Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive Z

• Village pump
  • Policy
  • Technical
  • Proposals (persistent)
  • Idea lab
  • WMF
  • Miscellaneous

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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals).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.

---

< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214

A more dignified User list

I would like to suggest adding another User list page in order to give Wikipedia a more dignified appearance, as well as to be more useful to anyone attempting to make contact with Wikipedians.

Currently, someone starting from the Main Page and clicking around looking for a list of users can click Special pages at the left and find User list, the name of which looks promising, but the content of which is disappointing and undignified, beginning with pages and pages of redlinks along the lines of "!!!!!!You are an idiot", which is rather uninformative except to demonstrate that apparently the exclamation mark comes ahead of everything else in alphabetical order. I don't suggest deleting this page, but I suggest adding another page which will come ahead of "User list" on the "Special pages" page -- something along the lines of "List of active users" or "List of userpages" or "List of categories of users". Preferably a list of users who have accounts, are not banned, have userpages and have contributed within the past week. Hopefully such a list would present a more dignified appearance of Wikipedians.

I'm sorry that I don't know how to begin making such a list -- put in a bugzilla request? Become an admin? Become a MediaWiki developer? Just go ahead and do it, following the instructions on page "Help: How to make special pages"?

The easiest way is probably to insert Special:Listadmins into the list of Special:Specialpages; does this require changing the Mediawiki software? And would it result in a mutiny by admins whose names start with the letter A? Another alternative is to delete User list from Special:Specialpages, so that people starting at Main Page looking for users will have to use the Village Pump or something. People who actually need to look at User list for some reason can still type in the name of that page. --Coppertwig 14:10, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. While the list is rather hidden to most, that is sort of embarressing.(sp?) I agree with the concept of un-banned users with userpages and contributed, let's say in the last month, to be broader. The complete list should remain available, but the primary link should be to an automatically edited list. -- Zanimum 14:24, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I've been thinking the same thing for a while now. I made some attempt improve the situation as far as possible (with the current software and without bureaucrat rights) about a month ago by deleting the userpages of indefinitely blocked users (over 20,000 in all). This has prevented Special:Random/User taking you to an offensive or gibberish name, and also removes them from Special:Allpages/User:, but unfortunately doesn't do anything about Special:Listusers.

I also agree that something seriously needs to be done about the user list. Going to Special:Listusers and typing in the names of some of the more, er, controversial administrators... isn't nice. I've thought of the following options, all of which have disadvantages as well, sadly:

• Delete offensive and gibberish usernames altogether: This is only technically possible for users with zero edits, which includes the majority of offensive usernames – as they tend to be blocked moments after creation – but not all of them. This would partly solve the problem, but since the deletion of old usernames has been proposed and rejected at least twice, and the developers have stated that they refuse to do it, it seems unlikely that it will happen.
• Get a bureaucrat to rename all the offensive usernames to something more acceptable: For example, "Indefblocked User" followed by a number. This would take a while, and would still leave the names in Special:Log/renameuser, which would at least be less visible than Special:Listusers. It also wouldn't deal with the problem of all the redlinks on the user list; in theory a bureaucrat could rename ALL the unused usernames to move them to the end of the list, but since that would involve somewhere in the region of a million renames it's infeasible.
• Prevent access to Special:Listusers altogether, except for administrators: While this would prevent people from registering offensive or gibberish usernames just to have them show up on the list, it would also inconvenience all the regular users without access to the list. Coppertwig's Special:Listadmins idea above, to separate that page and still allow users access, is a good one. In fact that page already exists and points to Special:Listusers/sysop. However it wouldn't be absolutely unnecessary, since the list is redundant to Wikipedia:List of administrators anyway, and the latter has the advantage of being grouped according to activity, so you don't end up contacting an administrator who hasn't edited for months. Doing this would require a small change to the MediaWiki software, to set the viewing permissions on Special:Listusers, and hence the approval of the developers.
• Filter the entries of Special:Listusers somehow: I strongly disagree with any specification of a minimum time since last edit; many users, administrators included, will take breaks from editing for months at a time; some users, again administrators included, have not edited for years, but I still don't think they should be removed. Showing only the users with userpage is somewhat redundant also, as this can simply be achieved by looking at Special:Allpages/User:. However, I agree that modifying MediaWiki to hide all indefinitely blocked users from the list would be a very good idea. It would require a significant software change, though, so it depends on whether the developers could feasibly implement it (and more importantly, want to/have time to/can be bothered to implement it). This would remove all the offensive names, names containing personal information, and gibberish names, as well as many other accounts used only for vandalism in which nobody would have any interest. It would probably be necessary to have two versions of Special:Listusers in this case; one displayed to regular users that hides indefinitely blocked users, and one displayed to administrators that shows all users – as there will likely be a need for administrators to see the full list.

