat on the back from the community? I dont wanna go making a whole page and then have it rfded. Cheers pedians --Wonderfool t(c) 23:39, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

You may want to look at Wikipedia:Esperanza, where there is a proposed Wikipedian of the Week. Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 23:40, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Protecting closed VFDs and such?

Why don't we do it? I realize people editing closed VFDs is rare, but it happens. ~~ N (t/c) 14:40, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Why would we want to do it? Protection is generally unwiki and only to be used in extreme circumstances. Is there a particular case you're referring to?-Splash 14:43, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Because occasionally people will edit closed VFDs, screwing up the "historical record". I've done it a couple times. Protection should be no problem on a page nobody should ever have to edit again. Why not just make it another step of the standard VFD-closing process? ~~ N (t/c) 14:46, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

If part of the VFD-closing process was protecting the page, then only admins would be able to close VfDs. We don't want that. --Canderson7 14:51, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

Yep. Editing doesn't really screw stuff up, only the top copy is changed and the history remains. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 14:55, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

OK, then, in the event that I'm promoted to admin, would people mind if I protected VfDs when closing them? ~~ N (t/c) 18:35, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

They probably would. Protection is generally not applied to historical records (talk page archives, closed *fD discussions, etc), unless there is vandalism. Let's avoid protecting where not needed. --cesarb 19:33, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

separate protections for files in the Image: namespace

I think that the actual image and the image description should have seperate protections. Currently, protecting an image protects both the image itself and the description. However, vandalizing an image description will have no impact on the articles that use the image. --Ixfd64 08:22, 2005 September 6 (UTC)

Seconded, this would be quite useful. ~~ N (t/c) 14:21, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Proposal for new copyright notice

I do a lot of new page patrol, and I don't see any evidence that new users (or some established users) pay any attention to our notices about restrictions on adding copyright material. Assuming good faith, I believe that this is because of ignorance and a genuine desire to help build an encyclopedia. I propose that we revise the notices on the edit screens and file uploads so that they give a very simple, clear, and direct message at the top of the page. Something like:

I realise that this sounds more restrictive than the current policy, but new contributors don't seem to stop and read all that copyright stuff. This is short and sweet and should at least give them pause. Hopefully it will cut down on the WP:CP backlog. The notice should have a distinguishing class/id so that experienced users can suppress it. Comments? Bovlb 02:10:50, 2005-09-02 (UTC) Modified per Superm401. Bovlb 05:43:20, 2005-09-02 (UTC)

Could you rephrase it so it distinguishes based on knowledge, rather than experience? Something like this:

Only in certain limited circumstances is it possible to reuse existing material; unless you are sure you have permission, do not copy the work of others'. If you do not undertand the copyright issues involved, contribute only your own work .

--Superm401 | Talk 02:47, September 2, 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. Bovlb 05:43:20, 2005-09-02 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia talk:Copyright FAQ#Proposed improvement for making the document linked to in the message more helpful. Bovlb 06:34:46, 2005-09-02 (UTC)

• This looks good, I think it should be put on the "Upload file" page ASAP. I added "or from newspapers, books or magazines" and also bolded "your own work". Is that OK? --Janke | Talk 07:46:10, 2005-09-02 (UTC)

THANK YOU

This is a badly needed warning/notice. Our anonymous helpers starting articles simply do not understand this. Some may just ignore our current warning but surely many just don't see it. The "do not submit..." warning is at the bottom of many crowded lines of instructions. A random contributer could easily miss it. support 08:26, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

I mentioned this message box on Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Proposal/Patent_copyvio_material, where they're talking about copyvios, too. I also shortened the header a bit, to "printed sources". --Janke | Talk 13:52:45, 2005-09-02 (UTC)

I have very mixed feelings about this. Yes, the insertion of copyrighted material into Wikpedia is a pain but (1) I really don't want this thing staring me in the face every time I edit, 2) it is an extreme oversimplification of the copyright issues involved, (3) "contribute only your own work" seems like an invitation for original research. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:45, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

I agree, especially on point 1. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 22:51, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Looking like that, the notice is way too harsh. Someone might interpret a notice like that as a faux pas, and you might deter him/her from using Wikipedia, or worse, provoke him/her into committing vandalism.  Denelson83  05:15, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

I like the proposed notice. Some people just don't understand that most web sites are copyrighted and you can't copy from them. mrholybrain 15:28, September 10, 2005 (UTC)

Could we brighten up disambig pages a bit? (Use of image tables)

I had a thought for improving disambig pages. <snipped>--Ashenai 13:37, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

The best place to discuss this is probably Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages). -- Rick Block (talk) 13:51, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Dang-nab it! OK, conversation moved there. I responded to your main point there, too. Thank you! :) --Ashenai 14:08, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

E-Books

I have recently discovered that some books used to reference articles were alvailabe as e-books (non-free). Is there any objection if I add a link to the editors site in the articles ? Ericd 15:31, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

if the link is to a place where an etext can be purcahaed, i would say the same considerations apply as in linking to any site where items are offered for purcahase -- only do it if the freely available content there is itself helpful to the wikipedia reasder, wikipedia is not a yellow pages. (or posibly if the site is obscure enough that a reader who wants to purchase the etext won't esaily be able to find it. Otherwsie why not simply say "this work has been published in an e-text by <e-publisher>". That allows people wanting to check the reference to do so if they choose, much like supplying an ISBN. DES ^(talk) 15:52, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Supreme Court citations and info boxes

To help standardize supreme court cases (particularily, but not necessarily, US ones) I've put up two straw polls at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases (here and here). One is to standardize our method of linking court citations and the other is to standardize the info box used. Both mainly concern readability and usefulness to regular users, so opinions from those who rarely read these pages are just as important as those from those who don't. Thanks. Telso 21:01, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

"Bosnian" vs. "Serbo-Croatian"

I have noticed that Wikipedia and its sister websites list Bosnian ("Bosanski"), Croatian, and Serbian as seperate languages. As any linguist will tell you these are merely dialects of Serbo-Croatian. Indeed the term "Bosnian" (referring to the language) had not even entered the vernacular until the recent war in Yugoslavia. To suggest that it is a sperate language would be like saying that there should be an "American" section on the site, seperate from the English one. The most politically neutral and linguistically accurate method of organizing this would be to have a "Serbo-Croatian (Cyrillic Alphabet)" section and a "Serbo-Croatian (Roman Alphabet)" section (those two names are only tentative proposals, as they pose certain difficulties). The current system isolates pro-seperatist and pro-Serbian groups, so that it is difficult to ensure that articles be politically neutral, as they ought to be. That is, one may write articles biased against Serbia in the Bosnian encyclopedia without fear of correction, and vice-versa. One final note: Slovenian and Macedonian are in fact distinct languages and not dialects, and so deserve their own sections, as they have now. (preceding unsigned comment by Hipcat (talk · contribs) )

We're supposed to assume good faith, but it s very likely that "Hipcat" is trolling. In his only other two contributions, he advocates switching to British English exclusively, and switching to light letters on a dark background.

If you're serious, you can tackle "Hindustani (Devanagari alphasyllabary)" and "Hindustani (Arabic alphabet)" first. And by the way, believe it or not, in addition to the Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian wikipedias, there's a "Serbo-Croatian wikipedia": http://sh.wikipedia.org/ (674 articles so far) ... if you want it, now you know where to find it. -- Curps 18:44, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמײ און פֿלאָט -- Mwalcoff 18:41, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Not really an issue for the English-language Village Pump to decide. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:15, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Vote on proposal to speedy delete blatant copyright violation material

Please see Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/Blatant copyvio material, and consider voting, thanks. Martin 15:52, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Undeletion Policy and related issues

• I have made a proposal to clarify (or change depending on your PoV) the intent of the wikipedia undeltion policy at Wikipedia talk:Undeletion policy#Process or content. There is also related discussion at Wikipedia talk:Votes for undeletion#"Purpose of the page" section and Wikipedia talk:Votes for undeletion#The scope of VfU. Please visit these talk pages and comment -- this matter should have a widely based consensus. DES ^(talk) 17:28, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

"Media" namespace for non-image media files

I think that we need a new namespace for non-image media files. It may be somewhat confusing to new users when they see sound files in the "Image" namespace. Having sound files in the "Image" namespace is also somewhat deceptive. --Ixfd64 02:39, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikiversity Vote

Voting has started for a new Wikimedia sister project proposal called Wikiversity. This is a request for anybody that is interested to cast a vote either in support or opposition to this new project proposal. The results of this vote will determine if this project will be started on its own seperate group of wikis as a Wikimedia sister project, together with approval from the Wikimedia Foundation Board. Discussion about this proposal should take place on the Wikiversity discussion page.

New speedy deletion proposal

Please see Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/Non-notable Internet entities. ~~ N (t/c) 21:15, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Watchlist

The watchlist doesn't show if a page on it has been moved. Is there a reason for this? I have not found this bug on bugzilla, and since I can't stay logged in on bugzilla I can't post it as a new bug there. So I thought I'd just ask here first in case someone has an answer up front.

Fred-Chess 13:07, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

A Wikipedia Review

Who am I to make a review of Wikipedia? Noone I guess. None-the-less, with my insight as software developer I would like to state the following. In the words of another user, "I am still debating how credible Wikipedia can be as source". Loads and loads of wonderful information that people work long hours on to create. A plethora of knowledge at your finger tips. Grand! But, I find that pages are too volatile! That everyone can edit articles is a great philosophy, but when someone has spent those long hours researching a subject, marking information with creditable sources, only to have an anonymous user or opinionated new user come by and change relevant information without doing any research into the subject, is almost vandalism. Ok, that each article has people watching over it, but I don't believe that through the collective watchful eye that errors are always reverted. 1642 turns quickly into 1942. When someone edits an article wrongly in such a way it often points out a weak sentence, but it still points to the fact that each article has to be constantly "guarded" by people knowledgable about its subject. And how long do such errors remain unchanged? Which school boy is going to get an 'F' because the date was stated wrong on his book report? Vandalism is easy to spot, but subtle erroneous changes in facts are not.

