Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive I

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Village pump (proposals) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals).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

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Corporate input

So, I was looking at the relevant page about my employer (those people that keep expecting me to show up EVERY day), and I had the feeling that it had been heavily edited/created by someone within the company. At first blush I was a little bothered, but in fact I think this is good. I'm certainly capable of contributing and editing things that don't seem NPOV (think union/employer relations), and the payoff is a more complete page.

My proposal is a template/note that can be emailed to an appropriate corporate/business person simply stating that they are included in Wikipedia, that there is an interest in having them contribute, and perhaps a short blurb on the nature of editing, NPOV, etc...

• More complete pages.
• Better control/release on photos and copyright.
• Maybe more danger of bias, but also better vigilance against vandalism.

I know this can be done on an individual basis, but I was looking for a little consensus and input into an efficient/proper way of doing things.--Bookandcoffee 23:36, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Is there a reason why you'd need a stock note to send to companies instead of writing indivually? I can't even think of who you would send it too, anyways. Interesting idea, though.--Sean Jelly Baby? 00:04, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Why should corporations have more rights than individuals, though? According to Wikipedia:Autobiography, individuals are discouraged from writing about themselves. There's an effort to tone down self-promoting language in the entries on colleges and universities, as well. I don't interpret that as a total injunction against editing the page of the university where I work, but I aim for neutrality. I don't think we should invite PR people to edit their corporation's pages without informing them of WP:NPOV. Mamawrites 08:15, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Help asked from ca:

We currently have a newly registered user Kuza31 creating trashy articles or vandalising existing ones. We're a small wikipedia and none of the 6 administrators seems to be around. Could someone from here (if he/she has the power to do so)block him please? Otherwise, hours might go by before he stops or an administrator makes his/her appearence. Thanks!--ca:Usuari:Jahecaigut

This is the wrong place to post this. I copied it to Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism to see if anyone can help you. -- Curps 19:09, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Someone has now blocked that user at the ca: wikipedia. -- Curps 19:16, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Yeps. Just saw it. Thanks for the help. And I'll keep that link to "Administrator intervention against vandalism" well visible in my page. It does come in handy!!--ca:Usuari:Jahecaigut

Easy Image Move to Commons

I've come across several images in Wikipedia that would be good to move to Commons, and would enhance an existing category / article there. But moving is a lot of hassle — as far as I can see, I'd have to create the Commons version, then AfD the WP version... ? Is there an easier way?

I think it would be really convenient if there was a "move to Commons" button at the top of an image page. This would only appear if the image had an appropriate confirmed licence, and would move the image, adjusting links as necessary, and then put up a reminder to set appropriate Commons categories etc. on the moved image. — Johantheghost 14:37, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

If it were that easy, all Wikipedia images with appropriate tags would be automatically moved to Commons... This hasn't happened yet, although it must be a perennial proposal. Physchim62 20:00, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

My thought is that if you did it automatically, you'd have loads of uncategorised images in Commons, which they don't like (I guess it's not such a problem in WP, where images mostly belong to an article). With a "move to Commons" button, I would move a specific image and then (I would be auto-nagged to) set its Commons categories up. — Johantheghost 22:31, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

• Be aware: articles uploaded to en.wiki under fair-use can NOT be moved to commons. RJFJR 14:49, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Suggestion for cutting down on vandalism

A tool which I hope is implemented in the future would be to require users to view the differences made by the last editor of an article when submitting a new edit. Thus, everyone becomes a member of RC patrol, and much more vandalism will be caught. This could be as simple as sticking in the content that normally appears when you click "diff", above/below the editing box, so that the bright red text can easily be noticed. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-7 11:48

I think that I would get annoyed by this and make a javascript tool that deleted the diff if this was forced on people. Viewing diffs, which can run to many pages, when you expect to see an edit box not a good idea in my opinion. Lupin|talk|popups 01:40, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

It can have an on/off setting in the preferences. It can also be positioned below the edit box. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-8 01:45

I think we would all love this feature

All editors have reverted a vandal, looked up his contributions, and found dozens of other edits. Sometimes not all of the damage has been undone by other editors, forcing a careful checking of the history of all the articles the vandal recently edited. Whenever I follow a link from the a vandal's contributions profile, the instance of vandalism may be the current version or another edit may have follow. Not wanting to allow an instance of vandalism to be buried, perhaps, by legit edits, I click the next edit link just to be sure the edit which follows is a revert. Doing this adds up if I am check 10+ edits. Wouldn't it be great if in the contributions profile, there could be a mark next to any edit that indicates an immediate rollback? lots of issues | leave me a message 23:06, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

• This is an excellent idea! It would be easy to implement (either by check if an admin clicked Rollback, or if the article that was edited and submitted was a version that predates those edits). — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-7 11:45

Separate "pictures" into "photos," "graphics," and "drawings"

The Wikipedia:Requested pictures is too big to be useful. A drawer is just looking for things to draw, just as a mapmaker (Category:Wikipedia map requests) is looking for things to map, etc. Lumping all of these into "pictures" is no longer a useful way to work. Do others agree that this needs to be split? -St|eve 17:58, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

• If the categories are sensible and useful, that would make sense to me. As it stands, I'm not sure I understand what the difference between a "drawing" and a "graphic" is, but I could definitely see the difference between photographic and line art. --Fastfission 21:48, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Notability proposal

Wikipedia:Notability proposal is a proposal to explicitly make "notability" a requirement for Wikipedia articles, and to explicitly include "lack of notability" as a reason for deleting articles. Please visit Wikipedia talk:Notability proposal and express your view on the proposal. DES ^(talk) 23:12, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

This has already been policy under WP:WWIN (propaganda#2)- Wikipedia:Vanity. -St|eve 17:01, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Both of those refer only to articles about people, and i am hoping for something more general. In any case, see Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Snowspinner 2 for soem of the reasons why I think this needs to be clarified. DES ^(talk) 19:38, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Proposal for watchlist

I would love to see a new button to appear on the watch list next to (diff) and (hist), to be able to (unwatch) pages i've lost interest in right from the watchlist. I know i can just go to the page, but with the speed wiki is loading, it'd be nice to manage your watchlist from your actual watchlist page. Shouldnt be hard to add methinks? Good idea? --The Minister of War 09:38, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

It's been requested for quite some time. →Raul654 09:41, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

See bugzilla:424. Unwatch is one of the popup tools available in Wikipedia:Tools#Navigation_popups as well. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:01, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

There is an un-watch facility right on your watchlist. There is a line near the top of the page that says "You have (number) pages on your watchlist (excluding talk pages); you can display and edit the complete list." Click on that and you'll be taken to a page where you can manage your entire watchlist (including un-watching pages). CanadaGirl 12:03, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks guys that helps! Still would like to see one in vanilla watchlist though... --The Minister of War 18:38, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

New Active Wiki Fixup Projects: Orphan Dump

This seems sort of obvious to me, but if this has been said before then I apologize. I've been sorting through the untagged image category, tagging images here and there. This was where I encountered the orphans posted up on Wikipedia. Is it possible for a data dump on all orphan media x number of days old, and set it up as a wiki fixup project for others to sort through and post on Ifd? --Bash 03:29, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

On private information and admin trustworthiness

I've just had the scary idea that one of the least-considered admin powers - viewing deleted pages - may be the most dangerous of all.

Currently, when personal information (address, phone number...) is added to an article, the revisions containing it are deleted. This puts them out of view of most people... but not our 500+ (with more every day - and the number will have to increase even faster as the popularity of Wikipedia does) administrators. So how do we know none of the administrators would want to harrass or stalk someone whose personal information has been added to WP and then deleted? Or, less likely but more scary, how do we know they couldn't be fooled, coerced, or bribed into doing so by a Wikipedia-savvy stalker? Remember, admins are only people we trust not to destroy Wikipedia - RFA doesn't determine trustworthiness in Real Life.

While it is unlikely that this will ever happen, the moral (and potentially legal) weight if it did would be immense. The only solution I can see is to ask the developers to purge these revisions from the database completely. ~~ N (t/c) 16:12, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't know-- in Real Life, your name, address and telephone number are about as public as information can get. This stuff can be bought from most state's motor vehicle departments, found online pretty generally, etc., etc. I have trouble getting real worked up over it. -- Mwanner | Talk 21:37, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Then why do we delete it from articles in the first place? Also, IIRC, some of the issues leading to revision-deletion involved the real names of people (porn actors) who wished to remain pseudonymous, and whose real names, although locatable elsewhere, weren't exactly public information. ~~ N (t/c) 21:46, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Speedy category renaming

I've modified and reproposed these criteria as possibly too much time passed from the consensus gained at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Speedy category renaming to list them. Comments welcomed. Steve block talk 11:12, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Process for de-adminship

Certain recent events regarding overextension of admin powers have made me think that there needs to be a process for speedy de-adminship - not like ArbCom, but more like RFAdm. (I am not saying Snowspinner should be deadminned, and I'm not even talking about him alone, but that is what started this idea.) In order to help this along, I propose that bureaucrats be given the power to de-sysop users, but not to de-bureaucrat other bureaucrats (because of the potential for Total Wiki Domination by de-bureaucratting everyone else until a steward comes along). ~~ N (t/c) 03:46, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Automatic self-rollback "reversion"?

Although this isn't such a big thing for me as an admin, it would still be useful - and far more so for non-admins. How about an extra button in the toolbar called something like "revert", so as to roll back the immediately previous edit that you yourself made? Say you've just replied to someone in a talk page and then either realised you've completely missed the point of their original message, or - now that you've calmed down a bit - realised that you could have been a bit less beliggerant in what you said. So you want to erase what you just wrote. At present, you have to re-edit the article, and your initial blunder will be there in the page history for all to see. With a revrt button, you could just click that and remove your previous message (maybe even remove it from the page history - although that might be going too far). Grutness...wha? 00:50, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Administrative rollback doesn't remove anything from the page history, it merely changes which revision of the page is considered "current", so it's all still there to be viewed. Rob Church ^{Talk | FAD} 10:29, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Should be really easy to add that button for yourself using some Javascript in your monobook.js (I don't know how, I know it's easy :) I would be really weary of adding this to the default user interface. Might be useful for 1% of the people, and clog the toolbar for 99% of others. The best thing is of course to be cool when you reply to somebody. :) Oleg Alexandrov 04:21, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't think that this is easy to do in javascript, actually. I don't think it's desirable either, though, as erasing history is not a wiki-ish thing to do. Lupin|talk|popups 03:13, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Watchlist blurb

I think this:

You have xxx pages on your watchlist (not including talk pages); you can display and edit the complete list.

Should be changed to this:

You have xxx pages on your watchlist (excluding talk pages); you can display and edit the entire list.

Just wondering what you guys think... and if your looking for a reason behind this... just to make it fit on one line in 800x600, not to mention its more concise. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 02:53, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

• Done. - Mgm|^(talk) 12:57, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Wow, nice! It's one line in FireFox, but IE would need to be shortened further... so for "complete" > "entire", but I'm certainly happy with it being on one line for the better browser :"D. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 00:08, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Preferences

How about having a checkbox in the user preferences for "my watchlist" to "Hide my edits" by default? Urhixidur 15:54, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

You can dokludge this by pasting the following into your monobook.js. Note that this will affect any other links on the page whose url contains the string Special:Watchlist. Lupin|talk|popups 03:07, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

function addOnloadFunction (f) {
  if (window.addEventListener) window.addEventListener("load",f,false);
  else if (window.attachEvent) window.attachEvent("onload",f);
};


function fixWatchlistLink () {
  for (var i=0; i<document.links.length; ++i) {
    if (document.links[i].href.indexOf('Special:Watchlist')>0) {
      document.links[i].href+='?hideOwn=1';
      break;
    }
  }
};

addOnloadFunction(fixWatchlistLink);

Wiki World Timeline

I am not sure how it would work, exactly, but i would love to see the wiki idea used in a timeline format.

So, wondering what was going on in the world in the year 800 AD, i could browse world events by year, decade, century, etc.

Does anything like this exist??

There are numerous articles on indivual years that document events.. See: 800, 1963, 1374, and related stuff like 19th century. Hope that answers your question.--Sean Jelly Baby? 03:15, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

And each of those will have links to categories containing other years in the same period, too, which should help. Grutness...wha? 00:44, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Rollbacl button on controbs

I am not an admin but IIRC admins do not have a "rollback" buttonon contrib pages. This can be very usefull IMHO against multi-page vandals which seem to be on the rise. --Cool Cat ^Talk 12:09, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

They have a rollback button on contribs pages, this was originally the only place it appeared. -- Tim Starling 19:22, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Display the top of the article's talk page above the edit box

It strikes me that we often leave many important notices about editing an article on top of its talk page, but of course, a user who hits "edit this page" never even notices them. Of course, we don't want them in the article text either, so the only logical place is the edit page. I'd say that if a user sees the notice that there have been polls or prolongued discussions which achieved tha balance in the article, etc., they'll be less likely to be reckless about editing.

So, should we display the top of the talk page (the bit before the first section i.e. comment) above the article's edit box? Zocky 12:17, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

• This could add a lot of unneeded text. I would limit this to template tags of vfd results, controversial tags and a few other templates that indicate strong debate. - Mgm|^(talk) 12:51, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Your favorite article starts here

Bla bla bla bla bla..... This is part of the above proposal. — RDF ^talk 14:27, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

navigation

• Main Page
• Community portal
• Current events
• Recent changes
• Alphabetical Index
• Ask a Question
• Browse Articles
• Browse Categories
• Browse Portals
• Other Indexes
• Random article
• Help
• Contact us
• Donations

Add Categorybrowsebar-like wikilinks to every wikipage

This is a proposal to address the difficulties many users experience when they try to thematically navigate Wikipedia after they leave the Main Page: add Categorybrowsebar-like wikilinks to every wikipage. This proposal is an update based on feedback for similar proposals at related discussion pages.

Specifically, the current proposal is to include the navigation elements contained in Template:Categorybrowsebar that used to be located on the Main Page (now a template is no longer used - causing "navigation bar drift" ;-) and other high-level pages it links to. In this template, the first line focuses on the main categories while the second line focuses on browse options. Adding the elements to the Mediawiki:Monobook.css style sheet (or wherever it actually needs to go) would allow Wikipedia to have a topical, top-level navigation scheme, based on the primary categorization scheme, that would help users move about logically and quickly from any page. Other benefits of this implementation would be that Template:Categorybrowsebar can be removed from a prominent position on several high-level pages, similar browse links can be removed from the Main Page, and the ever-insidious navigation bar drift can be eliminated.

The proposed basic approach is to use this (template:eight portals links) across the top of a page. Then add the browse options to the sidebar navigation box. The layout could look something like this. (Keep in mind that the following top-level heading actually is part of this proposal.) — RDF ^talk 14:45, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

---

Art | Culture | Geography | History | Mathematics | People | Philosophy | Science | Society | Technology

---

 

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I think a more prominent search box would be more useful than those category links. Angela. 14:49, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Angela, would you keep the Browse links in the navigation box? An important role of a navigation scheme is to help show users what's available. I don't have a problem placing the seach box across the top of the page (on a single line), but I still believe the site should offer its main categorization scheme on every page. As far as placement goes, putting top-level categories across the top (with a search box) and browse options down the side still makes sense to me. — RDF ^talk 20:42, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm not Angela, but I think your proposal goes too far... pick ONE addition to the navigation menu that accomplishes your goal best, and then you might be able to build consensus for it. My vote goes to Browse contents. Mamawrites 08:24, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree the Wikipedia:Browse link alone would be enough. Perhaps the new Wikipedia:Usability project could look into this. Angela. 22:44, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Automatic creation of alternative capital casing for articles

Quite often an article cannot be found because currently only the first letter of the title is case insensivite (in the sense that if an article is named "Article X", someone may type up "article X" and get it.

However, if someone types "Article x" or "article x", he/she will NOT get the article, because capitals of second, third etc. words are not automatically found.

While it is unrealistic to create alternative redirect pages to EVERY possible combination of letters (say ArTiCLe X), the first letters of each word in an article are the ones most likely to be miscapitalized.

If a software change would be implemented, the matter would be quite straightfoward. If a bot is made to do so, here is the algorithm I propose:

1. Get the dump of all page names in Wikipedia (both "articles" and non-articles, such as redirects)

2. Filter out to those that have at least 2 words (separated by a space), and at least one of those 2nd+ words starts with a letter (Article X will be recorded, Article 12 will not).

3. Compare multiple entries that are left for identical name except capitalization (that should mean that one is the main name of the article, and all other variants are already created alternative capitalization redirects to that article). 2-word entries would have only 1 alternative ("Article X" can only be alternatively spelled under this algorithm as "Article x"). 3-word articles can have maximum of 3 alternative namings ("Article X Y" can also be "Article X y", "Article x Y", and "Article x y".

4. Discard entries that have the maximum number of possible alternatives already made.

5. Compile a list of not-yet-existing alternative capitalizations for articles, tying all variants to their "home" article.

