Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive K

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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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals).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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Wikipedia's Calendar

An exchange from my talk page:

Wikipedia:2004: I see what you are trying to do, but I really feel, it's not neccessary. I suggest you mark them as {{db-author}}. Renata3 20:06, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

That's how you feel. I feel different. Wikipedia is a community. It is bigger than any micronation. It deserves a record of its history. I will discuss the issue at the village pump. mikka (t) 21:24, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I am very surprized that my idea of wikipedia calendar was met with indifference and urge to kill.

I have a feeling that wikipedia will not die any time soon. What's wrong with keeping track of our own history, of notable events? Of course, really notable accomplishments should go into the global calendar. But IMO we have plenty of events of "local pride", so to say, which are notable for the wikipedia community.

I am not particularly zealous about this my idea, and I have no problems with deletion of what I've already done. But I'd like to hear a broader reaction first. mikka (t) 21:35, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, looks like all you got in response was more indifference—no single response in three days! Fascinating... Anyway, for what it's worth, I support the idea, even though I have no desire whatsoever to work on such calendar myself. It'd be quite interesting to see the end result, though. That is, if anyone is going to bother to work on this, of course.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 21:02, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I just now spotted your comment. I am not against the history of wikipedia, but I don't think that anybody will really bother to properly develop it (I would be very happy to be wrong). Besides, we have History_of_Wikipedia. Just fill in any gaps there. Renata3 18:32, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Leadership and Vision of Wikipedia Forum

THE IDEA: Another forum to discuss what the vision should be about before it is shaped by outside interests that are in conflict with the success of wikipedia. Seigenthaler has become a kind of conduit for others to assert their own agendas.

The media has an agenda to report and grab attention, "salaciate." Apparently, Mr. Seigenthaler has a need for attention as well. Academia is another critic of wikipedia. These gatekeepers are threatened by its populism: The constructs of Wikipedia are excellent and continues to excel. There is nothing like it for providing a central voice for people to communicate and nothing like it for people to glean information. Its popularity and usuage is evidence of this.

The whole Seigenthaler incident points to a need for strong leadership.

Wikipedia should not attempt to follow the insistence or pressure of media, academia and other gatekeepers therefore become another gatekeeper or delimiter for voice and information.

The attacks from someone as prudish as Seigenthaler should have been expected. Also there should be some idea of how to respond to such incidents in advance. This is leadership. Wikipedia cannot and does not have to kowtow to anyone. This is also leadership.

It would be great for those that care about wikipedia to have some say as to what the response should be to continued and perhaps increasing attacks or criticism from those who do not share in the success of this project.

An example of what could be done is a collaborative effort to define statements (a kind of press release) that can be reported to the media to buttress concerns or attacks. This allows the formidable collective intelligence of wikipedia users to weigh in against competing pressures...again from other interests that do not share in wikipedia's success.

Bind contributions

I use mainly korean wikipedia. I suggest, Korea counter + English Conter + Commons + Source + etc... so, "All" counter will be good!! WonYong 10:32, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Categories and Article Titles

Reading down a list of Civil Wars I see that First Sudanese Civil War is listed under F and Second Sudanese Civil War is therefore under S. These should surely betogether in any index? I appreciate the category sort will work on the first word. If this cannot be overcome simply, would it not make sense to favour titles that avoid this problem such as Sudanese Civil War (first). Having World War I and World War II is already prefered to First World War and Second World War which are redirects. Is this already governed by a manual of style or soemthing that can be discussed for change. If so I propose it. Dainamo 13:03, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Although the default is to sort by first word, articles within categories can be sorted however you'd like. Please see Wikipedia:Categorization#Category sorting. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:05, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Use category sorting. Parenthesized topic areas are used solely for disambiguation and should not be mixed up with other purposes — this would only create confusion. Deco 05:48, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Separating out the "what links here"s

is there any way possible to add some sort of sorting filter to "what links here" in the same way as user contribs? So, for example you could click on "What links here" and find all the talk pages, or user pages, or wikipedia-space pages alone that link to a page? I think it would be a useful thing to have. Grutness...wha? 11:37, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, User:Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason recently asked if anyone had any software development ideas for him to work on.... Martin 11:41, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

The inverse would also be nice: "everything that links here that isn't an article" --Carnildo 06:57, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

A way of sorting the what links here would be nice as well. Thryduulf 21:23, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

My program User:Bluemoose/AutoWikiBrowser can find the "What links here" to an article, then you can sort them alphabetically, that would have the desirec effect. Martin 14:03, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Great ideas. Alphabetical sort, chronological (date of last edit) sort. Forward and reverse on each. Wish wish.

In the meantime, it would be nice to have consistency between:

• user contributions
• watchlist
• recent changes

To this user, they all seem to be addressing similar needs.

Would it be good to handle redirects out of the main sequence? Bobblewik 17:45, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Once a year a "Best of Wikipedia" version

I propose every year starting with 2005 Wikipedia produce a vetted "Best of Wikipedia - (year)" with as many articles as can be reviewed, improved and approved and provided as a stable can't be edited publication both on the internet and in print. I know lots of work along these lines is currently going on. It's the once a year, "Best of" part I haven't heard from anyone else yet. WAS 4.250 16:15, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

We could just print out a hard copy of all the fetured articles on december 31st, 2005, and then 2006, 2007, etc... --User:Rayc

Limited license for Images

Wikipedia:Restricted image licenses is a proposal to accept a slightly more limited license for images, one which might be acceptable to many content creators/copyright owners who are not willing to release images under the GFDL. Your comments and views are welcome. DES ^(talk) 04:53, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Wanna know a way to vandalise thousands and thousands of pages with one edit?

How? Template:Tl -- Perfecto Canada 03:28, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

• That's why commonly-used templates should be locked (ESPECIALLY templates which have no encyclopedic content and that nobody except maintenance workers have any reason to edit) Elvarg 03:31, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
  • And that's why I just protected it ;).--Sean|Black 03:33, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Aw that's no fun. How many articles are using it, I'm curious. My browser almost crashed finding out. Is it over 10,000? -- Perfecto Canada 03:40, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

• ALL articles that use ANY template also use THIS template (this template displays the "This article uses the following templates..." message). So I'd say its a good half of Wikipedia articles. Elvarg 03:44, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Are you sure? -- Perfecto Canada 03:55, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

• Pretty sure. Try editing any page that uses templates, and the bottom of whose editbox has the "this article uses..." text with list of templates used. It should also list this one. Elvarg 04:03, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Don't I get an award for pointing this out? I saved the project a big disgrace, and this proves my trustworthiness and self-control. -- Perfecto Canada 04:24, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Have a cookie. There are tons (how much does a template weigh?) of templates like this one that are unprotected (if you find em list them at WP:RFPP). Broken S 04:55, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Except we're already well aware of it.  :-) See four headings up, for instance. — Omegatron 04:55, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

{lookfrom|}

I made a template - Template:lookfrom, which links to all pages starting with those letters. How best to integrate this into Wikipedia? --For One World 19:15, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Tag for British and American spelling differences

I am aware that there has been some debate over using British vs. American spellings of English. I propose a new tag and corresponding profile setting that provides both settings, such as [[dialect:color|colour]] or something like that. We could probably even have the server autodetect the country to provide American spellings for people in the U.S. and Brittish spellings for people in the U.K. (we'd still have to decide on a default for other countries & for users whose country can't be determined.) Phantom784 22:05, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

So how would this system know when to translate "flat" to "apartment", and when not to? --Carnildo 00:54, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Next step will be "Global warming is [[POV:totally disputed|widely accepted]] by scientists..." - Fredrik | tc 00:59, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I think any such tag would make articles far harder to edit, and so would not be sued often enough to have any point. DES ^(talk) 01:01, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

There are some entertaining applications of this idea, such as: [[dialect:With the arrival of the Americans, the war was quickly won.|Despite last-minute interference by the Americans, the British prevailed]]. Deco 06:02, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

There's always standardizing what English to use on Wikipedia. Ereinion 07:31, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I remember BC[E] wars; I don't remember any colo[u]r wars being fought with similar fanaticism. If we're going for display preferences, let's begin with BC[E], which will be straightforward enough to implement. You cannot turn American English into British English or vice versa just by substituting a few letters, it's a can of worms, so I suggest we have no choice but to continue living with the fact that there are a variety of Englishes. dab (ᛏ) 10:08, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I concur. At first I supported PizzaMargherita's proposal for this on the MoS talk page and then I realized the real can of worms is not the vocabulary differences, it's the punctuation! Probably the most common punctuation fight I see is the difference between "this," and "this". --Coolcaesar 05:18, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the punctuation is standardized in the Manual of Style: you do it like "this". It's not the way American English does it, but it makes sense. rspeer 20:31, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

And let's not even begin to talk about what floor of a building is at ground level! :) Grutness...wha? 05:26, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I see how this could be abused, but the encyclopedia can easily be abused anyway due to its open nature. A way to make abuse easier to spot would be an option you can select in your profile that shows both versions, or highlights any text this option is used on. As for the first/ground floor, I beleive the best method is to use the system in place in the country of the building you are talking about, with a note given in parentheses. Phantom784 00:34, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I note the interest in this idea, and suggest we table the proposal. Shimgray | talk | 00:36, 18 December 2005 (UTC) (Wait a second...)

I agree. :-) --Carnildo 08:39, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

As I like to say (I am a programmer) "No job is too hard for the person that doesn't have to do it". This would really be a bear to implement. --rogerd 02:36, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

New talk page "accountability" template

{{Maintained}}

I will be starting a new template for the top portion of talk pages, which will list something to this effect: "This article is maintained by the following users. Contact them regarding verification and sources." Users who either helped write the majority of a page (such as a featured article) or users knowledgeable about the subject, can add their names to the template and will be listed as points of contact for readers requesting verification of the page's contents. It also lets readers know that the page is being watched for any vandalisms. Any suggestions? — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-13 21:56

This is a great idea, but be very careful not to word it in such a way that you imply that the listed users are the only contributors or are somehow "better" contributors than other contributors, as this could create conflict. Deco 22:17, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

The idea goes somewhat against the wiki culture. It could suggest a kind of "ownership" of pages. From the history of an article it is not difficult to find out which users actively working on it. The template would risk becoming outdated. −Woodstone 23:13, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

• I don't think it will do anything of the sort. Anyone can add their name to the list. It is simply saying, "these people are willing to be bugged regarding questions about this article, either because they've identified themselves as contributing significantly to the article, or as knowing enough about the topic or its sources to provide meaningful answers." — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-13 23:21
• Also, while it is obvious to editors that they can check an article's history for the recent contributors, it is not always obvious to readers. I'd rather they have a direct link to an Email page, since a simple Email form is something most internet users understand at this point. As for the list becoming outdated, that is why I have included a link to the user's contribs page in the list, so that people who know a little bit about the site will be able to determine immediately whether a user is still active on Wikipedia. If that user is not, anyone should feel free to remove the user from the list, since it is not meant to be an "ownership" list, but a list of active contacts. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-13 23:48

We already have tagging a bit like this, but by groups not individuals, so it's not a completely alien idea...

WikiProject Adding templates

This article is part of the Big orange templates WikiProject, which aims to expand Wikipedia's coverage of talk pages with templates on them. If you would like to participate, you can edit this article, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.

Big orange templates WikiProject, a must have, now :) _→AzaToth 23:38, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I forgot to mention "create the redlink and die die die", did I? Oops... ;-) Shimgray | talk | 23:41, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I'd rather readers have a direct link to Email someone for verification/sources, rather than have to jump through jargon hoops. Nobody is being forced to add this template to any article. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-13 23:48

Ummm, how is this useful compared to, say, the History tab, or the talk page? I don't mean to be too snarky, but when folks introduce weirdness into an article where I'm one of the few experts, they find out about it pretty quickly from my watchlist lighting up. Geogre 13:48, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

• It provides direct contact to email someone, something with which all readers are familiar, rather than assuming that all readers will know what the "history" tab is for, how to check for significant contributors (ie: looking for non-minor, non-bot, significant edits). Besides the contact, one of the main points is to let readers know that the page is being maintained by people, that it is being watched for vandalism, and that some people will hold themselves accountable for its contents. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-14 14:03

I do not like this. There are already far too many people who act on the notion that ownership of page contents is the trade-off required to maintain quality and fend off vandalism. This will only aid and abet the creation of editorial cliques ... for good and for ill. One solution implemented by a number of editor groups is the WikiProject framework with the addition of a template affixed to the talk-page of articles in the subject area of the WikiProject that indicates that the content is of particular interest to members of said WikiProject. I would much prefer to see the proliferation of that mechanism over this one. Courtland 03:25, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Marking edits as a revert

I just had an idea that I thought I would propose and see if it floats - currently there is a way to tag an edit as minor; I propose that edits can also be marked as a revert - either automatically (by editing an outdated version of the page) or manually (like marking an edit as minor). I know conventions exist, but if the functionality were identical to minor edits then one could for instance hide reverts on watchlists, and identifying three reverts could be made easier. Neo 04:59, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

• I've been wondering about this as well. I second Neo's suggestion. Steve Summit (talk) 23:01, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I like everything except hiding reverts from your watchlist. If vandals can revert to a vandalized state, how are you going to tell what is and isn't vandalism, or will this be restriced to registered users/admins?the1physicist 20:46, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia Credit Card for Fundraising

I have a credit card that supports the American Medical Student Association. When I signed up, they said that 1% of my purchases would go to AMSA, and while I can't specifically find that on the website, it does say "Carry the card that supports your chosen profession." Here is a similar Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE, credit card. I would definitely carry a credit card that supports Wikipedia and helps buy new servers as I go about daily business. --Truc-HaMD Thu 24 Nov 05 12:22 -800 UTC

The company is called MBNA, and they issue over 5,000 different affinity credit cards to support a wide variety of organizations. Maybe we could write this up as an actual proposal? 67.124.89.57 00:31, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Hehe. I drive by MBNA's world headquarters every day during my daily commute. Raul654 00:47, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Their website hides it very well, but as best as I can make out, to "Start a Credit Card Program", go here (PDF). I am not sure, however, that such an arrangement would meet the foundation's goals. Bovlb 07:53, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

What are your issues with it? Voyager640 00:30, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me. +sj + 20:48, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

The Linux credit card that used MBNA's service generated a couple hundred thousand dollars if I recall correctly. Has there been any progess on this? - Taxman ^Talk 18:48, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I'd like more of a consensus to develop before pursuing this... Maybe get more people to participate in the discussion? Voyager640 06:17, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

The credit card proposal sounds like a great idea! I don't have a credit card, but in the future, if I do, I would definately get one that supports Wikipedia. Kareeser 17:18, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Strong Support. Anything that gets the money rolling in to wikimedia. EDIT: all logical exceptions apply, of course. TastemyHouse Breathe, Breathe in the air 16:41, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I would use a wikipedia credit card daily. Unless there is some reason not to, I'm all for it.the1physicist 18:13, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps we should call it WikiCard?the1physicist 18:26, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

please allow donations in other currencies like rupee

Highlight Recent Changes

One way to make vandalism obvious would be to automatically highlight any recent changes in the text with a slightly off-white color. This would make it impossible to introduce very subtle changes (such as adding a "not" or modifying a link) without becoming visible.

It would also draw attention to recent edits, because either they or what used to be in their place is likely to deserve improvement.

This would require a change to the rendering engine so that it would automatically consult recent versions.

This is a more scalable method than page validation, only requiring more CPU cycles, zero moderator cycles.

Edit-only templates

I think it would be handy to have templates that are invisible at view time, but pop up and alert the user when they go to edit a page. Such a thing would have many applications: alerting a user to the history of a page, conventions (eg, "Use British spelling here"), letting users know whether restructuring changes are likely to be appreciated by other users, warning users not to add the same piece of information which has been added hundreds of times before...

I'm sure someone will reply that all these should go on the talk page. Well, who reads talk page history before making changes, anyway? :)

This can already be done with HTML comments (like for instance <!-- This is a comment -->). --cesarb 00:26, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

The problem is that there is no guarantee that a user will see a page-wide HTML comment, especially if they only edit a subsequent section. They're great for commenting specific paragraphs or sentences, but they don't work well for a whole article. Stevage 01:04, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Plus there's no way to insert useful links, without the user having to copy and paste them from the edit box. the wub "?!" 14:12, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Use common ground if therre is a choice in your version of English

This old chestnut is a perennial discussion: the suffix "ize" is not an American trait. Most words in British English that end with this suffix can be "ise" or "ize" (there are some exceptions as there are words that should end in "ise" in American English. In fact the OED prefers the use of "ize" as do many accademic sources. [1]. "ise" in British/commonwealth English seems to have crept into use more over the course of the latter twentieth century (find any old English dictionary and you will srtuggle to find "ise"). It has reached such ubiquity outside accademic circles that many British/Commonwealth readers often mistake the "ize" as Ameircan. Most dictionaries now list both suffixes as acceptable in British English, but if we are writning an international project and we have a choice, it makes sense to use the spelling that would be usiversally acceptable to all English Speakers and matches other existing links.