So, what is the solution to this? A concrete answer there is not and the developers and foundation will decide, but I think articles after reaching a certain point should be less edittable forcing other editors to mark discuss pages instead of the main article. Having people work hard to get the article they are working on into this less volatile state might be an added incentive. This non-volatiles state could be a state in between peer review and featured article.

Of course, this is only one possible solution and there are other concepts, but I will leave it at this. --None-of-the-Above 07:19, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

This is true, although one thing that helps is the page history. If every change is checked over, this is less likely. It's a big task, checking all those, but I think it gets done, to a point. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Twilight Realm (talk • contribs) 01:10, 13 September 2005

None-of-the-Above: I think something like that needs to happen. What I would prefer, though, is for a single article to be able to have different versions with different ratings. First put somekind of a rating system in place for users. Then the rating of a particular version article is (no higher than) the rating for the last user who edited it. People could read Wikipedia at a particular "level", which would show them the most recent revision of an article at or above their chosen minimum level. This way we could maintain the "anyone can edit anything" policy, still present a polished version of Wikipedia to the general public (the default reading level would be high), and, as a bonus, get a mechanism for review & certification of articles. — Nowhither 17:50, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Wow, that is some suggestion. I follow you, but one thing throws me. If there is a small error that appears on all versions of the page, would that mean one edit would have to be made to each version just to fix a simple mistake? Versions of the same article could differ drastically, especially if someone decided to do a total rewrite of an article at a high level. Conceptually, I think your idea is neat. But, I am not convinced it is practical. Plus, rating users is not easy either, because certain users know more about one subject than another. If you just rate the most worthy wikipedian based on edits or so, then you are going to withhold someone knowledgable from making a good contribution at a high level when he/she is not a great wikipedian. The "trickle up" concept comes to mind where someone can make an edit at a lower version and the edit trickles up toward the highest level or so. I think this train of thought would need more detailed thought out concepts. --None-of-the-Above 19:48, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

• Building on the thought of User:Nowhither, maybe the primary article needs to be locked and a mirror automatically created that can be freely editted. If there are changes made to the mirrored article that are all acceptable, then it can be placed as the primary one. This sounds logical, because in software development using source code control you have certain release points that you label as well. These released points are what the end users use and see. Wikipedia is just articles with source code control, so why would the concept of releases not be just as useful. I think the hardest question is determining who is going to be allowed to edit the more static version. They would have to be knowledable on the subject and check the added info that it is 100% correct. --None-of-the-Above 06:07, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

None-of-the-Above: What I was proposing was essentially the current system, except that articles come with ratings, which are at least partially derived from the ratings of their editors. The multiple versions are thus just the history of the article, as we have now. The main difference is that someone who just drops into Wikipedia for the first time will not necessarily see the latest version of an article, but rather the most recent version that has a rating above their minimum. And for people just browsing, I would have the default minimum set rather high.

For example, suppose we have three ratings: 1, 2, 3, with 3 being the best. Say the Monday version of an article is rated 3; then everyone who looks at it sees the same article. Now a new user (with user-rating 1) edits it on Tuesday. The Tuesday version is necessarily rated 1, since no version of an article can have a rating higher than that of its most recent editor. Now viewers with minimums of 2 or 3 see the Monday version, while viewers with minimum 1 will see the Tuesday version. Those who edit the article can edit any version they want, just as they can now, although most will probably want to edit the Tuesday version. Continuing: On Wednesday a mid-level user with rating 2 looks at the article, decides the Tuesday editor did not do such great work, and fixes it up. So the Wednesday version has rating 2. Now viewers with a minimum of 1 or 2 see the Wednesday version, while those with a minimum of 3 see the Monday version. Lastly, on Thursday, a super-user with rating 3 checks the article out, and decides it is top quality. He edits it, doing little or nothing, and the result has rating 3. Once again, all viewers see the same version.

Actually, I would add one more feature to this: a high-level user who edits an article could give the result a rating less than his user rating. For example, if a 3 user edits a 1 article, improves it a little, but thinks it still needs work by someone more knowledgeable, he might want to give his edit a 2 rating.

Lastly, I'll note that your "release" system is essentially the same as mine, only there are exactly 2 levels: non-release and release. And maybe that is all we need ... In any case, the result is that most people using (but not editing) Wikipedia will never even see vandalism.

And maybe this discussion should go somewhere else?

— Nowhither 00:57, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Isn't there a danger there that the "Tuesday" version, which may contain brilliant edits, will be overwritten without even being seen by a later editor who has their minimum set to 2?-gadfium 04:47, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

That's a very intuitive idea. I would have to think about it a little longer with a clearer mind (its late and I'm dead tired) to contemplate conflicts as stated by gadfium, but I already have a single remark... The purpose of an encyclopedia is that people see the "best" version. Translated this would be that "anonymous" users see the highest rating, but according to your system they see the lowest rated version (with possible errors). A released version should be displayed to everyone and an unreleased should be the "draft" version. --None-of-the-Above 00:05, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Gadfium:editors should always look at the latest version. Obviously reverts would be possible, as they are now. But I suppose that, to be an editor, you would have to have a rock-bottom minimum. How exactly this would be handled in the user interface, I can't say. — Nowhither 18:53, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

None-of-the-Above: What I was trying to say is that everyone has a minimum standard for articles they view. New people who walk in off the street would have a very high minimum, so they see only very good articles. — Nowhither 18:55, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

• To original poster: I'm not sure you know, but have you read Wikipedia:Replies to common objections? Also, there's a lot of tools we have at our disposal to check edits as they come buy and to fight of vandalism. Only rarely do these edits stay hidden. Also, if some do get through any dedicated Wikipedian can change them. In reality, it's very easy to determine when vandalism or opinionated editing is becoming a problem. - Mgm|^(talk) 11:03, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I just read the common replies, but I still don't see the answer to what I stated above. If there are certain tools to guard articles, please elaborate. --None-of-the-Above 19:48, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

• Anyone who takes anything they find on the web as gospel truth is in deep trouble. And it's hard to miss the "edit this page" tab at the top of each Wikipedia page, so it should be obvious that what's on offer here is a work in progress. So the student who gets a date wrong and gets an "F" because they used Wikipedia as the sole source for their paper richly deserves what he gets. Wikipedia is one of the better sources of information on the web today, but neither it, nor any other source, will ever be wholly reliable. -- Mwanner 20:27, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

• The issue isn't how to make it perfect, but how to make it better. I think the original proposal would be a step forward, although some details still need to be worked out. The fact that mistakes are eventually fixed does miss the point that all the mistakes and vandalism introduced into an article may be seen by many readers before each is fixed. This makes us less reliable than many other sources on the Internet, and we should fix that problem. If editors are rated on their ability to write and their willingness to cooperate, that would go a long way towards eliminating bad edits. Rating editors on their competence in each individual subject matter would be a far more difficult task. StuRat 20:56, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Under the current setup, if an editor makes a change that shows up on my watchlist, and I go examine the edit, and I agree with the edit, there is no mechanism for me to say "that was a good edit", and therefore no way for others to determine how much scrutiny a particular edit received. Therefore, my preferred (minimalist) solution is:

• Allow editors to mark a particular revision of an article as "reviewed". This should show up in the page history (with the editor's ID). Effectively this is just a regular page edit, with no changes made.

I think this simple change, with some encouragement to people to go ahead and review things, would be a big step forward. Dmharvey File:User dmharvey sig.png Talk 22:41, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

I dunno, I see a lot of possibilities for gaming the system with these proposals, along with what appears to be a major increase in complexity. What about a simple display of the number of users who have the page on their watchlist? -- Mwanner 23:12, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

The idea of displaying the watching users is already under consideration by the development team. I don't think it matters how many people are watching an article. You can't know how many of them are going to do the research or are knowledgable enough about the subject to catch faulty information. I see lots of edit wars about people's origin or eye color because people don't actually do the research and add a creditable source. They just use their opinion. I actually had someone remove a valid reference to change the stated information to one that was unsourced. If someone adds a statement that is false, but looks correct or can be imagined to be correct, these are the errors that are the most dangerous in my opinion. I agree with the "reviewed" option. Maybe there should be a way to have a count of the number of people that have reviewed the edit. Brainfart: The "weight" of the review could be equal to the amount of times that user has already made edits to the article. --None-of-the-Above 06:34, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

The problem with the "how many users have this page on their watchlist" option is that it basically becomes a "please vandalize this page" tag when the count is zero. Though that kind of info would be useful in recent changes (the underwatched pages need more attention) - listing how many users are watching a page next to the edit summary. Or better, listing how many (registered) users have looked at the edit diff or just looked at the page since the edit. That one's probably a terrible mess (i.e. impossible) to implement, but at least it doesn't add to the complexity on the user side, and offers little opportunities for gaming. Flammifer 14:43, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

• So what's happens after this stage? Are these ideas going anywhere or will they have to be suggested on Bugzilla? --None-of-the-Above 00:05, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia Toolbar

I think it would be a great idea if you made a toolbar for Internet Explorer!!! Not a bad idea right?

I like it! :-) — RDF ^talk 13:27, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that is a good idea, but who is this "you" who is supposed to do the work? — Nowhither 01:25, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Works for me, but other browsers would also need to be supported!--Scienceman123 23:12, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

You can already do that with the standard toolbars in Firefox and Galeon (Firefox needs a download from the home site). You might want to try one of those. Mozzerati 21:08, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Wiktionary-Wikipedia linking

I've noticed that many people tend to add dictionary-only entries to Wikipedia, even though such content belongs on Wiktionary instead. However, many articles link to such entries, and people will definately search for dictionary-only entries on Wikipedia.

Therefore, I think that it's time to use {{wi}} on all dictionary-only entries. This will bring two benefits:

1. People can be easily pointed to the right direction.
2. This will also encourage more people to contribute to Wiktionary. After all, Wiktionary does need more editors, because right now, it is nowhere near active compared to Wikipedia.