– Gurch 16:51, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

If it's too time consuming for bureaucrats to perform a name change on every offensive username, it might be possible for a developer to perform this change through an SQL query perhaps, if they are given a list of names to look through. That way, the changes would not show up on the log. I also like Gurch's idea of having a list showing non-indefinitely blocked users. The only problem would be that there maybe some more notable users who are indefinitely blocked, and these would not show up. Tra (Talk) 17:48, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, but who gets to write the list of offensive words to look for? You? Me? Someone who find anything not 100% PC to be offensive? Someone who finds absolutely nothing offensive? If someone does have a username that is deemed offensive but they contribute a lot, do they get to keep it or do we force them to change their name? Koweja 18:13, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

How about this? The User list is reprogrammed to only show users that have an actual page (in other words get rid of the redlinks since they don't help anyone who's looking for info on a specific user) and filters out banned accounts. That would probably cover 99% of the accounts you would want to remove with your no offensive/gibberish name proposal. Koweja 18:17, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• I think if you want developers to do anything, bring it up in WP:VPT. I'm not really sure some of the suggestions here can a) be coded b) would be acceptable to developers, and c) are acceptable to the Foundation. Titoxd^(?!?) 19:17, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• It's not that difficult code-wise to make Special:Listusers ignore users that are permablocked. You could bring this up on bugzilla. (Radiant) 11:45, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

{{expand further}}

I'm here to pimp my new template, {{expand further}}. If it intrigues you, please visit its talk page to hear my hopes and add your own comments. And of course, please try using it! Melchoir 08:07, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Having Folders/subfolders for the favorites list

For people who have a high amount of topics in their favorites list, wouldnt it be sensible to have a system (?) where we can neatly organize our watched topics in a folder.

For example, I create 3 folders: history, science, and biography. The watched topics will go in whatever folder we please. To even further the organization, there should be subfolders. For example, under history, theres war and civilizations. Under science, theres psychology and biology. Under biography, theres serial killers and political leaders.

This would greatly put me at ease when looking through my watched topics, as im sure it would be for others.

---

I like this idea. I could watch more afd topics then and it wouldn't be so cluttered.++aviper2k7++ 17:02, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

What you can do is create a user subpage with a list of links to the pages you want to watch, then click related changes in the toolbox to see the recent edits to those pages. You then can create a different subpage for each 'folder'. Tra (Talk) 17:37, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Fuse albums with band articles?

There are realy many articles on bands, singles and albums at the english wiki, see f.e. this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_of_the_Middle_Ages it doesn't really resemble an encyclopediatric entry, and there are many alike, not to mention articles elaborating a single song. There's already a specialized wiki on modern music, wikibands.org, and that is where stuff alike belongs to. Wikipedia shouldn't be flooded with stuff that specialised - if needed the appropriate page on the wikibands or some potentional corresponding wikimedia project could be linked.Turkmenbashy 02:28, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think these pages are really that harmful, other than popping up all the time when you hit "random page". Merging would probably lose the infoboxes if nothing else, and bloat up the main artist/band articles. While most album articles start out minimal, not much more information than you'd get from CDDB or whatever, they do tend to expand to include meaningful prose. I just don't see the need to bloat main articles here, personally. --W.marsh 02:30, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Album stubs are a bit of a nuisance and keep popping up in cleanup categories (like my own favorite: uncategorized articles) but overall it's a fairly benign nuisance. Merging creates a different kind of problem with bloated articles for prolific bands. My hunch is that album stubs are more likely to expand properly as articles rather than sections in a band's article but of course it's just a hunch. I think a good way to make albums more substantial is to merge singles in the album articles though: there's rarely much third-party non-trivial coverage about singles, unless they are huge hits anyways. Pascal.Tesson 03:14, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, then, how about merging all the albums of an artist to one separate article of defined form? (f.e. List_of_Albums_by_Rammstein) If the one or another album incited the breakoff of some ex-yugoslavian republic or done something as influencial, it could maybe get an article of it's own. 84.167.198.10 22:51, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Of links, frames, and the logo

