Wikipedia talk:Motto of the day/Nominations

RE: This space for rent

Hi. I came here after receiving a note on my talk page. I wondered whether nominations are vetted for verifiability (although I completely understand at the moment that you're short of resources). Thanks. -- Trevj (talk) 14:57, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, of course! All nominations are verified by reviewers during the approval phase, and then by a "decision maker". –pjoef (talk • contribs) 08:53, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I think what Trevj meant was that the motto: "This space for rent" did not seem correct. People cannot offer the listed price and put their favorite motto in MOTD. What this motto meant is that MOTD was in desperate need of motto nominations and reviewers. Fartherred (talk) 00:37, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Hum... I think he was referring to this. –pjoef (talk • contribs)

Discussion about linking

Hi, I am new to MOTD, since reading some notices that mentioned the recent "Space for rent" problem. having thought about this though, I would like to suggest that we consider relaxing slightly the "rule" about not linking to mainspace (if it's a rule, wp:Iar can probably be applied, smiles). MOTD ought to reflect the community or purpose of Wikipedia; well mainspace is the purpose of WP. I have found that it can be very useful on occasion when wp:Pol's are linked to mainspace, see Consensus which links to (3) useful articles in the See also. I think that we can, subject to individual evaluation of mottos, and aesthetic considerations, that we allow useful links to be made to appropriate article(s) if a candidate motto is improved by doing so. There ought to be a majority of links to wp-space, as has been current practice, but sometimes a motto could be "fleshed out" with a link to an article in addition to the links to wp-space. Any discussion of this idea is welcomed, if people have the time to think about it. NewbyG ( talk) 19:42, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

I do not have much insight to add, but I agree that the possibility exists for beneficial links to mainspace. I think it can be decided on a case by case basis. Fartherred (talk) 20:50, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

The main reason why we should link to the policies, help pages, guidelines, essays, wikiprojects, and etcetera, and not to the main namespace, is to promote those parts of Wikipedia. But, I agree with Fartherred, it can be decided on a case by case basis. –pjoef (talk • contribs) 11:02, 20 March 2012 (UTC) Personally, I have never had any real objection to linking to the mainspace if it is the most appropriate link. Nutiketaiel (talk) 13:18, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Broken link?

I used the link (under nomination procedure) nested heading and only got to the top of the Manual of Style page. Is the fine tuned link still valid and it is only my browser that is on strike (again)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Slowlate (talk • contribs) 19:55, 5 May 2014 (UTC) Sorry, forgot to sign Slowlate (talk) 20:02, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

@Slowlate: It seems the link (Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings)#nesting) used to go to this old revision of the page before that page was redirected to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings)#Section headings, but as the link has a "#nesting" pointer that overrides the "#Section headings" one from the redirect and therefore produces the nonexistent Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings)#nesting. Maybe we should now remove the "#nesting" part from the link, or replace it altogether with Help:Section#Headings? benzband (talk) 20:32, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

I was confused, because I was searching for the correct form to comment on an existing heading/motto. So I was looking for the wrong thing and mixed everything up. The heading part in itself is quite clear. I still support linking to the new location.Slowlate (talk) 19:30, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Okay, I've gone ahead and done so! (diff) Do you think the link is alright now? benzband (talk) 20:46, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, now it is easy to see how to create a new heading. My problem is still more with the 'nested' part. For example one of the last entries was 'Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision ...' and the improvement was done with a new heading. Or did I miss something there? Would it not be better to say 'create an edit under a new heading' instead of 'create an edit under a nested heading'. Or maybe 'create an edit under a new nested heading'. I am probably too pedantic here, but someone not familiar with the nomenclature might think into the wrong direction (like I did). In hindsight I understand now that the emphasis is not on the heading vs nested heading but between a big edit and a minor improvement. Slowlate (talk) 19:08, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

The edits are created under nested headings inasmuch as they are put in a ====h4 subheading==== under the original motto's ===h3 heading===. You're right though it's not very clear especially since the linked page doesn't mention anything about "nesting". If you have a better wording in mind I see no reason for keeping the current one. benzband (talk) 11:20, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Mostly my mistake: I did not notice the difference in size of the motto and the motto-edit. I tend to look more for an indent. To put more emphasis on the if-clause I would propose to switch the two sentences. And only as a second step maybe rephrase the nested part. Something like this: 'Simple spelling mistakes or punctuation errors may be corrected without creating a new edit; just be sure to leave a comment explaining exactly what you have changed. If you have an idea that might improve a motto by rewording, changing the links, etc., nest a new heading (see the above example) under the motto.' Slowlate (talk) 19:23, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Sounds good! I'm in favor of making these changes. benzband (talk) 12:24, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Just made these changes. Slowlate (talk) 19:26, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