I propose the logic should also apply to examples such as Gaol and Jail in British English and Ketchup and Catsup in American English). Dainamo 13:13, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

We have a policy that works very well already. I don't see the need to tamper with it. No, -ize is not uniquely American. However, in modern British writing it is rare to see -ize used. Most Britons would use -ise. I am a classicist, and I prefer, etymologically, to use -ize where it comes from the Greek -ιζω. However, I also am editor of a school newspaper, and we use -ise because it strikes fewest people as being wrong. British English writing generally uses -ise, and to recommend against it is not necessary. Where words are intelligable from both countries' points of view, I don't think it necessary to recommend that one or the other should be used. However, a note in the MoS that writing for a majority audience is recommended is a good idea. [[Sam Korn]] 16:20, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

IMHO, it's not a question of "mistake" but a question of semi-nationalism. I, like many "commonwealth" people, once I became aware that American spelling uses -ize everywhere, began to use -ise everywhere as a way of asserting my culture orthographically. I'm not talking about on Wikipedia, of course. Words like 'realize' just leap out at you as being American, anyway. Stevage 23:56, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the general notion that where a word or spelling is commonly used in many nations, we should prefer it. I used this to argue that "connection" should be preferred to "connexion", but this was opposed vigorously by some British who use it commonly in some localised areas. I think the current policy is pretty much all we'll ever agree on. Deco 05:43, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Template protection

I've suggested permanently protecting a range of high-volume templates in order to lessen the impact of vandalism on the hardware. See Wikipedia_talk:Protection_policy#Template_protection. --bainer (talk) 23:09, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

These might be good candidates for semi-protection, or if ever such a thing is proposed, three-quarters protection. It's probably safe to allow them to be edited by people with, say, 500+ edits under their belt. Stevage 23:58, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

No, it is not safe. Editing one of those most-used templates (like Template:TL) would practically grind the site to a halt for a while. Admins should definately get consensus before editing them. r3m0t ^talk 02:28, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Replace new articles with CotWs

How about replacing the requested articles on Special:Recentchanges with the current CotWs? Since anons can't create new articles anymore, it makes sense to do something that they can more easily participate in -- there'd be a lot of general copyediting and tweaking. Wikipedia has an article on everything notable that is not obscure, I think, and the vast majority of people have no inclination and/or resources to do the required research. CotWs tend to be general subjects that a lot of people can help out in (and that interest a lot of people). We could have the general Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week and one or two of the more specialized ones (and active ones, as a bonus, this would be an incentive for more active CotWs) on a rotating basis. Tuf-Kat 07:41, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea. I support this. JesseW, the juggling janitor 22:18, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Column width

With most people using higher and higher desktop resolutions (1600x1200 here), I find it sometimes really hard to read through an article seeing as the text spans over the whole width of the screen (imagine having to read a 30cm large page). Wouldn't it be possible to force a smaller column width for readability's sake?

I know of one AOL user (not myself) who only has 500px for the article portion of the screen.... Physchim62 (talk) 17:33, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I suggest you not maximuse your browser window. Make it full height, but not full width. In KDE, you can readily do this by middle-clicking the maximuse button. I don't know of a similar shortcut in Windows or other operating environments.-gadfium 19:06, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

It's surely possible to do this with user CSS. Don't ask me exactly how, but it has to be possible. Lupin|talk|popups 23:37, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, CSS can control width. Readability studies suggest we might want to limit the width of the text itself to about 50em. Here are examples of various widths:

• (50em) Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. …
• (30em) Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. …
• (20em) Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, …

While the examples use CSS property "max-width", a stylesheet can also use "width". Using "em" as the width unit allows folks with poor vision to increase the font size without being thrust into three words per line. (Bigger fonts have bigger ems.) --KSmrq^T 03:46, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Please note that this has no effect on my IE6 browser (it's ok in firefox) −Woodstone 15:51, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

If such a thing were implemented, it would be much more useful if it created multiple columns, no? Perhaps each section, if long enough, could be displayed as two columns...I'm sure it would still play havoc with the images etc. In the mean time, a quick hack is to just zoom in, rendering the font size larger. Of course you get less on your screen vertically too. Stevage 00:02, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Usage of wikilinks in quotes

Hello fellow editors, I posted at WP:MoS's talk page before I found out about this page. Please see Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Wikilinks_when_quoting for my original policy query. If I may re-phrase myself I'd say that wikilinks in quotes should not be used or with great caution as they may impose the editor's bias on the quote. Though its a matter of enriching articles vs. fear of corruption of statements I'd say that the latter outweigh the benefits. Scoo 11:34, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Piped link says "Do not use piped links to create "easter egg links"". Follow that everywhere including while quoting and the problem goes away. WAS 4.250 16:43, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree that it can 'corrupt' statements. Clearly the links are some editor's interpretation of the quote. Sure, if you did something like this: "We must protect the American people" then that would be one thing...but even still, it's so obvious what the person actually said as compared to what some editor thought of the quote. Stevage 00:06, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

French translation of the week

I see that there's a large French speakers community in Wikipedia. Is anyone a fan of creating a collaboration project much like the Spanish Translation of the Week, since there's a lot of great featured french articles. CG 20:55, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

• I think this is a great idea actually, even though my French leaves much to be desired.--Pharos 03:41, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Seconded.--Shanel 21:07, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes please. I'm willing to do French translations, but the only page I found that had a list of translations to do was a complete shambles and very demanding on the translator to provide status reports etc. I'd much rather just see a quick list of pages to be done, with an optional "not started, draft, needs polish, done" status. But none of this "Yes, I'm working on this now, contact me before you start" business. Please. :) Stevage 00:11, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Proposed Wikipedia 1,000,000th article celebration

Given that when I first came here, (September 2002) we had less than 100,000 articles and this was not foreseen, and now we are up to 800,000+ articles, I say a small celebration should be in hand when that 1,000,000th article is created. Maybe a banner congratulating the poster and the article written, provided it actually is an article and not some sort of vandalism, vanity, etc. What do you guys think?

God bless

Antonio Me Me Me for 1,000,000th!!! Martin

We'll certainly have a press release, like we did for 500,000 and for 1 million across all languages. We're bound to get a Slashdotting too. One million is such a big milestone though, I wonder if we shouldn't have an alternate logo or banner or something for a little while. Deco 08:53, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

We should also think about the fact that if we intend to make a big deal out of it, there will be all sorts of cretins and yahoos waiting in the wings, hovering over their "submit" buttons, ready to pounce the instant the existing count reaches 999,999, so they can proclaim that their silly troll article on creative navel bubble gum moulding (or worse) is the millionth. It occurs to me that one way to guard against this would be to inject some deliberate noise -- a random, plus-or-minus fudge factor of 100 or so -- into the published "total article" count. That'd make it harder to "game", but an admin with access to the database could still determine, after the fact, what the truly 1,000,000th article had been. Steve Summit (talk) 20:47, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

If a troll article did get the spot, we'd delete it and take the next article as the 1 millionth. We are allowed to shape reality. Broken S 21:06, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I predict the millionth article will concern a character or set of characters from a television show. Geogre 13:50, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I'd go for some highschool student who is apparently gay. Filiocht | The kettle's on 13:53, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Simply the word "Penis" is often believed to be encyclopedic enough to deserve an article, although not so much now anons can't make new articles. Martin 14:01, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Have you actually seen the Penis article? It's not bad. Anyway, I predict the 1 millionth page will be an asteroid, an unremarkable province in China, or a list of B sides released in 1966. Actually there's a page to do these predictions somewhere...but I forget where. :) Stevage 00:13, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

The count is already fudged for technical reasons. The count is already way off. Nobody can find the nth article. r3m0t ^talk 02:33, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, we can just pick any article that looks good and that was uploaded around the time we crossed the 1 million. Broken S 02:45, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Removal of "the free encyclopedia" slogan and more pro. s

I'm a daily wikipedia user and contributor, and I use wiki for any information I need for projects. Even though I trust the content in wikipedia many teachers and professionals do not like wikipedia being used as a source. They say it isn't relieble. I have two suggestions to fix this.

1. Please try and remove the slogan of "the free enyclopedia" on top of the pages.
2. Have some professional and more knowledgeable editors checking the work of contributors.

Thank you very much _{orginal contributor: User:Aytakin on 2005-12-07 22:37:33 +0100}

• I agree, there should be a better wording, perhaps: "Wikipedia— The biggest and most comprehensive encyclopedia in the known world" _→AzaToth 21:59, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree. The tagline is misleading. See Mediawiki talk:Tagline for some proposals of changing it. — Omegatron 22:42, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Have some professional and more knowledgeable editors checking the work of contributors.

• We would simply love to have more professional and knowledgable editors checking the work of contributors. However, we are extremely limited in our resources and funding and as such simply cannot afford to hire such editors en masse as we might hope to. If, however, you know of any knowledgable or professional editors who would be interested in volunteering their time, we would relish the opportunity of having them! (Well, most of us; those not trying to abuse the site, at least.) -User:Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 03:06, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

  There have been about 23476535436 different proposals for rating editors and articles to keep quality content while rejecting bad content, which would be just as good, but no one has come up with a really good one that everyone likes. — Omegatron 18:49, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

  Tagging individual revisions by individuals or groups is the way to go. Then you can filter it however you like.--Gbleem 15:41, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

  I'd like to see tagging based on some combination of number of constructive edits and length of time the account has existed - in other words, something that can be used to make throwaway accounts and new accounts stand out in RC. Triona 08:57, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I had the exact same thought earlier today when I used Wikipedia as a reference. It sounds cheap with the "free" in there. Replacing it with something along the lines of "Non-Profit" Encyclopedia makes it sound more authoritative. Ereinion 03:47, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

See? Proof that the current tagline is misleading!  :-) It means "Free" as in "freedom", not "free" as in beer. — Omegatron 18:49, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

To me I like this word "the free encyclopedia. The tag is sweet"--manop 20:56, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

No one should be using an encyclopedia as more than a starting point in any kind of serious research, anyways. Voyager640 06:18, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

It isn't reliable. I'm a big fan of wikipedia. But at this point it isn't reliable. You could start your own web site where you have a staff comb over every article and then call say it was derived from wikipedia or whatever the lic will allow.--Gbleem 15:38, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Ellipsis markup

It's my opinion that an ellipsis operator would be a useful addition to the wiki editing toolbox. Good expository writing is always a balance between telling too much and telling too little, between crisp prose and thorough explanation.

The tensions arise largely because readers come to articles with a wide range of needs, knowledge and interpretive skills. Consider, as an extreme example, the information content of an article about a new heart-bypass surgery technique. The text and vocabulary that is (immediately) useful to a patient with a high-school education is very different from the text that is useful to a cardiac surgeon.

For the extreme example above, the best compromise possible in a single article is copious hyperlinking in the context of a summary discussion. For less extreme cases, however, an ellipsis indicator (e.g. '...' ) would allow short sections of text to be hidden from the main flow until the reader either clicks the indicator or changes a preference setting so that the full text of the article is displayed.

For example, the three paragraphs above might appear in elided form as shown below.

It's my opinion that an ellipsis operator would be a useful addition to the wiki editing toolbox. ... An ellipsis indicator (e.g. '...' ) would allow short sections of text to be hidden from the main flow until the reader either clicks the indicator or changes a preference setting so that the full text of the article is displayed.

In the above paragraph, the elision required the word 'an' to be capitalized in the elided form. This is a small example of a general case. To be useful, a well-defined ellipsis markup needs to support replacement text so that both the elided and expanded versions are grammatically correct.

The exact markup syntax should, of course, be determined by the WikiMedia developers. The visual indicators should clearly indicate the presence of an expandable elision and yet be minimal enough that normal reading is not disrupted. I've used the tradition three-dot ellipsis in my example but it is not clear whether this is the best choice for an indicator that is also a hyperlink that expands inline. At the very least, the ellipsis indicator should be obedient to browser settings for hyperlink coloring and decoration.

From an editor's point of view, ellipsis markup offers an alternative way to compress long articles without information loss. For the reader, expanding an ellipsis would, in my opinion, be less disruptive to the flow of comprehension than transitioning away from the page under consideration via hyperlinks.

--Michael.f.ellis 16:13, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Review boards

We want to have all the articles reviewed, to prevent hoaxes and increase the quality of the articles. I propose to form boards of reviewers at each WikiProject and Wikiportal each board adopts a group of categories related to their Project/Portal. We can also form a wildcard review board for the categories that are not adopted by any project.

A member of a review board should be a registered user with at least a few months of experience, never founded to commit hoaxes and other bad faith editions, who has some good quality contributions in the field of the board. The board can be originally elected by the participants of the project/portal and then co-opted by the consensus of the board members or by additional voting. For the wildcard review board lets say that the administrators are the original wildcard board.

What do the reviewers - they review articles on their adopted categories. If an article is reviewed does not mean that it is a perfect article. It only means that it is not a hoax, that it is not in a vandalized stage and that all the applicable tags are there. If it a stub, than it labelled as a stub, it it POV then it is labelled as POV, if it needs clean up - it labelled for clean up, if a minor fact is dubious - than it clearly marked as dubious, etc. If an article already was reviewed, than the next review means that it is clearly in better state than it was at the previous review. If the article became worse since the last review the reviewed status should be withdrawn. If there are arguments between the reviewers, than the decision should be voted (probably by consensus as with the adminships), if there is no consensus it goes in RfC, Arb com etc.

After reviewing an article, the reviewer leaves a template message, showing the name of the board, his own name and the date at the bottom of the article. He/she also clearly marks "Article was reviewed by the board member" in the edit summary. Reviewer can not review an article if he was a major contributor to it ( or the major contributor to the changes since the last review, if the article was already reviewed). For people who are not official reviewers leave messages masquerading as a review should be a blockable offence.

In future, if we will have a large pull of reviewed article we could have a GUI switch between the latest reviewed version and the development version as well as "revert to the latest reviewed version" button. We could also have a separate colors for the links to the reviewed and non-reviewed articles, toolbox for the reviewers, etc.

Advantages: improves quality by forcing systematical reviews, starting point for checking - comparing with the latest reviewed version, CD distributions should be done based on the latest reviewed version if they are available. I also hope the decision would curb revert wars and give some recognition to good participants of particular projects abakharev 09:31, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea, which is (in part) already being worked on. An article validation system is currently in development and is scheduled to be deployed here in January (I think). There is also the {{Maintained}} template which is currently under threat of deletion which does a similar thing (although with individuals as well as boards). No one has thought to add the restriction that non-authors review it, but that wouldn't be a bad idea. I think once article validation goes live there will be a lot of policy discussions surrounding it. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 16:54, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Listen to this article (help)

Noticed its placement when reverting something on Jimmy Wales, could that link be moved to the same line and font size (right justified) as "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 20:59, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Change "Editing" Page to Encourage Citing Sources

As a relatively inexperienced user, I notice that one of the things I don't really know how to do is to cite sources for an article, especially non-Internet ones. There is no button or text box for inserting citations, and no link to information on what style of bibliographic citation I should use to cite a book or article. If I follow the "help" link on the far left, I'm taken to a page with a multitude of links, many of which seem like they *might* help me with citing sources, but it's hard to be sure. (I'm not even sure what a wiki-bibliography should be called: "Sources"? "Bibliography"? "Further Reading"?).

Since the lack of internet and, especially, non-internet, sources is a big problem for wikipedia articles, I would suggest considering how the "edit" page might be changed to make it easier to cite articles, and to indicate that such citations are generally expected, and appreciated. Changes might include a text-box for citations, or buttons for "add web citation" or "add non-internet citation" or just prominant "Adding Citations" help button located near the "save page" button. I'm not sure how this could best be implemented. But in my humble opinon, it would be very beneficial to wikipedia to encourage people to include better citations by making it easier to do so.