Would it be too hard to put a "Back to top" link at the bottom of every page, or use frames for Wikipedia, so that on a long article, the user doesn't have to scroll all the way to the top to get to the main link bar... thing? just a thought...
WiiWillieWiki 17:06, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I usually hit the Home key, which seems to work pretty well. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 17:07, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Places of local interest

Feedback is requested on this (proposed) guideline about articles on "local" places, such as churches, historic buildings, malls, masts, neighbourhoods, parks, schools, stations, and streets. Please respond to its talk page rather than here. Thank you. (Radiant) 16:02, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Static, "official" version of each article

I thought I would find this on perennial proposals, especially since one of the most high-profile contributors cited it as a main reason for his current disillusionment with Wikipedia, but I couldn't find any discussion of it there. Here's the proposal anyway:

It wouldn't be that hard to keep a "last good version" of some articles, and have them accessible through an icon or an extra tab. This version could be updated occasionally by admins, either on their own judgment or via edit requests given by non-admins wanting to get something added. If that's too much pressure on admins, then the static version could simply be permanently semi-protected, or have some other kind of criteria for editor qualifications.

I really don't see why this hasn't been implemented yet. It would help shut up all of the detractors who call Wikipedia unreliable, and it would assure people coming to the site that they can find material with at least some standard of quality to it. In my view, it can only benefit the project. G Rose 16:35, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

This is currently under development, IIRC. Sam Korn ^(smoddy) 17:30, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

This has been repeatedly discussed, see Wikipedia:Stable versions and Worldtraveller's own Wikipedia:Static version. There's a software change to support this, presumably currently under test at the de: wikipedia (see m:2006 proposed approval for anonymous edits). -- Rick Block (talk) 19:17, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Good. It amazes me that it's taken 5-and-counting years for this idea to be found worthwhile. Many thanks for the links. G Rose 23:41, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

the Wikirace

To Whom It May Concern: 193.140.194.107 15:16, 3 December 2006 (UTC)My friends and I are often amazed at the tangents we take when using Wikipedia. We then come up with the idea of a fundraising competition. We propose a Wikirace. Two topics are chosen ie. Ben Franklin and the Museum of Bad Art. Then two or more people are put head to head and see who can get from one to the other, only using links within articles. It’s a fun game – trust us. We think that many many people would be interested in competing in such a game, and think it might be a good way to raise money for Wikipedia. Even a small one dollar entrance fee, would make a fair amount. Just a thought. Thanks Max

You might be interested in Wikipedia:Six degrees of Wikipedia. Tra (Talk) 15:25, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

fork wikipedia over fair use policy

I just want now how it's receaved the idea of forking because of some recent developments with the way fair use rule is interpreted.If your not awhare of the isue see thies three link's to make an opinion.--Pixel ;-) 22:39, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

All_images_with_no_fair_use_rationale All_replaceable_fair_use_images talk:Fair_use

I went to the pages but it was not quickly apparent what the issue was. Can you summarize the issue here? CyberAnth 00:04, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

People have started cracking down on overly broad use of "fair use" images which could be replaced by free ones, or ones used with no particular reason beyond "we need a pretty picture, so fair use". This has not been an entirely popular move. Shimgray | talk | 11:03, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Is not the issue, then, whether or not they can be replaced with free ones? If not, then the fair use claim is much stronger. If so, then it does weaken it. If the images can be replaced by the uploaders with relatively comparable free ones, why not just do so? I realize this does take some work. CyberAnth 11:44, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

What you are asking for is that we relax the use of copyrighted material so that the images can be used as decoration. Fair use is actually saying we know you have a right to your work and to expect payment, but please understand our intention this use is not to dimish your rights only to acknowledge your work in relation to "this" article. If we are to relax our position and permit the use of the images are we not violating the creators rights, for wikipedia to be accepted as a reputiable source we cant be seen to violate the rights of others. Gnangarra 12:41, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

This is crap,it's the crapy "official" policy that commes from above.It's not aplied in the legal sence,now they want to deleat all fair use from the moment the in "theory" is possible to recreated,with complit disregard how dificult/resonable this realy is.--Pixel ;-) 14:35, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