6. Upload all created redirect pages to Wikipedia.

7. Repeat at interval, getting newly created article names from dump. -- unsigned comment left by User:Elvarg 00:49, 27 September 2005 UTC

• I get the idea that this won't be necessary, because case-insensitive article names are coming in meta:MediaWiki 1.6. (Finally. I wonder if they could allow initial lowercase letters while they're at it.) RSpeer 19:00, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

So what will happen to the differences between Muse, MuSE, and MusE?

• • If there are multiple articles with same name differed only by case sensitivity, existing articles would not be touched, and remaining variations (if any) would be redirected to the disambiguation page (if one exists), or to the article with no capitalizations except the first word (if there is no disambig)

Long point short, my proposed change will NOT interfere with ANY existing system -- the ONLY way people will notice a change is that they hit a "NO ARTICLE" page before and now they don't.

I was thinking we could kludge something for the lowercase first letter like gnuplot = Gnuplot and _gnuplot = gnuplot. Omegatron (talk) 19:21, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

• I think it's important to note that this issue pertains almost exclusively to wikilinks. When "go"ing to an article, if each word of the article title is capitalized or if all words except the first are not capitalized the "go" action is case insensitive (so only titles with at least 3 words and with mixed capitalization, like Isle of Wight are case sensitive, see Wikipedia:Redirect) . Wikilinks are always case sensitive (excepting the first character). Seaches are always case insensitive. IMO, automatically adding redirects to fix miscapitalized links is simply not necessary. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:03, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
• Wouldn't it be easier to make the search function case insensitive instead of creating masses of redirects? - Mgm|^(talk) 12:49, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree. More specifically, the search should give the highest priority to matches with the same case as the search term(s), but should also list matches with different case. Article names should have whatever case the editor set, as case is sometimes critical, such as "God" (the specific Judeo/Christian/Muslim diety) versus "god" (any diety). StuRat 16:12, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

A Printer Friendly Option?

I'm not quite sure whether this falls under policy or not, maknig a printer friendly option would probably require a structural change to Wikipedia. I just think that the enyclopedia entries would be a bit nicer on the eyes if they could easily be printed out with the blue hyperlinks and such that typify Wikipedia entries. I just thought I'd throw the idea out there and see what the community makes of it. ~ Jared ~ 15:58, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Every page is already printer-friendly, if you use a browser that properly supports CSS. Just use your browser's "print preview" function to see. —AlanBarrett 19:48, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

You also can try clicking "Printable version" in the sidebar "toolbox". — RDF ^talk 20:14, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

mmk Then, thankyou both very much. (: ~ Jared ~ 02:39, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

CSS has a nice feature that allows you to set a page to be reformatted for printing. --AllyUnion (talk) 05:17, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Auto deletion of nonsense

(moved to Wikipedia_talk:Bots#Kakashi_Bot)

TCP/UDP Port Information On Multiplayer Video Games

Has anyone considered adding the TCP/UDP ports used by multiplayer computer games to their pages? This information is relatively hard to find reliably (small game publishers often fail to provide it), and is needed by anyone playing games from behind a router/firewall. I understand that wiki is not a technical manual, but this seems like important information to me. — Nimlot 23:32, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

If you know that information and you think it's relevant, add it. Superm401 | Talk 01:24, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Consolidating consecutive edits

It's probably a perennial proposal, but has anyone considered a way to consolidate many consecutive edits by the same person, either in the actual history or in the way the history is displayed (a checkbox for "hide consecutive edits", while retaining the actual history).

Err.. "fold consecutive edits" might be better, since you could still view them. Just like, if you clicked on a diff while folded, you would see all the consecutive edits by that person as if it were one. Omegatron (talk) 21:29, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Coalesce might be the word you're looking for.

Absolutely ! Let's find a way to coalesce consecutive edits by the same user. It could look like this:

---------------------Closed-------------------- ----------------------Open---------------------

[+]StuRat[Multiple edits]	[-]StuRat[Multiple edits]
	StuRat-Added comma.
	StuRat-Spelling fix




StuRat 15:14, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Virtual Tour sister project

I've started a proposal page for a sister project called "Wikitour" that would lend itself directly to Wikipedia. Whereas Commons hosts individual images of places that have articles on Wikipedia, Wikitour would host "virtual tours" of these places, such as castles, museums, galleries, caverns, mountains, college campuses, typical mosques or churches, archaeological sites, etc.

The basic idea is as follows: a user submits numerous photos of a notable place, which are organized into pages/subpages to create a navigable environment similar to that in Myst, Riven, or graphical adventures; the navigation system would be on Wikitour, while the files themselves would be on Commons, with a link in the respective article on WP; Basically, any topic that has an article on Wikipedia has the possibility of its own entry in Wikitour. Users could also submit photos of an object from various sides/angles/distances, rather than a place.

Please leave your impressions/suggestions at Talk:Wikitour. Thanks. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-21 20:14

More ideas needed for Wikipedia:Title pairs for future redirects procedures

If you prefer an explanatory anecdote or two to set the stage before diving into the specifications, start here:

_ _ Today i found my way from List of people by name: Hes-Hez to the Dab Hess, where i found the (non-MoS-compliant, but never mind) entry

* Moses Heß(Moses Hess), , a Jewish philosopher and proto-Zionist

which i have left un-fixed so you can see that "Moses Heß" is a rd-lk & "Moses Hess" is blue. Never should happen, but before neutrally making the rd-lk title into a redirect to the existing article, and un-lk'g the new rdr, i said, "Hmm, there ought be a policy-consistent place, instead of this, where people can discover that an anticipable rdr now has an article to point to.

_ _ Earlier in the week, i found that a rd-lk'd entry on List of people by name: Wil for

*[[Ian Wilson|Wilson, Ian]], Irish cultural figure

had become blue and now read

*[[Ian Wilson (composer)|Wilson, Ian]], Classical composer

which suggested that there was at least one other Ian Wilson with a WP bio but no LoPbN-tree entry. At Ian Wilson (which was then a bio on a writer on science and Christianity), i found no DoB for the LoPbN entry i wanted to add, which may be what impelled me to Google-search WP for the name. That search produced another writer, and at least three more Ian Wilsons with lks or mentions; one of these turned out to have a few lks as Ian Wilson (Australian politician) and nearly a dozen as Ian Wilson (politician). I was not willing to start the article, nor to create a rdr that lacked a target, so i satisfied myself with editing the less numerous long-titled lks into the shorter version, retitling for Dab'n between the two writers, and creating a six-way Dab at Ian Wilson. I'm pleased to report that something among these efforts apparently attracted others' edits: the second was creation of the bio article; the first, unfortunately, was an rv of one of the (then still red) lks i'd changed, which meant it stayed red when the article appeared. I say to myself, should preventing such proliferation of names depend on my alertness to my watchlist or my contribs list?

---

On reflection, i think such events call for a project-space page that would have had entries for

* Moses Heß uses Moses Hess uses: Jewish philosopher and proto-Zionist

* Ian Wilson (politician) uses, Ian Wilson (Australian) uses, Ian Wilson (Australian politician) uses : (b. 1932), United Australia and Liberal parties; federal House of Representatives, Adelaide

Note

• my removal, from the material i copied for the 1st entry, of all lks except those intended to eventually become redirects or their common target, and
• my inclusion of Ian Wilson (Australian), a rdr not yet used elsewhere in WP.

These are both intended to make following lks or What-lks-here to the new page

---

1. "Title pairs for future redirects" is the relatively short, but hopefully suggestive, title for a page devoted to groups (not actually necessarily pairs) of titles

   of which

   • none is yet title of a main-namespace page and
   • one should eventually become an article, list, or Dab, with the others in the group becoming rdrs to it.

   A cleverer and thereby more effective name may be needed.

2. What kind of maintenance will this need?
   • IMO, entries should be acted upon as soon as practical after the article arises, by creating the rdrs.
   • Should such completed entries be removed, or simply marked up as done?
   • What is appropriate action if a redir is created prematurely with one of the titles and no existing article as target? Deletion (under new or existing CSD?)? Conversion to a stub, even if it is likely to be CSDed as A1? Is the answer different if the rdr is lk'd to from a context demonstrating a different topic is intended?
3. What kind of attention will enhance this tool's effectiveness?
   • Until an article appears, will it help if editors are encouraged to rule out (via strike thru?) rdrs that would fail to Dab between the article in question and other potential or actual articles? To turn such red-lks into premeptive Dabs?
   • Is Title pairs for future redirects a place for advance debate abt which among the group of titles should go on the article when created? If not, should a sub-page of "Title pairs for future redirects" be created & lk'd from it, dedicated to such debate on a single group - presumably to be moved to the article's talk page when the article arises?
4. Besides this, do we also need an tool for finding uses of rdlks, that is easier than clicking "What links here from the "start this article" edit page for the non-existant page? Perhaps a page with a pane where an editor can paste and/or key in one title & then click the button to reach a second page, with both titles of pgs lk'g to that keyed title and an identical button and pane they can use to edit that keyed title into the next title, and see the corresponding linkers displayed on a third page?
5. Would we want something different if there were two visibly different shades of rd-lk, one for no-page-with this-title (as now) and one for (the currently blue cases of) rdr-to-title-with-no-page? If so, what about lks to Dab pages, which we want bypassed about as urgently as we want targetless lks (hmm, and dbl lks) bypassed?
6. I'm about to try & get the page created, even tho these two cases could be resolved without it.
7. Should this be subdivided by topic areas? My examples are bios; maybe they are numerous enuf compared to others to be worth separating.
8. How should the entries be sorted, when the pages get big? Do we want to consider a subpage for each entry, whether or not the article title is debated?
9. I may have more points to add here myself, when i have time in a few days, but i have to stop now.

--Jerzy•t 20:08, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Search should have autofocus

Many times I come to wikipedia to search for something. It would be very nice if the search box had focus automatically without my having to click on it.

Alt-F transfers focus there too, but I agree, the search box on any search-heavy site (Amazon, IMDB, Google) should always have the focus when you load the page. However, are we that? We run into a problem - what if I want to hit space or pgdn to read the rest of the article? Then I have to click the article, and there's no simple shortcut to do that. So I say, live with the clicking or hit Alt-F. The benefits are outweighed by the inconveniences. --Golbez 03:30, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Autofocus on load is a bloody pain. The page comes up, you click in the search box, you start typing your query, and something (an image, an ad) delays page loading a bit. The page finishes loading, autofocus kicks in, and you accidentally search for "glish languageThe longest word in the En". --Carnildo 23:30, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Spellcheck

What if there could be a spellchecker activated by the preview button? Misspellings would be highlighted in red with alternatives offered at the top. This would save many people a lot of work correcting typos later. Of course, it would be nice if users were required to preview before sending. ;) Purplefeltangel (talk) 21:06, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

• Also, it would be good if there was a script that would go through the entire Wikipedia and fix common typos (it could not fix all misspellings due to proper names, quotes, etc). It might cause downtime but it would definitely be worth it . . . . Purplefeltangel (talk) 21:19, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

• Been proposed very often before. Too much server load. ~~ N (t/c) 21:44, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

• See User:Humanbot for a project to fix common misspellings, though it seems like its not active right now. There's also Wikipedia:List of common misspellings. --Vclaw 12:07, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I think the first idea, of a spell check in the edit function, perhaps activated by preview, perhaps in some other way, is worth persuing. Couldn't this run on the client side, and so not impose significant server load. And even if it ran on ther server side, it would run one article at a time, which is very different from a tool to do a mass spell-check on wikipedia. DES ^(talk) 15:02, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

• how would you get it to decide between us and uk spellings? Wiki doesnt use a standard spelling. BL kiss the lizard 23:14, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Ahh, but this would be a way of achieving in-article consistency on one of the variants; spell checker databases exist for each of the variants of English and it would not, I believe, be out of the question to either a) exclude from the Wikipedia spell checking database those terms that are ambiguous with respect to dialect and/or b) provided a "dialect conflict" detector that would flag when an article has internal use of several dialects and/or c) allow selection of which dialect to use in conducting the spell checking. Further, having such a facility could facilitate the addition of a meta-data flag affixed to each article that would indicate which dialect has been used in it (hiddent to users, a comment on the talk page perhaps?). Courtland 16:06, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

This should go in Wikipedia:Perennial proposals if it isn't there already. See also Spell checker. Omegatron (talk) 15:16, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

The real definition of the noob

I have been playing video games for years, the word noob first meant someone that is stupid on the game. Then people started getting the word noob and newb mixed up. Now even google thinks that the word noob means newb. They had the real definition but now it is gone. This website also has it wrong.

I know what I'm talking about aswell :(

I'm pretty sure both words came from "newbie" which is a much older word than video games. --Golbez 17:33, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

See, if we had references in that article, we'd be in a much better position to resolve this (minor) dispute. Lupin|talk|popups 22:10, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Next and Previous at the bottom of Category pages

Basically, at the moment the only Next 200/Previous 200 links are at the top of a category list. I suggest that it would be logical to have identical links at the bottom as well. - SoM 16:09, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

That would be very useful! Grutness...wha? 23:31, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Blocking proposal

Please let your opinion be known in regard to the Blocking policy proposal, we are now voting on the issue. thanks! Martin 09:34, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject_WheelOfTime?

I'm curious if anyone reading at the Village Pump is interested in helping co-ordinate/organize/flesh out these articles on Wikipedia? (I'm aware of Gherald's new wikicties project, but I have reservations about that format's usefulness -- especially when compared to the EWoT [1], and in any case it doesn't obviate the need for cleanup here on Wikipedia.)

Please respond here or on my talk page, and if we reach 5-10 (currently at 3-4) I'll start a WikiProject page. nae'blis _(talk) 01:20, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

• The new book coming out will likely result in a fair amount of new content (along with vandalism). It would be good at least to have a number of people watch the relevant pages. Christopher Parham (talk) 05:41, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Mountain biking

I am suprised at the lack of mountain biking information here. For instance, there isn't even an article for FOX Racing Shox, which is one of the top porducers of suspension for mountain bikes. I'm going to start improving some of these articles and creating new ones for non-existent info. If anyone wants to help me on this, feel free to post on my user talk.

Thank you--Windsamurai 02:09, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't know how much detail is needed on every manufacturing company, but I do wonder how much detail is missing from shock absorber. (SEWilco 04:23, 17 October 2005 (UTC))

I've been doing a bit of work on various mountain biking articles. You may be interested in Wikipedia:WikiProject Cycling where there's a few people working on various cycling related stuff. There's also a lot of articles in Category:Cycle manufacturers that could do with some expansion / improvement. --Vclaw 14:09, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Multilinugal Mechanisms

It is proposed that each page be modified such that an individual wishing to transate that page to another language might do so by selecting the language and clicking a button. I was eager to contribute in this way, but found myself clicking aimlessly and in vain. It would also be a real treat to read the a corresponding alternative language wikis a page has.

Implementaion would be could be fairly simple or very complex depending on the level of interconnectedness desired...

Browsing between languages is already possible, please see Wikipedia:Interlanguage links. These links (to corresponding articles in other language wikipedias) appear in the "In other languages" box in the navigation frame which is on the left in the default skin. There is no "click to translate" feature for a couple of reasons. First, the versions of wikipedia in different languages each currently require their own login registration. Once "single sign on" is available, this becomes far more feasible. Second, the article name in the target language is not necessarily obvious. If you'd like, you can effectively do the same thing but not quite automatically. Step 1 is to obtain logins in all the language wikipedias you're interested in contributing to. Then, to translate an article (not already translated) add the interwiki link in language 1, save this change, then click the interwiki link which will take you to the page in language 2's wikipedia. Please also see Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:26, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

WikiWebServices ?

I am not sure this is the right place to propose; neither am i sure that nobody ever brought up this topic before. Anyway, wouldn't it be nice to expose the most useful data from Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects as Web Services, so that it may be useful not only to humans but to computers as well? The idea is very fuzzy in my mind at the moment, but I am absolutely sure that a lot of applications would benefit from having XML-style access to various information from Wikipedia. Ivan Memruk 09:05, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

There is a discussion of exposing machine interfaces on Meta (the meta-wiki for discussions about all Wikimedia wikis) at m:Machine-friendly wiki interface. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:38, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia Cleanup Day

I was thinking of doing something along the lines of Gentoo's Bugday, where on a regularly schedule day, such as every other week, once a month, etc. We get editors to meet in #wikipedia on freenode to work on a cleaning up/adding to a selection of articles.

An example would be a biography stub day, where we editors would work together on finding information on biography stubs and fixing them up.
Another would be wikify day, go through all articles that need to be wikified, one by one, and turn them into a proper article.