[On preview: Ok I just noticed that the "edit" page includes a helpful link from the word "sources." But it's hidden in what seems like legal fine-print: ("Content must not violate any copyright and must be based on verifiable sources. By editing here, you agree to license your contributions under the GFDL.") But this info should be more visible, and citing should be made a more integrated and normal part of the editing process, I think.] --ThaddeusFrye 17:09, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I would support such a text box to encourage adding sources. I'm not sure exactly how it should work though; should urls just be pasted in and then magically appear in the ==References== section? There should also be an option to let more experienced users turn it off. Once the details are settled on, I could do this in javascript, I think, or (better yet) we could get a dev to do it server-side. Lupin|talk|popups 23:36, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

It should be included only on new pages as a seperate box, and perhaps javascript or something for edits. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 00:25, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

A simple text box would be very nice. Here's an additional idea, though, too: It might be nice to incorporate (or make available as a tool/tools) some way of importing print citations from Google Book, or Google Scholar, or the LOC or World Cat or other such sources. Like, you could paste in a URL for a book or article you searched for on one of these sources, and Wikipedia would find the citation info from Google Book or another database, and insert a properly formated citation into the articles "References" section. Maybe that's a programing nightmare, but it's an interesting thought! ThaddeusFrye 05:12, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikiproject Cuba?

Is there a Wikiproject: Cuba around here? If not, I propose we have one. --Antonio Not Marti but Martin

There doesn't seem to be one, but feel free to start one - see Wikipedia:WikiProject. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:41, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries. Courtland 04:13, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

MIT's OpenCourseWare

I just ran across MIT's OpenCourseWare. Darned impressive resource. I was thinking that we should probably add to External Links wherever relevant, but I don't want to be accused of spamming (on behalf of an institution to which I have no connection, by the way) so I thought I'd come here first and see what others think. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:40, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Inspect the site more closely. It was just a publicity ploy--the links lead to empty shell pages. Lotsofissues 05:06, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

MIT, and especially the MIT Media Lab, is keen on hyped-up "world-saving" project ideas which get huge amounts of positive media publicity around the world (great for fundraising and brandbuilding), whether or not the ideas are actually that substantive and dramatic. I'm sure they'll eventually fill out the categories for OCW a lot more, but if its more of the same now (i.e. those few categories now which have something more than just MIT course syllabuses) it's still basically downloadable lists (literally lists) of lecture notes / questions /reading recommendations and some (also just text ) instructional cribs sheets. Remember OCW was launched with generous funding in 2001. over 4 years later, and its still downloadable lecture notes that cover only some subjects. (I'm a former MIT grad student) Bwithh 15:50, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

More annoyingly, they are essentially attempting to recreate already existing infrastructure without working with the various pre-existing MIT courseware projects. On the bright side, the translation project part of it is pretty cool. Glasser 15:52, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm glad I checked in here! -- Jmabel | Talk 01:09, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Ability to change edit summeries

It sometimes happens that defmaatory contnet, information that violates privacy, copyvio content, or a personal attack can be placed in an edit summery. In this case there is no way to get rid of the damaging content short of compeltely deleting the articel and recreatign it at a different name without its history, or else having a developer make direct changes in the DB. This is true sience even deleted edit summeries are now visible to any user who looks at the history and clicks "view nn deleted edits". See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive50# Edit Summery Vandalism on Judith Krug for an example.

Also, rather more often, an edit summery can be highly misleading.

I propose that the software be changed so that admins, or some more limited group (perhaps B'crats?) be enabled to change existing edit summeries. Use of this feature should of course be logged: the log should should the articel title, the revision timestamp, and the old and new edit summeries. (Alternatively this feature might be limited to the summeries of deleted revisions.)

I know this will require a software change, and must be propsoed on MediaZilla, but there is no point in askign the developers for this unless there is soem support for havign such a feature. If this proposal gets soem support, i will log a feature request. DES ^(talk) 21:20, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree. I'd like to be able to change edit comments - if we can edit everything else after the fact, why not those? Sometimes we wish we'd been more descriptive or less misleading, or said something we regret in an edit comment. That said, I would consider this relatively low priority, since you can always correct an edit comment with a subsequent trivial edit ("Last edit was really [blah blah]") and because I don't think I've recently seen a New York Times article about some defamatory statements in an article's history. Deco 08:05, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

It hasn't made the outside media, no. But it has been used ot "out" a contributor, and it has been used to make personal attacks on editors, and it has been used to make false statements about article content, and there is nothing, not even delteting the revisions, that fully removes or hides such comments from anyone. Nothing but database hacks will do so at present. See the case linked to above where an editor has complained several times about an edit summery that disclsoes her legal name contrary to her wishes and to our privicy policy. DES ^(talk) 18:37, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I have wished I could edit an edit summary after the fact more than once. Seems to me that there are a couple of potentially messy issues: clearly one should only be able to edit one's own summaries. But then, anons with floating IPs would be unable to get back to their own summaries (on the other hand, this becomes one more good reason to get an account). More troubling, though-- presumably there should be an edit history of the edit summary edits-- kept where, accessed how? Would we have edit summaries for the edit summary edits? Ech! -- Mwanner | Talk 00:23, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

An Annon could always simply edit again with a summery "previous edit actually was..." Just as anyone can do now. i am actually more worried about cases where there is a need to correct a malicious or blkatently incorrect summery by another. That is why I suggested a change log, simialr to the delete log. That is also why limiting this to edits of the summeries for deleted revisions might be enough IMO. DES ^(talk) 00:30, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Hm. Should we have edit histories for our edit comments? (Presumably, edit comments would be disallowed while editing edit comments to prevent the Universe from imploding). Otherwise the wiki principle of recoverability goes out of the window somewhat, it seems to me. This could usher in a new era of edit summary vandalism, too. Lupin|talk|popups 23:43, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I suggest that if this is done we make edit comments append only (with a limited exception for admins suppressing vandalism and/or removing sensitive/private information) - you can append to them to correct incomplete or misleading comments, but can't change what's already there. This would keep from having a "revisionist" edit summary, as well as discourage someone from making unneeded/pointless corrections in the edit summary (the project is better served by editors that are producing content rather than by editors producing log entries!). It might also be helpful to be able to automatically create pointers between an item in the edit summary and the article's talk page (maybe let anyone do this via a "discuss this change" type link?) Triona 09:31, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

another proposal: If an registered user has edited an article and left the summary field blank he should get the chance to add a summary later for his own edits.--84.169.52.4 19:02, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

And while we're at it, how about the ability to preview the summary. If I put a misspelled link in it there is no way to know or fix it until it is too late. -- Samuel Wantman 11:43, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

make user logs and deleted more accessible?

I think that it would be nice if the logs and deleted edits (Kate's Tool) for blocked users were accessible from the block list. Often times, blocked users would have nothing showing up in their contributions. If the user wasn't blocked for an inappropriate username, it can be very time-consuming to check what they have done. This mainly applies to image-upload vandals and users who create nonsense pages. Anyone agree with me? --Ixfd64 04:11, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Ellipsis markup

It's my opinion that an ellipsis markup would be a useful addition to the wiki editing toolbox. Used effectively, it would allow editors and authors to improve the readability of long articles without deleting information or hyperlinking to another article. The basic idea is to have a symbol that indicates the presence of additional text. When clicked it would expand the text inline.

I think ellipsis is needed because good expository writing is always a balance between telling too much and telling too little, between crisp prose and thorough explanation. The tensions arise largely because readers come to articles with a wide range of needs, knowledge, and interpretive skills. Consider, as an extreme example, the information content of an article about a new heart-bypass surgery technique. The text and vocabulary that is (immediately) useful to a patient with a high-school education is very different from the text that is useful to a cardiac surgeon. For this example, I believe most of us would agree that the best compromise possible in a single article is copious hyperlinking in the body of a summary discussion.

But there are many less extreme cases where an ellipsis indicator (e.g. '...' ) would allow short sections of text to be hidden from the main flow until the reader either clicks the indicator or changes a preference setting so that the full text of the article is displayed.

For example, the three paragraphs above might appear in elided form as shown below.

It's my opinion that an ellipsis operator would be a useful addition to the wiki editing toolbox. ... An ellipsis indicator (e.g. '...' ) would allow short sections of text to be hidden from the main flow until the reader either clicks the indicator or changes a preference setting so that the full text of the article is displayed.

In the above paragraph, the elision required the word 'an' to be capitalized in the elided form. This is a small example of a general case. To be useful, a well-defined ellipsis markup needs to support replacement text so that both the elided and expanded versions are grammatically correct.

The exact markup syntax should, of course, be determined by the WikiMedia developers. The visual indicators should clearly indicate the presence of an expandable elision and yet be minimal enough that normal reading is not disrupted. I've used the traditional three-dot ellipsis in my example but it is not clear whether this is the best choice for an indicator that is also a hyperlink that expands inline. At the very least, the ellipsis indicator should be obedient to browser settings for hyperlink coloring and decoration.

From an editor's point of view, ellipsis markup offers an alternative way to compress long articles without information loss. For the reader, expanding an ellipsis would, in my opinion, be less disruptive to the flow of comprehension than transitioning away from the page under consideration via hyperlinks.

--Michael.f.ellis 16:13, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Fundraising

Here is a modest proposal which is bound to get me flamed to a crisp: Why not use the space under the toolbox for google pageads? It would not be invasive, there is blank space there anyway, and it would bring in so much money that it could be discontinued after one year, leaving enough funding to keep the foundation in hardware for a decade. Maybe we could, instead of having a fundraiser every now and then, make December the PageAd month. --Slashme 11:11, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Generally I don't like advertisments, but google page ads *are* nicely unobtrusive. Are page ads pay-per-view, or pay-per-click though? I rarely (one in a thousand or whatever) bother to click through.

Also if we could maybe give an option to turn the ads on or off for registered users. Then maybe there could be a trial period in which anonomous users don't get ads and registered users can opt-in to them. Depending on user response and income generated the scheme could remain opt-in, or be extended to all unregistered users. --Neo 11:23, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Maybe it's just because I'm a registered user, but wouldn't it be wiser to make the ads visible to anon. users before registered users? After all, registered users tend to contribute more than anonymous users, and we're less likely to click on the ads. But I would say the best would simply be to make the ads visible to all. The faster we make our target, the faster we can ditch the ads. Here's a thought: Make the ads come on at the same time as a fundraiser. If the ads irritate you enough, you'll pay to get rid of them ;-)

As an aside, to see what they would look like, see the Uncyclopedia main page. --Slashme 12:11, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

The community response to advertising in the past has been very, very strong - the mere discussion of funding the project through advertising was enough to cause the Spanish wikipedia to split, forming the Enciclopedia Libre; this didn't do either project any favours, really. We can get the money through private donations, people are happy to donate, and there are no major cashflow problems. Starting advertising may bring in money, but the possible side-effects are not at all promising. Shimgray | talk | 12:26, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

It seems to me that:

• The split was caused by more than just the threat of advertising.
• It would be a shame if Wikipedia were to split due to the threat of advertising. I for one hereby pledge not to form a splinter encyclopedia over this issue.
• The fundraising ad at the top of the screen is rather more distracting than google ads down the side of the pages of Uncyclopedia (and more monotonous).

But if the community is dead set against it, who am I to stand against the masses? When was the last vote held? How overwhelming was the vote? --Slashme 13:52, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

There was a big fuss back in October as a result of this announcement, which kicked off Wikipedia:Wikiproject no ads - it wasn't a proposal to add ads, but it got interpreted as one, and there was much screaming. A glance at the associated talk pages should give you an idea of the size of hornets nest this tends to kick up... Shimgray | talk | 14:07, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I for one would rather tolerate google adsense ads than fundraising drives. And I'd definitely rather put up with them than pay WP. I'm not sure what the economics of it are though - how much money I would generate for WP over a year of watching adsense ads. Stevage 14:39, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Wow. After reading that petition, I realized just how hypersensitive some wikipedians are, and just what a hornets nest it indeed is (thanks Shimgray!). Is it just a vocal minority that believes that the trustees of WikiMedia are here for personal enrichment, or would a couple of PageAds really cause a large rebellion? Maybe if they took a closer look at the WikiMedia Budget, and compared it to any real-world company, they'd be a bit more understanding. Really, $33,000 is not a lot of money to pay 2 full-time and 2 part-time staff. Almost all the money goes to hardware!

Anyway, the reason that I raised this here was that I didn't know where to find this kind of information. Is this not by now a frequently-enough asked question to go into the FAQ? --Slashme 17:47, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

For the foreseeable future, fundraising alone should be able to continue to pay to keep the server farm humming and the foundation running at minimally acceptable levels (that is, if we spend 25% of the year fundraising). Doing more than that will require grants and large donations. At the same time we *all* need to understand that, by choosing to *not* have something like GoogleAds we are giving up millions of dollars of revenue each quarter. The mission of the foundation is to freely give every single person access to the sum of human knowledge and to do so in their own language. Revenue from something like GoogleAds could be used to expand our reach outside of areas where cheap high-speed Internet access is ubiquitous. We often forget that that still accounts for the great majority of humanity. But we can't do something like that without community support. Just make sure your decisions in this matter are fully informed and not the result of a gut reaction against advertising. BTW, I'm talking for myself and not at all in any official capacity as a foundation officer. --mav 18:14, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi mav. You say "millions of dollars...each quarter". Was that an official figure someone came up with, or just a guess? If it's for real, that is a ridiculous amount of money to be turning down for the sake of...uh...what exactly. And hell, if ads are brought in, sell 'premium accounts' for like $5 a year to turn the ads off. Hell, $1 a year and you'd still probably come out in front. Stevage 21:02, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

IIRC, the last estimate I heard about this is a couple months old; it stated we'd make - at that time - several hundred thousand dollars per month. Traffic has increased significantly since that estimate was given. I think it would be safe to now say the figure is at least a million dollars per quarter. --mav 22:43, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

This sort of figure gives a bit more perspective to the surprisingly insistent levels of linkspam we get... Shimgray | talk | 23:02, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Not that I'm against the whole idea, but it is worth pointing out why people don't like it. Wikipedia's trustworthiness (such as it is) depends on it's only being subject to the sway of its editors and not external forces. Suppose we become dependent on Google Ads, and an article criticizes one of google's endeavors. What do we do if Google says, remove the critical article or we will pull the ads from your page? I'm not saying google would do that, but it would put wikipedia in quite a bind. Either we sacrifice the encyclopedia or change our content slightly. Even if this were to never happen, people would definately accuse us of doing it. This is why Consumer Reports doesn't do advertising. Not because they couldn't still be objective, but because no one could trust that they were. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 02:04, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I do not understand this argument, currently Wikipedia depends upon minuscule amount of donations (around 1M p.a). Certainly if somebody will offer say $100K donation in exchange to some POV (say protect George Bush or Microsoft in a particular state) it would be hard to resist. If Wikimedia would have a budget of 20M/p.a. it would be much easier to resist such an offer. Alternatively, for $100K the POV-pusher can employ quite a number of web monkeys that would push the POV, in my own experience resistance against even a single determined POV-pusher is almost futile unless you want to spend all your life in a revert war over a single article. Frankly side ads on Google does not bother me (sometimes I even follow them), I do not see why they should bother other peopleabakharev 03:51, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I think that unless there is an official proposal here, there shouldn't be a drawn out (likely very heated) discussion at the VP. I just wanted to be sure that the objections to advertisement were not dismissed without at least a brief defense. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 04:42, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Maybe if we just had PageAds on during our fundraisers, it would on the one hand allay fears of manipulation, and also make the fundraisers shorter. As for the discussion at the VP, where is the best place to discuss issues like this? --Slashme 06:26, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I've written a page at User:NeilTarrant/PageAds trying to summarise thoughts on this topic. Maybe discussion can be moved there? --Neo 12:32, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

For us, money is not nearly as important as goodwill. We are doing fine on the money side, so gambling with goodwill is unnecessary and dangerous. The Spanish Wikipedia broke off when Larry Sanger mentioned the possibility of his salary being covered by advertising in the future. I am sure that the German Wikipedia would break off if advertising were initiated; indeed their fundraising message right now says "Help us keep Wikipedia and its sister project in the public domain and free of advertising in the future".

If you want to see Wikipedia with ads, check out about.com. They have good content, but everybody hates it. Nobody contributes to such a site: deep down, you're afraid that somebody will profit from your work other than you. (Which is true: the advertisers profit.)

Advertisements are inherently POV. It doesn't make sense to remove spammed links from the articles, and then invite them back in to the highest bidder in the form of Google ads.

And regarding the point that mav raises above (it's also one of Jimbo's talking points): we might need advertising money in the future to distribute encyclopedias to people without net access. To that I say: If we ever got our act together and produced anything that's worthy of distribution, philanthropic organizations would be more than happy to fund it. Money is never an issue in these things, there are plenty of rich foundations eager to give it away; you just write up a decent proposal and that's that. AxelBoldt 16:49, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Using OpenID to logon to sister projects

Wikimedia should use a system similar to OpenID to avoid the hassle of needing to sign up for a separate account on each sister project. It would mean that if I want to post on fr:, just to make some minor adjustment but I can't be bothered opening an account, I would be able to post as "pfctdayelise from en:w:", more or less. You would still be able to open a separate account if you had a serious interest in multiple projects, but it could be very handy especially for a project like commons, where most people are not interested in hanging around, but just uploading their photos and then going back to their "main" project. It would also mean people with accounts on other wikis could start articles here without needing to sign up for an account.