That's not all it is about. For example, images deliberately released for promotional purposes, such as Image:Jennifer Granholm.jpg, are being tagged for deletion. Yes, it would be great to have a completely free image to replace them, but using such images poses no risk whatsoever to Wikipedia and minimal risk to re-users of Wikipedia content. Sure it might be possible to construct elaborate hypothetical problems posed by using such images. But removing them is over-zealous copyright paranoia. older ≠ wiser 13:56, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

From a very long time there was a general consensus of editors for how the policy is aplied,wikipedia is not a goverment,it work with concensus and ther's no concensus for the way the polissy is aplied recently,the consensus was to ignore that policy.--Pixel ;-) 14:35, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Where was this consensus achieved? User:Zoe|(talk) 23:21, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

If an image is released for reproduction then it would be released as PD, GNU, GFDL or other such free license, if I give away a signed photo of actor "X" as promotion of X's new movie I haven't given away the right to make copies and distribute. Its copyrighted and if its then loaded here fair use applies which means you provide the source/author, and a rationale for use as is required under WP:FU policy.Gnangarra 03:41, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion

Would it be possible to have a tag telling when the individual sections of an article were updated, possibly near the "edit" link?

Probably not yet. For the same reason you cannot transclude a certain section of an article or redirect to a certain section. Cbrown1023 21:04, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Plus, what happens when sections were re-arranged or renamed? Cbrown1023 21:05, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

The section editing should still work as normal in this case. Tra (Talk) 21:40, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

The "wikimyspace" issue

Cleary, as seen by this TfD, there is no consensus on wikipedia where and when to use myspace links, and if to link to myspace at all in the first place. As Martinp23 said in his closing of the TfD: The result of this belief which may be inferred by some users is making the job of those on recent changes patrol much harder. On the other hand, those on the keep side feel that the use of a myspace template is good, as a way to standardise the format, and in the understanding that in certain cases, myspace links are inherently useful and permissible under policy, and citing the fact that we have other templates for linking [1]. So, my proposal is to come up with some kind of consensus (you know, the stuff wiki runs on) to decide when/where/if myspace links from wiki are needed. This is not a !vote or discussion or which policy means what for myspace, but the idea is to make a policy (or at least a guideline) regulating myspace links. Many users will indeed say that this is just instruction creep, but I believe that it's needed. Anyone interested? -Royalguard11(Talk·Desk·Review Me!) 19:11, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

How about a wikiproject to patrol the backlinks to the template, and nominate any for deletion that don't cite other (more reliable) sources? New pages will appear at the end of the list, so it shouldn't be hard to keep tabs on.</almostserious> --Interiot 20:41, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Although that seemes like a good idea (however almost serious), the problem is nobody agree's on what to remove, and what to leave. -Royalguard11(Talk·Desk·Review Me!) 20:48, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

We have a well-established set of policies and processes for improving or otherwise handling marginal articles (eg. WP:MUSIC, WP:CITE/WP:RS, {{Music-importance}}, PROD, AFD, etc). I don't know that we necessarily need to change anything in order to handle MySpace-linked articles. --Interiot 21:01, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, I am not sure if a template itself is needed at all (which is to say I have no real strong opinion about it - although I do think Interiot's idea sounds like a good starting place). As for Myspace as an External Link, I do feel very strongly towards allowing them as long as the MySpace is officially managed by the subject of the article (or somebody close appointed by them). This is probably the only rule I can think of in allowing a link to Myspace, but its possible I'm not thinking of other exceptions. -- Shadowolf 22:03, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Lynne Britton needs to be added

The Name Lynne Britton needs to be added to Wikipedia. He was the man in the Blues Brothers movie who said "Did you get me my Cheez Wiz, boy? " He also was a famous make up artiet doing makeup in Tota! Tora! Tora! Potky and Bess, and several of Jane Russell's Movies. H also Played a character of Shotgun Briton in Dirty Dingus Magee. He aslo worked on Starsky and Hutch and for Frank Sinatra in The Dective. Aso he was a Contestant on Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life. in 1950.

I don't know how to enter something in Wikipeda but you can reach me at chesterkearns@msn.com —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 4.164.168.130 (talk • contribs).