Sure this gets done all the time, but I would believe that editors working together on a single article with realtime collaboration could be much more effective
AppleBoy ^Talk 05:52, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, the Wikipedia:Maintenance collaboration of the week was recently started to help concentrate fixup efforts on the most urgent problems. If people actually show up to participate in a fixup day, I think that would be great. You could pick the day of the week that the most editors are usually logged on, and dig into whatever this week's collaboration was. Alternatively, the event could inject some life into the Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce, which tends to deal with the most stubborn cleanup problems. It needs people to assign issues to other participants, and of course actual article work. Over 1% (9,000+!) of the articles on the English Wikipedia are tagged for generic cleanup right now. If this is to work, it would need to be well-publicized, like on the Community Portal and IRC, and maybe the Signpost. -- Beland 06:16, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Redirect and un-redirect log

Creation of redirects (and their "uncreation") should be logged, displaying the page title and the title of the redirect target:

How it would work

[[Special:Log/redirect]] would contain lines like:

02:00, 16 October 2005 Guillermo en las ruedas redirected User talk:Curps to User talk:Cvrps

02:49, 24 February 2002 213.253.39.193 created London, England as a redirect to London

To be more specific, there should be a log entry any time a page becomes a redirect by editing (initial creation or modification of existing article), and not as the automatic side-effect of a page move.

It would also show up in the Special:Recent changes log, but instead of appearing as an ordinary edit, it would appear in the same way as other log entries there:

Instead of:

02:00 User talk:Curps (diff; hist) . . Guillermo en las ruedas (Talk | block)

it would show up as:

02:00 (Redirect log) (diff; hist) . . Guillermo en las ruedas (redirected User talk:Curps to User talk:Cvrps)

Rationale

This would help spot cut-and-paste page moves by clueless newbies (or edit warriors), and it would also help spot cut-and-paste pagemove vandalism.

Turning a page into a redirect is fundamentally a different concept than editing it. Actuallly, it's exactly like a page move, except the "page move" target already exists.

-- Curps 04:02, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Comments

• If you use CryptoDerk's Vandal Fighter, you can pretty much spot this already, by watching for edits that substantially decreased the filesize of the page (mostly used for catching blankings) — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-16 04:08

True, but it should still be logged within Wikipedia itself rather than only on IRC... -- Curps 04:33, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

• I think this is another one of those "wouldn't it be cool if we had" proposals that really doesn't belong on enwiki. There are no privacy implications or other implications at all other than that we present information slightly more usefully. Get it coded up and once it exists in mediawiki I don't expect anyone to object to enabling it on enwiki. --fvw* 04:42, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
  • I've been tempted to get into Mediawiki source code, but I'm already spending too much time on bot code and time doesn't really permit it. I was hoping perhaps an existing developer might take an interest in this (I already left a note at Ævar's talk page). -- Curps 05:47, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
    • Ah, in that case you should put it on http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ instead of here. --fvw* 05:50, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

I did some poking at it and have a crude prototype of this working, might finish it... —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 07:29, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

This is impossible to do currently due to Special:Log only working for logged-in users, anonymous users can also create redirects. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 03:41, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

The mention of CDVF above got me thinking... the edit-size display that that gets from live RC is really one of its most useful features, but it's only available to people who are using it and happen to be looking when the edit in question is made. It covers both this case and numerous other cases that require attention--blanking, copyvios, etc often trigger its alarm. So, would it be possible to have some sort of special page for recentchanges above a certain size, or an option to highlight changes on your watchlist or in a page's edit history (like in CDVF) if they're above a certain size? For that matter, would it just be possible to turn on edit-size displays on those pages? Or is this already available somewhere? --Aquillion 01:01, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Hmmmm, well, is it possible to do outside of the Special:Log hierarchy, as Special:Newredirects instead of Special:Log/redirect ? Various logs such as Special:Newpages work for both logged-in and anonymous users, so perhaps it's doable? -- Curps 02:44, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Categories, Portals, Wikiportals, Wikiprojects and Notice Boards

It's my view that our systems for co-ordinating both readers and editors are currently poorly organised. I'll describe what each of these things attempt to achieve (as I see it) and then explain why this causes several problems and suggest solutions.

Categories are in theory perfectly simple. Category:English poets, for example lists all our articles on English poets and does nothing else. We also , however, have categories pretending to be portals. Category:Mathematics is the perfect example of this - there is a perfectly good Portal stuck on to the top of a perfectly good Category. The Mathematics Portal actually redirects to it.

We also have straight-forward Portals, which are purely (or almost purely) designed for readers. The Cricket Portal is a good example of one of these. It contains an introduction to the topic, a few pictures and links to some of the more important related articles. The only item which is not aimed solely at readers is an invitation to participate in the associated WikiProject.

We also have WikiPortals. These contain the same sort of stuff as Portals but with extra bits thrown in, aimed at editors. To pick a few examples at random, the Brazil WikiPortal invites people to add information to a list of Brazil-related stubs and contains a little information about when it was made and who runs it, The Physics WikiPortal has a brief 'things you can do' list and the Music WikiPortal links to connected WikiProjects.

WikiProjects aim to "help coordinate and organize article writing". Lots of these are aimed purely at getting articles on the same subject to share a format/layout etc. The mountains WikiProject for example is 90% instructions on how to set out articles on mountains, 8% administration and 2% links to resources for article writing. The only thing in the Archaeology WikiProject is a list of articles that people might like to contribute to.

Finally, there are also Regional Wikipedians' Notice Boards. These contain all sorts of lovely stuff - articles to create, expand, pictures to find, relevant peer reviews, articles for deletion, featured article candidates and so on.

The problem as I see it is that the functions of these things overlap, making the system as a whole overcomplicated. I'll now list the three main problematic areas and suggest solutions.

1. Categories and Portals are essentially coming at the same job from different angles. They both provide topic-based navigation, Categories with the emphasis on being comprehensive and Portals with the emphasis on providing an attractive interface. At the moment our Categories are far more developed than our Portals, but given enough time there probably would (or could) be a portal covering each Category. There are two obvious solutions to this and at the moment we're doing both inconsistently. We should either decide to split the two up completely as is done in Portal:Cricket and Category:Cricket or put them together one one page as at Category:Mathematics. My personal preference is to keep them separate but with prominent links between them, but either solution would be acceptable. The system as it stands, however, is illogical and confusing.

2. Portals and WikiPortals are more or less the same thing. The editor related content in WikiPortals is useful but certainly not the sort of thing we should be presenting to the public. I think we should take all the reader-orientated content from our WikiPortals and transfer it to Portals. One link inviting people to edit is probably acceptable, as at the Cricket Portal, but certainly no more. What is left can be incorporated somewhere else, which leads me to...

3. Our editor-orientated pages. Here we have Noticeboards and WikiProjects doing the more or less the same thing - co-ordinating editors' efforts in a certain field. Regional Wikipedians' Noticeboards I think are a great idea, except for the first word. I see no reason why the Noticeboard concept should be restircted to regions. I think it would be equally applicable to any other topic area. I discussed mountains earlier and I think the content at the Mountains WikiProject could quite easily be incorporated into a Mountains Noticeboard (possibly on a well-marked subpage) which would also allow for the inclusion of information such as that currently on the Regional Noticeboards - requested articles, articles for expansion, up for featured articles etc. These could also include any information left over from the relevant WikiPortal.

Basically, I think we should attempt to simplify the system and organise it along more logical grounds. This would help our readers to navigate the site and find the content they want and also help our editors to create this content.

Comments and criticism etc welcome

(Also posted to the Mailing List)

--Cherry blossom tree 20:04, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

I can see your point about Portals and WikiPortals, and - to be honest - would not mind at all if they were merged. Noticeboards and WikiProjects are, however, a totally different matter. Some of them are like the Mountains one you refer to. At this level, some Wikiprojects do behave similarly to noticeboards, but with slightly different purpose. WikiProjects tend to be for people who are actively working on particular subjects. Noticeboards are more for people who - by dint of their location - may be able to solve problems relating to their area. They are also good places to post information about things like local get-togethers. Ideally, these two things should mesh together well - an Armenian astronomer on Wikipedia may spend most of his time formatting articles on stars as per his WikiProject, but will still be available to answer questions about Armenia on his noticeboard that a local might know but a non-Armenian might not. What's more, some other WikiProjects, however, are a different kettle of herring entirely from what goes on on a noticeboard (have a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting and its dozen or so subpages as an clear example of one like that!). Grutness...wha? 09:31, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

search engine

OK, so alotta poeple are complaining about the wikipedia search engine. now that i think about it, yeh, it sucks. someone mentioned that they use google search instead, and disregard wikipedia's own method. I also noticed that when the wikipedia search engines are down wikipedia invites the user to search through google or yahoo. Many websites have boxes that say "powered by google", so why doesn't wikipedia get that too and solve the problem of poor searching ability? --Ballchef 10:14, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

EDIT: I know I prob shouldn't have moved this to the front but i was hoping that some one of authority here could at least acknowledge it, or suggest it to the developers for me (bugzilla makes little sense to me). thanks. --Ballchef 07:52, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

You can already search Wikipedia via google just by adding site:en.wikipedia.org to your searches. I.E., to search wikipedia for "siamese twins", do a google search on "site:en.wikipedia.org siamese twins". Wikipedia does rely on Google searches when its database is overwhelmed, but there's a reason to have internal searches otherwise. Indices can be updated dynamically as articles change, which Google is not. I agree that there are some issues with the internal search; however, the developers are busy, and probably working on some of the search problems. If you have a specific complaint, try going to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). Superm401 | Talk 19:56, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Votes to Create?

Moved to perennial proposals. Steve block talk 18:44, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Jobs

Since it is likely that Wikiholism has negatively impacted the personal lives of numerous people in the community, myself included, I propose the creation of Wikipedia:Jobs that will list various jobs or careers that Wikipedians would be good at in real life, such as writing encyclopedia articles for Encyclopædia Britannica (although we probably shouldn't promote something like that). The goal of this would be to encourage people who are currently unemployed, and whose only motivation is their tireless work on Wikipedia, to get jobs. The first goal of this project will be to find me a job. So, Wikipedia community, get to work! — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-14 05:08

• What a noble goal. Whatever I can do... What about an exciting career as a librarian, a position that also allows an excellent opportunity for the semi-subversive promotion of Wikidom?--Pharos 05:50, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
• Your first job at getting your job is to write the article. (SEWilco 05:57, 14 October 2005 (UTC))
  • I was being mildly sarcastic, but I do think it would be useful. There are probably several careers out there that younger Wikipedians wouldn't even think to consider. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-14 12:02
• Freelance editing and researching? Apwoolrich 06:41, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

If you feel that WP is negatively impacting your personal life, maybe it really is time to take a break. Have no fear, it will all be here for you down the road. People whose "only motivation is their tireless work on Wikipedia" may need more than jobs. They may actually benefit from spending time focusing on other aspects of their life.--Gaff ^talk 07:19, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

• You're free to remain in the delusion of the importance of life. I'll remain in the delusion of the importance of Wikipedia. :) — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-15 15:00

Static snapshots

Could it be possible to make static snapshots of the database without histories to download for when you are not connected to the Internet? You could use it from a laptop when you're on a plane, or when the site is down. It would simply be the zipped .sql backup file. Of course, only advanced users would know how to use it, but it could still be worth it. The files could be downloaded as torrents from friendly servers.

Eje211 21:03, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

You just have to download only the cur table, instead of the cur table and the old table. I believe there are separate downloads for the cur table and for the full data (cur+old). See http://download.wikimedia.org/. --cesarb 21:22, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

I was wondering to myself the other day about whether it would be possible to release annual copies of the entire wikipedia in DVD format? Warts and all... :) That could be useful, for example, when you're away from the network and need to look up something, such as a family vacation in a car. — RJH 21:55, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:TomeRaider. You'll need the TomeRaider reader(shareware), and would obviously have to burn the database to DVD yourself, but the latest version with images(April 2005) is only about 900 MB compressed. It should easily fit on a DVD when unzipped. Superm401 | Talk 00:18, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

That was EXACTLY what I was looking for! I was just about to complain about the fact that they were hard to find, but I just noticed that they are mentioned almost first in the FAQs. I crumble with shame. I usually carefully read FAQs before making that sort of inquiry. Sorry about that. Eje211 13:29, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Extra deletion button

When you move a page, a handy little button box comes up saying "do you want to move the talk page too?" Very useful, since you almost always do. So why not do the same with deletions? If I delete a page, likely as not I'll forget to check whether there's a talk page that also needs deletion - I often realise a few minutes later then have to hunt for the relevant talk page. A button asking "do you want to delete the talk page too?" would be a wonderful addition to the admin's page deletion options. Grutness...wha? 10:26, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Having just spent a two-hour bout of Wikibooks cleanup with essentially double the workload because each transwikied page had a talk page, yes this would definitely be a nice feature to have. Garrett^Talk 11:56, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

new warning system for admin use

I have been thinking about a new system for warning vandals. Usually, unless the vandalism is extremely severe, users will get a warning on their talk pages before being blocked (if necessary). However, users might use excuses like "but I didn't notice any messages" and such. Therefore, I am proposing a system that allows "official" warnings by admins. When a warned user requests a page, he or she will get a warning message instead of the requested page. There would be a button that says "I confirm that I have read this message" that must be clicked before the user can continue using Wikipedia. This would make sure that the user has seen the message, and leaves no room for excuses. Still, I'm sure that this is a very controversial idea, and I'm not even sure that I like it myself.

Any thoughts? --Ixfd64 01:16, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

If they are repeat offenders and have several warnings on their talk pages they obviously know what they're doing, and any excuses they use are therefore irrelevent. Editors are still the best tool the admins have in reporting vandals. Wikipedia is still a community afterall, and like in any good community, the people are the best watchmen. Ereinion 03:41, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Why care about those excuses? We know they saw the warning. ~~ N (t/c) 14:45, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Even if they don't try to monitor their talk(which any responsible user should), they get those orange boxes. Therefore, no excuse. Superm401 | Talk 00:42, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Maybe we can edit Mediawiki:Newmessages to add "Please read them at your earliest convenience" or something similar. But then again, we don't want Wikipedia to get too wordy. --Ixfd64 06:14, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Possible equation enhancement for MediaWiki

Would it be possible to allow characters to be entered directly in equations, as they are in plain text. I have got some examples: Susvolans ⇔ 07:52, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

x−y	Failed to parse (syntax error): {\displaystyle x−y}	x-y	$x-y$
u×v	Failed to parse (syntax error): {\displaystyle u×v}	u\times v	$u\times v$
sin 2α	Failed to parse (syntax error): {\displaystyle sin 2α}	sin 2\alpha	$sin2\alpha$
x²	Failed to parse (syntax error): {\displaystyle x²}	x^2	$x^{2}$
i₃	Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "http://localhost:6011/en.wikipedia.org/v1/":): {\displaystyle i₃}	i_3	$i_{3}$
½	Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "http://localhost:6011/en.wikipedia.org/v1/":): {\displaystyle ½}	\frac 1 2	${\frac {1}{2}}$

Why?? Omegatron (talk) 23:54, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Makes the wikitext clearer. ~~ N (t/c) 00:05, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Ahhhhh... That makes sense. It's not really TeX anymore then, though. Omegatron (talk) 00:12, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

I believe the math article editors would strongly object to actually using such a capability, they seem to prefer TeX markup and oppose any form of WYSIWYG. My unicodify bot changed &gamma; to literal γ in one math article (not \gamma within <math> but &gamma; in the main article text) and they objected to that. So I don't know if this enhancement will actually be used in practice (it will probably be reverted if used), although enabling the technical capability makes sense (perhaps other wikipedias and other wikis will have a different policy). -- Curps 16:50, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I think the ability to add things like \gamma is non-standard for TeX. There are some extensions to standard TeX in our version of the software:

"In addition, texvc provides some extensions to standard AMSLaTeX, such as \codes for HTML math character entities (for example, Σ → \Sigma) which have different names in LaTeX." - Texvc Omegatron (talk) 05:57, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

alternate method for identifying anonymous users

Since IP addresses are publically shown, and anonymous proxies are currently not allowed, we are probably scaring off some legit contributers.

So I am suggesting that an alternate (but optional) method of identifying anonymous users. Each anon would have a special ID given to them (for example, Guest user:48388422389), generated by a special algorithm. I've been to a forum that uses such a method, and I don't think it's a bad idea either. --Ixfd64 22:52, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

We have no interest in encouraging people to contribute anonymously. We allow it, and will continue to, but would rather people choose user names. Superm401 | Talk 12:22, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

A possible compromise is to allow administrators to see all IPs. --Ixfd64 01:10, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure. The point of hiding IPs is privacy, and the fact that we don't want people to (potentially) get in trouble for their actions on Wikipedia; and as admins are selected on the basis of on-Wiki trustworthiness, not real-world trustworthiness, they shouldn't be given powers with potential consequences off Wikipedia just by virtue of their adminship. ~~ N (t/c) 14:44, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

WikiPDA - The pda version of wikipedia.

Would people consider making a PDA compatible Main Page and Page layout specifically designed for PDA viewing, like Google PDA (www.google.com/pda), although not necessarily as bland...