What do you think of this suggestion? --Ixfd64 05:51, 2005 September 12 (UTC)

• I'm sorry, but I don't like the suggestion.

1. Creating soft redirects with the template creates pages that are blue-linked when in fact we don't have an article on them, which hampers creation of actual encyclopedic entries on topics where this is possible.
2. The template on empty pages already suggests looking at Wiktionary when something can't be found. We're already pointing people to the right location and we should just make them aware of it, not create extra work for people who don't read carefully anyway. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:58, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Proposal: Verification - Academic Subculture

Adding an academic subculture

I sent an e-mail to info after reading the article in wired magazine about the criticism that wikipedia is not taken seriously as an academic source. I wrote up a proposal to add academia controled pages in parallel with the publicly contributed pages.

Please take a look at tell me what you think:

Academic Verification Proposal

I am sure this is an issue being addressed elsewhere an I would be happy to discuss this matter with other people.

You might like to look at meta:Article validation feature and meta:Category:Article validation. Bovlb 18:18:25, 2005-09-10 (UTC)

I support this proposal, but not just for the reasons you listed. There is currently a problem that certain areas which generate an academic interest are "hijacked" by academics, and made so unreadable with technical jargon that the general audience has no hope of understanding any of it. I think many articles with the "too technical" tag on them can't be fixed, because the academics won't permit any language that isn't "academic". Hopefully, a separate section for PhD's would keep them away from articles "for regular people". An example of this is the current article on Boolean algebra, which has generated many complaints on the talk page from those who are lost by the mathematician-speak used in the article. I suspect that many more have left Wikipedia in disgust without leaving any message on the talk page. StuRat 00:44, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Making featured articles stand out

Given that featured articles are meant to represent the best Wikipedia has to offer, should they not stand out? I'm not saying have them all shout "Hey, I'm a featured article!" but I've long thought a rosette at the top of a page saying "Featured Article" would draw attention to the fact that this is the standard that we are aiming for. I'm terrible at drawing, and being a newcomer I don't know how to go about it, but does anyone think this is a good idea? -David McCormick 20:07, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

It's a good idea, but it's already done. If you look at the top of the talk page of Featured articles, they show {{featured}}, which does exactly the job that you propose! Grutness...wha? 00:53, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, not exactly, since it can't be seen from the article page. — Nowhither 01:34, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

It's my opnion that {{featured}} ought to be returned to the article pages, where I belive it used to be, for precisely the above reason. possibly a smaller, less obtrusive version should be created for the article space. DES ^(talk) 14:42, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

(A) The {{featured}} was never used on the article itself. It has been like that from day one. (B) It was done that way on purpose, because a featured article is supposed to represent (and impliment) all of Wikipedia's best practices. This means keeping metadata (like featured article designations, among many, many other things) out of the article and on the talk page where they belong. →Raul654 06:22, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Good standing users "flag"

This my proposal. It's like a bot flag, kind of. Holding this flag means that administrators and users can be less concerned that the person is a vandal or a new user. Such a flag is more considered as recognized as fine Wikipedians. Kind of like mentors, in sense they could teach other new users to be more expertise or something like that. If users turn bad, the flag should be easily removed. This should allow the hiding of such users from RC patrol, or exclusively showing these users in the RC patrol. This way you can sort the experts from the newbies and vandals. Since, not all experts are sysops, but they can be marked off with this flag.

Obtaining this flag should be done through community consensus with the backing of one administrator (likely the one reviewing the consensus). --AllyUnion (talk) 04:30, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Oppose in the strongest way possible - I call bullshit, this will be abused and is simply a violation of WP:NPA. Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure. Agriculture 05:06, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, you're allowed to oppose things, but you could be nicer about it.

AllyUnion: I would say that some kind of rating system is a good idea. Separation into "trusted" and "not" is not going to fly, though, since we essentially already have that in the form of administrator status. Further, RC patrol is not much of a justification. What might end up being a justification for a rating system is how Wikipedia is seen by the general public. I do not think we will be able to keep up a good reputation over the long term, without having some kind of rating system on both users and articles. This is worth discussing, although I am afraid it is not going to happen any time soon.

— Nowhither 00:22, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I think your idea for a rating system for articles is better than the one for users—but I wouldn't make it a traditional "how good is this article" rating, that would encourage ballot-stuffing and such. Instead, make it an "in need of attention" rating; there would be a button to say that an article needs attention or is fine as it is, and a list of "most in need of attention" articles would appear on some special page. There are already ways to tag articles for attention, of course, but they require knowledge of special tags that casual readers probably won't have and they don't sort articles by how badly they need attention. Aquillion 17:10, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, there are lots of ideas floating around. What I was thinking was something vaguely along the lines of Slashdot (note: "vaguely"; I realize that Slashdot has problems). In particular, I would like people to be able to read Wikipedia at a certain quality level, with the default level being rather high. I suppose it would show the most recent highly rated version of an article. If you clicked on an article that had no highly rated version (or no recent one?) you might get a message saying that a lower rated article was available, and would you like to read it. As for how articles get rated, I want downgrades to be automatic. The basic idea would be that the quality level of an article would be the level of the last user who edited it, with high-level users able to edit without raising quality much, if they want. Then add modifiers from there. A high-level user could thus mark an article as good (maybe by doing a NULL edit). — Nowhither 01:27, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

But what about all of the anonymous editors like me?

Get an account. You'll still be anonymous. — Nowhither 01:14, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

I believe the technical term for this sort of thing is a "reputation system". Some sites such as eBay rely on this, though it can be gamed. All of Google is a fairly elaborate reputation system: the more "reputable" webpages rise to the top.

On Wikipedia, we probably could theoretically come up with some kind of reputation system for users, though implementing it would require not just much time and effort but considerable research. This might be somebody's PhD thesis. I doubt we could come up with a reputation system for articles, though... with so many contributors there's an inherent unevenness from one paragraph to the next. The last user who edited it might be highly reputable, but probably just changed one small thing and didn't read the whole thing from start to finish and can't vouch for it. -- Curps 21:32, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm opposed to your suggestion too. I don't think we need to flag users as being less likely to be a vandal or a new user, one of the beautiful dynamics of Wikipedia is that everyone will be double-checked regardless. I may no longer be a new user and am certainly not a vandal, but what I submit would still definitely warrant double-checking. Mentioning that such tagged users could serve as mentors is ridiculous. Members of the Wikipedia community are already excellent at greeting new members. Shortly after my account RoyBoy posted a friendly little greeting with links to familiarize me with Wikipedia. ~ Jared ~ 22:34, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Cross-Wiki Accounts

I have been wandering the wiki-wilderness today and have crossed from wikipedia to meta-wiki to the german wikipedia and realized that I have a separate account for each. Is there any way we could have one account for all wikipedia-related projects, in all languages? I think that this would simplify greatly the constant logging in as you cross from project to project and language to language. Clarkefreak ∞ 23:39, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

• And when two people have the same name in different wikis, which one would you tell they had to change their account? -- Jmabel | Talk 05:47, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

• This is hopefully going to happen sometime soon. See meta:Single login. Angela. 10:53, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

• The matter isn't just cross language, but cross project: I have a Wikipedia name but not a name for Wikiquote or Wiktionary. It get really annoying, but there are probably accounts by the same name on different projects. I think we should change all accounts to Wikimedia (aka one size fits all). Jmabe brings up a point, though...
  • Better register yourself in all the projects quickly then :P ! Actually, having one login for all would ensure that some unscrupulous person didn't register in another project using another (well known ) person's login. Sabine's Sunbird 03:26, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Math equations to plain english

Is there a template message to tag a page of equations to be translated from math formula to plain english?

Such as: Math2english (example template)

This article's formula needs to be translated to the English language.

A simple case would be:

1+1=2 one plus one equals two;

a more complex one would be:

$f_{c}={1 \over 2\pi {\sqrt {LC}}}$

the resonant frequency euqals one over the product of two pi and the square root of inducatance and capacitance.

This wouldn't replace the formula, but be in addition to it. It may be helpful to people not skilled in mathematics. Thanks. JDR 16:28, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

copied from Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki namespace text. Thryduulf 10:32, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with this idea, but I'd like to point out that people who are not skilled in mathematics are hardly going to get any benefit from the English version. — Nowhither 22:26, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Think of it in the converse, some people are vastly more adept in words, than they are with all the choices in primers of equation representation. Especially as notations vary, or wholly change meaning when moving between mathematical disciplines, or even from one conversation group to the next.

One more comment, and then I'll shut up: On the contrary, mathematical notation is standardized all over the world. And being adept at words and not math means you probably don't have a clue what "the resonant frequency equals one over the product ..." means. But, again, this is a fine idea, and I don't want to get into a long argument, so I'll go away now. :-) — Nowhither 08:16, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

No argument at all with your comments. In fact, by the inclusion of the word description after/under or linked, I now have a vastly improved understanding of the mathematics being discussed on resonant frequency. This is supremely valuable to someone like me (I'm sure there are more), who didn't have the benefit of learning the world-wide standard method as you must have. Even with the growing pains experienced by this wiki, some day I suspect many people, again myself included, will enjoy wiki all the more as a place to learn. Learning works best when someone can explore a topic they are interested in, and the ability of wiki to imbed links right in the middle of a formula would be of great value. So certainly no argument, I agree with you, this is a fine idea. (no need to go away Nowhither). TTLR

Towards elevating confusion, (of course only when a mathematician wants to, they are always free to remain private with their primer), I think this wikisuggestion has merit. I particularly like the demands it places upon someone advancing an impressive formula, wherein they are forced to confess exactly which representation list they have chosen from. Not to throw out a 'skepticism of bad faith' or anything, but when it comes to numeracy, some people are tempted to take advantage of wiggle room. Yes/No?