It is used at the moment on blogs/livejournal. It would probably require some modification for the wikimedia projects, but I think it could be a workable solution to this annoying problem, and it seems more realistic than scrapping everyone's account and starting again with a centralised database, or somehow merging all the existing accounts together into a centralised database. pfctdayelise 03:57, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

See [2]. r3m0t ^talk 18:46, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Translations: Status, tutorials

I'd like to contribute to the French to English translations and am having a hard time understanding what is going on!

One of my confusions comes from the translation status. I seem to be finding several articles which are listed under the "Requested" translations, even though they appear to be status "Done". I noticed someone else found it a "shambles" in their words, so I'm not the only one!

Is there a way to move these articles automatically, or does someone need to monitor/clean it up? Should the choice of status be limited by using a pull-down menu?

Having a tutorial called "How to translate an article" would also be very helpful, as the instructions are written from the point of view of the person requesting the translation, but not the person who's going to do it.

Thanks for all your thoughts & help (I've a headache trying to get to grips with it all)

--Carolille 17:00, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

There's no way to handle status automatically. For the first year that we were trying to systematize translation requests at Wikipedia:Requests for translation I tried to keep it running smoothly, and mostly succeeded. French-to-English was always the worst, mainly because a lot of people signed up for things and didn't follow through. Since approximately March 2005, I've been too busy on other things to focus on this. I know several people have been trying to keep it smooth, but I'm not surprised if French-to-English has turned into a particular mess.

Does someone want to look into this? If no one takes it on in the next week or so, "ping" my user talk page, and I'll try to give it a few hours and see what I can do.

By the way, a lot of what it takes is simply following through with people who've started something and haven't obviously finished, and asking them what's going on. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:10, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Include this template on Featured Articles (actual articles, not talk pages)

WHEREAS Featured Articles represent the best work of Wikipedia, and

WHEREAS Featured Articles should be edited with extra care if doing major revisions, as community consensus has approved of the current version, and

WHEREAS Featured Articles are a major step forward Wikipedia 1.0+, and ultimately printed/CD-based wikipedias, where all articles go through community appraisal

THEREFORE, Featured Articles should be visibly distinguished; and

WHEREAS the English Wikipedia has no distinguishment of Featued Articles on the article itself (only on talk pages), and

WHEREAS other Wikipedias have successfully adopted various distinguishments,

NOW, THEREFORE,

I propose all articles to include the template FeaturedSmall. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:FeaturedSmall

What it does: It places a small yellow star in the top right corner of featured articles, followed by the text "ARTICLENAME is a Featured Article"

This template is already successfully used on other wikipedias, such as the Italian Wikipedia, for distinguishment of featured articles (see http://is.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6rfuknattleikur).

The template is not overly pompeous, it does not "brag" the article excessively, and does NOT convey the message that it is "elite" compared to others. As well, it does NOT look restrictive or critical of change. It does, however, display the featured status of the article right ON the article, without need to go to the talk page.

I propose that all Wikipedia Featured Articles use this template.

It would need to be minorly adjusted (from "top:72px" to "top:10px") once the Fundraising Drive is over, for proper layout, but otherwise it will be stable.

Articles having the template would look exactly like the article on the Italian wikipedia I gave the link to. I also chose ONE (since there was no community consensus yet) English article to use the template on, and it will be there unless someone decides to revert it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond

Some discussion has already occured at the Technical board, where I inquired why don't we use them, and I found out it is used in some wikipedias but not others. So, I propose we use it here.

If adopted, the FeaturedSmall template should be locked, since it would be present on over 700 pages. Elvarg 03:01, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I like this implemtation. It's small, elegant, and doesn't seem to have the problems people have mentioned with other options. Good idea. JesseW, the juggling janitor 22:23, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I like this idea, too. I propose a text that contains some more vital information namely:

"This article [[(link to the page with the FA vote for this article)|was identified]] as a [[(link to FA page|featured article]] on [link to the historical version of the article that was chosen | date when it was chosen]. "

This should not be too long and gives some more vital information. Alternatively, we could just add a link to the talk page.--Robin.rueth 14:20, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, I could try that, but people who already object to including metadata on the article may raise further objections (and they may be right to some extent). Since the article tag (as opposed to talkpage tag) is intended primarily for the readers, rather than editors, the main thing they need to know is that the article is accurate, neutral, and well-referenced. It may not be the place to display the inner-workings of WP, such as our FA selection process. On another note, it may present technical difficulties -- namely lack of space. Already I realized I must either replace FULLPAGENAME with "this article", or create a second template (such as StarSmallLong) for articles with long names that doesn't have FULLPAGENAME, or face the problem of this tag overlapping some other text or not fitting on one line at all. Elvarg 20:33, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

For the 977th time, NO. One of the important things about Wikipedia is that it be easily replicable. This means it is very important to keep metadata out of articles -- metadata makes replicating our content elsewhere very difficult. Featured articles are (by definition) supposed to explify our best standards and practicies. This means keeping them free of metadata. Raul654 20:40, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Is it that difficult to mark metadata in such a way that whatever bots perform the replication don't pick it up? We already have {selfref}. There is enough value in such metadata that defining a simple standard for "metadata specific to wikipedia - you probably don't want this" is worthwhile and probably not difficult. Stevage 20:58, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Do we not have a ZILLION of tags that we put on articles anyways? Cleanup, COTW, AFD, RefsNeeded, NPOV, and HUNDREDS of others? Oh, and what about the TENS OF THOUSANDS of stub notices? At any given time about 20%-30% of Wikipedia articles have some kind of metatag. And besides, if a website wants to copy WP contents as a mirror, its really up to them, not to WP, to ensure a good copy. It is REALLY not that hard to program a bot to ignore STARSMALL templates (as they alrady ignore the mentioned tens of thousands of other stubs). "Free of metadata" is NOT holy scripture, and is not even a wikipedia policy (if anything, its a guideline), and to every guideline there are MANY valid exceptions. Elvarg 21:50, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

(1) Just because other articles break the standard does not mean the best ones should. (2) What is really needed is a technical solution - e.g, something implimented in the mediawiki markup that can be used to exclude certain data from dumps. Until and unless that gets done, we won't be putting metadata into the featured articles. Raul654 07:45, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I have to agree with Raul here. We're here primarily as an encyclopedia; you don't see "featured article" tags on EB articles. Then again, they don't have talk pages, either... Flcelloguy (A note?) 21:56, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Did you ever see on EB "this article is a stub" notice?Elvarg 21:59, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Since this discussion doesn't progress: Raul, do you have the final word on questions like these ones? If not, whats the next step I should take in deciding this question? Elvarg 19:58, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Raul, do you have the final word on questions like these ones? - pretty much, yes. Raul654 20:57, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Gift Certificates

I was looking for Christmas and birthday presents lately, and since the subject is as much a Wikipedian as I am, I was looking into the possibility of somehow combining the fundraising with the Christmas/Birthday aspect. However, I did not find any such way. Why is there no possibility to present someone with a donation to Wikipedia as a gift? The person in question would have loved to get a certificate saying "You're holding 20€ worth of free knowledge in your hands." or something. Of course, I could easily produce something like that myself, but that's not the same thing. I'd want to give out something official.

Shezoid 15:41, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Regional noticeboards?

I was thinking about all of the pictures that needed to be taken of Delaware and I was wondering if noticeboards for regions should be created? My first thought was making the noticeboard (basically a request board too) in the wikipedian category. I'll create a little example that should be tweaked a lot in Category talk:Wikipedians in Delaware. I want to know what other users think. I think it would be useful since I pass a bunch of these things on a weekly basis but I have no clue what Delaware related articles are on wikipedia because Delaware is not the most interesting thing in my mind. Is there a better place than category pages? Should this be done? What uses beyong localized image requests does it have? etc. etc. gren グレン 17:56, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

They already exist, although not to such fine detail. See Wikipedia:Regional notice boards. You might also be interested in Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities/Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. states. pfctdayelise 20:07, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh. Some admin I am... hmm, with the breadth of images that need to be taken and the fact that the most localized one (for me) is Wikipedia:U.S. Northern Wikipedians' notice board would it be worthwhile to create either through location categories like I did... or through some other way (like Wikipedia:Delaware Wikipedians' notice board) a way to let users know important local things? I think this is mainly important for pictures since localized picture notifications would motivate me some at least. That noticeboard is more collaboration based... not pending tasks based. It's an interest board... and I'm not interested in Delaware so I'm unlikely to participate in any COTW, but I would take pictures. I can't tell if I make any sense. gren グレン 20:51, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia Anniversary

For Wikipedia's 5th anniversary, I think it would be nice to have the featured article to be Wikipedia. --Wookiebaca 22:06, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

It seems like a pretty gratuitious self reference (see wikipedia:Avoid self references) Raul654 20:58, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

It's not really a self reference if our article is good enough to merit inclusion in Britannica. I don't think 'self referencing' policy applies any more to the wikipedia article than it does to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wilmington. I do think that while having wikipedia as a featured article might be nice... but to become a fully respectable encyclopedia it might be better to have science or something core featured first. gren グレン 18:08, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Image upload (source)

As including a source is now (and has been for some time) required, I think it'd make sense to include a "Source" edit box (in addition to the box for "Description"). This would encourage users to include a source (be it a URL or a note saying it was scanned from a newspaper or screencapped by the uploader, or whatever). Ideally this "Source" box would add a new section (similar to how the license drop down box adds a "License" section) called, logically, "Source". :P As a side note, is there anyplace else I should suggest this (and future image upload suggestions)? —Locke Cole 02:00, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, this must have been the wrong spot. :-| —Locke Cole 19:12, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Page validiation

Page validiation, but not as on the tin. All edits would still emediately come out on the page, but they would have to be approved by a wikipedia admin. If the current version is not a accepted one, a note is put on the top of the page with a link to the last approved version of the article. Such a feauture could make the world for Wikipedias credibility. Aye? ThorRune 10:25, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

There is an article validation feature in progress, see m:Article validation feature. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:47, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but despite the name, the article validation feature (which is really a rating system) and what ThorRune is proposing are two separate things.the1physicist 21:06, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

The article validation system is also intended to hide versions that have not yet been rated positively, if my understanding is correct. Deco 04:08, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Your proposal for admin approval implies that admins have a better understanding of content than non-admins. This is not a correct assumption and presents an inappropriate expansion of admin responsibilities and powers. Courtland 03:31, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

As an admin, I have to agree with Courtland on this. Zoe (216.234.130.130 18:21, 20 December 2005 (UTC))

Administrators are users more experienced witht eh project, and that are trusted enough to gain the rank. All administrators should be trustable enough, and this future should only be used to not accept things that are oubeously wrong like spam, pedofile-accusations to the norwegian prime ministar (that got on Wikipedia on the frint page of norways bigest (or secound bigest, not sure) online newspaper), random odd sentances ("Ducks don't eat soap" in the what-they-eat part of the artice), and such things. Things that _might_ be false should be discussed, but those things will be spotted easyer with trusted people allways checking. I know administrators are not over the other users in any way, but being a administrator indicates that you know how stuff works around here, and that you behave properly. That's the criteria for admin promotion, ain't it? ThorRune 01:20, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Sponsored article

There seems to be no possibility of sponsoring a single article or a category of articles now. However, I'd propose a mechanism to to just that, which would work in conjunction with the above-mentioned gift certificates. It would work as follows:

1. I donate some money to Wikipedia, associated to an article/a category. I get a certificate for that, or not, depending on the availability for certificates.
2. The money would go to a special "pending" account or be marked "pending" or something, so that Wikipedia would not use it. At the same time, the article/category would get a small box saying "This article has xx$ pending."
3. As soon as that special article enters the list of excellent articles/that category has $n$ articles in the excellent list, Wikipedia un-pends the money and finally "receives" my donation.

This way, I could make sure that a certain article of my interest would get special attention, donate money to Wikipedia and give out small portions of Wikipedia as presents. Three flies in one strike!

Shezoid 16:06, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

I think this is a bad idea all around. Do we really want to go down the road of having articles with template tags saying "article development supported by Joes' Used Car Emporium", which is exactly where this would lead? User:Ceyockey 16:18, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually, we already have this in a slightly different implementation: Wikipedia:Bounty board. And, as far as I'm concerned, Joes' Used Car Emporium is welcome, at least on the talk page. See: Talk:Mário de Andrade for an example.--Pharos 16:25, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

The reality of this having been done already doesn't change my opinion that it is a bad idea. My main objections are (1) that monetary compensation involvement demands extra scrutiny over the balance of the piece (with respect to NPOV/POV matters) and (2) putting "thanks to Joes' Used Car Emporium" in association with an article invites people to start using Wikipedia for commercial enhancement, in particular with regard to corporate image. It would be easy as anything for someone to come in and add their company imprint to a thousand talk pages - it is no different in my opinion from using Wikipedia as a platform for advertising. User:Ceyockey 17:57, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

How about not putting any names to the sponsorings? How about just saying "There is a $$$ Bounty on this article." right next to it? The certificate wouldn't be publicly available, just for oneself. To frame it, say. How about someone going over the pages right now putting a "I wrote this article and I was paid for by Joey's Used Cars." on the talk pages, what would you think about that? What stops me? Point is: Without the built-in ability to associate names to a sponsoring/bounty, how are you going to use it for advertisment?! Shouldn't we be talking about the potential of an idea to improve the article quality instead of devising hypothetical ways to use it for advertising, that aren't even possible in the original implementation? Shezoid 20:07, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Template:Update

I thought I'd better bring this here before I create it. Basically, I think we need an {{update}} template. The template would be placed at the top of articles which need updating, much like cleanup/wikify/npov/etc are. It would be useful in keeping Wikipedia up to date, as many articles as written well, and then forgotten about. Types of article which need this template most are ones on sport seasons, weekly or monthly events and chart musicians. The template could also spawn, maybe, a maintenance WikiProject dedicated to keeping Wikipedia updated. Once the article is updated, like with cleanup, the template is removed. I feel this template could become essential - There's nothing worse than out-of-date knowledge. Hedley 02:21, 27 December 2005 (UTC) Add: The template exists, but it's not something in wide use, like it's been hidden somewhere and isn't used. Hedley 02:25, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link at the top. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use out the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. Phil Sandifer 02:23, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

The reason why the other templates exist is because sometimes a person simply is not qualified to cleanup/wikify/npov/etc due to lack of knowledge or time. I can't say anything more than that, but Hedley is hardly a newcomer! — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 02:30, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

hehe :-) _→AzaToth 02:33, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Special:Newpages should indicate already-deleted articles

In Special:Newpages, articles already deleted should be redlinked or otherwise indicate they no longer exist. --Quarl 10:10, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

The likely reason for what you are seeing is the caching of content of this special page, which is done to help reduce the load on the servers. 86.133.53.111 02:34, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Massive De-Wikification of Years and Dates Campaign

I propose an officially sanctioned campaign to rid Wikipedia of excessive wikification of years and dates on the grounds that:

1. Only wikifying dates of the initial statement of the year and possibly the initial statement of the date if there is a significant anniversary related to the article subject is useful. All else is pointless and unnecessary.

2. There are many articles out there where not only are the first instance of dates and years wikified, regardless of whether these are significant dates or not, but every single date in the article, down to the day is wikified. Sometimes people even wikify the month and the day separately, for every single time the date is mentioned. All this should be clearly redundant - repeat wikification of the exact same phrase that isn't a date every time it occurs in an article is typically targetted for editing quickly. But repeat wikification of dates is very widespread and generally goes unedited.

3. There is a widespread misperception that excessive repeat wikification of dates is some kind of Wikipedia standard, when its not. It should be made clear that it isn't.

4. Overwikification of dates reduces the visual emphasis on properly wikified terms and phrases. Overwikfication of dates damages the user-friendliness of Wikipedia rather than enhances it.

What do other people think?