Also, it could be named wikiPDA, so there'd be no need to resort to adding wiki to a word to invent a new one... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.42.72.223 (talk • contribs) 22:09, 9 October 2005

This can more or less be done with skins. See your "preferences" and try the "Chick" skin, or see m:Gallery of user styles. Sorry, you have to create an account before this will work. —AlanBarrett 05:46, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Take a look at Main_Page_(PDA_Version), which has simplified layout for PDAs. On my own iPaq 4700, I find the normal main page renders adequately, but I've got a larger screen than most.-gadfium 07:30, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I proposed this on the main page talk page a while back. I agree it this is somthing we should do. It's nice to have that PDA version but unless PDAs are automatically redirected there it is useless. Also the search box is at the bottom of the page when it is viewed in a PDA. Using skins is not a good solution because one shouldn't have to be a wikipedian (or even a user) to view and use wikipedia on a PDA. Broken S 22:59, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

If the ?useskin= links ever work properly, it might be useful to convert that page to always link to the "chick" skin. See Main Page (PDA Version)?useskin=chick. At the moment, the skin is lost as soon as you click another link though. Angela. 23:03, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

But one of the biggest problems on PDAs is that, due to incomplete CSS support, on the monobook skin the search box ends up at the very bottom. On Chick, the search page is at the bottom on any browser. ~~ N (t/c) 23:09, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

We already have special spoon-feeding of IE5 and I know there are even sites that detect the PSP, so the technological side of adding a redirect is probably a minor one. However a completely rearranged visual theme that works suitably on all PDAs would need to be designed, not just a tweaking of the main page. Garrett^Talk 16:33, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Proposal for a new navigation link

I propose that Wikipedia include a new link in its navigation menu to the page Wikipedia:Who writes Wikipedia. My primary concern is the potential for students to assume that all Wikipedia entries are of equally high quality. This MSNBC news article discusses how uncritically the typical student entering college approaches research: Colleges look to test internet IQ. This link documents the popularity of Wikipedia among kids: Alexa's Most Popular in Kids and Teens Category.

There is precedent for adding a new menu item to the toolbox; User:Angela made a proposal within the past few months for a "permanent link" option to be added at the bottom of the toolbox menu. It appears in all main articlespace pages. While users of the MediaWiki software may not make use of a link that says "Who writes wikipedia", I bet they would all appreciate a link called "About this site" or something similar. Ideally, this link would be customized for each installation of the MediaWiki software.

What do others think? Is this worth asking the programmers to do? Mamawrites 11:14, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

• I'm not convinced any one in the target audience will click it. Though I do think a very interetesting article could be written ont he subject. RJFJR 14:44, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

I think it's important to have such a link in a prominent place. I've heard too many stories of people using Wikipedia as a more authoritative source than they should be, and getting burned by vandalism, POV warriors, and the like. Omegatron (talk) 17:19, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't necessary think a link to Wikipedia:Who writes Wikipedia would be necessary, but I think that having an "About this site" is a great idea! Perhaps right under "Random article"... Thanks! Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk | W_S 22:02, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

About Wikipedia is linked at the bottom of every page already. Something like "Who writes Wikipedia" could be considered for addition to that article. --Michael Snow 01:58, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

OK, I asked for a link on that page (it's protected, so I can't just insert one myself). I still think a top-level link in the navigation page would be valuable, though. Mamawrites 08:49, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:About isn't protected. I think the link there is enough. The permalink was a tool that needed to be on every page, whereas information about the project can be found easily enough via the about page so more links aren't needed. Angela. 23:00, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I was confused; it's the disclaimer page that is protected. I have added a link in Wikipedia:About. Since Angela doesn't think the top-level link is needed, I'll just continue my alternate strategy of linking Who writes Wikipedia to lots of the places that are mainpage links... it'll take two clicks to find, but hopefully people will stumble acrss it through Help or Wikipedia:About. Mamawrites 10:43, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Proposal about certain templates, and where they go (article or talk page)

Currently, many templates go on the talk page. I think they should go on the article page, because (just as NPOV warning adds important info and so is on the article page) they add useful or important content that one may want to know when reading an article, without having to go to the talk page.

My current list of things that should go on the article, not the talk page, are:

• Featured Article (could just be a star somewhere near the top of the article, like the Spoken Wikipedia icon)
• Featured Article candidate (to encourage more people to contribute, just as the AfD template is currently on the article page)
• Peer Review (but NOT Peer Review archived)

Please feel free to add to the above list, and/or tell me why this proposal is a good or bad idea. Batmanand 09:12, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you about featured articles. I think I have actually seen a little star next to the interwiki links to the German Wikipedia when the German article is a featured one. Mamawrites 11:16, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

There was quite an extensive poll done on this issue a couple months ago at Wikipedia:Template locations - SimonP 15:34, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

The idea of indicating the featured status of a article in the article page, have been brought many times, but I think there was a consensus about leaving the template in the talk page to prevent readers from considering non-FAs low quality articles. As for my opinion, I'm rather for putting some kinf of a FA mark in the article page. An idea taken from the vietnamese Wikipedia, about putting a star right next to the title of a featured article in being discussed at Wikipedia talk:Featured articles#Featured article icon on vi:.
As for the FA candidate and the Peer revew template, the main reason for putting them in the talk page is that there are "editors" templates, that concerns the ones who are interested in editing the page, and who should check the talk page. CG 14:15, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

ESA Template

I'd like to propose having an image template for pictures from the EAS web site.[2] This would be comparable to the {{PD-USGov-NASA}} template. Could somebody let me know what process I need to go through to make this happen? Here are the EAS site terms of image use:

Most images have been released publicly from ESA. You may use ESA images or videos for educational or informational purposes. The publicly released ESA images may be reproduced without fee, on the following conditions:

• Credit ESA as the source of the images:

Examples: Photo: ESA; Photo: ESA/Cluster; Image: ESA/NASA - SOHO/LASCO

• ESA images may not be used to state or imply the endorsement by ESA or any ESA employee of a commercial product, process or service, or used in any other manner that might mislead.

• If an image includes an identifiable person, using that image for commercial purposes may infringe that person's right of privacy, and separate permission should be obtained from the individual.

Thank you. :) — RJH 20:53, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

That is an unacceptable license. Images on Wikipedia must be usable by third parties, including for commericial purposes, which this license forbids. Superm401 | Talk 03:49, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

It seem to me to permit commercial usage - "commercial" and "educational or informational" are not mutually exclusive: consider, for example, use in a textbook, which would be a commercial educational use. However, Wikipedia:Copyright FAQ#Educational licenses states that "educational use permitted" licenses are not allowed, similarly to non-commercial use licenses. So it is still unacceptable, but not for the reason you give. -- AJR 23:15, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I can't see any prevention of use of images for commercial purposes, except where the image includes an identifiable person (so such images couldn't be used by Wikipedia), or the image is being used to imply endorsement by ESA (which seems totally fair as a restriction in my opinion).-gadfium 08:17, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

In any case, users of PD-US images of an identifiable person could be sued in other jurisdictions for breach of local privacy laws. I think this is an acceptable licence, in Wikipedia terms, and much freer than "fair use". Physchim62 19:52, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

It's the following paragraph in the license that I guess may be a problem:

If these images are to be used in advertising or any commercial promotion, layout and copy must be submitted to ESA beforehand for approval ([3])

:-( Johantheghost 22:00, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Ach, well then it sounds like ESA pictures are a no-go. I've seen some ESA images on wikipedia already, so they will need to be expunged, alas. — RJH 16:16, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Please see Meta:ESA images]. Superm401 | Talk 18:42, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Wiki Accounts

Alright, I bet this subject has already been talked about numerous times, but I think there should be a way to just have one single account for every wiki, instead of having to make a new one for each one. Such as the main wikipedia.org, and then demosphere's wiki, and halo(the video game)'s wiki, and all those other good stuff.
Or am I just crazy?
--KelticKTalk 18:22, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I've thought the same thing myself many times (about the accounts, not your craziness :) - plus I'll chip in the extra idea that you can log on and be logged onto all of them simultaneously. There's nothing more annoying that going, say, from en.wiki to common, signing something and then realising you're only logged on in en.wiki and have signed as an anon. 'Twould be most useful. Grutness...wha? 04:52, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

See meta:Single login. The developers have been working on this for a while, and it seems things may come to fruition soon (let's hope!).--Pharos 05:30, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

(in evil Gerry Anderson baddie-type voice) ex-thel-lent! Grutness...wha? 05:53, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

• Indeed meta-login has been discussed extensively, but we'll never have a single login that includes Demosphere's wiki, and Halo's wiki. We are not affiliated with them and there's no way we could get those databases to work together. - Mgm|^(talk) 12:55, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
  • That could be possible even for unassociated wikis. For example, all Drupal sites support a shared login scheme. Angela. 22:50, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

The problem with shared login that springs to mind is that of duplicate usernames (but different people) existing across projects. For instance, I'm Robchurch on this wiki, and Robchurch on Meta, Commons, etc. but what if there's a Robchurch on FR-wiki that isn't me? This is going to be a technical headache, I feel.

If we start incorporating all wikis using the MediaWiki software, as Angela claims is possible (and I don't dispute that it is); then this username clash is going to be even more prominent. Rob Church ^{Talk | FAD} 10:27, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

The problem is more social than technical since it involves handling the disputes between people who currently share a username. If all wikis were sharing it, it could be possible to have an ID like angela@enwikipedia which would appear as "angela" on en.wikipedia, allowing someone else to be "angela" on fr.wikibooks. The login ID doesn't need to match your displayed username. See m:Single login specifications and m:Single signon transition for more on this topic. Angela. 20:45, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Shared computer problem

Section transferred to Wikipedia:Blocking policy proposal Steve block talk 13:39, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Please add "send page" option

To help disseminate knowledge by sharing specific information and increasing Wiki's visability, I propose a "send page" option be added to the toolbox or navigation pane.

The user should have the option of sending the actual page (I suppose an html document?) or just a link to the article.

Thanks. I apologize if this point has already been raised. I did not see it in the perennial proposals discussion.

SG-

Article rating competition

The Wikipedia:Article rating competition is a proposal to informally rate articles under given topics chosen every week. Take a look and comment on the talk page. violet/riga (t) 19:20, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Forcing Editors and Contributors to log on

I propose that anyone who edits pages on the wikipedia be forced to log in. This way, there will always be a record of who chaged what, and in some cases, who to kick off. Also, forcing people to log on would allow people to view a full list of their own contributions, providing a way for people to check back on the pages they have worked on. Tell me what you think of that idea. Fresheneesz 15:48 30 October 2005 (US West Coast time)

That's probably the most frequent proposal on Wikipedia -- see its entry on the perennial proposals page. — mendel ☎ 01:37, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

If somebody wanted to create a wiki about electronics he would be wise to get the experts in sci.electronics.design involved somehow.

These electronics gurus can be asked to solve disagreements, so we get a very good wiki. It doesn't need a "forced login" because a hundred editors keep an eye on what is happening and they decide in each case if the change is to be kept, or revert to earlier version, or use the new material in some other way, like merge it with something else.

If the one who wrote it want to argue about it he has the possibility ultimately to present his case to the gurus in sci.electronics.design

The wiki administrators could have their own forum, also open and unmoderated, where they discuss the development. The editors would have a forum too. A system of forums backing up a wiki.

One of the forums, in this case sci.electronics.design, is used as the highest authority over the content.

What works for electronics works for knowledge in general, and I think these ideas can be used for wikipedia too.

Roger4911 10:47, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Creative democracy

I have participated for years in the newsgroup sci.electronics.design and have thought about the fact that we never create anything together, like a book about electronics, in the form of a wiki, for example.

We would have no problem assigning overall responsibility to a few which have gained respect for their knowledge and/or human insight.

All we write disappear again, like water running by in a river. Old messages are quickly forgotten, and we write new messages every day.

That allows us to get to know each other, know each others competence.

We have what is needed to give correct and optimised replies to questions, we have an hierarchy that is natural and accepted by most regular participators. We can determine what is right and wrong in the field of electronics, we have authority based on a competence order which is rather informal but very clear.

In alt.comp.freeware we have another organisation, an appointed person acts on the behalf of the participators, she organizes the votings each year for the best freeware programs, to go into the list of "Pricelessware" we publish each year, and we have organised a net of voluntary CD burners all over the world.

If you live in Tasmania and want a copy of the Pricelessware CD you write a message to one of the burners, or in the newsgroup. Somebody who lives in Australia replies and offers to burn the PL iso to a CD and send it to the person in Tasmania.

In ACF we have a system based on an informally organised representative democracy which works very well, as long as Susan can keep on taking care of all tasks involved.

In wikipedia there is no problem to get participators to participate, but there is a quality problem instead.

Practical informal anarchy often leads to mob rule in the cultural sector, the writers and singers who shouts loudest wins most media coverage.

Practical informal representative democracy is to appoint some generally trusted persons to handle a web site for a newsgroup, or to having the overall responsibility for section of a wiki.

If we combine the diskussions in a newsgroup with a wiki we get the other half of the creating process, the structuring and remembering of structures and data in the form which is more dynamic, more interactive and more materialized.

For the results to be good we need some type of representative informal democracy in this written medium.

In wikipedia they have a big problem with exactly the same problem, there are no really educated people who can make sound judgements in control, so the content is like the text you can read in the subway, mainly written by angry and arrogant young males, who seem to have immense resources of energy and time. Like very active participators in a newsgroup, who have to get involved in every thread they see, when they are in their speeded mode.

Some people speak because they have to say something, some people speak because they have something to say.

In a newsgroup we quickly find out who are the wise people and who are the less merited.

This results in a social order based solely on each persons written messages, so reason and judgement can easily be seen, separate from the person's body language, his social pondus, his voice and ability to take people emotionally.

So we can find the really intelligent people through using the text medium. We can use the newsgroup to learn to know each other, appoint by democratic votings some responsible and knowledgable persons to have the final decision for a part of the wiki.

The newsgroup or forum can also be used by people who have been overruled by higher authority, to defend his views and maybe get support from higher authority on a certain issue.

Using talkpages, wikipages, for discussions doesn't work well at all, we should use tools appropriate for the task, like forums or mailing lists or newsgroups. Wikipedia could set up a discussion forum server, that is the simplest solution.

Keep the discussions open and unmoderated like in usenet. Philosophy and knowledge in general really need freedom of speech.

Roger4911 15:21, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

One might be able to combine a Wikibook project with Usenet by posting Wikibook change summaries to the newsgroup. Updates would probably have to happen in the Wikibook so as to keep the licensing simple. A few messages above is mention that a Forum capability is often suggested. (SEWilco 17:49, 1 November 2005 (UTC))

Separate taxonomy from systematics!

Wasn't taxonomy about classification and name-giving taxa, and systematics the study of organisms' evolutionary relationships? The latter is a research program and the former a practice.

Quoting [4]:

Systematics: the science of organizing the history of organismal evolution
     the science of ordering
  Identification: recognizing the place of an organisms in an existing classification
     Use of dichotomous keys to identify organisms
  Taxonomy (Nomenclature): assigning scientific names according to legal rules
     Recall discussion of ICZN Green Book (see also Phylocode homepage)
  Classification: determining the evolutionary relationships of organisms
        A "Natural Classification" will accurately reflect phylogeny
           Classification should be a hypothesis of evolutionary relationships

Shouldn't we divide taxonomy from systematics more clearly? Even in the taxoboxes? I noticed that the French wikipedia put a 'classical classification' (with Linnean categories) in their taxoboxes as well as a 'phylogenetic classification' (without Linnean categories). This seems like a good practice. Maybe we can do the same at other wikipedia's but call these Taxonomy and Systematics respectively. Fedor 09:41, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I think that some professionals and near-professionals in this field use "taxonomy" to include much of what is called "systematics" above. I am sure that "taxonomy" was regualrly so used in the popular essays of Stephen Jay Gould for example. I am not sure what the usage is in actual professional publications. DES ^(talk) 18:48, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Molecular biology is the great mangler of technical language (just consider the mangling that "homology" has gone through *sheesh*), and "taxonomy" has not escaped being a victim. Professional molecular biologists can be found to often use "taxonomy" to refer to organismal relationships, despite its improper usage ... another example of "proper is as proper does" unfortunately. Courtland 01:56, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

{{taxobox}} is part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life. Perhaps this belongs on their Talk page. (SEWilco 02:38, 2 November 2005 (UTC))

"The doctor is in"

Possibly a silly suggestion, but possibly not... is there any way of putting a litle box at the top of usertalk pages that indicates whether on not the user is currently logged on to Wikipedia? It would save wondering whether to wait around for a reply to a message, and would also make it easier for people looking for an admin to help them if they knew they weren't talking to one who was offline. Grutness...wha? 02:05, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

How would that work? For example, I currently have two machines on which I have a cookie that keeps me logged in whenever I return. So would I just show as perpetually logged in? That doesn't seem very useful. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:37, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