One way to do this, would be hot linking all the individual notation component to the formulators' chosen definition. The english language (or any language for that matter) sentence would be bot-able at the click of a button. Or hit the reverse process button. Isn't cool what we can (I mean could) do with computers? See Pharos comment below. TTLightningRod 23:04, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

An interesting idea. Of course, some very complex equations can't easily be converted to plain English, like those with lots of nested parens. StuRat 10:47, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Actually, wouldn't it be possible to convert mathematical formulae to plain English automatically by extending the Math syntax on the English Wikipedia (and separately on the other Wikipedias)?--Pharos 12:47, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

This would be nice, but would only work for the simplest kinds of formulae — the resonant frequency one given above is about as complex as would viably be intelligible in words. I would envisage particular difficulty in producing a clear way of 'speaking' functions with complicated arguments. -Splash 16:44, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Maybe this idea has some merit in some very special cases for rather simple formulas. However, if this template starts popping up in odd places or being used too much, I would object. Oleg Alexandrov 19:01, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Oleg. — Paul August ☎ 20:01, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

Note that the benefit from using sentences in the example provided was that it defined the variables. You don't need sentences for that:

$f_{c}=ResonantFrequency$

$L=Inductance$

$C=Capacitance$

$\pi =pi=3.1415926...$

$f_{c}={1 \over 2\pi {\sqrt {LC}}}$

The definitions could even include links, to make them as useful as possible. Perhaps we need a template meaning "please define the variables used in this formula". StuRat 19:25, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Agree with Oleg. For simple formulae this is great; but I wouldn't be too impressed if the template turned up on Abstract analytic number theory. The whole point of mathematical notation is that it conveys certain types of meaning that are very difficult to convey in words.

May I also point out that if/when MathML becomes implemented in wikipedia (which is being worked on as we speak), it will be possible to wikify individual elements of an equation. Dmharvey File:User dmharvey sig.png Talk 20:13, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

The template is a poor solution to a real problem. The editing guidelines already suggest avoiding unnecessary symbols, and contributors to mathematics articles regularly discuss criteria for best practice. An article that uses a resonant frequency formula without explaining its terms almost certainly needs more than a formula "translation"; using undefined symbols is bad practice in every context I know. (Obvious exceptions include π, arithmetic operators, and the like.) Suggestions of links inside formulae are scary; they can cause confusion and unreadability with default formatting of links. MathML, now half a decade old, has formal mechanisms (in its content markup) for adding meaning to symbols. Even when that becomes available, it will be no substitute for good writing. To request that, we already have templates. For anything else, I'd like to see concrete examples of articles where this kind of template might be used now. Notation serves a purpose; we would not want to tackle complicated mathematics writing without notation any more than we would want to build a house without blueprints. However, a smart architect does not expect the client to "see" a building from its plans; nor should a smart mathematics explanation omit the intuition behind the equations. --KSmrq^T 23:05, 2005 August 30 (UTC)

To clarify, I wasn't proposing links within formulae, but rather in the definition of the variables, like so:

$f_{c}=$Resonant Frequency

$L=$Inductance

$C=$Capacitance

$\pi =$pi = 3.1415926...

$f_{c}={1 \over 2\pi {\sqrt {LC}}}$

StuRat 03:44, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

I think that's an excellent idea. WP has a lot of formulae, and they're potentially useful, but they can't stand alone. I know I could probably make sense of them if I knew what each symbol is supposed to stand for, but don't, because I never went beyond high school physics or chem. The above would be a big step towards making WP a useful resource for people who aren't already well-versed in the fields where they're looking up info. (And really, if you're looking for something in a field where you're already knowledgeable, you're probably going to be looking somewhere other than an encyclopedia.... We need to write for the layperson!) -- Avocado 01:20, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

Agree with Oleg, Paul, StuRat, KSmrq. If an article is poorly written, poorly structured, or hard to understand, that problem should be addressed. Converting formulas to words will help only in the rarest cases. linas 23:11, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Complaints about poorly written articles can be made on the article talk page; a cleanup tag added, and if need be, a breif complaint made on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. linas 23:13, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Translated formulas are useful for blind users, whose text-reading software can't make sense of images or text formatted with tables and superscripts. Non-user 11:03, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Is accessibility a Wikipedia value? Is conformance to W3C recommendations? Dream on. (But it's a lovely dream.) If WP developers were willing to support valid XHTML 1.1 output then it would be a simple matter to present mathematics using MathML, which has support for voice synthesis as an explicit design goal. Users with poor eyesight could also use large font sizes without concern for pixellated images. In fact, images themselves could be made more accessible using the triple XHTML+MathML+SVG profile, because SVG is also designed with such goals, and is built on XML (like XHTML and MathML). In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. recalled the ideals of the founding documents of the United States of America, saying: "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'" In 2005, that's still a distant dream even for a utopian effort like Wikipedia, which claims to invite the world to read and contribute. (But it is a lovely dream.) --KSmrq^T 01:31, 2005 September 5 (UTC)

This proposal echoes a larger proposal that I had thought of making. I've been trying to learn a little bit about set theory and computer system modeling lately. But when I read many of these articles, they are clearly written for Computer Science 301 and higher students at your higher learning institution of choice. That would be great for me if I were such a student. I'm not. I'm just trying to understand a new idea, which I thought was the raison d'être of Wikipedia. Instead, I'm finding that in order to even understand the article (not the topic of the article, just the article itself), I'm following page after page of links. To a point, this is expected for new topics, and I oblige.

I propose a policy that suggests to editors that any articles that are not readily understandable by the layperson or unedumicated[sic] professional such as myself (perhaps because the topic itself is not easily understood) be prefaced with some sort of indication of the educational prerequisites that will be demanded of the reader in order to proceed. I'm sure that there's some kind of WikiSpeak to explain what I'm suggesting, but hopefully I made myself clear.

With such a Reader Prerequisite template, the articles that contain Math markup will probably not need so much translation to English. Upon stumbling across the formal definition of Petri Nets, (I can read most of the math markup, I think) I would first see that I am expected to have first understood advanced set theory and what class I'm going to need to take at the local college before I should try to finish the article. --RedCrystal 23:02, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

You have to understand though that Wikipedia is not a textbook. It is an encyclopedia, a loose collection of essays. Think of it as a quick reference. The best way of learning a totally new thing is from a book. A book is written from beginning to end by one person (or group of people). It is addressed to a specific level. Its sections proceed in logical fashion and are integrated. The pupose of Wikipedia is not to write a book. Oleg Alexandrov 23:38, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree with RedCrystal that some of our articles are written at a level beyond the comprehension of casual readers. I prefer to solve this with rather basic introductions, leading to complex theory later. Diagrams and illustrations can also be enormously helpful to those who are visual learners. If the advanced readers want to skip the basic intro, it's just a click on the table of contents to get to the "good stuff". For example, if we were discussing electron shells of atoms, we could start with the planar, circular shell model with each electron as a discrete sphere. This isn't technically correct, but this simplification makes it far easier to understand than the probability functions actually needed to understand electron configuration at the advanced level. Of course, there are some topics that really do require understanding a range of prerequisites. In this case, your suggestion about a warning of the prerequisites would be good to implement. StuRat 23:52, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible, which addresses exactly what you describe. In this vein, I'm experimenting with a standard {{prerequisites}} template (shortcut {{preq}}; see Divisor function for an example) to be used as a subst:'d infobox. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 01:03, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Oleg, I do understand that Wikipedia is not supposed to be a textboox. I do use it as a quick reference frequently. I don't actually have any problem with the advanced topic articles, and I don't propose that every advanced topic should be rewritten so as to be understandable by laypeople -- there would be far too much redundancy, as fundamentals necessary for understanding the advanced topic would have to be included with every topic that builds from those fundamentals.

Nevertheless, I often find I don't even know where to begin! True, many of the articles contain references to textbooks (thank you!), but I am sometimes at a loss as to which references also assume advanced readers, and which are more like primers. There certainly are articles in Wikipedia that provide a more textbook-like approach to introducing a subject. Sometimes, but not dependably enough, IMHO, there are links to such introductory subjects. It's stlil hard to know which links within an advanced article take you to an introductory subject article, and which proceed to other advanced articles. I feel like a puppy chasing my own tail, and I'm not a slow learner.

--Alan (aka RedCrystal) 00:51:42, 2005-09-08 (UTC)

Here are my two cents. The use of TeX-generated graphics exclusively to show mathematical statements is just plain out-of-date... We should be using nested <object> elements with MathML. Let a PNG/GIF be displayed as alternate content, with an alt attribute in plain English if at all possible. WP should allow for input in Tex (using an automated conversion to MathML) or in straight-up MathML. The plain English is very important for users who utilize screen readers. Also, plain English expressions should describe the statement, not its representation, preferably using a stack expression methodology. For example, the quadratic formula would be expressed:

"The standard form of a rational quadratic polynomial is the equation of the sum of the sum of the product of A and the square of x and the product of B and x and C and 0, where A, B and C are integer constants and x is a rational variable. Z is a root of a rational quadratic polynomial if and only if Z is equal to the quotient of the sum or difference of the opposite of B and the square root of the difference of the square of B and the product of the product of 4 and A and C and the product of 2 and A."