Bwithh 21:27, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Would this include birth years? like in... Tintin (November 8, 1923 – December 27, 2045) ....? I agree that in article text many times it shouldn't be wikified... I think you could do this rather well by checking wikification of links beyond 100 bytes with some bot. I'm not sure about this... I think it'd be best to create a uniform and specific policy on this (or has this been done?) gren グレン 21:32, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

I personally don't have a problem with birth and death dates. Bwithh

This is an inherently bad idea. The proposer utterly fails to mention that the reason we link those dates is so that automated date preferences kick in. Raul654 21:43, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

While it IS a bad idea for that reason, it doesn't address the (technical?) reasons that we have to do this for date preferences in the first place. That's probably why people feel dates are overlinked; because they are (just not for the reason that would seem apparent at first). -- nae'blis _(talk) 21:47, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Is it technically necessary for every or almost every single date and year (i.e. not just key dates, but dates for minor incidents and references too) in an article to be wikified, even ones which have been wikified already, even more than once, in the same article? For instance, take a look at a page currently linked from the front page - Hwang Woo-Suk where besides the usual overwikification of dates, someone has even wikified the "AM" in a time reference, 4:30 AM (at least in the current version I'm looking at now). I "utterly failed" at mentioning the technical side of automated date preferences (what are these?) because I have no idea what the technical side is. Can you explain why wikification for every single date in an article is technically necessary and efficient? thanks. Bwithh

The Manual of Style encourages linking all dates, because linked dates can rearrange themselves to match the user's date preferences, no matter whether the editor uses the form "December 24, 2005" or "24 December 2005". See Help:Editing#Links. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 23:47, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

That makes sense (at least until we have a better mechanism) when month and day is given, but makes no sense for years in isolation. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:05, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Not at all, the MoS specifically says not to link dates, unless it is for the date preferences reason or for another specific reason, which in other words means that individual day, month or year links should almost always be unlinked. Martin 19:44, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think years should be linked. However, I link the first mention of years while wikifying because people often put on the tag specifically so that years and such will be linked and they complain when I don't wikify the years or the put the wikify tag back on. We need to come up with a policy so that we don't end up linking and delinking the years over and over. It should be specifically mentioned in the Manual of Style, for the regular reasons and so that those who delink or leave years unlinked while wikifying will have something to refer to in a disagreement. It should specifically mention what should be linked or unlinked, like the first mention of a year, what qualifies as an important year for linking purposes and whether unimportant dates should be linked merely so that the user's preferences work. -- Kjkolb 13:46, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

I think what this ultimately comes down to is, is Wikipedia just an encyclopedia, or is it an almanac/encyclopedia? I've seen the latter stated on some official project pages. If it is an almanac as well, it makes sense to have the year entries and to have many links to those entries so that they're useful (and truly relevant links are likely to be quite rare). On the other hand, a person clicking the link might be misled into thinking they'll receive an actual encyclopedia entry about the year - maybe we should distinguish encyclopedia articles from almanac entries more explicitly. Deco 19:33, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

I oppose this proposal becuase, as Raul said, this would cause the date preference not to function and we'd be involved in more edit wars like the BC/BCE mess. Leave well enough alone. User:Zoe|^(talk) 01:14, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

However, none of the above argumentns apply to unlinking year and otehr date elementsa that are not part of complete dates, and on which date prefereces do not work anyway. The Manual of Style already strongly discourages linking such dates. Have a look at recent edits to User:DESiegel/Date Test to see the kinds of things I am referring to. DES ^(talk) 01:19, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

I totally agree. The only catch is that some sort of alternate date preferences formatting that doesn't require linking must be done first. --Cyde Weys _vote^talk 01:30, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Note that such new syntax is not required when unlinking date elements which do not activate date preferences in any case. That is all that i think should be done until and unless such alternate syntax is implemted. DES ^(talk) 01:34, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

• Ohh yes, totally agreed. I already do unlink such things as "2005", "December, 2005", or "December". It's just the tricky circumstances of "December 25, 2005" or "December 25" where I feel the new date syntax needs to come into place before we do something about it. --Cyde Weys _vote^talk 01:43, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

I support the proposal. The source of the problem is that two entirely different things (links and date preferences) have been implemented with identical mechanisms. The date preference mechanism is not even available to most readers (the many without an account and those not logged in). The benefit is limited to resolving ambiguous numeric dates like 5/4/2001. Dates like Dec 25 and 25 Dec are not ambiguous so we have paid a high price for an aesthetic change. Anyone that suggests most existing date links are needed for context should provide a different explanation for why we have thousands of links to Tuesday and January. Anyone that suggests the current implementation of date preferences is worth the price should explain why non-logged in readers can manage without. I think the current massive overlinking makes Wikipedia look silly.

Dates are the most linked articles. They rank highly on:

• the list of articles with multiple links to the same article.
• the list of most referenced articles
• the list of most incoming links

Some editors just add links because they can, not because of an encyclopedic benefit to the reader.

Bobblewik 20:18, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

I personally prefer a healthy amount of linking redundancy. Just because a link is in the same article, if it is three sections down, it doesn't do me much good to have to go searching for the link. Link to the same article in the same paragraph is likely overkill, but once in a section, I think, is not a bad redundancy. If a date is repeated more than once in a paragraph, the paragraph likely needs to be rewritten. Disclaimer:this is a quick, not thought-out-very much opinion — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 20:27, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Link to concrete news articles on Main Page

As of now, the news items on the main page do not link to any concrete article that would contain further information. Ofen I read a news item and would like to find out more, but don't know where. The link to the sister project Wikinews below the items is of course prominent, but not all of the news items are also listed on Wikinews and if, they have to be found.
I would propose to create some kind of link ("more info here"/"more"/...) to a full article on Wikinews for every Main Page news item. mmtux talk 23:00, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

But... maybe they don't link to further articles because further articles don't exist (yet)? pfctdayelise 14:20, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

If they already exist, link them, if they don't exist, encourage people to create them... If the latter is not possible, at least simply link the ones which have matching articles on Wikinews. --mmtux talk 00:03, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

New suggestion to stop Vandalism

Hi

I was a bit disappointed regarding the negative publicity surrounding the Wikipedia recently Although I have used the site many times when looking for something from simple to complex topics and found it great I have not contributed to a post

I would like to suggest the following to prevent further abuse of a very good tool and concept.

Charge any user who wants to contribute an article a 1 time deposit fee of 50 USD. For every article which they submit they are billed 5 dollars which is deducted from this amount. If the article goes through a time period of six months without anyone proclaiming it to be false or incorrect. The 5 dollars are added back to the persons account. Should the article be found to be false. The person who entered it is offered the opportunity to correct the entry. Should they refuse to do so they lose the 50 dollars. Where mistakes are innocent the user loses the 5 dollars but may submit the next article for free.

This covers admin costs and prevents those intent on destroying the wikipedia from succeeding. Good Luck ! Uven

That goes against the 'spirit' of Wikipedia, and will deter people from contributing. Any cost to the contributor should be avoided. But thanks anyway! Yellowmellow45 18:18, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree, any cost, even if refunded, would only hamper the project. I know I wouldn't contribute under those conditions. --Falcorian 18:51, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

This would dimnish contributions by 95%-99%. Not workable. Lotsofissues 00:14, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

2 things to note here A) Wikipedia is a non-profit orginazation so if we started charging people money that could get us in some legal trouble and B) A large percentage of contributers are teenagers or young adult who eithier don't have access to a credit card or can't risk loosing $5 an article. Deathawk 02:22, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I appreciate that you're thinking about the problem Uven; I think the site needs some out-of-the-box ideas like yours. Petty "edit wars" are already are already a problem. Imagine how bad the arguments would become if people were screaming about their five bucks! Mikeblas 18:22, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Excessive Wiki-linking

The other day, someone went through the Joseph Stalin article and practically wiki-linked every second word. Can we please stop this? For example, the word "bar", the word "books"...I could go on and on...

Do we really think that someone would look up Stalin, and then while reading the article, have the urge to link to the article on "bar" with its myriad meanings, or the generic "books"?

I do hope that this is not gonna become a trend...it adds nothing to any article.

Camillus^{talk|contribs} 23:58, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Some misinformed newbies like to do this. Just revert the changes, keeping any appropriate additions. If there have been more edits in the interim you'll just have to go through and clean up the mess. Also watch out for the more insidious "surprise links" where the visible text has no clear connection to the linked article or is trying to be clever/funny. Deco 01:19, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Don't you mean cases where the link is trying to be clever/funny? :) -User:Fennec (はさばくのきつね)

• When I first started looking at Wikipedia I found the copious linking really annoying. Partly this was due to the underlining which was very visually distracting but has now gone (congratulations to whoever did that). But, apart from that, I have shifted my point of view a little. I find that links lead me on to other interesting articles that I would never have otherwise looked at, and generally give me a picture of the breadth (if not always depth) of Wikipedia which I would otherwise not have formed. So, I say, except for extreme excesses (or, obviously, links to articles that aren't relevant), leave the links alone. Matt 23:40, 7 December 2005 (UTC).

• • I agree - links are very important and useful, however, I'm talking about what you call "extreme excesses" - links to irrelevant articles. Camillus^{talk|contribs} 09:43, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

• • • My rules of thumb for linking: link proper names, link topics the reader might need background about, link topics expanding on a topic discussed briefly in the article, link the topics that the subject has an immediate relationship to such as "is a" or "is a kind of", and link major lists related to the article. If there's any chance in your mind a link might be going to the wrong place, double check it and disambiguate it if necessary. Things not to link: common words that happen to appear in the article and, more controversially, topics which the reader could be reasonably expected to not require background on. For example, it's doubtful that someone reading about Fourier series needs to know what addition is. Deco 08:18, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

• • • • This is kind of where I disagree. I think that having links to "topics which the reader could be reasonably expected to not require background on" encourages people to browse Wikipedia, look at things they otherwise might not look at, and quite possibly contribute more as well. Matt 00:01, 10 December 2005 (UTC).

There is guidance at:

• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links)
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)

One of the root causes of overlinking is that square brackets are used for two entirely different functions (date preferences, article linking). This leads to a popular misconception that all date elements must be linked, including solitary years such as 2004. The Joseph Stalin example article suffers from this problem right now. Another root cause is that we have no objective data on which links are useful to readers, so we rely on subjective judgement of each editor. Thus there is an inherent tendancy for linking and an inherent opposition to delinking. Bobblewik 15:57, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

HOW ABOUT THIS: Wikilink every word. Turn off all the links and make every word effectively a wikilink. Of course some words will not point anywhere but then those are less likely to be words clicked on..but not always. Besides, if someone wants to click on any word, they may just need a definition or something. Who knows, we all have different interests and needs.

AN ANSWER: I have a suggestion that which might be a good compromise and make everyone happy. I created a software called LinkZu a while ago. What it does is basically allow any text on a webpage become a link by hilighting the text. It would effectively make every word on a page capable of being a wikilink but at the discretion of each individual visitor. It is javascript and I've tested it out in just about every browser and it works well. I know when I am looking at wiki articles I use the wikilinks a lot and even copy and paste text that isn't linked into the wiki search. I do sell the software, but I'd be willing to GPL the thing for use on wiki, no one buys it anyway. Check out the website(www.linzku.com) for a demonstration of how it works. I think once you educate wiki users on its functionality it would be an awesome addition to wikipedia. --Schirinos 22:39, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

This is a very bad idea - the number of incorrect, misleading links thus created would number in the millions and destroy all useful value in links. Deco 20:00, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree that having millions of links would destroy the value of links. However the links created by this fucntionality are not persistent. It is simply another way to perform a search without actually typing something in the seach box. Which it seems is what people are trying to facilitate with the excessive links. Links would not be added to an article so there would be no problem of having millions of links. Good linking practices of course should be followed but this might be an inobstrusive way to allow those wanting more info on something a faster way to get it.--Schirinos 07:11, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Edit approval mechanism and policy

See WP:APPROVE. Don't worry, edits wouldn't be held hostage until approval. —MESSEDROCKER (talk) 20:11, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Habitual copyright violators

This isn't so much a proposal as a problem that I'm not sure how to solve. I recently hit the random article link, and up came Manas Journal. At first it didn't look like a copyvio to me because of the links. Looking at the history made me suspicious, and I did a Google search, and sure enough it was an egregious copyvio.

I marked it with the usual template and went to inform the user and found they'd already received a warning about another article. My natural response was to check their user contributions. My sad discovery was that they had added copyrighted material to all of the following articles, most of which he created, most of them over 90 days ago:

• Manas Journal
• David Orr
• Barry Lopez
• Erazim kohak
• Terry Tempest Williams
• Gene Logsdon
• The Land Institute
• Prairie Writers' Circle
• E.F.Schumacher Society, E.F. Schumacher Society
• Orion Society
• Orion Magazine
• Myrin Institute
• Schumacher College (UK)
• Gary Paul Nabhan
• Robert Michael Pyle

I templated them all and added them to Wikipedia:Copyright_problems/2005_December_27 (except one, which he simply added material to; I removed it and left a notice on the talk page). Needless to say, this sets a worrisome precedent: in all this time, only one of the user's many copyvio pages was caught, and no action was ever taken against them - they went on creating these things for weeks. I think the user's tendency to add links disguised their origin.

So my question: how do we prevent this kind of thing from happening again? How do we detect and stop habitual copyright violators? Deco 09:38, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Copyright violations on Wikipedia are far more common than most people realize and a portion of it goes undetected for a long time or completely undetected . For example, a lot of articles sent to cleanup and most of the articles longer than a paragraph sent for wikification are copyright violations. During one wikifying session, I wikified about 5 articles and reported 40 copyright violations. It's rather disturbing when someone does a lot of wikification work, but their name never shows up at Copyright Problems. Some of the copyright violations have been extensively edited by veteran editors and admins and most have been edited by some watching Recent Changes. Most of them are blatant and all people need to do is to look out for them. Almost all of the rest can be caught be searching Google.

As for habitual violators, I think they should be warned once or twice and then banned indefinitely. -- Kjkolb 09:57, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

That's interesting - perhaps the project page for wikification should discuss the preponderance of copyvios amongst the nominated pages. But as Bobbyjones shows, sometimes violators do add links, which makes this unreliable as a method of detection. Most copyvios are new articles, and some kind of automated offline check could be done against the database dump using the Google web service to detect these, but even this would fail to detect cases like Barry Lopez, where copyrighted material is added to an existing article. Maybe all article modifications since the previous dump could be scanned for suspicious-looking additions, but it seems difficult to distinguish copyvio from original contributions by an experienced writer. This type of copyvio particularly concerns me, because if copyrighted material is significantly edited it becomes more difficult to detect, more difficult to remove, and results in lots of wasted effort by those who edited it. Deco 19:07, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

There is a warning and it does help somewhat. But a significant amount are still being missed. I think the problem is a combination of people not noticing the warning, not checking every article and not knowing how to effectively search for copyvios. Also, not all of the wikification is done by people who come through the category page. The copyvios that I come across are rarely done by repeat offenders, however (this may not be representative of all copyvios). The vast majority are anonymous editors with only a handful of edits. Most of the rest are of users without a user page (their signature is a red link) and very few edits. However, I have come across a few cases where an editor repeatedly posts copyrighted information, even after being warned multiple times. -- Kjkolb 09:01, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

• • I think that some people are of the opinion that "significant editing" is a way to avoid copyright violation. Whether this is correct I do not know. Matt 22:44, 27 December 2005 (UTC).

• • • Well, among the rights granted by copyright laws is the exclusive right to create derivative works. If something is edited enough it may become different enough from the original to be considered an independent work (or for its derivative status to be difficult to detect), but usually only some parts are edited while others are left identical to the original. Really the only safe way to create a nonviolating work is to read and internalize the work as a whole, then rewrite the information - even things like word choice and style/organization have been used to support copyvio charges. IANAL, though. Deco 08:41, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Article Menu

How it could look...

To automate several tasks, a drop down menu could be displayed on the top of every article. This would simplify processes such as the deletion process. --mmtux\^talk 00:40, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

See WP:US. You can install scripts pretty easily to automate several processes (including AfD). pfctdayelise 13:39, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Searches in US/Commonwealth English

It would be soooo useful if all Wikisearches for one spelling (eg colour) automatically also searched the other (color). Failing that, stick an automatic reminder on the search results page?

I know it should be obvious to search both, but how many readers will think of this? I'm a professional editor who has worked in both genres, and it's taken me two days to remember to check the US spellings (was editing existing articles about printing - written in C'wealth sp). Apologies if this is an oldie, tho I haven't found refs anywhere. JackyR 18:59, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Please see the Manual of Style talk page and archives for the history of the perennial debate between American English and Commonwealth English speakers. --4.246.42.93 05:31, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Absolutely. Given which, it is particularly important to have a search that is not nullified by the "wrong" choice of spelling. Can we not spend a little effort on practicalities rather than ideology? JackyR 14:15, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

templates for linked location names

I find myself often changing links like "San Francisco, California" to "San Francisco, California, USA". How about we use templates like {{San Francisco, California}} becomes [[San Francisco, California|San Francisco]], [[California]], [[United States|USA]]. --Quarl 10:31, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Utterly impossible to code with templates. Possible MediaWiki parser extension though. — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 02:35, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Why is it utterly impossible? Proof of concept: "{{San Francisco, California}}" --Quarl 22:56, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Move FA tag back into the article?