User:Jmabel is correct in suggesting that "logged in" != "available". The likelihood of someone being available can often be determined by looking at the person's User Contributions, such as Special:Contributions/Grutness which indicates that User:Grutness has been contributing for at least a four hour block ... the problem is that the last edit is shown as having occurred at around 19:39 Nov 1 and my automagic signature indicates that it is now only about 18:16 Nov 1. I'm not sure of what the origin of the time-stamp discrepancy is, except to blame it on User:Grutness having a time machine (or my being perpetually late, maybe), but if the time stamps can be reconciled, then a comparison between now and last edit could provide a fact that could be used to estimate the likelihood of someone still being around. A couple of things that would help this comparison process (without getting into how the Wikimedia software might do cool things with the info) is to a) provide a "the current Wikitime is" element in the left-navigation space, and b) ensure that a snippet of the User Contributions page is available via mouse-over (my mouseovers are not working on my current machine (not my regular one) so I can't say if it already provides enough information without opening the page). Hope this helps. Courtland 18:24, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Sigs normally timestamp in UTC. watchlists and user contrib lists use a timestamp adjusted by your prefered time-zone, so if your TZ prefernce is -1 this would expalin the difference. DES ^(talk) 18:45, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm in New Zealand, so my TZ is +12. So the "on-line noww" was actually about 11 hours before your comment. Grutness...wha? 00:37, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

OK; that has convinced me to adjust my preferred time-zone to +0 (i.e. UTC) to facilitate comparisons. When you say "your preferred time-zone", DES, I see what you mean; I experimented and saw the times viewed on a contributions page change if you the observer change your time-offset preference. do you mean "your" the observer or "your" the contributor? Courtland 01:48, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Some people have been just manually copying one of two images onto their user page to show their status. If they are careful to update it, this should always show their status accurately:

I wonder what a yellow light would mean ? "I'm in, but moving slow ?" StuRat 18:48, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Maybe "I should have left by now"? :) - Flooey 20:41, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, wonder if a toggle functionality could be added so that you could one-click toggle your availability ... it would need to be done through the preferences I think, though ... hmm. Courtland 00:06, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Request for comment

Please could you comment on a previous proposal about a new namespace, the Gallery namespace. It has been marked as an archive before it had even been approved or rejected. Thank you. CG 19:37, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Tag for featured articles

In the German wikipedia, they have a nice tag (see de:Vorlage:Exzellent) on the Article page to show that it's a featured article; likewise, there is one to show that it's nominated (de:Vorlage:Kandidat) for featured article status, and that it's nominated for removal (de:Vorlage:Wiederwahl). Wouldn't it be nice to add these to the English featured articles as well, so readers can appreciate what they are reading, can participate in voting, and new users become more familiar with the system of featured articles? --Robin.rueth 11:22, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

That would be a self-reference. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 12:20, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Not a problematic one, though. But a better solution would be to show article ratings prominently on the article page, when the rating system gets enabled in 2008. Fredrik | talk 12:31, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Would that then be a provisory solution until 2008? It works out all right in German.--Robin.rueth 13:55, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

According to what will it be enabled in 2008? —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 13:28, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I know, I'm being optimistic. Fredrik | talk 15:43, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I've never heard about this rating system. Could you give me more information about it? CG 18:02, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Can i help with my language?

I see the for me with (no) Norwegian (bokmål) as language, many words are still in English. Is there some way to translate these?

Wikipedia:Experimental NPOV resolution

This is a proposal by User:MessedRocker to deal with POV pages. Please visit and comment. Radiant_>|< 21:28, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Put a darn wikipedia glossary link in the darn sidebar!!!

it would really help new users confused by the editing and talk page jargon Bwithh 22:13, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Look at the section immediately above- I imagine such a thing would be included in that.--Sean Black | Talk 23:54, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

"Get a receipt" button for changes

It could be a real world bonus to have a "get a receipt" button for changes done to a page. I was mainly thinking this for students and researchers, or other knowledge societies, that might want to show their work in wikipedia.

A professor might encourage class work on wikipedia articles and demand for "receipts". They should be self contained in a single file to send, and have links to wikipedia "history page" for the article for verifiablility.

More details exist, where to have the button (in the "my contributions"), how exactly display the changes, how to handle others edits inbetween if allowable.

This functionality is already achivable as a simple rightly picked "diff" and packed easyly as an URL. Then maybe I only suggest more visibility to the possibility for less internet savvy users, the existance of the concept, and maybe a different, less powerful, display for the changes but allowing a easy read (that is to say some colouring for the full article). --Pablo2garcia 13:02, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

If you only show the new or changed words, without any context, that would work for new sections, but if the editor put a word or two here and there, it would just be an apparently random series of words. The current history button works well for comparing two versions, but not so well for comparing multiple versions at once. I'm not sure how you could "show all changes made in this time range" versus the previous version, but this would be valuable if students made changes in multiple edits and wanted proof for their instructor. StuRat 13:28, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

You can esaily gt a Diff between the version prior to the start of a series of edits, and the version at/after the end of hte series. This shows the net effect of the series. Now if edits by other editers are interspersed in the edits of the person who wants to show his or her work, that is more of a problem -- multiple diffs would be needed, but then that is no worse than multiple "reciepts" would be, IMO. DES ^(talk) 17:03, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia Janitors' Union

Babajobu would like to begin disseminating a new meme: the concept of the Wikipedia Janitors' Union. Copyeditors and other such sloggers are the Rodney Dangerfields of Wikipedia, and our contributions are consistently undervalued. In future this Union will attempt to address this troubling lack of respect. I hope the meme will help lay the groundwork for the birth of the union. Go meme, go! Babajobu 10:08, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

I protest the union's diversion of my janitoral efforts to such political campaigning as the above.  :-) (SEWilco 05:53, 28 October 2005 (UTC))

WikiSort Project

This is just a quick note to say that the WikiSort Project has begun! Come on over and check it out!the1physicist 03:27, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

censorship of Chinese Wikipedia

I've heard that the Chinese government has censored the Chinese Wikipedia a while ago. Would it be a good idea to create alternate URLs for the Chinese Wikipedia? --Ixfd64 02:04, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

This would work for a while, then the Chinese gov would just block the new site, as well. A system of constantly changing web addresses (like al-Queda uses) would work, but then users couldn't find it either. StuRat 13:37, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I think it is wrong to try and "dodge" the Chinese Government censoring the site, and I'm not sure Wikipedia principles agree either. Anyway, there is no way of hiding the site from the government without hiding it from users. If the Chinese want it censored, then just let them have their way. The only thing I would suggest is Wikipedia co-operating with the Chinese Government over this. --Heebiejeebieclub 19:00, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

In that such cooperation would mean they would expect us to rewrite the Tibet article to say something like "then the Tibetan's, mistreated by the Dalai Lama, were rescued by the glorious Communist armies of the Chinese liberation", I can't support any such move. StuRat 16:53, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm neither a Chinese Wikipedia user nor a speaker/writer/reader of Chinese but one thing seems apparent ... the Chinese language is larger than the Chinese government in scope. To bow to the imposition of censorship on a language resource by a same-named government is not a good thing to do, though it appears that it is also not an easy thing to avoid. Government censorship should be treated in the same way (if possible) as other editorial vandalism. Simplistic opinion, yes, but an opinion nontheless. Courtland 16:10, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

If there was a way to bypass such censorship, I would support it. Can you think of a way ? StuRat 16:53, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Woah! This is the Chinese Government you're trying to outsmart here, not some good-for-nothing Wikipedia vandalisers in their youth. --Heebiejeebieclub 19:04, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

OK, and what is to stop them from censoring the english wikipedia? Or for that matter, what is to stop the American government from censoring the Chinese wikipedia? Once you go down the road of "don't try to stop them, they are the government" you might as well just pack it all in the closet and go home. Courtland 19:39, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Worth considering non-English language articles in the English Wikipedia as a way of giving certain articles "refugee status"? Just a thought off the top of my head. Courtland 19:43, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

"I think it is wrong to try and 'dodge' the Chinese Government censoring the site, and I'm not sure Wikipedia principles agree either. Anyway, there is no way of hiding the site from the government without hiding it from users. If the Chinese want it censored, then just let them have their way. The only thing I would suggest is Wikipedia co-operating with the Chinese Government over this." --Heebiejeebieclub 19:00, 28 October 2005 (UTC) You think it's wrong to try and dodge the Chinese govenment? I think you are a communist, or atleast a socialist, what about censorship, that's what is the real wrong here. Governments should work for their people, not for the oppression of their people. And if a government is oppressive like the Chinese government, people not only have the right to work against that government, they have the responsibility. This reponsiblity can be fulfilled by armed resistance in extreme cases, or even small, seemingly insignificant acts such as reading banned literature. The government isn't your daddy, and therefore shound not be provideing for you, or telling what to do. As nice as it sounds to have another father in the government, we must remember, some fathers are abusive, and when that father is a government, it always becomes abusive.

16:38, 2 November 2005 (UTC)BAN

I'm opposed to censorship (with the exception of a few cases where lives are at stake, like giving out the address of a witness to a gang killing), but I am equally opposed to calling people who disagree with me Communists. I never cared much for Senator Joseph McCarthy's methods. StuRat 16:56, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Agreed; when people get labels slapped on by someone who is interpreting the intent and history behind statement (a) or (b) that's as bad as any of the government censorship allegations we're talking about here. Courtland 17:54, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

A proposal to reform Wikipedia editing permissions

I have created a User:Thue/Wikipedia editing permissions reform, which proposes a way to create a web of trust among Wikipedia editors. The proposal limits the editing rights of users who are not yet trusted, but the idea is that it should not be too hard to become a trusted editor (on the order of a few hours quality work on Wikipedia if the editor is competent).

To still allow newbies not yet in the web of trust to contribute, and eventually become part of the web of trust, the proposal suggests a way to place "untrusted" editors' edits on hold until the editor becomes trusted, or until a trusted editor OKs the edit. By always treating anonymous editors as untrusted, the proposed solution also removes most of the problems with anonymous editors, while still allowing anonymous editors to contribute. Far most of the vandalism seen today would be eliminated by this proposal.

Having this big population of trusted editors will make it much easier to design a validation system for Wikipedia 1.0.

Comments appreciated!

Thue | talk 19:05, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

This seems more like "red tape" to me. It would slow Wikipedia's growth, especially from a technical standpoint, and a lot of those people who edit Wikipedia anonymously but benevolently may end up getting turned away.  Denelson83  19:26, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm not so sure. Trusting users could become almost as basic a function as greeting them, and getting recognition for their first few good edits could encourage new editors to stay... The restrictions for being untrusted, as described, wouldn't be any worse than just being a new user, so I don't think it would scare anyone away... New users don't generally try to move pages as soon as they register anyway. I suggested something like this a while back, but only requiring trust from 1 trusted user (on the theory that anyone who abused it to 'trust' a long line of socks would just be giving all of them away once any one of them acted out, assuming trust-logs were public.) In any case, we should probably move this discussion to the proposal's talk page. --Aquillion 19:52, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh, wait, I somehow didn't notice the bit about "edit approval." Ugh, no, that doesn't strike me as a very good idea at all. A "trust" system could be used for things like page-move abilities, sure, but requiring approval for all untrusted edits would never work (the anons alone are so numerous that we'd never be able to keep up with them.) --Aquillion 19:56, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, we would save a lot of time currently spend checking anonymous edits anyway. I check all anonymous edits to the articles on my watch list anyway... Thue | talk 17:50, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I would oppose this idea as being very non-wiki. Instant gratification was what got me hooked in the first place. Lupin|talk|popups 22:06, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I like the proposal, but we would need a way for not-yet-trusted editors to see their edits before they are approved. For example, we could have a "permanent page" and a "proposed page", showing the unapproved edits. Any trusted editor could copy the "proposed page" into the "permanent page", thus approving all edits, or could copy the "permanent page" into the "proposed page", thus rejecting all edits, or could edit the "permanent page" directly. Note that this would double the Wiki disk space requirements, however. StuRat 15:32, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia's purpose is not to give you instant gratification. It's to provide information for people to use. As such, 'instant gratification' should always be subordinated to whatever is the best way to provide that information. -Dalziel 86 12:40, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Writing from personal experience

In writing for the Commonwealth School article, several editors (including me) were writing description from personal experience. Another editor came in and started deleting all the portions that were not Verifiable through reputable sources. I've been reading through relevant Wikipedia policy, and I think I have a decent handle now on what is allowed. The problem is, the way I've been treating Wikipedia and the way many others seem to treat it is at odds with official policy. People do write from personal experience. We could just say these people are sloppy and should go read policy, but that seems like it doesn't deal with anything. When people do this they are being useful, and often informative and helpful articles get created. One example might be the Slashdot subculture article, as there are very few if any "reputable" sources for it, but many people who could provide useful information. It seems the problem is with information that is:

• Well known among members of some group.
• Interesting to people outside of the group.
• Not documented in official sources.

Current Wikipedia policy does not make a way to include this information, but people want it included and want to provide it, and so write pages for it. These pages get worked on, and often get to be pretty good. Then someone comes by applying policy and removes anything not verifyable. Grouping all writing from experience in with "origonal research" seems simplistic and not really helpful. Is there a nice solution here? -- Jeff 18:31, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, no nice solution exists. No Original Research is king. Unfortunately, we have no way of telling whether someone's "personal experience" is real, or made up. You may want to consider checking out Everything2, for a community that welcomes personal experiences and well-written non-encyclopedic stuff. --Ashenai (talk) 18:35, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I know nothing about the article of which you speak or the controversies involved, however I think it is reasonable that material that cannot be verified is challenged, if not removed. If,as you say, there are a few of you speaking from personal experience and you all broadly agree with each other I would perhaps recommend that you pool your talents to make the case for the material. One thing that you might consider as an interim measure is to ensure that any material you feel shouldn't be removed is placed on the articles Talk Page. That way it is at least available to be read and debated with a view to possible inclusion in the article. However if the persoanl experiences are in violation of Wikipedia:NPOV you might consider producing a personal account of your experiences on a website of your own and linking to it from the article. If it's something you feel very strongly about, have you considered whether there is in fact a way to verify your information? Ie, could you get records from archives and place those online somehow? --bodnotbod 18:47, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

It's none of it particularly controversial, just information that has not been written about in verifiable sources. The people adding content were not in disagreement about the facts of any of it, the problem was that it was not externally verifiable. -- Jeff 18:53, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

So what should happen about all the pages that have this sort of writing? When I look at other pages for schools, so many are like this, and they are informative. Should we really go in and delete (or ask for external information for) all the non-externally verifiable information there? -- Jeff 19:06, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

After trying and failing to verify it, yes absolutely. -Splash^talk 19:22, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

"In such cases, one option is for one or more of the people involved to write up their personal experiences and post them elsewwhere on the web, then cite "My histroy with slashdot" or the like as a source. This wouldn't fly when better sources are avaialbe, or for a new scientific theory, but in the kind of case you cite I thimk it might be workable. What constitutes a "reputabel source" is soemwhat flexible, i think. DES ^(talk) 20:02, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I must admit I've got a great deal of sympathy with what the original writer is saying here. There are a couple of times when I've written an article about a place based on my personal experience of it and found a "no references" template slapped on the article. What references do you use if you're writing about somewhere you live? You use your eyes and ears. Grutness...wha? 00:02, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Sure, but if we want to build wikipedia's reputation as a reliable source of information, we absolutely have to discourage this as much as possible. Lupin|talk|popups 22:04, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't see how this is unreliable. If everyone in a place knows something about it, and so it gets put into a book (which gets referenced by a Wikipedia article), how is it different than if these people post the information themselves? Maybe it is even more reliable, as the averaged observations of many tend to be better than those of a few. -- Jeff 02:32, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

It is not as easy to verify as reliable as something documented in a published source. ~~ N (t/c) 02:36, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

"I don't see how this is unreliable. If everyone in a place knows something about it, and so it gets put into a book (which gets referenced by a Wikipedia article), how is it different than if these people post the information themselves?". One would expect a book that makes it all the way to published status has been through a number of hands; proofreader, editor, publisher - all of whom would hopefully challengethe writer on any claims that look shaky. This is very different to Wikipedia where anyone can slap up anything anywhere and, in fact, very, very frequently do so. --bodnotbod 06:11, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

"Look shaky"? Ashibaka (tock) 01:12, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Hello, I believe dot book is a prime example of an unverifiable article. This comment is unrelated, but I would really hate to see that article get AfD'd (creator's pride). Unfortunately, it is constructed primarily on my experience. It's got pictures and lots of information but no sources... what would you guys say? — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 03:38, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually the dot book search that has been appended to the article seems to return enough evidence of their existence on a cursory glance to me. I think your case is also helped by the fact that it would be beyond weird for someone to invent such an article ;o) I strongly suspect the community feels it is much more important to verify articles that mention people (especially living), particular institutions (esp. those still active/attended) and matters of science than they would with articles - such as yours - which are about an obscure tool of a trade. --bodnotbod 06:11, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Personal experience not being admissible as encyclopedic content is at odds with what we allow as sources to support articles. Consider ... all news items are examples of personal experience (a journalist has a personal experience and writes about it); practically any weblink will suffice (apparently) as evidence of verifiability, but anyone these days can slap up a website, write on it, then add the URL here as evidence of verifiability (take the schools example ... persons at the school write on a school website about an event, then link to that description from Wikipedia, claiming that the statement in Wikipedia is now verified); persons are allowed (indeed it is essential that they do) to take pictures of objects and add those pictures to articles as part of the article content (for instance, take a picture of a spoon and post it as an example of what a spoon looks like), which is certainly an instance of instantiated personal experience. All this being said, the notion that is under consideration here should not be one of personal experience vs. secondary reputable source but rather one of what we mean by "verifiability", "reputable", and "encyclopedic". I think that is a valid contribution to this discussion, but I'll look forward to responses before making a final judgement call on that :). Courtland 17:23, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

The purpose of NOR is to prevent Wikipedia from being a publisher of new ideas. And that means new ideas in a bigger sense than writing from personal experience. These points are important:

• Not everything is on the web.
• distinguish between personal experience and primary sources
• Not everything is on the web.
• Facts are facts regardless of personal experience
• Not everything is on the web.