Since this English expression refers only to operations and not to symbols of operators, there is no possible ambiguity. Everyone should be able to reconstruct what I just said in their favorite notation. If not, please go talk to your high school algebra teacher :-). --Mm35173 18:50, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

This seems to say:

$Ax^{2}+BxC0$

$Z=...$

Instead of the correct vesrion:

$Ax^{2}+Bx+C=0$

$x=...$

I believe this illustrates the difficulty in correctly representing formulae as words. StuRat 16:01, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Just want to make a (slightly irrelevant) note: writing a mathematics formula in plain english can help non-english speakers (such as me) get familiar with english terminology when it comes to formulae. Sure, I know that what I call "συν" in greek is "plus" in english, but (for example) how do you call "e εις την x" (is it exp(x)?) in english??? How do I speak f(x)? In greek it is "f του x". Is it "f function of x" in english?? Irrelevant and offtopic note, but I wrote it anyway! Michalis Famelis 21:14, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

I think this is only useful for very simple formulas. I think its use in RLC circuit is unnecessary; if you can't read that formula, are you going to be messing around with tuned circuits? Also I think the template needs a link to more information; when I first read the template, I thought it was a sarcastic comment about the formulas being confusing. Links to formula and English language are unhelpful. Pfalstad 23:18, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

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New category idea - Wikipedia:Higher risk of vandalism

Here's an idea. Why not add a new category called "Category:Higher risk of vandalism" as a sub-category of Category:Wikipedia? It'd be somewhat analogous to Category:Wikipedia featured content. This "higher risk" category could have subcategories like recently slashdotted, etc. The purpose of the category would be to note articles which appear to have a higher risk of being vandalized, and thus watched more closely. This would be a useful warning to readers, who would know to a little careful of such things, and would also hint to vandal-watchers to think about adding it to their watch list. If it works well, the "Recently Changed" list could specially mark any modification to an article in that category. I could easily add the category and see how it works, but I thought it'd be good to hear any constructive comments first. In particular, a better name or taxonomy would be great. Then we can add it, and see if it's actually useful (and drop it if it isn't). -- Dwheeler 14:41, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm. It's a double-edged sword. If a vandal sees that category, it might just excite them. It might make them think the're 'work' was worthwhile. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a fine idea, it just has some distinct disadvantages, you know?--Sean Jelly Baby? 22:34, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Doesn't WP:VIP allready have a section for articles being targeted for vandalism? Also we ahve a page for the most commonly vandalized pages. Broken S 23:31, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm talking about using the category system, as well or instead of the current system. Yes, Wikipedia:Most vandalized pages lists the most commonly vandalized pages, but (1) Readers and editors of the articles are not warned anywhere in the article that it's a most-vandalized page, (2) that list has to maintained by hand, and (3) there's no reasonable way to cleanly modify the Recent Changes list to note when one of them has been edited. Basically, the category system is a really simple yet powerful mechanism to group and keep track of things... let's use it to track highly vandalized pages too. -- Dwheeler 05:46, 27 September 2005 (UTC) Note - even without software changes, you could use this category to show recent changes. Once it's marked, just like Wikipedia:Favorite pages of banned users you can use a special URL like this one

Units of Measurement in Templates

Has someone hashed out how to handle varying units of measurement in templates? I understand that it supports consistency to have the units in the template, rather than leaving them out, but Metric is not always appropriate. I'm specifically looking at the River template, which assumes metric and can't be changed. This isn't a good fit for, say, the Mississippi; all of the units in the article are given in English units (then Metric).

• We could make two templates, "river-met" and "river-eng", but that seems clumsy.
• Or is there a wiki way to translate units based on user prefs? I know it can be done with dates, so I thought there might be such a system and I just can't find it.

Please point me in the right direction if there's a better venue for this issue. Thanks, —Papayoung 05:52, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I'd suggest making two templates. It's not a template that needs to be updated, so it will probably stay that way it is for a long time. However, you could do both, like "Length: 20 km (15 miles)" (don't bust my balls for the conversion, i think imperial units are stupid!). That would mean adding a bunch of arguments, and I see no problem with making a miles-template. gkhan 06:36, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

... and to directly answer your question, as far as I know there is no user preference item for metric vs. English unit display and no computation mechanism available within templates (so providing one and displaying the other would not be possible in a template). There is an existing software enhancement request, see mediazilla:235. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:42, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you. I have a lot more to learn about templates before I try to make this happen, but I'm getting there. —Papayoung 19:01, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Linking to Wikipedia, Wikisearch box

Most search engine Portals and Websites have a link banner/search box, google for example (http://www.google.com/searchcode.html) . Wikipedia should make one available to the public, a copy of the existing code should do, I have copied it myself for my WikiAtlas page (http://tiamat58.tripod.com/WikiAtlas.htm) I am happy to take this page down if there is a problem.

Wikiforum

What I was wondering is why Wikipedia hadn't made a forum. It would be an excellent place for people to discuss certain things, get ideas for articles proofread and all those kinds of things.

the talk and wikipedia pages act as a forum and we have the mailing list too Broken S 01:46, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

The campaign against untagged pictures

I understand the motivation of the current campaign against untagged pictures, but I don't understand why no one is making any effort to contact the people who uploaded them. I recently discovered that dozens of images I uploaded over a year ago, before any such standard was in place, and for which I provided clear information about provenance but not the current tags (which didn't exist at the time) have been deleted. I only found out by looking at the articles in question, because no one tried notifying me and because I don't customarily watchlist images.

Frankly, this pisses me off. It's not like I'm generally hard to reach (although I am about to take a 5-day break, my first in over a year).

I've often removed dubious images in the past, myself. But I've never done this without attempting to contact the uploader. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:13, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

FWIW, I also notify when I tag an image {{unverified}} and {{nosource}} or nominate it for deletion. Other users are asked to follow that policy as well. Superm401 | Talk 17:52, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Special:watchlist has just been updated with a notice about this, but I think it's important to individually notify as well. Jimbo Wales recently amended criteria for speedy deletion officially making these images subject to deletion without warning. However, just because they can be deleted without warning doesn't mean they should be. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:18, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Please add a Wikipedia:Lost images link to the notice so images deleted incorrectly as a result of the policy change can be restored. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 22:56, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, apparently one of my images has been deleted without anyone contacting me. I'd like it restored; who can undelete images in the event of an error? ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 21:49, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Images cannot be undeleted. They must be re-uploaded. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:29, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

If you don't have a local copy anymore, don't despair. Most of these images should be recoverable from Wikipedia mirrors. -- Norvy (talk) 23:36, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

I've removed Jimbo's ill-conceived and rude attempt to dictate policy. If there is a good reason for images to be deleted outside WP:IFD, it should be discussed publicly. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 22:15, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales is the chair of the Board of the Wikimedia Foundation, as well as the founder of both Wikipedia and Wikimedia. He also has the right to make any decision whatsoever regarding Wikipedia policy. You do not have the right to reverse his policy changes, regardless of whether you disagree, nor to demand consensus. Superm401 | Talk 22:59, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

If Jimbo feels justified in making irrational policy changes that show no foresight, I think every Wikipedian should be greatly concerned. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 23:10, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Great thing is that, rather than just reverting his change, he has a talk page you can use. -Splash^talk 23:14, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo's talk page is not a appropriate location to discuss policy. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 23:16, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Not only does Jimbo feel justified making policy changes(both those that you believe are irrational and without foresight and those you do not), he is justified, for the reasons already explained. However, I disagree that this choice was irrational and without foresight. At any rate, I am not concerned about him abusing his powers. I believe that he has shown very good judgement in most cases. There is really no need to discuss this policy change anywhere. The change has been made and is permanently binding unless Jimbo reverses his decision, which is very unlikely. If you still wish to attempt to convince him to do so, his talk page would be an appropriate place, though you will need to be patient. Superm401 | Talk 23:22, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

• If people followed regular copyright policy by properly tagging the images they upload and use them in articles, Jimbo's policy wouldn't even have been neccesary. I don't see what's the big problem. He's trying to get rid of copyright violations in an efficient manner. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:27, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo ≠ infallible

I have no interest to participate in a wiki where the founder is established as a dictator in fact rather than simply in humor. I will not continue editing. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 02:20, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Why not leave a message on his talk page and ask him to post here, he is probably unaware that you have started a discussion here. The new policy might well be dictated by legal advice or other valid reason. Let him give his side. Are you objecting to the policy itself, or just the implementation (deletion without adequate notice to the uploader)? -- Curps 03:26, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

That's your perogative, and while we wish you would stay, you'll find that no one is going to go down on their knees and beg. You have to make your own choice, and I hope it's not a hasty one. Superm401 | Talk 22:33, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

A few comments seem worth making on several issues raised.

1. It is inevitably upsetting for a culture that nurtures the image of itself as a community to confront a truth that is different. A benevolent dictatorship is still a dictatorship.
2. The recent fundraiser suggests there exists an entity in the legal sense which is capable of being sued for copyright violation. If that is true, it must be possible for that entity to act on copyvio complaints — perhaps too promptly to contact image uploaders.
3. We live in a strange world if any image that isn't explicitly declared freely licensed — and with the now-proper tags — is considered a public enemy that must be wiped out immediately. In the absence of a complaint, is it so harmful to assume "good faith"? We explicitly assume an edit to an article is not a copyvio even in the absence of an explicit tag saying otherwise!
4. Technically (and legally), it seems bizarre that an article can be undeleted but not an image. What about an image of an article? An article which is an ASCII-art or more sophisticated encoding of an image? An article that is Chapter 28 of the latest Harry Potter book?
5. I would guess that articles tend to have many editors, but images, few. Did anyone ever, say, run a bot to warn uploaders of impending deletion? Isn't the current modus operandus disconcertingly similar to the Vogon's telling Earth they "should have known" it was scheduled to be destroyed?

   ❝There's no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaints, and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it now.❞

6. Will a Human Being ever bother to look at image provenance comments predating tags? Is the burden really on some uploader who should "just know" of the threat? What else should someone "know"?