A little something

I have never understood the fetish here for mottos with blue links. I do not like the look. However, perhaps the project could make use of this At the heart of the matter, we are bound to one another. Mario Cuomo, 1984 Democratic Convetion speech. Or perhaps just the last phrase, after the comma. Paul, in Saudi (talk) 08:27, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

@PaulinSaudi: The scope of the "blue text" is to link a motto (or parts of) to the related parties in the Wikipedia namespace. Thus creating a correlation between the meaning(s) of a motto and parts of Wikipedia such as policies, guidelines, essays, WikiProjects, and etcetera, just to promote them.
If you would like to nominate a motto, please go to: In review section and use the following format:

===[[Mario Cuomo|→]] [[REPLACE with one or more links within the Wikipedia namespace|At the heart of the matter, we are bound to one another.]]===
[[Mario Cuomo]], 1984 Democratic Convetion speech. Or perhaps just the last phrase, after the comma. ~~~~

Please, place it on top of other nominations.
I suggest to use two "blue" wlinks: WP:CORE for the first part and WP:COMMUNITY for the second part, but there are many other alternatives.
Thank you and sorry for the delay in replying. –pjoef (talk • contribs) 09:07, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Suggested conversion

This seems to be struggling more and more as of late. I would suggest converting to a motto of the week format as that would greatly reduce the needed upkeep without forcing the unfortunate result of closing this entirely. You could also then schedule everything ahead of time, pjoef. What do you think? I think it's unfortunate that small but humanizing corners of the 'pedia, like this one, sometimes get so bare. The Signpost ran a few issues with just two sections last year before things picked up again. ResMar 03:45, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

@Pjoef:. ResMar 03:45, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

@Resident Mario: In the way things are going here, it would not work even if it will be converted to the motto of the month. In the last year, the number of contributors to MotD can be counted on the fingers of one hand while, in the past, two or three hands were not enough. In any case, your proposal can be a good temporary solution.
Thank you very much. –pjoef (talk • contribs) 08:29, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

If you convert to a weekly format you can basically run it yourself, since it'll only require you select and come up with and list five items a month—very doable. Longer periods of time would also encourage more contributions because each individual motto becomes seven times as impactful. ResMar 13:15, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Mottoes with line breaks

There may be reasons not to which I am currently unaware of, but if there aren't, I would like to suggest adding a space directly before line breaks (<br />) in mottoes which use them in order to make the TOC (and any other place on Wikipedia which forces MOTD into a single line) more readable. benzband (talk) 17:58, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

¡¡¡¡¡Proposed Merging!!!!!

This project has gone very far south and is pretty much inactive. I am noticing the Tip of the Day is also starting to go down this path. I believe that this project and the tip of the day can both be saved if we merge the two and basically put a quote at the bottom of the tip of the day and mark this project as defunct. Then, I would redesign the tip of the day page to be more user friendly and work for quotes as well. I believe that with one project covering both these topics, we can combine the little interest left and bring these projects back. With no opposition, I will probably go a head with this in a week as long as the reamaining tip of the day people are cool with it. If you leave a message here, please ping me as I will not be monitoring the page. To ping me just copy and paste this somewhere in your comment: {{ping|User:Tortle}} Thanks Tortle (talk) 02:13, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose The mottos continue to appear on automatic pilot and seem to work well enough. Merger or other restructuring might break what we have so, if it works, don't fix it. Note that Tortle seems to have become inactive in 2015. Andrew🐉(talk) 21:57, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Oppose It would be better to purge inactive staff from the project and recruit volunteers that can spend more time on it. The automation removes tis charm. Also might be useful to put the project template on the front page. Excutient^Talk 06:35, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

@Andrew Davidson: @Excutient: Any update on this? jp×g 07:45, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

There is clearly no consensus for the merger and so we should close this proposal as failed. Andrew🐉(talk) 10:26, 11 September 2021 (UTC)