If someone wrote in an article about their school that the school had won the state badminton championship 6 times in the last ten years since the hiring of Coach Belinda Munchabox, but that information isn't on the web - that doesn't make it personal experience. If the school has plaques on the wall that every student passes THAT is primary source material. Hiring records for Belinda Munchabox are available. If that is what make it verifiable then there it is.

Examining a primary source material isn't personal experience either. If you personally went to interview someone about some historic local event then take good notes, that person is primary source material and there is no reason not to include what you've learned. Your notes or recording would be verifiable of that persons claims.

Similarly, you and your memories can be a primary source. If you witness a bridge sink on a certain date - that's a fact. However, don't present new ideas or claim to know why it sank unless you've also examined data about that. A claim that it was shot down by alien missiles would, uh, need some verification.

For the example of Slashdot subculture, the slashdot forums are primary source material. Stating facts "Slashdot has a lot of trolls." is verifiable by any examination of the forums. There are a few places that article verges on presenting new ideas, but the article is also backed up by a lot of example posts in the forums. A real sociologist writing a paper to a scientific journal about the Slashdot subculture would be absolutely awesome as a secondary source material - and I'm sure it's been written, go find it.

When interpreting NOR, don't stray too far from it's intent. The intent of NOR is to discourage crackpots not to discourage editors from contributing what they know. Don't let it get in the way of contributing what you know but be willing to back it up. SchmuckyTheCat 21:21, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

I suppose it's also important to add notability into the mix. As you say not everything is on the web (though with the inexorable rise in blogging and the falling prices of data storage, you could spit distastefully that everything that happens from now on will be, I digress) but we can expect things of a degree of notability to be. --bodnotbod 05:05, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

What you write here, that the intent of NOR is to discourage crackpots not to discourage editors from contributing what they know does seem reasonable to me, and is how I had origonally interpreted it. The problem is, that's not what the policy actually says, and some people do try and enforce the policy as written. I'd be happy to use the interpretation you give, but it would be nice to know whether there was a general consensus. -- Jeff 18:30, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Everything anybody writes is POV in one way or another. What you decide to write about, how you write about it, what examples you choose, what references you choose, all is your point of view. Everything you write is colored by your personality, your experiences, your view of the world.

Is wikipedia a collection of all that has been written, or all human wisdom and knowledge?

I think the best solution is to allow any POV which the council of the most merited wikipedians allow. If they say "this is good knowledge" it stays. They will allow anything which is accepted knowledge, accepted at least by the most advanced intelligence, by the best educated and experienced readers.

If wikipedia is upsetting to read for a backward fool in a strange part of the world, so what? wikipedia is run by enlightened and modern people :-)

I don't mean we should intentionally upset people anywhere, but if the truth is upsetting to anybody it should't stop wikipedia from publishing it. If we consider it to be important and correct.

Roger4911 19:19, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Getting pnm: RealAudio links to work in Wikipedia

(copied from Wikipedia:General complaints):

Normally, if you put a URL: resource address in [brackets] the wiki server side process will properly format a buried link for the browser. However, there are many more URL: resource addresses than just those that begin with "http:". For example, the wiki server side process does not properly format the following [pnm://rm.content.loudeye.com/~a-600111/0676330_0104_07_0002.ra URL: resource], as you can see. If you paste the URL: resource address

pnm://rm.content.loudeye.com/~a-600111/0676330_0104_07_0002.ra

into your browser address window, you will see from the browser reaction how the wiki server side process should format that pnm: URL: resource address as a link in the above examples. Could you please add pnm: to the table of allowed external URL: resource prefixes, such as http:, https:, ftp:, etc.? Thank you. ---Rednblu 20:17, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I have submitted a request for this feature at bugzilla It is listed as "Bug 3925". DES ^(talk) 18:06, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

idea of bookmarking

Hi, I have an idea that would make Wikipdedia even more helpful for me. Often I read interesting articles which I know I'll easily forget about - what if you could create a user account or bookmark these different pages for future reference? Oh wait, I could do that on my browser, but I think that's an ok idea.

Some people keep a list of interesting articles in their User page. (SEWilco 06:22, 11 November 2005 (UTC))

If you created an account you could always add articles you're interested in to your watchlist (using the 'watch' tab at the top.) You could then see a lsit of these pages at Special:Watchlist/edit. --Cherry blossom tree 10:48, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Random article with fixed article topic

Couldn't Wikipedia have an improved Random article option? I use it more or less frequently but I don't like those minimal stubs about local American geography. For example, I could be looking for a random article about computer science or physics.

--GTubio 22:32, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Go to Category:Computer science or Category:Physics, close your eyes, and click. (SEWilco 06:24, 11 November 2005 (UTC))

First and Last pages links

Could a "First" and "Last" link be added in some special pages (like "What links here") next to "previous" and "next" to make the navigation in these pages faster? CG 21:16, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Web Services SOAP/XML Interface

Has anyone ever proposed making a suite of web services available for wikipedia? Many major web sites (Amazon, Google, etc.) have web service APIs available that allow developers to access the content of the site. The main advantage of having such an API is that it would allow individual developers to create applications that use the information available on Wikipedia, which will in turn allow them to provide features that are not available or are just difficult to do inside of a web browser.

For instance, wouldn't it be nice to have a full-featured wikipedia editor with inline symbol assistance, highlighting, etc (much like an IDE for programming languages)? Also maybe a preview pane. Plus, I'm always afraid when editing an article that I will lose my work - with a standalone local application a copy of the file could be kept on the editor's local filesystem and never be lost. With web services these options could be made available - but it would be up to individual developers (most likely completely unrelated to wikipedia) to decide what those features would be for their specific product.

The great thing about web services is that they are language and platform independent. The most common is SOAP, which is essentially an XML format sent over HTTP. Once the API is defined any language and platform that already provides support for web services (and most do) can interface with it. I can write an application in Java for Linux and someone else can write one in C++ on Windows, and the interface is the same from the server side.

I can envision a number of possible applications for this such as an advanced editor and more advanced content visualization system (i.e. viewing the articles plus having other navigation/search aids). And I'm sure that there are many other people (including many academic organizations) who would love to have programmatic ways to access the wealth of information available from Wikipedia. I think that this can open up whole new ways for people to take advantage of this resource.

I don't know how the process works for this, and who is in charge of developing such a thing. I'm not even sure I'm posting this in the right place... I'm also sure that I'm not the first person to ever dream this up, though I haven't found anybody talking about it. I'm a developer, and I'd love to see this happen - I'd be willing to help in any way I can.

Best regards,

Ben 17:20, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

This was suggested recently someplace, but try looking in MediaWiki's pages. (SEWilco 05:30, 10 November 2005 (UTC))

There are a number of automated bots that edit Wikipedia programmatically, but to the best of my knowledge all of them use the same HTTP interface that your browser does. Fortunately, that interface is quite stable, and there's a lot of code out there already that works with it—see pywikipediabot, for example. If you just want to retrieve wikitext, that can already be done at Special:Export with just a normal HTTP GET. I personally don't think lowering the effort required to implement automated editing will help anything; we don't want to make it even easier to write vandalbots, after all. —David Wahler (talk) 16:05, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

College articles reform

Anyone visiting our college articles understands they have all been overrun by shameless school cheerleaders. Every insignificant acknolwedgement (which only an admissions office or development office could care about) is listed sometimes in the lead. Throughout the text from student activities to athletics, sales pitch prose is employed. Attempts to dislodge the shibboleth of worship is challenged and the outsider doesn't get very far. Take University of Texas for example -- overloaded with marketing in the lead and this is after I fought to tone it down. Entry denizens accusse me of anti-UTexas aggression, so I doubt I'll get any further. Even my own school's entry UCSD is overrun despite my attempts to contain the marketing in one section. But most edits seem directed at expanding that section. I propose the first step of reform will be relegating rankings and ratings to a box, and even banning some rankings as too insignificant (creating country specific approved list). lots of issues | leave me a message 14:48, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

That's really just m:instruction creep. If you make very specific rules, it's easy to evade them. You need to take these things one case at a time, keeping NPOV and Wikipedia is not a soapbox in mind. Superm401 | Talk 02:40, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Did Proquest respond to you? lots of issues | leave me a message 02:22, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

white-listing legit contributors

I'm sure that this idea has been suggested before, but there whould be an option for administrators to "white-list" user accounts. In many cases, legit contributors share the same IPs with vandals. When the IPs are blocked, so are all the users using them. However, white-listed accounts, unless specifically blocked, would be able to edit even though their underlying IP addresses are blocked.

Any thoughts on this idea? --Ixfd64 08:41, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

This is not a bad idea but it does bring up the inevitable problem of "if I am not white-listed, am I getting the same treatment and consideration as those on the white-list?" Your proposal is good intentioned, but I think that it unfortunately undermines "assume good faith" by creating a paralell system of "assume bad faith" (i.e. those not on the white list are "suspect"). Courtland 21:57, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

• You might wasnt to have a look at Wikipedia:Blocking policy proposal, which suggests a slightly different system which would work in pretty much the same way. Grutness...wha? 23:46, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Automatically generated welcome messages

I was thinking that it might be a good idea, and save some editing time to have a welcome message generated on the talk page of an IP user right after the first edit the user makes. An anonymous user would come across Wikipedia, look it over and make an edit. After the save page button is selected the "New Message" notice would appear and they would have a welcome message that would cover all the topics they do now. Exceptions would be to those talk pages that already have messages (an anonymous user had come through on that IP already) and talk pages that have AOL type notices on them. We could also generate these welcome messages just after a new user account is created. In both cases the user would have an immediate way of accessing common answers new editors have and a quick orientation right off the bat. Thoughts? Rx StrangeLove 07:03, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

This was recently discussed (and rejected) at Wikipedia talk:Bots#Welcome bot. —Cryptic (talk) 12:23, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

intervening with wikipedia by promoting it

Dear administrator, I am curious to know how you would react if people intervened with wikipedias content, by promoting it to groups who may not have heard of it. For example, how would you react if people photocopied 100 fliers saying ‘where is wikipedia.org?’ and stuck them to their cars?

• First of all, when you write here you are writing to the entire Wikipedia community and not to the small number of adminstrators. Second, the administrators have no special words to say on this (or they should not) over and above what the typical user has; admins have technical tools at their disposal, but their sensibilities are as frail as those of the rest of us :). Third, if you are looking for the governing body, you should take a look at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Contact_us. Fourth, consider purchasing from the Wikimedia Foundation logo'd goods ... see http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia. Courtland 14:36, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

However, to answer your question as best I can: There is no Wikipedia policy forbidding what you've described, but I'm not sure it would be very effective marketing. (people might not like things stuck to their cars). Superm401 | Talk 18:24, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

• I agree. There is nothing more annoying than coming back to your car and finding it plastered with leaflets. (Well, maybe finding it burnt out would be more annoying...) Matt 22:50, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

You might try organizing another WikiRaid. The raid a week ago that covered future studies was fairly popular. [5] ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 21:33, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Screenshots are creations too

Hi. I will post this here, but feel free to move it to a more appropriate place.

Most screenshots are uploaded only with a "fair use" tag. But the person creating the screenshot (the Creator) of a computer game requires a degree of creativity, albeit including "fair use" material. If the creator does not license his individual creation under a free license, the particular screenshot can probably not be used under the "fair use" clause in other places. So we need to make clear to those uploading screenshots of computer games they also need to license it under a free license. // Fred-Chess 01:36, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

True. It's a derivative work, but the added copyright should be released under a free license. Superm401 | Talk 03:44, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm totally confused by the above. Yes, screenshots are copyrighted. Fair use only applies to copyrighted material. (A "fair use" claim is absolutely unnecessary for materials with a free license.) But you seem to be saying that because it is copyrighted, fair use does not apply? Am I missing something? -- Jmabel | Talk 09:00, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

It's complicated, and IANAL. However, I'll try to explain. The game/web site/moview is copyrighted by the creator. However, the screenshot requires some creativity to make. Therefore, it is a separate work. Of course, it is a derivative work, meaning it normally can't be published without permission of the owner of the game/movie/site copyright. That permission can sometimes be bypassed through fair use. However, we also need the permission of the person who created the screenshot, and whether that image is fair use is a separate question. Superm401 | Talk 18:30, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Favorites/notepad section

I think a section where you could store some favorite tools/topics of wikipedia, such as templates, would be very helpful. I've noticed that users, myself included, tend to store such links on their personal pages for quick access or reference. I think a system specifically for this purpose would also be very helpful. Ereinion 20:30, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

• Some user have created personal subpages for that purpose if they do not want to include them in their front page - Skysmith 14:23, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Babylon project. A new model similar to Babel to help the traduction

Sorry, my english sucks, so you will have to understand what I mean, and not rely on what I say.

Remember Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by language (see also [6]) and how Wikipedia:Babel is much better ? I would like to do the same for the translators.

I would want to make obsolete this page Wikipedia:Translators available which is heavy on Wiki EN, and is basically useless on most user wikipedias. I would like to remplace it with a simple model which would work with the Babel template and in the same spirit, so I just have to put in my homepage :

{{Babel-5|fr|de-3|eo-3|en-2|es-1}}
{{User:Jmfayard/Babylon-2|de|eo}}

I tried to explain everything on my homepage User:Jmfayard.

I'm not often on Wikipedia EN. Feel free to continue the project if you think it's interesting.

Jmfayard 17:07, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Babylon project? is it anything to do with Project Babylon? ;) Martin 17:26, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Not that I know  ;-) I don't care about the name, it should just look international and have something to do with translation. A Wikipedian told me babylon was used on commons. Jmfayard 19:15, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Two simple ideas

1. See how it says "From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia" at the top of everything? How about having links to Wiktionary/Wikicommons etc. articles on the subject there, instead of the templates we use now? I'm intrested in having all the Wikimedia sites working more in unison. 2.How about having a "No stubs" option next to the Random Article button?--Occono 16:11, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

better interface for creating article

For god's sake why do you make the whole thing so complicated? The article creation interface should be simpler... pages and pages and still no easy way to use a template, irrelevant links everywhere... why dont you do something more streamlined?

Works well enough for me. Maybe if you were a specific and took the trouble to sign your comments I'd be more interested. Superm401 | Talk 03:36, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

There is something implemented in Wiktionary for just this purpose ... this is a sample URL that is not meant to lead to article generation, but illustrates the assistance provided → http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=POV5&go=Go . Courtland 18:34, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Place to discuss whether to merge articles

Recently, one proposed merging circumcision and female genital cutting. The merge is a great idea because both are human genital mutilation. The discussion never got started because it had to happen on two talkpages. The logistics were just bad. I propose a place to discuss mergers. It miht look like this:

wikipedia:votes for merger

The pages would have a link to wikipedia:votes for merger/circumcision & female genital cutting. — — Ŭalabio‽ 02:37, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

That discussion is meant to happen on Wikipedia:Duplicate articles, which seems like it only half-fits this particular purpose. I think the best bet is to ask participants to discuss it on one or the other's talk page, and then refactor the discussion (and ask others to do so too) to keep it on the talk page chosen. — mendel ☎    #    02:48, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Stable & Current Versions of articles

I propose that we have had a stable peerreviewed (>⅔ of logined editors bothering to participate in a poll, agree that it is okay) version and a current version (the current state of the article). When searching, one would encounter the current version. A note at the top would stat that this is the latest version, but has not yet been factcheked, but an older out of date peerreviewed version is at the other end of this link .

Anyone can nominate a version of an article to be its new stable version by starting a poll on its talkpage. Within a week, one would know one way or another. The stable version would be protected. — — Ŭalabio‽ 02:37, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Polls do not work when there are very few persons present, and many of them can be created identities to influence the result. We need a better way to raise the quality level.

All new edits to a page should go through a person responsible for that page. This allows free editing by anybody and it keeps the quality at the highest possible level. Roger4911 14:45, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

NOR policy update needed

[The following was originally posted at Wikipedia talk:Village pump. By reposting it here, I am not implying that I support this proposal.]

I think that photos, which are intended to make a specific point, should not be uploaded to Wikipedia unless they have been previously published by a disinterested, reputable 3rd party.

Flikr.com, weblogs, partisan political web sites (dailykos, freerepublic, etc) and such are not acceptable, but commercial news organizations and commericial publishers and to a lesser extent, non-profits would be ok. There is simply too much opportunity out there to stage photos, for example:

Supporters of Candidate A take Candidate B's signs and make a big mess in a parking lot with them and leave also a lot of trash like water bottles and sandwich wrappers.... the Wiki caption for this reads, "trash left behind after local rally for B".