A little food for thought. --KSmrq^T 04:45, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Images are supposed to be tagged for a week before being deleted, aren't they? If you upload an image, you have the option of watching its page; and if you're watching its, page, then you get a week's warning right there. If you're not watching it, they you've basically said that you don't care what happens to it. --Aquillion 16:03, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Ksmrq, Wikipedia is not an experiment in anarchy, as all experienced Wikipedia editors should know. While ordinary people are given vast latitude here, and many decisions are made communally without a central power structure, there are authority figures with power. It should come to no surprise to anyone here that Jimbo has made a unilateral decision. He has the right to do so, though he uses that right 'very rarely. I believe that the reason images can't be undeleted is because of size constraints. While we ask that articles overall be less than 32 KB, a single image could easily be more than that. Hence we don't want to store unused and unencyclopedic ones unnecessarily. Could we keep them anyway? Probably, but I doubt we will. As for people not knowing about image deletion, that's ridiculous. Our image rules have been on the image upload page for ages, and policy dictates that people are notified by a message on their talk page when {{no source}} or {{unknown}} are added to their images. They are also notified when an image is put up for deletion normally. The problem is that people don't pay any attention. Not only have Human Beings who actually care about Wikipedia's legal liability looked at image copyright tags, all uploaders have been asked to on the image upload page for ages. Anyone who ignores that request is irresponsible. Superm401 | Talk 22:33, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

• So in your view "consensus"="anarchy"? I see some evidence to support that, but I'm not convinced the alternative to dictators is anarchy. Do you agree that Jimbo's absolute power makes Wikipedia a dictatorship, regardless of how he chooses to use that power? Note I'm not asking if you like it or accept it or enthusiastically assert it should and must be that way; I'm proposing that it is that way, and that confronting such a fact can be unsettingly for consensualists.
• Size constraints is an interesting guess, but no excuse for lack of some image undelete. User interfaces today routinely provide undelete of anything on a hard drive, because people make mistakes. It's absurd to have no image undelete, even if it must have size and/or time limits.
• You are still talking Vogon when you claim folks have no good reason to complain. My limited investigation suggests Jmabel is an experienced and conscientious Wikipedian who did care about his images and did not know they were going to be deleted. The problem is, by the time he finds out, the image is gone and can't be brought back. And you blame him, not the deleter, and not the failure to provide image undelete. If you can't see a problem with this scenario I don't want you designing my user interfaces (nor my hurricane emergency plans)! --KSmrq^T 01:20, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Would it be technicaly possible to make images remain red-linked until tagged in some way? Fornadan (t) 22:42, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

• Images can be reuploaded using mirrored version. The fact there's no undelete for images is purely a technical issue. I'm against admins deleting images without proper warnings, but all such warnings are really given on the upload page. We can't help it if people don't read those. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:32, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Placeopedia

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Village pump

what would you guys think of adding in the placeopedia website into wikipedia. see www.placeopedia.com . we can at least do it better than them because we have more users. hans863

The obvious thing to do if we want to support them is to add a template for their purpose with geographical coordinates, so that they (and we) can put this information directly into Wikpedia articles, and coordinate the databases by an automated process. -- Jmabel | Talk 16:31, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Articles not on watchlists

• I think it would be nice to have a way to check whether an article appears on user watchlists. This way, non-watched articles can be IDed.--Confuzion 11:20, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

  See above. —Cryptic (talk) 14:42, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Remove Subject to disclaimers from {{GFDL}}

Please see Template_talk:GFDL#Subject_to_disclaimers!? --Sanbec 08:38, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Preserving Your Eyesight

I propose that Wikipedia should change the background color to black and the font to white. This would be much easier on the eyes, seeing as staring at a white moniter is much akin to staring at a light bulb. This isn't an issue on most sites, but considering Wikipedia is a research site, people can spend many hours reading articles here, and it would just make common sense.

I would be ok with darkening BRIGHT WHITE a bit to beg, but not a black bg, Thats an over kill --Cool Cat ^Talk 04:04, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

The above was posted by anonymous IP 4.227.192.134 (talk · contribs), and sounds like Hipcat (talk · contribs), who made an identical proposal. Although we are supposed to assume good faith, Hipcat appeared to be trolling (posting three controversial suggestions in rapid succession). Nearly every website in existence uses a light background, and anyone who's unhappy with that should figure out how to change colors within their browser. Perhaps the Monobook.css file might also allow for such customization. -- Curps 05:22, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, studies seem to indicate that dark letters on a light background, ideally black on white, are easiest to read. Color is cheap on the web, which is why you'll find personal web pages with beige on red, purple on green, yellow on black, and so on; however, any major web site, be it CNN, Yahoo, Ebay, Amazon, and so on, will use black on white. I'd say it's akin to staring at a white piece of paper with black ink on it, like conventional print media. I agree with Curps; if a user desires an unconventional color scheme, modifying his monobook.css file would be the best method. — Knowledge Seeker দ 05:31, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Even supposing the proposal is trolling, we can have a little fun and introduce science (using black on mintcream):

[M]ost studies have shown that dark characters on a light background are superior to light characters on a dark background (when the refresh rate is fairly high). For example, Bauer and Cavonius (1980) found that participants were 26% more accurate in reading text when they read it with dark characters on a light background. Moreover, a survey by Scharff, et al. (1996) revealed that the color combination perceived as being most readable is the traditional black text on white background. However, it is common for websites (such as this one) to have an off-white background in order to reduce the flicker and glare associated with white backgrounds. — SURL optimal web design

Some study results by Scharff are here and here. --KSmrq^T 09:33, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Mind, you, there is a corollary - yellow characters on black are easiest for dyslexics to read. However, black on white seems most natural, especially when we have embedded images and templates. If it ain't currently broke... Grutness...wha? 01:42, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

The m:Gallery of user styles on meta has some examples of skins with light text on a dark background if you would prefer that. You can of course create your own - see m:help:User style. Thryduulf 07:21, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Thinking about your article's intended readers

I know I am not the first person to point out the problem that Wikipedia articles are often too technical for the layman. I consider myself to be a fairly well-educated person, but the article at Zipf's Law, for example, is completely unintelligible to me.

I think the reason for this problem with Wikipedia is editors' tendendency to write for themselves rather than to imagine an intended audience. Take the article on American football. The people likely to read this article are non-Americans who know little about the sport and are looking for basic information. Yet some editors insist on adding details on the most obscure aspects of the game, such as one-point safeties, fair-catch kicks and other minutia.

One way to resolve this problem is to think of Wikipedia in a hierarchical sense. Articles on general topics -- the kind you'd find in World Book -- can be considered "top-level" articles. These articles should provide a basic overview of the subject for someone completely unfamiliar with the subject. The reader should not have to read another article in order to understand a top-level one.

Articles on more-technical subjects could be considered "tributaries" of the top-level articles. A reader should be able to understand a tributary article after reading the associated top-level article. The article on American-football strategy, of course, cannot be aimed at someone completely unfamiliar with the game. But it should be written to be generally comprehensible to someone who has read American football. We could even have a template: "If you are unfamiliar with the topic of American football, you might want to consider reading that article before trying this one."

You could also have second-level tributaries -- Zone defenses (football) as a subsidiary of American-football strategy. Or you could expect readers to read two higher-level articles. And if the overall meaning is clear, you can just bluelink some terms (like "OECD" in the nex paragraph) rather than explain every single word. But the important thing to remember is that readers must not be forced to go chasing links all over Wikipedia in order to understand a single article.

Of course, it doesn't matter how a hierarchy of articles is organized if they are written in an incomprehensible manner. Editors should always write articles as if they are going to be read by average people. Fewer than one-fourth of Americans 15 years or older have a bachelor's degree, and the average adult in OECD countries has 10 years of education. Yet some people edit Wikipedia like they think everyone has a Ph.D.

I understand that there might be some information that merits inclusion in Wikipedia even though it cannot be made easy for normal people to understand, such as the equations in the Zipf's Law article. But the beginning of every article should explain in simple language what the subject is and why it is important. The math can go at the end for the people interested. Mwalcoff 02:34, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Most definitely. Please take a look at Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible. Would you be interested in a WikiProject to help address this problem? ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 03:02, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

"some people edit Wikipedia like they think everyone has a Ph.D." -> what's more, a Ph.D. in the topic in question !

I had something like that in mind when I started making a Glossary of probability and statistics to serve as a reference for reading some thorny articles in that subject. But I'm not sure how to add links to the glossary. Maybe a special template for difficult topics, with lists to basic concepts and glossaries ? Hmmm ... I'm sure this has already been extensively discussed, there may even be a project about this.

Wikipedia could certainly do with more plain talk. Flammifer 03:07, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Oops, got hit with the edit conflict stick again :) I'll go have a look at that project then :) Flammifer 03:07, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I've now started the project; please see WikiProject:General Audience if you would like to join. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 08:14, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for alerting me to the style guide. The WikiProject might be a good idea, but the onus is really on the original editors of the articles (if I knew enough about Zipf's Law to simplify the article, I probably would never have complained about it in the first place). How can we make more editors aware of the style guide? Mwalcoff 23:09, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I think that should be one of the goals of WikiProject:General Audience - improving the style guide, bringing attention to it in needed places (such as other wikiprojects), taking notes of how different people perceive the problem (See the discussion further up on maths equations in plain english), etc. Maybe also putting up case studies ? Flammifer 06:45, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

more powerful rollback function for admins

Administrators can, with one click, revert pages to the last version not edited by a particular user. However, if two or more users make bad edits to the same page in a row, then the administrators will still have to revert using the "mortal" way.

Also, if one user reverts a page, and an administrator reverts right after, the page might get reverted back to the bad version.

Therefore, I suggest a function that allows an administrator to revert to a particular version with ease. In the page history, each revision would have a "revert to this version" link. When an administrator clicks the link, the page will be reverted to the specified version.

The summary would be something like Reverted to version as of 19:59, July 3, 2005 UTC by (user name).