Some time ago several tags were moved from the articles to the relevant talk pages since they were considered to be editors' tools and not relevant for the reader. However lack of credibility is and will continue to be a major critisism against Wikipedia. That an article has received more than the average level of scrutiny is not irrelevant for reader. Currently it's left to the new user to discover that FA process exist at all. Fornadan (t) 03:18, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

• Agreed. Some form of the Featured Article tag should be somewhere in the article itself. There's no reason to hinder our encyclopedia under the guise of "keeping the content free of self-references for compatability with mirrors." — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-15 03:19
• "Some time ago several tags were moved from the articles to the relevant talk pages since they were considered to be editors' tools and not relevant for the reader." - No, this is flatly wrong -- they have never been in the article. The reason it's on the talk page is that a featured article is supposed to exemplify our best practices. This includes keeping metadata out of the article. Raul654 05:36, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose move back. I don't believe that providing a measure of article quality is something we should do on the page itself, particularly since these articles are still vulnerable to vandalism at any instant. I prefer the ideas discussed at Wikipedia: Stable versions, where good articles would have good versions branched off into a separate namespace (or whatever) and protected against disruptive edits. The location of these articles would implicitly assert their quality. FA still serves the legitimate purpose of selecting articles to feature on the Main Page, even if readers at large know nothing about the process. Deco 05:46, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
• Isn't there some sort of star that appears on featured articles on some non-en wikipedia? (On the article itself, not just the interwiki links as we currently have). I quite like that - it's fairly unobtrusive. I think it's javascript, so it could also be easily disabled on a per-user basis. Lupin|talk|popups 23:40, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
• Whatever the history, I wouldn't mind something reasonably discreet. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:58, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
• Perhaps a note could be worked into the subtitle. "A featured article from Wikipedia..." ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 03:34, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
• Pro: Many Wikipedias have got the FA tag on the article page, see German de:Todesstrafe or French fr:Yogh. Icelandic and Dutch have also got it, if I'm not mistaken. I think it makes people more aware on the quality of the article they're reading. German wikpedia has also got the votes for nomiation to and removal from the FA list on the article page (see de:Wikipedia:Exzellente Artikel, which can make newcomers become more involved into Wikipedia and create some awareness of the "process character" of our encyclopedia. The German label (de:Vorlage:Exzellent) is pretty unobtrusive and still rather nice, imho. We could just take it over for English, after changing the language, of course. The French FA tag has got two more nice features that are great to have on the article page, given especially the present discussions about certification of quality and about protection against vandalism: It links to the version that was chosen as a FA (this would be kind of a stable version), and it links to the discussion that led to the designation of the article. --Robin.rueth 15:53, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
• Strongly support. Adding a small tag will show the reader this article is one of our best and most credible, will caution editors to be careful when doing bold changes, and is a significant step forward towards an article appraisal system. See my proposal concerning adding the StarSmall template (down below). Elvarg 21:04, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
  • This is precisely what I disagree with. Editors should be bold, even in featured articles. I've seen some featured articles drastically improved in the past. But attempting to make it into some kind of "final version" that people should be afraid to touch defeats the purpose of open editing and content growth. It's better to have a separate "release version" for this. Deco 19:55, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
• I love the feature of having a link to the featured version from a small discreet tag. One puppy's opinion. KillerChihuahua^?!? 09:23, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Template:Award3 proposal

Looking for feedback on this. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 02:31, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Optional Image Sizes

Images that are excessively large can at times be difficult for users on lower-end machines.. per a complaint in the Featured Picture Candidate article. Apparently some browsers are also unable to even open images that are excessively large. Now when you click an image you are taken to a page that has a scaled version of the image along with a link to the high-res version.. could there possibly be intermediate sizes created by the system when an image is excessively large..? drumguy"font-family:verdana; font-size:9pt;">⁸⁸⁰⁰"font-family:verdana; font-size:9pt;"> - speak? 23:34, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Logged in users can go to "my preferences, click the "Files" tab and choose what size thumbnails they would like to see on the image description page, and in articles if the image have no hard-coded size. At minimum settings I doubht anyting internet capable would have much trouble. Though this doesn't affect images that have theyr size explicitly set in the wikicode. --Sherool (talk) 17:08, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I think it is a bad thing that most people don't know about this, and hardcode larger sizes in the wikicode. I was wondering if we should discourage the use of hardcoded thumbnail sizes except where they are actually necessary, and just remind people to change their preferences first. What do you think? See Wikipedia_talk:Extended_image_syntax#Thumbnail_px_size — Omegatron 17:29, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Use different software for mediation of wiki policy, administration, government, etc.

Avoid monoculture. Use a different peice of software to handle all the discussion of meta-wikipedia affairs. Perhaps something that is not (gasp) a wiki, but something designed for goverment of a wiki. Let us not get caught up in a cycle of blind faith. Let's build some software. Kurt Gödel says what? Let's take a look at this thing form the outside. Lilhinx 09:37, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

What's wrong with the current system? What would the new software change? r3m0t ^talk 11:14, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Seeing only the last edit in Special:Contributions

I'm suggesting something that makes Special:Contributions displays only the last edit made in a page (like the Watchlist). CG 14:16, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

May I ask why? For the things I use Special:Contributions for (cleaning up after vandals, investigating disputes, etc) this would be quite bad. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 18:20, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

I'd actually rather it was the opposite; make the Watchlist function like Related changes and Contributions, so you can see older edits than just the last one. Vandals can often get lost in the shuffle. -- nae'blis _(talk) 19:33, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Seconding Nae'blis's request. — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 20:24, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

No you've got me wrong. I use my Special contributions page to check if my edit or comment on a talk page has got any responses, by checking if (top) is next to the page. But when I make mutliple edits on one page, I easily get lost, that's why I was suggesting a button that could hide all the older edits. I meant "hide" and not "delete", since these older edits are still useful. CG 08:10, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Ahhh, that's a very different matter. I think I can agree with what you're saying, but wouldn't your last contribution still have (top), no matter how many you made on the page? I'd suggest using your Watchlist for this purpose, actually - as its currently organized, it shows pretty easily if you've had the last edit on a particular page, in a particular day anyway. -- nae'blis _(talk) 22:49, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't watch every page I edit, especially talk pages. Yes, I'm a bit of a neat-freak but I would prefer if someone suggests my proposal in Bugzilla. CG 07:17, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Defending Wikipaedia from commercial advertising

Fresh from a discussion about commercial advertising masquerading as legitimate articles (User talk:HasBeen), I come with a proposal to help reduce abuse of the Wikipaedia project as I see it from the invasion of both professional marketing and grass-roots covert advertising from e-teams.

The proposal: all articles about individual music albums and singles be copied into the relevant group or individual's biography, the deleted as stand-alone entries.

Is this important? Yes, it is very important indeed. With Wikipaedia set to be a global source of information, the inclusion of a stand-alone article in the project legitimises its contents for almost all-time! Given that the source material for most of these entries are the press releases of the various big music corporations, what was a marketing lie yesterday suddenly becomes music history tommorrow just by cut and paste into one of our user-friendly fields.

This proposal would help stem the tide of blatant advertising that is choking this excellent project. By way of example (and please don't feel victimised, it's just that this article was the first one that caught my attention being on the front page (!)) please see Cool (song). This is nothing more than a commercial for a product, and also begs the question, who is going to type the word "cool" into our search engine in the future specifically looking for this ephemeral pop song?

By moving the contents of this stand-alone article to the bio the information adds to the whole body of data on the particular group or individual, and the impact of the advert is massively reduced. Yes, the same would apply for the Beatles too, their estates still make money from promoting products (as does Michael Jackson, for the time being...)

Other marketing professionals: please note the e-teamers at work in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rich Girl, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/What You Waiting For?, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Luxurious (song). Could you or I boast such an army of vigilant subjects to spread brand loyalty? Also note the personalisation of the argument in favour of addressing the points made: they have been coached well. (I hasten to add that not all respondents were e-teamers! Some very helpfully guided my argument here.)

Now I ask the nightmare question: what if one of our internet-junkie, wikiholic admin team was also an e-teamer? They could pass blatant advertising off as legitimate, and there would be precious little we could say in defence.

I appreciate that this is only a small step, and that there is an argument that this seems a strange place to "draw the line" as it were. (Indeed, could such a policy work for films? Probably not...) However, by chasing away overt marketing ploys in the music industry, we can be more vigilant for a similar abuses in, say, the field of books or politics.--HasBeen 09:31, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

This proposal has much going for it, and I agree that a lot of songs that have their own pages at the moment should be merged into their author's pages with extreme prejudice.

I would, however, question cutting off all song and album pages. For example, are you seriously suggesting that the page on the song American Pie should to be merged into the main Don McLean page? It's an iconic song, that has been subjected to massive interpretation, and would definitely be a topic that would be searched on its own. What about the album The Wall by Pink Floyd? It has been made into a motion picture and has a wide influence on people who don't listen to any other Pink Floyd. I think that songs and albums should just be subject to the same notability criteria as other pages. And just being no. 1 on the Billboard Chart is not enough, in my opinion.

• Again: why does including the information in the bio diminish it as encyclopaedic? I will give you a for instance: if you forgot the name of Lee and Herring's television show, would you type in a list of random words hoping to strike lucky, or would you type in, err, Lee and Herring? Please, anyone, explain to me why putting Yellow Submarine into The Beatles is going to diminish either article from the point of view of a user. The hotlinks in the contents instantly zoom to the relevant information; why have a ready-for-marketing-abuse, stand-alone article too? --HasBeen 10:26, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

If you look at the American Pie article, and imagine what the Don McLean article would look like with that added to it, you'll see that it becomes a monster of a page. Similarly, imagine if you will the size of the Pink Floyd page with the pages on The Wall (the album) and The Wall (the motion picture) tagged onto it. Your "Yellow Submarine" example is a case in point. How long would a user with a modem have to wait for the Grand Unified Beatles page to load if it had to contain Yellow Submarine the song, the album and the motion picture, as well as the White album, and all the other Beatles-related pages?

Further, what do you do about songs that have been recorded by many artists? Would you put Blue Suede Shoes under Elvis Presley or Carl Perkins? There will always be splitters and lumpers, but some songs and albums are notable enough to warrant their own pages. I agree that Wikipedia-based advertising by creating pages for non-notable pop songs is an evil that we must fight, but maybe requiring all songs to be lumped into the pages of their respective composers is a cure that is worse than the disease. --Slashme 10:47, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

• Thank you for your views. Given that wiki articles have that handy Contents hot link to sub-titles, I would disagree that including album and single information into a bio would make it unwieldable. And, yes indeed, who should get the credit for a team collaboration (the Elvis example is inspired)? Who indeed is more famous, or "noteworthy" of the pair in question? I think a discussion of individual cases would not take too long to sort out, with a link to the other's bio for the other (the John Cale/Lou Reed bios might start fighting, but do they ever stop?) This added bit of talk is a very small price to pay for defending the project against the commercial interests of corporate music. What is better: informed conversation between legitimate contributors, or rabid e-team posting every surface they can find with a press release? --HasBeen 11:25, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

The issue of where to place a song could in principle be decided quite easily: Put it under the page of the person who physically wrote the music (Making for very few difficult decisions: "It's now or never" goes under Eduardo di Capua, The Lion Sleeps Tonight would go under Solomon Linda, and The House of the Rising Sun and most of Steeleye Span's work would go under "Anonymous"), and any others just get a link to the relevant subsection. But that is not the main issue for me. I have a 56k modem at home, and downloading the whole Pink Floyd page takes a while already. Downloading it along with all their album and song information would be an irritating, slow, expensive endeavour.

Also, simply from the standpoint of data organization and readability, it is simply less elegant to lump songs along with their composers. Think of the load on the servers, for example. Every time someone wants to research the Beatles, the server has to send them all that information. Divide the article up, and someone who was just doing a school project on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band can click on the link to that album and save the server having to send out about six times as much data.

Another point - Page size policies would rather limit the information that one could put on a page about an influential musician if all the songs and albums had to be listed on the main page. I know that everybody ignores page size anyway, but this would just make it worse. --Slashme 12:10, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

• I absolutely agree with you Slashme, and feel that a lot of the PR fluff that pervades the stand-alone single and album articles would have to be editted out under the new proposal in order to maximise the use of space, thus protecting the project further from corporate marketing. Thank you so much for addressing the question. There are so many press releases currently masquerading as articles that would be purged from the project, thus leaving the quality information behind. Does anyone have an argument against this point? PS do see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Honey (Mariah Carey song) for an example of an e-team in full mob action.--HasBeen 09:28, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

E-teamers, eh? I took a look at the guys voting to keep the page in question:

• Everyking: An admin with a good record of vandal fighting
• Badlydrawnjeff: A wikipedian with an impressive list of edits
• Capitalistroadster: A wikipedian with more awards than I have edits (this is hyperbole, not irony, Hasbeen!)
• Extraordinary Machine: A refugee from IMDB with a deletionist barnstar for his work on Mariah Carey yet.
• Jcuk: He's an avowed inclusionist, so no surprises here.
• Howcheng: A Wikipedian who has voted for deletion of non-notable bands.

And as for construing my comments as support for your position, that was either disingenuous or inattentive of you. I would be willing to support a policy of keeping only very notable songs, but my personal position is that it is reasonable to keep pages on all but the least-notable of songs, but to keep the non-notable entries short. If you think that the page on a particular song is bloated with marketing, explain your position on the talk page and take a hatchet to the page, cutting out all but the facts. Then defend your edits against those that you so blithely call "e-teamers".

As for your proposal to solve the problem of marketing puff about pop songs masquerading as wikipedia entries by removing all pages on songs, the words of Piet Hein spring to mind:

Stupidity's true opposite's the opposite stupidity

--Slashme 10:19, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

• And that is such a traditional e-teamer response as to be textbook: personalise the attack to disuade debate... That you did accidentally put your finger on the positive side effect of excluding stand-alone single and album entries should not necessarily be viewed as a bad thing. Many of these pop bios are heaving with conjecture, advertising and fluff that could well do with trimming. If the emphasis is on accuracy and brevity, then this proposal to protect wiki from commercial advertising will have many additional positive side effects. --HasBeen 10:19, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

So, now I am also an e-teamer, working from the e-teamer textbook (please direct me to it). And I am trying to "dissuade debate". Please, don't let me "dissuade" you. Kindly respond to my points, and thereby continue the debate that I am "dissuading":

• Which of the people that were voting to keep those songs were e-teamers?
• Why not just edit the fluff out of those song pages that you so dislike? It's much easier and more defensible than trying to get them deleted.

As for my Piet Hein quote, I was not personalising the attack. The fact that I think your proposal is the "opposite stupidity" to having bloated wikipages on every pop-song that comes out, does not mean that I think that you personally are stupid.

--Slashme 10:44, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. A blanket ban on albums or singles sounds like an unnecessary rule. Instead, each album and single should be judged on its merits. Andjam 14:06, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Where would you go from here? Deletion of all movies and television shows? Deletion of all articles about books? Zoe (216.234.130.130 17:42, 23 December 2005 (UTC))

I am sure that there are many singles and albums that have articles of their own and don't need them. I'm equally sure that I wouldn't want to make a rule to say that no singles or albums deserve articles of their own. Are you really saying that we should make The Beatles into Wikipedia's largest article? Or that featured article Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me) should be rolled into The Tempations? Or that Kind of Blue should be rolled into Miles Davis, despite the role that John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and Cannonball Adderley played on the album? This seems like just a bad idea. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:05, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

This proposal is simply ridiculous. There are countless singles that are ingrained in American culture and have been for decades, like "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and "American Pie". Likewise there are albums that have had wide-reaching influence in the development of genres, such as Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. You can't say these don't stand on their own. That said, I'm unsure whether many ephemeral pop singles are any more notable than a single issue of a magazine, but like the latter they certainly get a lot of exposure. Deco 19:43, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

• O.K. so it looks like an impossible task for many reasons: (a) this form of grass roots advertising bildge is very hard to differentiate from legitimate content copied lovingly from fan sites, press releases and exisiting biographies as per the wiki guidelines (b)a dragnet policy would limit the size of certain entries (the Beatles etc.) which many feel would be unreasonable. It seems such a waste to give over so much space in free advertising to commercial corporate pop. By saying "a bio and no more" would severely limit the exposure a single commercial entitiy could generate, and force some decent, studied editing for once, rather than cut and paste every last titbit of "pop fact" verbatim. By including up-to-the-minute product placement, we are legitimising far more than historical research. --HasBeen 08:27, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
• Seeing as this idea is not being met with much enthusiasm, I'll drop it for the time being. I will also cease from AfDing on this criteria (however painful the entry), and limit myself to Comment when it crosses my path. Thank you for bearing with me, apologies to all posters who found themselves on the receiving end of this gripe over the last month. --HasBeen 09:22, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Utilities Wiki

I think the labrinthine reference stuff (policy, formatting info, etc.) could use a search feature, perhaps a "side-wiki" of its own. Even as an administrator, I have to look things up often, and it's often difficult and time consuming. There must be a better way.