Clearly it's a staged photo intended to make a point. If the control parameter of "intended to make a point" is not enforced, the excuse regarding the above scenario would be "I found the trash & signs in the parking lot and merely snapped the photo". Such assertions could not be disproved, opening a pandora's box of scheming opporunities.

Rex071404 ^{216.153.214.94} 06:27, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I disagree with that proposal. Most good photos already published by disinterested, reputable third parties (that is, the ones good enough to be worth publishing on an encyclopedia) would almost certainly be taken by professional photographers who were paid by the first publisher for the right to publish their work, and they are not interested in giving out their best work for free. --Coolcaesar 07:32, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Markup for footnotes

I dont know if this belongs here or in Assistance. If you feel otherwise move it and let me know. The situation is that we have a very big article with tons of bizzare references (Kambojas). We cleaned up the references and put them into footnotes format. Now the problem is that everytime the article is modified, the footnotes order need to be modified. which is a pain. (for more about the problem see Talk:Kambojas. If the developers can come up with some kind of markup similiar to # or * to number and order footnotes that will partly solve the problem I guess. May be a ^ sign before the footnotes and it will automatically gets numbered or something like that. More ideas are invited to solve this problem.--Vyzasatya 20:21, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Someone who inserts a new citation just has to make sure to insert it in the right place. I ran my bot on it and sorted the citations to the proper sequence. (SEWilco 20:38, 1 November 2005 (UTC))

See Wikipedia:Footnotes. Some of the links at the bottom point to proposals for improving citation handling. (SEWilco 20:43, 1 November 2005 (UTC))

Use {{ref|uniqueref}} for refs and {{note|uniqueref}} for footnotes. It works amicably well. ≈ jossi fresco ≈ t • @ 12:13, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Article edit alert

Just like there is a new message alert box (when your talk page is edited) how about the option to select such a feature for particular articles. It would be nice for me to be alerted to changes to, for example, the ANPR article. It would allow people to monitor particular articles/pages of high interest to them. I know the watchlist is fine in most circumstances but there are some articles I'd like to oversee a little better (HANS device, for example, has come under vandal attack for weeks and it would be nice to monitor it more easily). violet/riga (t) 14:38, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I've thought this many times, too. Even just a way to highlight certain articles on the watchlist would be nice, if not a separate alert. I have several hundred pages on my watchlist that I watch for vandalism and accuracy, but about a dozen or two that I want to watch very closely. (I actually considered setting up a dummy account just to have a separate watchlist for those articles, but I hate logging in and out...). The pool of editors who really need this is probably pretty small, but if there's a simple way to add a flag or a class (something we could style with our own CSS?) to these entries, it'd sure make me happy! — Catherine\^talk 01:53, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Actually, in thinking about it, it's easy enough to use "Related changes" on a user subpage with the desired articles -- what would be helpful is if I could add a link to that page next to "My watchlist", or in the "toolbox". Does anyone know to do that? — Catherine\^talk 02:06, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Try this- on high volume pages such as featured pages, etc. set a minimum pending time for changes, that way edits can be reviewed by peers as the content changes approach a computer-set deadline for publishing. Say, a 6 hour waiting time. That alone should be enough to weed out spurious additions and vandelism. - Alex p.

Contributing Guide

Introduction

One of the first things that struck me when I first became a Wikipedian is the amount of information about editing articles that is scattered all over the place - this is bound to be the case in a free-for-all encyclopedia. What I suggest is one big manual containing everything one needs to know about Contributing as an Editor.

Aim

The aim of this would be to:

• have a wealth of information where even old Wikipedians will discover something new
• a comprehensive guide for beginners
• one single place to look in times of dispute
• and I'm sure there are others, too

Suggested Table of Contents

• Creating an Article
  • How-to
  • Wikipedia Guide to Layout
  • Article Size
  • all other expectations of a good article

• Expanding an article
  • Stubs
  • Orphans
  • all other expectations when expanding an article

• Cleaning up an article
  • Wikifying
  • NPOV
  • Merging
  • etc

• "Chores" - (what i call the "boring" things that you have to do when being a dedicated wikipedian, like adding stub notices, and other labels.)
  • Notices
  • Lables
  • Welcoming Committee

• Other Ways in which you can help
  • Providing Images
  • Providing Maps with GIS data
  • Peer review an article

Obviously the sub-sections can be added to, but I strongly suggest keeping to those five main headings.

Suggestions

Either create it in Wikipedia or in Wikibooks.

Watch this space.

--Heebiejeebieclub 18:51, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

This strikes me as a very good idea. I would like to suggest adding an additional section as follows

• Working on wikipdia -- how to communicate with others and work together
  • Article Talk pages and how to use them
  • User Talk pages and how to use them
  • Signing your name on discussion pages
  • How to add a link to your talk page to your sig
  • Playing nicely: WP:NPA and WP:CIVIL
  • Admins - what they do and how to find one

These are vital to realatively new users; they do not seem to fall into your categories above, and many people don't understand them well at first or know where to find them. I'd like to work with you on this. DES ^(talk) 23:32, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

A thought -- encourage the new users to contribute on pages that have the cleanup tag on it. That way it will be more clear immediately how they can be of use, and if they screw things up, at least they're doing it on pages that are already pretty bad. --Arcadian 23:54, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the positive feedback. I want to get started pretty soon - but should I do it on Wikibooks or wikipedia? --Heebiejeebieclub 12:44, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

It's a huge task, but a worthy one. I would put it on Wikipedia:Contributing guide, I can't see why you feel it might belong in WikiBooks. Don't forget that we already have a tutorial and a page on "your first article", so try not to duplicate those. Physchim62 20:05, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Have started at Wikipedia:Guide

What we don't want is further duplication and fragmentation of this already "scattered" material. If a new guide is to be developed (which I certainly wouldn't argue against), make sure that existing material is moved to it (i.e. deleted from its original position, with a link where appropriate), rather than copied or rewritten again from scratch - Matt 05-Nov-2005.

Suggestion

Some articles have "[[ ]]" feel to them, but I haven't seen an appropriate template to post as a warning. I've used this on a few pages:

Warning: This topic, as currently written, it borders on common sense and nonsense at the same time. It's content has a feel similar to what charlatans and snake oil salesmen concoct. Please take everything you read here with a huge grain of salt.

Perhaps we could have some article rating system, that people can moderate and vote after reading through the article, even if they won't sit down to put in the elbow grease to edit it themselves. If you remember Simcity Classic, it had 3 colored bars showing residential, commercial, and industrial ratings. This would consume very little screen space. Some small section like that on each wiki page that describes overall quality, in depth content, ease of reading, ranking, something similar to what slashdot has as a moderating system would be nice. Of course this too could be abused and hacked around, just like any fence can be jumped, but it may, overall, provide a benefit to the usefulness of wikipedia. You would instantly know from a page ranked 10 out of 10 on each category, with 10,000 unique non-bot votes (just like Ebay ranks), that it's something worth reading, or even citable as a reliable academic reference, and edits to it may need some waiting period to go through, first showing up for those people who have the page in their watchlist, before it hits the full site. It would be something intermediary mechanism between a fully locked page, and a fully open page. When you submit a modification, you'd get the currently accepted page that students doing homework can use, or the currently in-process page, with the timer going on before the edits are commited, or even some sort of selective mechanism of people watching the page voting on some edit going through, or not, for some consensus to be reached. Wiki contributors should be able to get some mojo ranking too, like there is an Elo score in chess, or ranking system in karate or go. The higher the current quality of a page, the longer it would take for edits to go through, and something, say, below a ranking of 5 might get instant updates, but if it crawls over 7 in quality, edits take 1 hr to go through, while over 9 a whole day. Quality 10 pages may require the attention of at least 1 or 5 5-dan ranked editors to approve, before anything happens, even if it takes days. Anything below a quality 1, or even negative quality ratings would automatically be . You might even adapt the kyu-dan system for this, where 40 or 90 kyu means -40, or -90, while 1 kyu is -1, 1 dan is +1, and 9 dan is max. The field is still open for anybody to kick it. Your ranking as a contributor would be topic dependent. Though once articles are sufficiently refined, there isn't much to do to them to get an even higher ranking. Will there be any time when wikipedia will be 'finished' or 'fully completed', and new stuff is only added at the less and less read fringes? Of course there is nothing like a set it completely free wikipedia, and see where it goes. Any control mechanism may simply hinder and squash the wonder that it currently is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sillybilly (talk • contribs) 22:31, 2005 October 27

Sounds like you might be interested in Wikipedia:Pushing to 1.0. Articles ratings, editor qualifications, etc. have all been discussed before. Any of these would take both community consensus and software changes, each of which is difficult. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:21, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Templates exist to show that an article needs attention, a more professional way to alert editors and readers alike. Also, given the way its wording mangles the English language and opts for cliché over clarity, I'd view the above warning itself as suspect. [Note: experienced editors use a signature when commenting here.] --KSmrq^T 03:45, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

What about the proposal for an automatic visual depiction of page history found on in this article? Admittedly, it would take some coding for which I don't have the skill. Evan Donovan 00:54, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

seeing deleted pages edited by users

Would it be a good idea to have the ability to see what deleted pages a certain user has edited or started? It would really help keep track of vandals who create nonsense pages. --Ixfd64 22:02, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

We can. Special:Undelete.--Sean Black ^Talk 21:50, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

I think he means they should show up in the users' contributions. I agree - if you see a user with a lot of talk page warnings but no relevant contributions (which happens), it can be impossible to tell what they did. ~~ N (t/c) 23:23, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

My thoughts exactly. --Ixfd64 06:08, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh. I think so too, cause then dedicated speedy taggers could prove that they, er, are dedicated speedy taggers.--Sean Black ^Talk 15:46, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks to Kate, now we can. [7] —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 03:16, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately, that tool doesn't seem to work. Superm401 | Talk 03:50, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Really? It works for me.--Sean|Black 03:57, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Maybe none of the users I tried had deleted edits, though that seems unlikely. Can you give me a test user that worked for you? Superm401 | Talk 06:30, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I can't access it from that link. When you get a user's normal edit count, there's a link to the deleted contribs, and that works. Weird.--Sean|Black 06:34, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Something in the the above turned all the rest of the article green, apparently something in ck's signature. (SEWilco 05:34, 10 November 2005 (UTC))

Featured articles we need

I dunno if this has been suggested before or exists, so I'll say it. I think a good article drive would be a list of articles that SHOULD be featured. Not suggestions or anything, just a big long to-do list. Examples of articles on it would be every country article, major political and historical figures, and so on. Important topics we've no excuse not to have at featured standard. I'd be willing to implement it if there's support. Ludraman 21:52, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Good idea. Perhaps Wikipedia:Missing featured articles? ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 22:26, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Not exactly the same, but Wikipedia:List of articles all languages should have is very similar. If you create a separate to do list please consider referring to this list and including only additions. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:38, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

A lot of individual wikiprojects have individual lists of "articles we really need to get good", which might be worth looking at. I'd certainly concur with looking at List of articles all languages should have. Shimgray | talk | 20:30, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, this is in a similar vein, but for featuring. A sort of big long idealistic to-do list... Ludraman 21:55, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Prevent invalid html in sigs

We recently had a problem when the "HTML tidy" automated cleanup of incorrect HTML had to be turned off, and it became apparent that a number of sigs (and some templates and other code) had invalid html tags that left font or other changes in effect for subsequent text.

I propose a software modification so that the when a signature is entered into the preferences dialog it is parsed for strict HTML compliance, and any unclosed or improperly nested tags would be detected, and the invalid sig would not be saved. Instead an error msg would be displayed and the user would have to correct the sig before it was saved. DES ^(talk) 16:12, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Automatic notification system for AfD's and other "fD's"

This may well require MediaWiki software updates, but it seems to me that whenever an article, category, template, etc. is nominated for deletion that anyone who ever contributed to the article should be notified somehow, perhaps with an automatic entry in their talk or even an email. I decided this was needed after an article I originally authored (but stopped watching a while back) was submitted to AfD, and I had the strange feeling was being slipped in behind my back (as it was a resubmission after an initial failure to gain consensus). Overall, it just doesn't seem fair that the people who put their efforts into building up an article are not notified when somebody thinks this work should be removed from the Wikipedia. Note: I say all this as a deletionist who believes in removing all unencyclopedic material posthaste. But I also believe in fairness. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 19:12, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

The problem is that the Mediawiki engine is inherently "dumb". It doesn't know that {{afd}} appearing in a diff is of any more importance than something like {{web reference simple}}. So it would be necessary to code in something like the new messages warning in order for this to work. It would certainly be a good thing to have, but we will have to wait for it. Garrett^Talk 23:42, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

The above reference should be to {{web reference}}. {{web reference simple}} just got added to TfD because it is obsolete. (SEWilco 06:05, 15 November 2005 (UTC))

Not sure how important it is to notify editors in this way. We already have the Watchlist to keep track of articles we take an active interest in. Not that many watches or edits categories though. I think this is more problematic since you may not notice until a bot is all over your watchlist renaming and removing stuff. When listing categoris for deletion, I think a message should be left on the talk pages to articles using that category. For large categories this could be done with a bot. A decision to delete such a category should not be rushed anyway. Fornadan (t) 00:08, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Creation log

I like the Special:Log which features block, deletion, undeletion, move... logs for each user. But why isn't there any Creation log, which chows the pages created by each user? CG 18:36, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

We have Special:Newpages. I agree that it would be nice to have a way to filter by user. However, remember that when pages are deleted, most records are removed from pages like this and Special:Contributions. Superm401 | Talk 19:02, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

There is such a feature for edits for new users... [8] --AllyUnion (talk) 00:02, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Change template

I didn't see this in any of the perenial proposals, and I don't see it being implemented, so here is my idea: Have a template or a set of templates like {{US-elect-change-2006}} or just {{change-2010}}. The templates would be left blank and locked by admins. When the date to the side comes around, the templates would be changed to read:

The information in this article might of changed due to the US election of 2006. If the information is correct, please remove this tag.

or

The information in this article might have changed in 2010, please verify and remove this tag.

That way we won't have three articles claiming that so and so is the current mayor of smalltown, U.S.A., and it will be easier to update information that periodically changes. Just place the tag on the article that will need updating in the future, and forget about it. Comments?--Rayc 17:20, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

So make it and use it. Kurt Weber 17:47, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Avoid statements that will date quickly and Wikipedia:As of for some existing mechanisms for dealing with the problem. — Catherine\^talk 02:27, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Revert button for everyone

I think we should give the rollback tool to regular users, but limit it to three uses per article per day in the software for regular users. — Omegatron 23:39, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Note -- anyone can revert via the history tab, and the revert button merely automates this. Note also that there is a javascript entry called "God-mode lite" IIRC that effectivly simulates the revert button for anyone to use. DES ^(talk) 00:05, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

I know. I'm saying we shouldn't make them jump through hoops to revert vandalism. We can use a hard limit of 3 automatic reverts per day to prevent abuse. People can still revert by hand if they want to revert war, or get "God-mode lite" if they want to be abusive, but they could do that before, too. — Omegatron 01:17, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Clean out signatures from articles?

The report at Special:CrossNamespaceLinks shows articles that unfamiliar new users have signed, along with a few non-articles in article space. Is there scope for a fixup project here? Susvolans ⇔ 18:36, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

How many articles are applicable? Ingoolemo ^talk 18:52, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

The report only lists the first thousand, and gets to T. Susvolans ⇔ 09:15, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Idea for {{no source}}

I hate having to visit every single one of the hundreds of images categorised by this template to find an image that's ready for deletion. We need a better system: categorising them by date of tag. So when a user enters {{no source|~~~~~|11/11}}, the image is automatically placed in a template by day, so when a week expires, all the images in that day subcategory can be deleted without the need to wade through the massive no source category. Ingoolemo ^talk 07:46, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

There is a different alternative system in place: {{no source notified}}. This allows someone to notify someone the image is up for deletion, and gives a target date when it will be deleted. --AllyUnion (talk) 00:05, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

But as far as I can tell, it doesn't make actual subcategories by date (Category:Images with unknown source 11/11, Category:Images with unknown source 11/12, for example). This is what I'm requesting. Ingoolemo ^talk 23:58, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Standard system of linking for Bible references?

(Perhaps this has already been implemented or proposed, but I couldn't find it. For a newcomer like myself, the Wikipedia help system is quite scattered and takes a long time to master. Considering that editing itself is so easy, it would be good if the help system were simplified, and the search facilities improved.)

• Yes, I agree. The help is system is rather difficult for a newcomer to navigate. Someone has just started a project at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Guide to improve it. Wikipedia search is well known to be ... er ... unimpressive. You may get more helpful results if you do a site-specific search with Google. Matt 02:54, 10 November 2005 (UTC).