If regular users could revert images this way, I don't see why an administrator should not be able to do the same with pages. --Ixfd64 21:39, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Hooray! Support.  :-) Omegatron (talk) 21:47, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. In fact I'm surprised to hear that this isn't the way it already is. — Nowhither 23:19, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Before I became an admin, I figured this was how rollback worked. I was surprised to find that you could only rollback the most recent user's contributions. Carbonite | Talk 23:23, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Me too. This sounds like a wonderful idea. An additional case where this is useful is those occasions when one editor makes a good edit followed by a second not-so-good edit. Currently rollback can't be used in those cases. An additional bonus would be if it were possible to leave an edit summary, explaining the reason for the rollback. Grutness...wha? 02:28, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

This is easily done in javascript; see my standard.js. I'm not quite comfortable separating out the relevant parts into an easily-installable script, however. —Cryptic (talk) 08:35, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

POV template

On occassion during patrol I'd come across a POV edit that the normal test templates didn't really address directly. I want to create a new template patrollers could use to more specifically address them. It would tell/direct them to the neutrality sections of Wikipolicy, and elaborate that established articles go through discussion and consensus prior to contentious additions/changes being made. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 05:49, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure that's such a good idea. Vandalism is usually fairly straightforward, which is why it can easily be encompassed by a handful of templates, and why it's possible to fight it rapid-fire via RC patrol and with templates. You point out to someone that what they're doing is vandalism, and they either realize that and stop, or don't realize/care and eventually get blocked. POV concerns aren't so simple, and it can take a long time to talk your way through them. While in theory a template could be useful for a user who is obviously totally unfamilar with the policy of NPOV, I've yet to see a single case where simply telling someone about the NPOV policy made them dramatically reverse direction.

The main use I can see such templates getting is moderately experienced users in a POV dispute who both know the policy mindlessly slapping each other's user-pages with them, and there's nothing constructive in that. Aquillion 07:30, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I already did that {{Constantvandalisminprogress}}, see deletation log: [3] --Cool Cat ^Talk 04:02, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Metadata

Note: Yes, I know this proposals includes software changes and yes, I know that changes to the software should go on Bugzilla. But right now I'm just testing the waters what the community thinks of the proposal I wish to make.

Reading #Making featured articles stand out above, I started thinking: The point Raul654 makes against metadata is (probably - correct me if I'm wrong) backed by Wikipedia:Avoid self-references, and rightly so. Now one big reason for avoiding self-references is that reusers can just take the articles and, well, use them, so we should keep the database clean. However, there are numerous cases of self-reference that are accepted (stub and cleanup templates) or even encouraged (i.e. I'd say the interlanguage links are pretty heavy self-references, and no-one has proposed to remove those from featured articles yet). The rest go on talk pages, but they don't actually refer to the talk page. Now, what if we had a namespace that would attach to an article just like the Talk: namespace, but was intended for metadata? So, on the top of Article there would be a link to Metadata:Article.

That page would include any metadata that applies to the article, which would mean:

• {{featured}}, {{fac}}, {{peerreview}}, {{oldpeerreview}}, etc (now on the talk page)
• {{cleanup}}, {{POV}}, {{AFD}}, etc (now on top of the article)
• {{stub}} and stub categories (now at the bottom of the article)
• Categories and interlanguage links (now mostly at the bottom of the article, but displayed independently)

Now, if we have this metadata collected in one place, we can choose how to display it. That would require some changes to the software, but I think no really big ones: I would propose that the Metadata: page is just automatically prepended to the wikitext when the article or the talk page is requested. Of course, not all metadata should appear on both. The solution to this would be markup, and I think Metadata:Article could look something like this (the comments are only for illustration):

<articletop>{{cleanup}} {{POV}}</articletop> <!-- This is shown at the top of the article -->
<articlebottom>{{stub}}</articlebottom> <!-- This is shown at the bottom of the article -->
{{fac}} {{pr}} <!-- everything not marked up is automatically shown on the talk page... -->
[[de:Artikel]] [[Category:Articles]] <!-- ...unless it's an interlang or a category, then it's
parsed on the article only -->

It would be even better, of course, if templates like {{stub}} could actually include its own placement markup, making the maintenance of the metadata easier, e.g.:

<articlebottom>This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.</articlebottom>

Templates that contribute content, like navigation templates, would remain where they are right now, in the article itself, as would any metadata template that needs exact placement ({{sect-stub}} comes to mind).

That would neatly solve the "keep our database as reusable as possible" dilemma, since any reuser would just have to drop the Metadata: namespace, and we could choose to highlight. On the other hand, it would add significant instruction creep, and yet another namespace, and it would add another database call to any article or talk page. But since I've already thought this up, I'd like to hear if this idea has any merit at all.

Thank you for your time, -- grm_wnr Esc 21:19, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I'd just like to say that I think this is a brilliant idea (in principle at least). It would allow people who want to see metadata in the article to turn it on if they want to, and allow people who don't want to see it to turn it off. It would also make our database much more reusable to others. →Raul654 03:06, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I do not think this is such a brilliant idea. Whilst I can see the argument about self-references applying to the FA template, some templates and other metadata SHOULD be on the article. For example, the Neutrality and Factual Accuracy disupte templates should be there - because it is a founding principle of Wikipedia that articles should be NPOV, and so if people think an article is not it would be misleading to viewers and people who might want to use the information (for fun as well as for scholarship) to pretend that the article was NPOV when there is a dispute. Yes, I know the information would be on this new Metadata section, but how many people now actually read the talk page of most articles they view? I am going with a minority. Some information needs to be visible when you open an article. Even if it is strivtly metadata, that is a price we must pay. Batmanand 14:53, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree. In general, tags that are (in part) warnings to readers, such as NPOV tags, dispute tags, cleanup tags, stub tags, etc. IMO ought to be shown whenever' the article is viewed. There should not be an option to hide them, and the user should not have to go anywhere else to see them. This proposal is IMO a bad idea even in principle, if it would be used for those sorts of metadata. DES ^(talk) 15:53, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Um. You seem to misunderstand the intention behind this proposal. This is not about hiding metadata from the user, but to untangle it from the article content in the database. What is considered "metadata" for the purposes of this proposal is irrelevant at the moment - that would be a matter of policy. Metadata ranges from interlanguage links (shouldn't be in the article database IMO) to references (should be in the database IMO), but that decision can be taken later. Anyway, should a user wish to suppress metadata visually this can be done even now (and much easier) by just assigning the metadata class the CSS attribute "display:none" in the user's monobook.css. I have tried to visualize my intentions with Inkscape, maybe this way it will be clearer that the removal of metadata is a only side effect that is primarily relevant to reusers:

Is this clearer now? -- grm_wnr Esc 22:32, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

One negative implication of this would be that it would require two database queries (one to get Metadata:$1 and the other to get $1) where we now have one. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason (talk) 22:43, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Another problem I foresee would be when stubs are expanded into full articles. I doubt many editors would bother (or even remember) to go into the metadata to remove a stub tag. It would also increase the workload on us stub sorters (now: open article, edit article text and template, save; new method: open article, open metadata, edit article to correct sloppy text, edit metadata to change template; save both). Similar problems would occur when adding categories to articles. Perhaps the simplified form of this system is more viable - keep it to just article and talk pages, but add in metadata commands to the templates so that no matter where on a page a template was added, it would turn up at the right point on the page (a bit like with category links now). Grutness...wha? 02:22, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I am less concerned with the intention of this proposal than with its effect. There are particular kinds of information that may plausibly be labeled metadata, but that I think should always be presented with the article text to any user. It appeared as if this proposal would change that. Now it also seems that it would make editing such metadata more cumbersome. I don't think that better adherance to a theoretical purity of seperation of types of information in the database is worth such problems. What is the gain, from a practical point of view? If this proposal did not increase server load (or better yet decreased it) and did not make routine edits harder, and did ensure that certian kinds of metadata was always presented with the articel, not on a separate tab, then i woudn't object to it. DES ^(talk) 15:28, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

One (cumbersome) interface solution would be to have the article edit have two edit fields, one for the article and one for the metadata. I'm not sure I'd like it that much though (Maybe it'd be neat if the edit summary only showed which one(s) of those fields changed, which would make it easier to browse watchlists and recent changes ?) (On the other hand, having the article edit and discussion edit open on the same page might sometimes be neat =) )

The main problem I see is that the border between "article" and "metadata" is a bit fuzzy - categories and language links are metadata, ok. But templated banners like NPOV, hmm, some of them require special placement - putting it on the top is easy, but often stub templates are put before the see also / references sections, which makes things more complicated. Also, some stub and NPOV templates apply to sections or subsections, not whole articles; I'm not sure I like the idea of having some NPOV tags on the metadata page, and some in the article page. Also, aren't "see also" and "external links" lists also metadata of sorts ?

Most of all, if it ain't broken, don't fix it. I think the system works fine now, we don't need to bend ourselves all over to make reusing of articles easier, it's easy to write a script and get rid of certain tags, and I'm pretty sure they'd do it anyway even if we had a metadata section. So, neat idea, but not that needed. Flammifer 15:45, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I concur with Flammifer's well-reasoned analysis. --Coolcaesar 02:59, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I also concur; I think we should leave things as they are and NOT create yet another type of page. Creating a completely separate articlespace for metadata is conceptually clean, but would impose significant additional overhead (twice as many retrieves even though Wikipedia is barely able to keep up now) and make it harder for the uninitiated to edit (they wouldn't understand the difference). It's a reasonable idea. But I think the disadvantages of this proposal outweigh the advantages, at least right now. If there is a clean way to group all the "meta" tags into a top-level category, and then use the existing category system to categorize them, perhaps that could achieve the same effect without the big software change. -- Dwheeler 14:55, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

No redirects in searches

How often do you search for an article but all the good information gets drowned in pages and pages of redirects? An article may have 10 or may of these annoying pages along with it. Although they're a lifesaver when useing "go", they are just the opposite when using "search". My idea: find some way to give the option to ignore redirects on the search result page. HereToHelp 23:17, 17 September 2005 (UTC) Who'ss with me?

I agree, redirects should be omitted. StuRat 06:53, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

A redirect should only be omitted if the article redirected to appears in the search result as well. Otherwise important find places could be obscured. So it's not as easy as it looks! −Woodstone 10:58, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I have had some success with adding the keyword '-redirect' . I don't know if there is a better method. Bobblewik 15:08, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

It seems to me that this issue is a symptom of search error (false positives and misses). A redirect in the results is a highly visible false positive (except when the search term is in the page title). Immediately after the search index is updated, you should not get any. You notice them now because the index has not been updated for a while and they are increasing in number.