Anyway, I'm just voicing my frustration and not being able to find some things and invite anyone to either comment, make suggestions, or bite my head off for having missed something obvious. --DanielCD 20:51, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

meta:Main Page? Don't forget you can also constrain searches to certain namespaces, and of course, Google is always on your side. — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 21:35, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Man, I should have pre-added the "duh" in there. Thanks, I knew I was missing something. --DanielCD 21:55, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Second-hand hardware

One of the major costs for wikipedia is currently hardware. For the expendable computers lower down in the information chain, would it be practical to use second-hand computers donated by wikipedians? Andjam 12:38, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

This has been suggested before. I can't remember the page, but apparently the WikiMedia foundation has filled up its racks already, and a larger computer room would be more expensive than more computers. Or something of the kind. I'll check this out soon... --Slashme 12:56, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

It is my distinct impression that there is not a surplus of sysadmin time. Trying to maintain a large quantity of diverse, non-standard, old slow hardware seems like a bad idea. Thue | talk 22:32, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Google, last I checked, runs with a "deploy lots of them and deploy 'em cheap" mentality, which, in the end, offers better redundancy, as one high-end server will fail more easily then lots of cheap ones. This could be a long-term server administration project, I suppose. — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 01:16, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Go ask them then, but I have been lurking around the tech team for some time, and I really doubt they want a bunch a old computers. Thue | talk 08:42, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Google does use cheap / lots, but that is relative. Their systems end up as rather custom; e.g. no cases; specially built racks etc. They also use new hardware all the time and have hundreds of identical systems. I believe that, by the time they have removed things like graphics cards etc. the systems end up as quite competitive with high end servers in terms of compute power per square meter and per unit of energy. Second hand systems would a) have to be very high level (e.g. very fast SCSI disk arrays with many spares would probably be useful) b) have to be power efficient. For almost any reasonable "second hand" hardware, I think the only use would be in office space or contributors homes. I don't think this would solve the problems of hardware cost for Wikipedia that much. Perhaps, though, they could help with wikipedia outreach somehow? Make a page with a list of hardware available for donation, then people can suggest what could be done with it. Remember though, instead of five second hand servers, one new server with the same functions consolidated to it will be easier and cheaper to maintain. Mozzerati 11:43, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Keep in mind that Google also has no problem replicating their content, as it's updated much more infrequently. Every edit has to become immediately visible to all readers, which makes parallelism quite difficult. If they were using a better database engine supporting replication it wouldn't be such a big deal, but well, they're stuck with MySQL for now. Deco 19:47, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

In that way, then, Wikipedia is a unique technical problem, never dealt with before. I think the developers are doing an admirable job handling it. — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 02:37, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I came across Meta:What we use the money for, and there's a minor mention of the possibility of donating hardware, but the page is pretty old - it's only had minor updates since 2004. Andjam 23:59, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

TOC enhancement

I would like TOC that are somewhat limited, for example a TOC only showing level-2 headings, and TOC that only shows headings under given header _→AzaToth 19:06, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

nofollow links

One of the reasons we get so many articles on advertising and non-notable websites, as well as link spam in established articles, is because Wikipedia's Google rank is so high, and any outgoing links get a big boost on Google. One way to stop this is to force the "nofollow" attribute on all external links. Many wikis already do this due to spam. --Quarl 23:00, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Thothica for an example of AFDs plagued with sock puppets and/or forum recruitment, with stated reason for article of non-notable website being to enhance visibility of the website. My user page has also been childishly vandalized recently, my best guess is the sock puppets from this AFD (he also vandalized User:Perfecto). --Quarl 23:35, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea to me - how difficult would it be to implement? KillerChihuahua^?!? 23:10, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I would think, very very easy. --Quarl 23:35, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Perennial question that was the source of the hugest Wikipedia debate I've ever seen. The functionality is already implemented in Mediawiki and at one point was turned on without community consent. See Wikipedia:Nofollow/Vote. In the end the decision was that, given the divisive split on the issue, the status quo of leaving it off on article pages would persist. The logic behind this viewpoint (which I support) is that the high quality of our long term links significantly contribute to the quality of search engine results. Deco 08:46, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I thought it was a pretty obvious thing to do that people must have thought of, just didn't know where to look for the debate. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-01-06 23:25Z

Would it be possible to have the nofollow take effect only on new articles? If we did this than advetisments would have to stay on Wikipedia for a set amount of time (say 3 months) before they are allowed to become an external link. At the same time old "proven" aricles could be exported if they have not been deleted in 3 months. Thus We can keep the long term links, but remove one "plus" for advertisers. Can it be done, or is this not possible?Eagle (talk) (desk)

Eagle's suggestion is a good one but I just don't know how practical it is. Yes, of course it's possible, but it may not be an easy thing to do. The thing is this won't have much of an impact, because links are awarded PageRank values according to the popularity of the page it was linked from. A brand new article, even though it is on Wikipedia, is not going to have nearly the same weight as a link on a popular article. Still, the most important part of our efforts is going to be fleecing out the crap links on the popular articles. Despite this, I don't think nofollow should be removed. I run my own website and it is very useful to look at the stats and see where the inbound links are coming from. Also, this is sort of like "Build the web" (WP:WEB) on an Internet scale. I don't think it should be done away with; we just need to stay vigilant against link spam. --Cyde Weys _vote^talk 20:34, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

an offline vertion

is there a program to download wikipedia as a database so it can be viewed offline? i don't know much about programing but it seems like it would be easy to take the pages and make them avalable offline

Wikipedia:Database download — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 00:27, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

An idea of sorts

Hey there boys and girls. I just had an idea, although it's pretty belated.. Well, i always go to watch Manchester United when they're at home, and today was no exception. Now, i know that there's a lot of football fans out there who wouldn't mind reporting on the games they go see for their home team, and through that - i was thinking of making a project; WikiFootball, to cover the news and events of football in the UK, but was unsure how the wiki-foundation views such projects?

Appreciate any clarity! Cheers. Spum 22:35, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Football and Portal:Association football might be good places to start. --Arcadian 23:06, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, i should have been more descriptive. I meant an actual separate wiki which has football news within the UK, and articles on football. Similar to wikinews, but on football :-) Spum 00:00, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikicities may be the place you're looking for: Category:Sports may have something of interest, or you could get one started. With the level of interest in UK Football here, it wouldn't be hard, I'd think... -- nae'blis _(talk) 00:35, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't see why you can't do sport(s) news on Wikinews. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:55, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Conflicts on Wikipedia, a Versioning Solution

The solution I propose to the edit wars that have come to plaque wikipedia is to allow users to select their own terminal edit of wikipedia entries. This enables citations to wikipedia to rely on a stable source and eliminates the grievance of some who object to the edits others do to their work. Here's how it would work:

1) Say there are two warring editors, Joe and Mary. Users could have their account configured to accept the most recent Joe edit as definitive or the most recent Mary edit.

2) Each user will be able to have a whitelist of editors they accept and/or a blacklist of those they reject. Although blacklisting is more efficient, the use of sock puppets may force whitelisting to be the norm. If a user chooses both, she will have to decide whether blacklisting or whitelisting will take priority. She will also have to decide whether to white or black list unsigned edits. Although allowing unsigned edits will be more efficient, sock puppetry may require not accepting anonymous and previously-unknown editors. However, acceptance of new editors can spread quickly, because of:

3) Black or white lists can incorporate other lists by reference, even in inverse (taking someone's else black list as a white list, for example. A gameable proposition, so possibly ill-advised). So if I like Joe's edits, I may decide also to incorporate Joe's white list. This will be a reference, not a static value, so if Joe changes an entry on his list, it will cascade through to all who include his list in theirs.

4) In practice, this will probably aggregate up into a few big megalists reflecting the major political or other orientations on controversial issues. New users, or those interested in primarily being readers, can come to accept one or a few lists regarded as definitive. There should also be way of passing a list name as a query string, so that it can part of a URL. This enables readers to select a version to peruse. This version can also be in a cookie, so a user can consistently have a list that is applied to wikipedia for him.

5) This does mean that, while anyone will still be able to edit wikipedia, one will have to get accepted by a major list or two to have one's edits show up widely. This is helpful for problems like the insertion of libelous material, though it is not a complete solution to this. Material inserted by unknown editors will not be widely visible at first. However, if a whitelisted editor touches a post after you have made changes, any changes you made that the whitelisted editor did not revert will be present in that editor's version. Hence, you do not personally have to be widely whitelisted to have your material seen.

6) If this is structured as suggested, there will be a 1:1 correspondence between users and lists (although lists may be null for some users). This means the lists can take names derived from the usernames, e..g., Joe's list, which would simplify matters. Implementation of this would be non-trivial, but shouldn't be terribly difficult. I would be happy to contribute to implementing this if desired. I would emphasize that accepting an editor as part of your list should be kept independent of accepting his list.

7) There would be some performance hit to doing this. I don't have enough information about the nuts and bolts of how wikipedia works and what resources it has to evaluate whether this would be a serious obstacle.

8) It may be desired to make an exception to a white or black listing for a particular article. This obviously could be done, but may not be demanded enough to merit doing. Edits of a particular entry could always be made visible by letting a white listed editor touch them.

9) Users will have to get educated about this to make good use of it. However, it doesn't seem like the edit wars are going away, so I think it is worth biting this bullet. After all, users had to learn to use wikipedia itself, and still learn it every day.

69.109.179.193 03:58, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think people are interested in spending time compiling these lists. This also does nothing for anonymous users. r3m0t ^talk 11:17, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree with R3m0t; Wikipedia is not primarily here for the editors, but for the users. If you're proposing to let one such whitelist become the 'standard' for new visitors to the site, you're merely compounding the problem. I appreciate the concern about edit wars, but I don't think this is the way to do it. Community consensus/vigilance seems to work most of the time. -- nae'blis _(talk) 15:53, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Hieronymous 00:48, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

First of all, I wanted to properly sign this. I don't know why it came out anon before, but if it does again, I am Hieronymous, and this is my proposal.

I don't think that one whitelist will become that standard, but that three or four will, and those will overlap largely on non-controversial editors. I haven't been editing here lately, but my impression is that the edit wars are getting more and more serious and require more and more resources to manage, and that the results are starting to undermine the credibility of the project. Anon users can be treated as a single entity and white or black listed as a group. As for the labor involved in compiling lists, I think the fact that the lists can include others be reference and therefore and fully aggregable will be of use here. Thanks for the feedback.

Let me amplify that previous point. There is some number of people who edit wikipedia. Call that X. X changes, generally increases, over time, but is a fixed quantity at any given time. The number of people who will potentially make lists is also X. The number of controversial editors is some number less than X, my guess is much less, but obviously no greater. Therefore the number of people potentially compiling list is at least as great as the number of people to be listed. The fact that lists can incorporate one another means that all kinds of network and hierarchical efficiences come into play. This is, evidently, how Google primarily works. In short, I don't think it's as much work as it sounds, and whitelisting, specifically, would be fairly easy to maintain once in place.

Hieronymous 00:56, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

This would be incredibly impractical from an implementation standpoint, and would lead to POV article forks and stagnation. The wiki-way is to work with those whom you disagree in order to come to an acceptable solution. It is not to simply to ignore people on the other side of a controversy (isolated cranks and nutjobs excluded). -- Cyrius|✎ 05:04, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Looking for feedback oncreating a series of articles

Not sure where else to post this to get a fair sampling of input, so I'm asking one & all here.

I've finally accumulated/stumbled across enough piles of information to make it feasible to create an article on every community in Ethiopia: a smaller-scale equivalent to the original Rambot (I'm thinking of calling my bot the RasTafariBot. ;-). Now, the degree of coverage will reflect just how much information I have about each community, to wit:

1. Every city, town & village will result in about new 13,000 entries. These will consist for over 12,000 of these entries of little more than a name, the region the community is located in, & its latitude & longitude. (That's an awful lot of stubs.)
2. Every city, town & a few of the villages will result in about 927 new entries. This will increase the information to some basic population statistics based on the official Ethiopian estimates for 2005. (The only comprehensive census ever completed in Ethiopia was in 1994 -- & I'm still trying to find a copy of those results.) Again, most of these will be stubs, but this is about the amount of detail a gazetteer of Africa might have.
3. The cities, towns & villages I can provide not only the above information for, but also some historical or economic detail. At the moment I have materials for about 200-250 more communities, & at least half of these will be stubs.

I'll answer one question before it is asked: why so many stubs? First, I consider them "stubs" because, having read so much about the subject, I know there's more to be written about many of these places than would be contained in one or two paragraphs. Second, & more importantly, the reason so many of these proposed articles will be stubs is that faced with a choice between sharing an insufficient, yet useful, amount of information or waiting until these articles are comprehensive -- I'm siding with sharing the information that I have. Part of the hope of Wikipedia is that if one person starts an article, even if it is not finished, another person will contribute her/his incomplete chunk of knowledge on the subject, & so on until we have a finished article.

And FWIW, of the 3 choices above, I'm happiest with the second. Unless over 90% of the feedback insists every one of those possible articles should be written, & folks are willing to struggle with the challenge having thousands of stubs about Ethiopian villages poses, I won't act on the first choice.

Now that I've had my say, I'm listening. -- llywrch 01:00, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I think your gut is right: the middle option. Plus maybe an article on each region, which could list name, latitude and longitude for those villages without creating an article for each of them. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:04, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Option 2, plus regional lists as per Jmabel (tho that's 12,000 lines of list - whew!). It's great that you're doing this. And to back-up what you say about stubs - I first got involved in Wiki when I found and added to the stub of an African village I knew... JackyR 12:47, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Option 1 or Option 2, a stub is always more than no info at all, and many good article started as stubs. Great project! -- Chris 73 | Talk 13:40, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I would love to see an article on every town and village in the world. User:Rambot was created specifically to create an article on very town and village in the US, based on the 2000 census. We should have the same level of available information for every community in every country. User:Zoe|^(talk) 19:38, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Option 2 gets my vote; Rambot had a good deal more info from the US Census data than we would get out of most of the stubs in Option 1, it sounds like. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 19:44, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Who would ever go and click on all of those 12000 stubs. In my view the information is much more accessable of you tabulate it. The whole country gets a table of all regions with links to the region articles. Each region gets a table with the name and primary statistics of each town (or village), plus a link if there is an article (not a stub) for that town. That way you can make available all information that you have right away, and specific town/village articles can be created and embedded when enough information warrants their creation. −Woodstone 21:08, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Woodstone, you've raised the question that was in the back of my mind when I posted this RfC: what is the minimum amount of information should we expect to have in a geographical stub? I feel that it helps no one to create thousands of stubs for villages which say little more than (to pick a real & possible example): "Boramà Guddo is a village in Ethiopia at Latitude 85° 40' and longitude 40° 47'". Even adding the administrative region each lie in, & the elevation & population figure to me fails to justify its creation -- especially when there will be thousands of stubs like this. (And I suspect this would cause a headache for the folks trying to break these stubs into smaller, usable groupings.) The articles that the Ram-bot created had more information than this example.

Since this information is readily available for download & reuse on the Web -- the site I found has zipfiles containing a total of about five million geographical names & their latitude & longitude for the entire non-US world -- it's only a matter of time before some well-meaning yet naive editor starts creating tens of thousands of these stubs. This act would heavily impact Wikipedia, at the least making the "Random article" function practically useless. So any thoughts about a "recommended minimum geo-stub content rquirement", & what it should cover? -- llywrch 18:14, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

12,000 translates to 1.3% of current WP, and fewer than 2 in 100 Random Articles wouldn't be a problem. (Ethiopian towns would at least make a change from such worthwhile pieces as Township 157-30, Minnesota; Bourton and Draycote; Emmett, Texas, etc...) However, 1.3% would be a large increase if done suddenly, so I still prefer your Option 2, with Woodstone's tables (which are useful, stubs or no stubs), and let expansion happen as it will. It may be a while till that "naive editor" gets going - Wiki-takeup is increasing so rapidly that by the time it happens there could be editors able to expand the stubs. Wrt the 5 million names, well, that bullet will have to be bitten eventually. Again, if it happens in stages as you're describing, that's better. Fundraiser, anyone...