Anyway, to get to my actual proposal, I noted on viewing the articles Word of faith and Full Gospel that some of the only significant discussion of theological beliefs was presented in the form of a list of Bible references. These references, however, were unlinked, and so, unless one either

• has a Bible on hand while looking at Wikipedia(unlikely)
• is willing to enter all the verses into Bible Gateway or a similar site manually (inconvenient at best)
• or has perfect memory recall of the Bible (highly unlikely)

such article's content is not very informative. There should be a standardized system of linking Bible references, making use of a site such as Bible Gateway - either manually (as a suggestion in the Manual of Style) or automatically (using some kind of bot that would search for Bible references). Evan Donovan 01:27, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

A template can mark text as being a Bible reference, show it in a desired format, and perhaps create a link. However, I hesitate to suggest a link to a specific external site. I didn't create a template right now because there could be a dozen other people already doing just that. (SEWilco 05:28, 10 November 2005 (UTC))

There's a request for this in Wikimedia Bugzilla: [9]. Someone's even submitted a patch that will do it for the KJV translation. — Matt Crypto 15:04, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

In the long run we will hopefully have articles on all these verses. I'm continuing to work my way throught the Gospel of Matthew, but the OT project seems to have ground to a halt at Genesis 1:6. - SimonP 16:02, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Bible and {{bibleverse}} for some work that's already been done on this. — Catherine\^talk 01:26, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia search

Everybody seems to agree that Wikipedia search is completely useless. I propose that it is removed and replaced with a Google-driven site-specific search.

Don't think it needs to be removed, it's useful in it's limited capacity for the standard search, but a google extension for advanced searches would be very useful. Not that you can't do that already mind you ...  freshgavin TALK   05:59, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Forum

I am suggesting that there is "Wikiforum" or "www.wikipedia.org/forum" or something to make it so Wikipedia members can talk on their own online forum, or make it specially for people that have registered.

Like a vBulletin or phpBB type of forum? I could go for that.  Denelson83  04:16, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

What's the point? We already have the Village Pump

Forum software has been suggested regularly in the past -- see its entry on Perennial Proposals. — mendel ☎ 04:33, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

What about a Wikicooler? A simple place to talk about Non-Wikipedia things. As far as i know, there's no place to do that on Wikipedia, at least not the village pump.--Occono 16:04, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is possible. I think it is. Could wikipedia enable someone to search for a term within a particular article? I often wish i could do this online rather than copy and paste the article onto word and then search. Just a thought.

On Wikipedia, we don't talk about things, we write articles about them! Ashibaka (tock) 01:14, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

And that is the problem, we need to talk to each other to find out who are more suitable as responsible for a page or a branch of wikipedia. Without a responsible person the content will change everytime a spammer edits a page. Roger4911 14:36, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

"I'm not sure if this is possible. I think it is. Could wikipedia enable someone to search for a term within a particular article? I often wish i could do this online rather than copy and paste the article onto word and then search. Just a thought."

Have you tried Control-F? Under your internet browser? Andrewdt85 08:55, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

"Who uses" list

A thought related to the current suggestions about blocking only anons from IPs, rather than blanket blocking IPs: Is there any way of creating an (admin-only?) tool in specialpages so that when an anon IP is blockable, an admin can instantly check which users regularly use that IP (perhaps a list of all registered users who have used an IP within the previous three months, plus number of edits from that IP)? That way they could at least get an opportunity of knowing (a) whether a long-term ban is viable, and (b) know whether any editors need warning before a ban is put in place (I'm posting this to VPTech as well, since I'm not sure which page would be the best place for it). Grutness...wha? 23:34, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

• I've heard that users with the "checkuser" permission can perform such checks. But then again, I could be wrong, as I don't have that permission. --Ixfd64 23:43, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Village pump explanation needs changing

At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump it says: "The village pump is not a place to make lasting comments as discussions are removed daily to make room for new ones." This is apparently not true because several discussions I have been involved with here have gone on for days or even weeks. Could someone who knows the actual removal procedure possibly change this text? Matt 20:28, 20 November 2005 (UTC).

Throughout the various sectins of the pump, I would wager that something is archived at everyday, even if some discussions may linger. Also, note that "discussions are archived after seven days (date of last made comment [emphasis mine])". Steve block may have some statistics for you, as well.--Sean|Black 20:33, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Don't really understand. Are you saying that "discussions are removed daily" just means something like "every day we take a look and remove discussions which have been hanging around for a while and seem to be dead"? That's not how I understood it. To me it implies that messages are wiped automatically after 24 hours. If you understand how the procedure works then maybe you could reword to make it clearer? Matt 23:58, 20 November 2005 (UTC).

Yes. If a comment hasn't been made in seven days, then the discussion gets archived, and seven days after that the're wiped permanently. They're still available via the "history" tab however. Also, the "every day" clause is just a generic statement saying, "Most likely, at least one discussion will be archived on any given day"--Sean|Black 00:06, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

I changed it to read "The village pump is not a place to make lasting comments as inactive discussions are archived after seven days, and then permanently removed after a further seven days". I am unsure whether referring to the "archiving" section is a good idea because I do not know if this tenplate text is used on other pages where that section may not be present. If you can improve/correct then pls go ahead! Matt 00:27, 21 November 2005 (UTC).

There's a proposal to have a bot take over the archiving of the pump. Aside from that, I usually archive about once a week, taking out anything with no comments in the previous seven day period. It's also worth noting that discussions can be moved off the pump, or that discussions can be archived elsewhere if people so desire, I have archived what I felt to be noteworthy discussions at relevant pages. I would say that the new wording is perhaps overly precise and perhaps something like The village pump is not a place to make lasting comments as discussions are rarely permanently archived. Steve block talk 14:47, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

namespace filtering in special:whatlinkshere

I do not know if this will require a change in the MediaWiki software, but the ability to filter pages by namespace types in special:whatlinkshere would be nice. --Ixfd64 20:10, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Sound files

I use Internet Explorer, and most websites which have sound (or other media) content work just fine. With Wikipedia though, most (all?) media files seem to be in an "ogg" format which I have never heard of and which my PC doesn't recognise. I would like to suggest that the way Wikipedia handles sound is changed to be the same as other sites, so that it will work on standard Windows PCs.

There are various patent and licensing issues with other formats, such as MP3. Believe it or not, anybody who writes MP3 playing or encoding software is legally bound to pay royalties; in many cases, it's virtually impossible for open-source and free software developers to cope with these restrictions. Similar restrictions are enforced for most other formats. Ogg Vorbis, on the other hand, is a truly free and open format, with no royalties or restrictions. It has been decided that Wikipedia can better fulfill its goal of providing free content if its file formats aren't subject to vendor lock-in.

If you want to be able to play Ogg files on your computer, you'll need to install a player that can handle them. Winamp is an extremely popular media player that handles a number of file formats, including Ogg; you can also get plugins to play them through Windows Media Player if you prefer. —David Wahler (talk) 02:56, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

(Reply to the above questioner) - virtually every instance of ogg files on Wikipedia links to our Wikipedia:Media help page, which has how-tos to install ogg-playing software for every major operating system. Raul654 03:28, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. I don't understand why anyone has to "write MP3 playing or encoding software". I thought that this software was already incorporated into Windows Media Player, or Real Player, or whatever player one happens to use. I did actually read the Wikipedia:Media help page, but I overlooked the "Directions on Installing Software" link, which is kind of ... er ... tucked away at the side! I am extremely nervous about downloading any sort of software from the internet unless it's from a company I am very familiar with, such as Microsoft or Adobe, because much of it (esp. free software) is riddled with spyware and other nasties. However, if I find a reputable source for support for ogg files I might do it. Thanks again... Matt 11:08, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Postscript: I have now repositioned the abovementioned link to make it less easy to miss. Matt 11:16, 20 November 2005 (UTC).

Interesting. I have RealPlayer, because there are formats they handle particularly well, but they really piss me off with sending me messages "reminding" me I might be interested in all sorts of crap that doesn't interest me at all. WinAmp does not do that. I promise you, it is an aboveboard and legitimate product, even if it is not made by a famous company. I recommend it unreservedly. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:29, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Loginend

I'm reposting this here from WP:AN (I had originally posted there as this is a protected page, and would need an admin to change it). I've thought for a while that the text on this message (MediaWiki:Loginend) is misleading. Jeronim has pointed out there that the phrase "We won't reveal your address to anyone" isn't accurate, as we will if we legally need to. Also, I didn't realize at first that my e-mail would be visible to users that I sent mail to, or that it was required in order to send mail (yes, I know how clueless that sounds, but I didn't really think about it until later). I've proposed some changes at MediaWiki talk:Loginend (bolding added to make the changes more visible): essentially, that the phrase "We won't reveal your address to anyone" be changed to "We won't release your e-mail address to anyone unless it's legally required," and the sentence "However, giving your e-mail address allows other users to send you mail without knowing your address, and enables password reminders to be requested" be changed to "However, giving your e-mail address allows you to send mail to others, using this as the reply-to address, other users to send you mail without knowing your address, and enables password reminders to be requested."

I think that this will be helpful, not to mention more honest. It's going to be a little bit longer than before. However, I think that the gain in information and accuracy is worth it. If anyone has better texts, please suggest them—I don't like my "unless it's legally required" addition that much, but I think that that or a phrase like it is mandated to be consistent with our prvacy policy. Sorry to be pedantic, folks. Blackcap | talk 21:26, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't really like the proposed changes, as both sound kind of wordy and may scare some users aware. For the first one, why not ask a Board member (try Angela or Anthere) if we need to add that? Unless the Board states that there may be a need to add that, I don't see an urgent need to introduce that piece of text. For the second proposed change, I think that it makes it too wordy. How about adding more details at Wikipedia:Emailing users (a currently pretty-much abandoned page) and add a link to the log-in page? (I.e. "For more information, see here.") Thanks. Flcelloguy (A note?) 22:24, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the changes suggested are a little wordy, especially the one about the email. I'd also point out that when you actually go to mail a user, that page does say 'The e-mail address you entered in your user preferences will appear as the "From" address of the mail, so the recipient will be able to reply.' Maybe we should bold some of that text to highlight the issue? —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 22:39, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

I didn't really like them that much myself (my changes, I mean). You have a good point in saying that that message is already in MediaWiki:Emailpagetext (which is the text that comes up when you attempt to e-mail a user), but for someone who doesn't have an e-mail ID, that's not so helpful. I like Flcelloguy's proposal above to add a link to Wikipedia:Emailing users. It seems to me more honest to add that in, so that it's crystal clear what the policies are and what we'll do with the information. As an aside, the original conversation that brought this up is here: m:Talk:Privacy policy#Email address releases (when required by law). Blackcap (talk) 13:04, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the sentiments expressed by Blackcap. (Somewhere here I criticised the "Bugzilla" procedure for, as far as I can tell, asking for an email address and then publishing it to the whole world without even a single warning!) I would point out, though, that the sentence "However, giving your e-mail address allows you to send mail to others, using this as the reply-to address, other users to send you mail without knowing your address, and enables password reminders to be requested." is gobbledegook. Matt 11:32, 20 November 2005 (UTC).

Hmmm. Why do you think that? Because it's redundant? Or because it's poorly phrased? I agree that it's not the best in the world, but I haven't yet thought of a better alternative save the idea brought forth by Flcelloguy. Oh, and by the way, I have the same problem with Bugzilla. I don't really know why they do that the way they do: it seems like there's surely a better way to give out contact information without compromising privacy so much. Blackcap (talk) 18:55, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

What I mean is that it is a long and overly complicated sentence, with a complicated punctuation structure which takes several attempts to figure out. And even then, never having used the facilities in question, I am not sure what it is trying to say. E.g. I'm not sure if you are talking about a Wikipedia facility, or email in general. Basically I just think that whatever is trying to be said could be said a whole lot more clearly. If I understood it I would offer a suggestion! Matt 00:10, 21 November 2005 (UTC).

I see. What I was trying to say was that, by providing an e-mail address, you would be able to e-mail other Wikipedians who have also have an e-mail set in this preference. Otherwise, you will be unable to e-mail them (unless you happen to know their address). The e-mail provided would be used as the reply-to address. Blackcap (talk) 00:14, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

School article naming convention: commas versus parenthesis

How to name school articles, specifically how to qualify them with their city and province/state name, is being discussed at Wikipedia talk:Schools#Disambiguation - Naming Convention, where there's a straw poll on. --rob 07:29, 7 November 2005 (UTC) —Wikibarista 07:26, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

• This straw poll has now migrated onto an Archive page, Wikipedia talk:Schools/Archive 3#Straw_poll. The straw poll ran from 7 November to 9 November with thirteen persons adding an opinion. If you would like to comment on the results or add to them, please do so at Wikipedia talk:Schools and reference the archive rather than adding comments to the archive. Regards, Courtland 17:55, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Wiki Birthday Balloons

More than a month ago already, I got the idea to start congratulating people on their 'wikibirthdays'. A wikibirthday is a Wikipedian's anniversary day of his first edit. Just check out my talk page, I have received nothing but positive replies on them. There was even this guy that said that he would become way more active on Wikipedia since he felt appreciated. Just like company commit themselves to customer relations, we should also commit ourselves to keeping the Wikipedia together. I was thinking, could it be fruitful to turn the Wiki Birthday Balloons into a WikiProject? (See this page for more info on Wiki Birthday Balloons). -- SoothingR^(pour) 17:08, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

I think that'd be a really nice thing to do. I agree that people who feel appreciated in something are far more likely to contribute to it than when they don't. Good looking out. ^^ Ereinion 20:18, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Random links special page

I'd like to request a special page that populates itself with a list of random links, as a supplement to Special:Random. Please read more at User:Melchoir/Random links proposal! Thanks, Melchoir 00:53, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Warez links

Linking to copyright violations is prohibited, but some warez authors use loopholes and technically don't breach that rule. There needs to be a specific rule to outlaw links to illegal websites or programs. --Tom Edwards 12:21, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

The obvious problem is that most Warez websites and software are not illegal in many jurisdictions to avoid being taken down. Most of these services simply make something possibly (eg. Gnutella makes illegal file sharing possible) without officially endorsing it. To make these tools illegal would effectively be like making knives illegal - they can be used with bad intent but this is not their only use. Which jurisdictions do we go by? --Oldak Quill 16:39, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

File sharing portals are the exact sort of loophole I'm talking about, but certainly not the only one. Everyone (whether they want to admit it or not) knows they are used almost exclusively for piracy but, as you demonstrate, when approached from a completely rule-driven angle it is difficult to classify them as such. Even Bittorrent has fallen into this trap with the latest betas, which have a built-in search that brings warez up. I always used to use BT as an example of how P2P and warez don't always go hand in hand [10], but with the new client it's all out the window. :/

Any such rule would go on the laws of wherever the Wikipedia server in question is located, which is what should happen anyway as far as I'm aware. --Tom Edwards 17:13, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Newbie question about deletions

Hi,

I have been doing some minor edits to the article on "Tantra." I am a teacher, a published scholar, and a practitioner in an authentic Indian lineage.

The External Links section contained a real grab bag of stuff, from the scholarly to the profane, as you can imagine given the topic.

I organized the links into subsections so people could find what they wanted more easily. I was exceedingly careful not to delete anyone else's link even if it did not especially comport with my concept of the topic.

Within 24 hours, someone else came along and deleted 80% of the links and all of the subcategory headings.

Links that were deleted included general resource sites, schools of Buddhist and Indian Tantra, and a slew of other stuff.

Is this against any Wikipedia policy? Is it merely uncool? Is it acceptable?

I'm just trying to get a sense of the sort of editorial behavior that is acceptable, or not.

Thank you for your assistance.

Shambhavi Sarasvati

Hi there, and thanks for your help! I am unfamiliar with that article and that subject. However, I know from experience that almost every article suffers from being way too overburdened with links. People find Wikipedia and think it would be a great chance to advertise their site or a site they care about. I'm constantly cleaning up this crap. In 90% of cases, going through the list of links on a page with a chainsaw and whacking almost all of them away is very helpful!

That said, there are of course always people who want to remove links because they do not like what they say or some similar reason, and that's never appropriate. Articles should have links that reflect a variety of viewpoints, not just one.

The best way to handle it would probably be to raise discussion on the article's talk page, suggest some links you think need to be added back in, and then go with whatever consensus the other editors on the article think is best. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 16:50, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Links should be kept to a minimum, not only because they tend to get obsolete fast, but also due to Wikipedia being the central source for general information (for further references people can use Google, for example). However, a few links are highly recommended, preferably trusted "to stay on the air" for a long time, and even more preferably showing a variety of views on the topic itself. Somebody's propably cleaning with a heavy hand, so Jdavidb's suggestion is the best option here.

On another note, I'd like to thank you for participating in the upkeep of Wikipedia and stress how important it is, that we get scholar or otherwise authoritarian support on various topics. If I may suggest, you might want to create a small introduction of yourself with selected credentials on your user page - this would give your opinion even more weight on your field of expertise, especially if you need to discuss changes on an article, like this time. Your work is not lost in any case, if the article discussion ends with common agreement to return the links reverting from page history is as easy as snapping your fingers. Welcome! aeris 20:02, 17 November 2005 (UTC)