For example, if the page 'foobar' contains the word 'splurge' and somebody redirects 'foobar' to 'foo bar' then a search for 'splurge' will incorrectly list 'foobar' as a false positive result. When the search index is updated, the redirect page 'foobar' will not be listed. ...I think...

If the search index is updated more frequently, you will see fewer redirects. I asked a question about reducing false positives at Updating the search index. Somebody correct me if I am talking rubbish. Bobblewik 01:03, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Ombudsmen

The cherished goal of NPOV for Wikipedia often seems to be getting farther and farther away from realization. One of the most intractible problems is that POV warfare is carried on in a highly organized basis, not only in the editing, but oftentimes in administrative functions as well. It takes the form of what have been described variously as WikiCliques or POV posses, which generally have one or more Designated Administrators, administrators who carefully avoid direct participation in specific conflicts, but will intervene with administrative powers on the side of their respective teammates. An example of such behavior is what I call the Protection Racket, where admins watch the Requests for Protection page in order to protect the versions desired by their buddies, and POV warriors time protection requests so as to intersect periods when their Designated Admins are on patrol.

At present, the remedies are inadequate. Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship seems very unwieldy and is seldom used. So, I am making the following proposal:

I think that there ought to be a higher echelon of administrators, whom I propose be called ombudsmen, who would be held to a far higher standard of propriety and neutrality than present administrators. A member who becomes an ombudsman could lose that status at the slightest hint of partisanship in any dispute where ombudsman powers are invoked. And here are what I propose ombudsman powers should consist of:

1. The authority to discipline admins by imposing temporary bans on their use of admin powers, just as admins may temporarily ban ordinary editors from editing. This authority would be used when admins are found to be using their authority to further the POV-pushing of their allies.

2. The authority to temporarily intervene into POV disputes by setting ground-rules for conflict resolution in specific articles (this idea needs some refining; my intention is to take some of the load off of the mediation and arbitration committees, and speed conflict resolution.) --HK 15:32, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

This might fall under the aegis of Bureaucrats (a misleading title. We were actually discussing possible new titles for bureaucrats at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship not that long ago - Ombudsman would have been a good option). Grutness...wha? 00:53, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

The issues you raise with this proposal are certainly a problem and I've encountered admins of this sort before. Having a more neutral party with higher authority than the admins to reign them in when they violate policy or coordinate POV attacks would go a long way to improving wikipedia's editing environment and reducing the number of conflicts. You should consider drafting a formal version of this idea and posting it with a proposed tag for community comment. Rangerdude 15:38, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

How do I go about doing that? I was under the impression that the Village Pump was the correct forum for making such a proposal, but I don't really know my way around Wikipedia's administrative labyrinth. --HK 21:13, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

What you want is Wikipedia:How to create policy (yes, the Wikipedia: namespace is really a labyrinth. Suggestions on how to improve it are welcome). --cesarb 21:46, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

OK, I'm giving it a shot. I'm a bit uncertain of how to proceed, so please visit Wikipedia:Ombudsmen and help out. --HK 21:57, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Auto deletion of nonsense

Repast The Tempest (Insane Clown Posse) Formal amendment Hay sweep Actual effects of invading Iraq W. Ralph Basham Adam bishop Harrowlfptwé Brancacci Chapel Acacia ant(Pseudomyrmex ferruginea) Cyberpedia Principles of Mathematics Moss-troopers Gunung Lambak

All of the articles above are created by people as a "test". On average there are 2-20 of these posts that keeps admins busy unnecesarily. All pages have one thing in common they are less than 16 bytes. 15 bytes is a magical number because it is the smallest article size posible to have a redirect. or #redirect A = 15 chars. --Cool Cat ^Talk 02:30, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

14 bytes. The space after #redirect can be omitted [4] -- Curps 08:42, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I already replied to this on your tlk page, it is trivial to code in a on "#redirect" on page halt. Thans for the input. --Cool Cat ^Talk 11:08, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

We already have a way to detect such pages. That'll be my bot in #en.wikipedia.vandalism . It is trivial to add it a function to make it delete any page newly created with less than 15 bytes. I intend to do so, objections? --Cool Cat ^Talk 02:30, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Several people suggested why not simply disallow the creation of pages smaller than 15 bytes, well people would create a slightly larger page with nonsense. People should be able to experiment and if it is detectable its better. This way admins can worry about real problems rather than waisting hours on peoples "tests" --Cool Cat ^Talk 03:03, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I intend on restrict the bot to article namespace --Cool Cat ^Talk 03:03, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

A valid tiny edit could be adding {{WoW}} to a userpage, but the bot will ignore it as it is not in main article name space. --Cool Cat ^Talk 03:54, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I was the one that originally started bugging people about this idea. The bot is very reliable at detecting too small to be #redirect articles, and I thought it would be good to automatically delete them to save the admins time. Later, if this works, I think it would also be cool to test out the possibility of auto reverting page blanking, where if more than 90% of the page is blanked without an excuse, it automatically reverts its. One thing at a time though, I hope to see this implemented soon --appleboy 03:17, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I support the bot addition. Not in a single case I've seen one of those tiny entries has been a valid one. -- (☺drini♫|☎) 03:16, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

It might be a good thing to avoid deleting anything that's a template. One example is a {{deletedpage}} (which happens to be 15 chars, but no reason it couldn't have been shorter). Or, it might theoretically be possible to have a very short template that performs some logic based on the {{PAGENAME}}. -- Curps 09:01, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

The bot would not delete admins creating tiny pages. Only admins can have a valid reason (that I can see) to create a tiny page, I think we can trust the admins for this. --Cool Cat ^Talk 09:40, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Admins shouldn't, as I understand things, have editing privilages differnt from thsoe of ordinary users in good standing. a page that uses templates could have an arbitrarily long expansion for a very short source text. either the bot should ignore any page using transclusion, or it should count on the lenght of the text after transclusion, whichever is easiest to implemt, IMO. Recognizing the presence of a template is easy, after all. DES ^(talk) 14:51, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

True true but {{deletedpage}} is an admin only template like {{protected}} regular users should not create any page smaller than 15 bytes in reglar namespace. If someone can come up with legit instances I can write expetion cases for those. --Cool Cat ^Talk 15:11, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Pages created in the past 10 minutes: Jamie Lidell Katy Lennon Cassa Rosso

--Cool Cat ^Talk 10:45, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Exeptions bot will not delete:

• #redircts
• templates

Given that how large (in bytes) should a newly created article be written to be kept?

• Aside from templates and #redirects is there anything else lets say less than 30bytes a legitamate page?

objection to 15 limit - Please note: During debate on potential deletion of stub template redirects at WP:SFD and WP:TFD it is often easier - so as not to get the "this may be deleted" message on the real template - to replace the redirect message with a simple template message. Thus, if a redirect to {{a}} was being debated, the nominated template would contain the text {{tfd}}{{a}}. 12 characters. Then there's pages containing simply {{copyvio}} - 11 characters. I can't think of any smaller possibilities, but they may exist - and 15 is thus too big! Grutness...wha? 01:49, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Grutness, he already said he wouldn't delete templates. --Golbez 01:59, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Oops - missed that bit - sorry! Grutness...wha?

Will this bot automatically post an explaination to creator's talk pages explaining why their page was deleted? Perhaps it should, if that's feasible. --Aquillion 16:09, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

First of all - good idea, go to it. (With the no templates, no #redirect's limits) 15 chars seems fine to me, we can expand it upward if we still get lots of slightly longer bad pages. I find it ironic that people have often cried that their articles were deleted automatically and we were always able to say - no, we don't delete things automatically, someone just was watching really fast and deleted it by hand. Now we won't be able to say that. It probably would be good to put a tiny note in the start-a-new-article MediaWiki text saying something like "Articles with less than 15 characters will be automatically deleted" - so we can point people there when they complain. In any case, good idea, go to it. JesseW, the juggling janitor 00:24, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good. Might I suggest also - if there wouldn't be one automatically - a 10 minute delay between the posting of the article and the automatic deletion, just in case the article was a valid one which glitched while being saved (as can happen with IE from time to time). Grutness...wha? 00:43, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Can be done. We can raise the cap a bit as JesseW suggested. What should be the cap? 42 bytes? ;)

The bot will need "some" admin power at least enough to delete pages. Should we start a wikiproject? Its easy for me to code the bot, however we will have people complaining unless we have a page explaining this entier mess. --Cool Cat ^Talk 22:33, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I have been requested by Cool Cat for his assistance, but in light that Cool Cat doesn't have admin powers, I have taken upon myself to write this bot. I have decided three levels for this bot: 15 bytes that are not redirects or templates will be deleted automatically by the bot. 42 bytes are automatically marked with {{db}} with the delete reason of "Bot detected new article less than 42 bytes, possibly spam." Anything under 1k will be marked with the generic stub template. --AllyUnion (talk) 23:57, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Does this include the 10 minute (or whatever) delay I suggested? I still think it would be useful... Grutness...wha? 00:13, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

New blocking policy proposal

We are trying to develop a new proposal that would, in a nutshell, mean that we have a new level of block which would allow an IP address to be blocked from anonymous, but allow registered editing.

This is impportant so please get involved!

See Wikipedia:Blocking policy proposal.

thanks - Martin 21:20, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Redirects in search results

Every time I search for an article, I see all the different results, many of them are very simmilar, and many of them will redirect to the same article. However, I always read a few of the less simmilar results and wonder if they are a separate article or not, and I usually end up clicking on a few of them, and end up visiting the same article multiple times, to my annoyance. I was just wondering if it would be possible to put a little line saying 'redirects to:_____' beside each search result, to easily determine which of the results will take you to a different article. Let me know what you think. --Someones life 08:51, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

It's been suggested before but not yet implemented. See meta:Redirects in search results - proposed software changes for a very old discussion on this. Angela. 22:53, 10 October 2005 (UTC)