On the practical side, I had been going to suggest the "minimum geo-stub content" follow the "Schools" compromise (Wikipedia:Schools#Current proposal for schools), but realised you can probably exceed these specs for most of the 12,000 villages. So my rather less useful contribution is simply some content prompts (where available): map, transport links, languages, local facilities (schools, clinics, access to clean water, telecoms, electricity), nearest neighbours, and of course Notable Stuff. JackyR 00:44, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia a.r.t. (article resolution template) Proposal

I request help from anyone concerned with policy to assist here where a problem is most apparent Talk:Pope_Pius_XII#Visible_1_1_2006_Impossibility_of_a_Serious_Article, and to consider the a.r.t./'article resolution template' I suggested here at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Vatican_Bank#WP__Article_resolution_template. The template is not a template in the wiki form but more in the general working sense. I have proposed fair inclusion of mutually incompatible arguments before, but here I happened to place the closest I see to being useful. I have to say to reasonable users that there is a problem, which is essentially one of un-acceptable truth, as, in fact, I have yet to be presented with any hard source denying the hard source upon which -it appears- the truth does rest.Therefore I see the necessity to allow conjectural faith-based argumentation to be run in a controlled parallel manner. At present there are no possibilities of any consensus, nor will there be so long as history is claimed by faith. The whole template is a bit wooly, but better than the blood falling from the running sores in various spots in WP. Can we perhaps work it up to get over these endless edit wars? Thanks EffK 01:27, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikidating

Since we obviously need a steady cash flow to supplement fundraising, why not setup Wikidating? It would of course have advertising. An online dating service based on Wikimedia software; with Portals for cities etc. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 07:27, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

For some reason I posted this initially on Jimbo's talk page; figured I should put it here as well. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 17:22, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Hey, as long as this is totally separate from Wikipedia ... why the hell not? --Cyde Weys _vote^talk 17:25, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, and it could be like any user can collaboratively edit anyone else's date profile and ad. Bwithh 19:10, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

After you create the profile you could protect it. But there would of course be a talk page where your dates could post comments detailing the accuracy of your profile and whether you were a good or bad date. I doubt I'd sign up for that! —Mike 04:53, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

LOL; I hadn't considered the complications from talk pages... but it would be assumed the Wiki software would be significantly altered/restricted to keep stalking/flaming from being an issue; at least on user/profile namespace. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 05:21, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

We can call it nnbiowiki. -Splash^talk 23:07, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

TOC Levels

I'd like to bring this suggestion over from Wikipedia_talk:Section. It suggests a configurable maximum heading level for a section to be included in an article's Table of Contents. Anything below the level is ignored by the TOC, but remains as a heading in the article body. The example given is Timpani article, which has subheadings that, while important to the article, are far too detailed to be included in the TOC.

As well as setting the level globally, there should also be a function to set it on a branch-by-branch basis, for flexibility. --Tom Edwards 13:24, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any problems with the Timpani article. It's not that unwieldy. Usually the only time I wish the TOC could be limited is when a list is being created. But those lists normally have specialty TOCs that are created using templates. If this feature is created it should either be created as part of a user's preferences, or the user's preferences should be allowed to override these limitations. —Mike 04:49, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Welcome template for vanity articles

Out of frustration with the bluntness of AfD and speedy deletion procedures, I've created Template:Nothanks-vanity for welcoming new users who create vanity articles. Questions, comments, and insults are welcome at my talk page. Gazpacho 04:28, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Isn't that why we have Template:nn-warn? JoaoRicardo^talk 22:28, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Simple enhancement could be useful?

When a page is displayed in edit mode, would it be possible to display the contributor's name or IP address of that particulr edit. At present, if one views the history, a contributor's name is available, but if reverting to a previous version, as soon as you go to edit mode, the information isn't on your screen. Therefore if you want to write an edit comment such as 'revert to last version by so-and-so', you have to flip back to the history (or have a good memory, not easy for IP addresses, I find). This surely would be a very small change that would streamline reversion quite nicely. Or is there a way to do it already thaty I haven't spotted? Comments? Graham 01:18, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree that it would be useful. In the meantime, cultivate the habit of copying the name or IP address to your clipboard before diving into edit mode. Chris the speller 03:27, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, a good suggestion - but since the software already knows this information, it would be more user friendly if it just helped me out as much as it could - for those times when I forgot the cut and paste. Graham 11:53, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

For simple vandal reverts, I usually use http://sam.zoy.org/wikipedia/godmode-light.js _→AzaToth 12:15, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree. This information is useful when writing edit summaries, and already exists. Why not have it available where needed? (I'd also like to see an edit summary preview when I do a Show Preview while we're at it) LloydSommerer 02:52, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

MataCategories Book: Film: Standard: ?

Wikipedia suffers the same weakness as Google when it comes to searching for a Book, Song, Film, or Standard. It deals in Phrases, without distinguishing whether they relate to Concepts or objects (the basic default assumption), or descriptions of concepts or objects in other form.

I suggest that Book:Ghost could be used for the book page, Film:Ghost for the film page etc. and of course just Ghost for the object/concept page. This would reduce the need for Disambiguation pages, which increasingly get in the way of searches, since so many things exist also as book or film titles. It also could be of particular use in searching for Standards. A page like Standard:ITU-R 468 (test page I created) could be much more easily searched for.

Note that MetaCategories describe the Nature of the page, not the nature of its content, and this distinguishes them from Categories. The category Standards for example is a mish-mash of articles about standards, standards bodies, articles about standards bodies, etc. Using the prefix Book: in the title of every book page would seem to have no disadvantage. It could still be redirected to from the top of a normal page, but would allow direct searching too. --Lindosland 00:56, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

• This is a great idea, perhaps as well as colon seperating the search term and the meta catagory a drop-down menu could be provided on the main page. This could default to 'All MetaCatagories' so as not confuse new users, but allow selection of Book, Film, Standard, Song and even Wikipedia! --Bandaria 13:20, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't see how this is different from categories, except that it is more limited and harder to change. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:57, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

You have not taken in what I wrote Cyrius! As I explained, MetaCategories are not about content (topic) as categories are. They are about the fundamental nature (intent) of the page. Thus every Standard: pages would present a standard. They would not just be pages under the broad category 'to do with standards', which includes descriptions of standards bodies etc. Rather, they would BE standards, (albeit in summarised form - perhaps better headed Standardsum). With Books and films it actually goes a bit deeper, because a page that begins Book: should, strictly, actually BE a book (or at least the exact text of a book), and while this is appropriate to MetaCategories on the Web, it is not currently within the remit of Wikipedia. Strictly, the MetaCategory Booksum: would be appropriate, meaning that the nature of the page was a 'summary of a book'. Whether we use Booksum: or Book: depends on whether we anticipate the extension of metacategories to the Web as a whole (where they would help Google searching enormously!). Similarly categories like Songlyric: and Song could exist, the latter being the actual download. Again you see the 'intention' of the page - to provide a song lyric or a song download. --Lindosland 13:06, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

PDA version of Wikipedia

I think it might be a good idea to have a "PDA" version of Wikipedia. I was thinking simple HTML, limited graphics, designed for a small screen, mostly text only and not too many frames. Is anyone with me on this idea?

Please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia on PDAs and Wikipedia:Browser notes. Note that different skins may behave differently. You might also try user:Npocket's m:Gallery of user styles#Monobook Handheld. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:34, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

See also Wapedia which is a useful mirror of wikipedia formatted for PDAs. dml 03:43, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

I have created {{editprotected}} to request edits to protected pages. -- Zondor 06:00, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Direct quotes in references

Very often, when I've added specific fact references to an well-fleshed out article, I provide the direct quote from the source that I cite, after the citation. I have been asked to start a discussion on this, and I have done so on Wikipedia:Citing sources. Please comment there. Thanks! JesseW, the juggling janitor 08:53, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Comments requested about categorization proposal

I've posted a proposal about categories and subcategories here. Please take a look. I'd appreciate feedback. The proposal concerns the relationship of categories and their topic articles, situations when articles may be in both a category and its subcategories, and some other general guidelines for categorization. These topics have been under discussion for many months (or should I say years!) This isn't quite to the vote stage, but it is getting close. Thanks. -- Samuel Wantman 08:51, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Admin visibility

When I was new around here, and in need of the assistance of an Admin, I was very uncertain how to find one. Now that I am an admin, I have some suggestions of how Amins can be more visible:

1. Strongly suggest at WP:RFA and the Admin reading list that admins categorize themselves as admins by using a userbox. This should be the norm. I'm at a loss trying to think of a good reason why an admin doesn't want people to know . If they are inactive, they should categorize themselves as inactive admins. Currently less than one third of admins are categorized, even less mention it at the top of their user pages. Along with advertising, admins should state at the top of their user page, what functions they are willing to perform as an admin.
2. Admins should add links to their user page on the talk pages of categories and controversial articles that they watch. Users could then easily find admins who are familiar with the articles and categories in question. Perhaps we could make a nice template for this.
3. Post links on the talk pages of policy articles in the Wikipedia space of admins and other users who regularly watch, discuss, and implement those policies. That would help everyone trying to understand who does what. If there are too many admins to list, we could create a category for each policy. The only place that I know of where this already happens is at WP:RFA.

All these posting should be presented as a way of offering assistance, and not to convey that big brother is watching. -- Samuel Wantman 09:51, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Although I agree with point 1, I personally feel that points 2 and 3 do reek a little of big brother. I'd be far happier to simply make Wikipedia:List of administrators far more visible by adding it as a link at places like the top of the village pump pages, on the community portal - and as a special page in the toolbox. Grutness...wha? 10:43, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

The reason some of us do not announce to the world loud and clear we are admins is that it should not matter. We should not be treated differently just because we have some extra access to some features of the software. Not announcing it on our user pages is one way to avoid differential treatment. --cesarb 21:07, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

In particular, admins have no more authority over content or influence over policy discussions than any other editor. -- Rick Block (talk) 21:37, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

All these comments are correct, but perhaps I'm not stating my point well. To a new user, the method of finding and getting the help of an admin when needed is not obvious. Isn't helping new users a role of admins? How should they find us? Admins were selected because they have the trust of the community. As such, they should be setting good visible examples of behavior and not flaunting their minimal powers. -- Samuel Wantman 22:51, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

But wouldn't simply adding a link to Wikipedia:List of administrators prominently to things like Help:Contents achieve this just as easily? Adding your admin name to article and category talk pages does sound to me like "don't do anything bad - the boss is watching", which is not how admins should act or be perceived. Grutness...wha? 22:58, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

I've added the link to Help:Contents, and I'm looking for other places to add links. -- Samuel Wantman 23:23, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

I guess I'm coming at this from a different direction. I am trying to get a group of people from an academic e-mail list to get more involved with Wikipedia. The attitude I regularly encounter is "anything I post there will get vandalized". Having a list of editors saying "I'm watching this category" or "this article" might assuage some fears. --Samuel Wantman 23:12, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

User:Brian0918 made a template to that effect. I can't remember its name. -Splash^talk 23:14, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Was it {{Maintained}}? Steve block talk 23:25, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Indeed it was! Thanks. -Splash^talk 23:43, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

What if we put a link to the list of admins on Template:Welcome, saying something like, "these people may be helpful".--Pharos 22:58, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Back to Samuel's suggestion about listing "watchers" - providing such a list seems like a reasonable idea, but I don't see any particular reason admins should be encouraged to do this more than any other user. In particular, if experts can be convinced to register a login and participate I'd think it would be a whole lot more useful for an expert to watch an article than some random admin (I don't really know, but I suspect most admins are actually college students in some computer related field who may or may not have any other subject area expertise). -- Rick Block (talk) 02:39, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Admin-tagged usernames

Unfortunately, having admins editing side-by-side with non-admins in the open can have an influence on the editing experience; in other words, participation in the process can influence the process. This is because there are a very few editor/admins who have strayed over the line separating editorship and adminship, to the detriment of all admin reputations (I don't know how pervasive this impression is, but it does rear its head from time to time in various places). I believe I made a suggestion that has been shuffled into the history of some talk page that when an editor receives an adminship a new username should be created that is the original username + some suffix ... maybe simply "admin", so that User:RosanneRosannadanna would have a second account User:RosanneRosannadanna_admin. This would have several positive effects; first, it would allow complete separation of admin and non-admin roles; second, it would allow complete visibility of all actions conducted by the user while in the admin role; third, it would allow a specific and automated measure of admin activity or inactivity. Think of this as issuing a uniform to admins, a uniform that should be worn while conducting admin-related business and not worn while going about the routine business of being Joe Editor, Expert on Widgets and Widget Flanges. I am not an admin, but if this dichotomy of roles were established I would consider self-nominating for an adminship, and I don't think I am alone in that feeling. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 23:39, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

That would not change things much. Consider, for instance, warning an user for vandalism: you do not have to be an admin to do it. The only admin-specific situations (which would be the situations we would be using the alternate username) are already separate (deletion, undeletion, blocking, unblocking, etc). The admin "role" isn't as different from a normal vandal-fighting editor as you might be thinking (though it can be very different from an editor which mainly edits articles). --cesarb 23:55, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

There is a significant difference in roles as stated in many discussions, primarily centering around admins being "held to a higher standard" than your typical editor. This particular quality of the role is often at the crux of disputes over actions taken by admins which are those that could have been done by any editor but were in fact done by an admin. By requiring a "uniform" in the form of a distinct user name, much of this tension could be eased, I believe, because there would be a clear-cut distinction between actions taken as an admin and those taken as a regular editor. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:53, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

"Being an admin is no big deal". Admins are just editors. There should be nothing to differentiate us. User:Zoe|^(talk) 04:45, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't think this is a good idea for two reasons:

• Admins are editors first, admins second
• It may discourage editors from changing something, because it came from an administrator, even if they have updated, or more factual information.

xaosflux ^Talk/_CVU 05:29, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

New template, {{SplitCategory}}

Just made the above template because i noticed that a lot of articles were just lists, and would be much better off just splitting the links down and then adding category tags in there, the pages really should be category listed anyway. For an example, please check Illnesses related to poor nutrition.

Spum 13:48, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure I understand your point. But your example, Illnesses related to poor nutrition, would not be better made into a category. Categories cannot be grouped like that list is, nor can the entries be annotated, as those are. Categories and lists are complementary. -Will Beback 19:52, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I do, and Spum's idea makes sense. Although the two are complementary, sometimes the wrong one is used. A collection of items that's simply an alphabetical list is better as a category; a collection of items which need to be in some specific order or have extra information, or would have a lot of (to be filled) red links is better as a list. For that reason I'd also suggest a complementary template to go in categories that might be better as lists. BUT (and it's a biggie), this needs to be coordinated with AFD and CFD, rather than done off one person's bat, since categorising what was a list involves deleting the list (AFD), and listifying a category involves deletion of the category (CFD). Grutness...wha? 22:33, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

WikiEffort

I hereby propose WikiEffort, the wiki counterpart of BOINC.

• Thousands of visitors like the idea of contributing to Wikipedia, but lack the expertise to write encyclopedic articles.
• Some Wikipedians have tasks in mind that allow Wikipedia to take a giant leap forward. But with only themselves or some insighters aware of it, the task is unsurmountable and might take a life-time to complete.

WikiEffort brings the two together in a massive collaborative effort. One day later, the unsurmountable task is completed.

The process in short:

1. attract lingering users, possibly via the main page.
2. propose to them a wikitask (the task of the day), providing both quick and long information.
3. link them to one unique workunit.

Comments welcome--Joris Gillis 09:36, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

It's an interesting idea. Maybe even suggest two different tasks. You're more likely to get something that interests the user, and you have the "Which colour would you like it in?" type of hard-sell. Maybe you could have a box which says:

Would you rather:
*Write a short article on the topic "Sabine-Southwestern War"
*Improve an article on the topic "Meditation" or 
*Proofread the article on the topic Albert_Wesker?

selecting one requested article, one article that needs to be taken to featured status, and one article in need of copy-editing. --Slashme 11:55, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

• Thanks for the response. But I was actually thinking of tasks that do not require insight or major cognitive efforts. Creating or 'improving' articles would not be candidate tasks, I fear (lack of expertise). The task should be able to be carried out by a majority of ordinary users with a minimum of instructions. Proofreading OCR-scanned pages will do perfectly well as a wikitask: one only needs to be able to read and type characters.--Joris Gillis 12:21, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
• WikiEffort would allow the nasty jobs to be carried out quickly. The term nasty refers here to the size of the job, not the nature of it.--Joris Gillis 12:24, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Oh, right. That seems sensible too ;-] --Slashme 12:33, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Not quite the same, but this sounds similar to User:Humanbot. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:37, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. I notice the similarity indeed. The Not writing section of the fixup projects resembles quite good what I had in mind for WikiEffort. The only real differences seem to be the scale (I thought of attracting thousands of users during a single day) and the missing a-useful-contribution-is-only-one-click-away-factor: the need for a firefox extension might hold some users back.--Joris Gillis 17:59, 5 January 2006 (UTC)