It would help if you spelled his name right. :) Its Layne Britton. I loved the Blues Brothers, and he seems like a notable fellow, so I'll create a stub. Feel free to sign up and create an account, and start filling in the details. Phidauex 20:29, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

starting AfDs for anonymous users

In order to complete an AfD, the user must create the appropriate sub-page at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ARTICLE and list it on the daily log. However, anonymous users currently cannot create pages in the Wikipedia namespace. I'm proposing a process that will allow anonymous users to complete AfDs with the aid of registered users. In general, this process would be somewhat similar to articles for creation. All comments are welcome. --Ixfd64 01:27, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

If an anon were really that interested in Wikipedia that they want to nominate an article for AfD, they can register. User:Zoe|(talk) 04:23, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 13:46, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

New Namespace

Maybe it might be time to move the wikiprojects into a new namespace? -- Nathannoblet 07:17, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, it would help with the capitalization conventions for them quite a bit. They could even keep the old WP shortcuts. Just make sure to ditch the camelcaps in WikiProject, or you'll be making a horrendous to type namespace prefix. --tjstrf talk 07:22, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree this would be useful. Instead of "WikiProject" or "Wikiproject", why not simply "Project" for the namespace? —Doug Bell ^talk 10:13, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Because then we'd have to change all the redirects. --tjstrf talk 10:22, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Not sure I understand why they wouldn't have to be changed anyway. Besides, this would be a pretty straight forward job for a bot, so I don't think that should be a driving consideration. —Doug Bell ^talk 10:30, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

WP: stands equally well for both Wikipedia and Wikiproject, that's why they wouldn't need to be changed. --tjstrf talk 10:46, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Still bot fixable, but maybe Wikiproject is already engrained. —Doug Bell ^talk 10:50, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

• Technically we could split the "Wikipedia" namespace into e.g. "Project", "Process" and "Policy", but would that really help? (Radiant) 10:23, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

The reason this stuck me a good is two fold. First, all of the WikiProject stuff currently is labeled as if it had the namespace Wikipedia:WikiProject, so Project: (or if we must Wikiproject:) is an improvement. Related to that, the WikiProject stuff feels like a different animal than the process and policy (and these should just stay where they are). The project stuff is more content-related than the rest of the Wikipedia space stuff. So I would think along the same lines of reasoning why the Portal stuff is separate from article space, this should be separate also. —Doug&;nbsp;Bell ^talk 10:29, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

"Project:" cannot be used, as it is a special term in Mediawiki to link to the project namespace, i.e. the Wikipedia namespace. For instance, see Project:Copyrights. It could not, therefore, be used for anything else. Sam Korn ^(smoddy) 00:02, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

As for abbreviation, how about renaming them all to "Wikipedia task forces" (WTF), since that's what they are. (And right after I wrote that sentence I looked at the abbreviation and laughed...) Sooo, maybe just "Task force" or "WikiTask" or some such name. This would also help deal with the confusion over the fact that the "Wikipedia:" namespace is technically the "Project" namespace for Wikipedia. - jc37 13:32, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

That's a really unfortunate abbreviation... MER-C 13:35, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Bad idea; aside, even, from the abbreviation, the term "task force" is already in common usage to refer to integrated sub-groups of larger projects. Kirill Lokshin 19:21, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Content-related namespace

I've personally been intriged by namespaces myself : )
The question I have is where do we draw the line between WikiProjects, and "content-related" pages? The two seem to be interlaced. The difference, as I noted in the discussion above, the Wikiprojects are task forces, which rather heavily use the content-related pages as reference.

Something I've been thinking about for awhile (along the "content-related" line of thought) is that MoS should be its own namespace. This wouldn't be much different than how Portal, or Help have been (re)moved from Project space ("Wikipedia:" space).

Manual of Style (which could be abbreviated MoS or MOS or mos, as seems to be the current convention), would include all "content-related" policies, guidelines and essays, which would of course include the MoS pages. (There are many more, like WP:BLP.) This would also remove the need for many of the parenthetical disambiguations.

Ideally, Naming conventions would have its own namespace as well (once again, removing parentheticals), but it could at least be included with the MoS namespace. (Naming conventions, while similar, is a "slightly different" thing than content.)

This gives us two new namespaces which would be interrelated: The MoS provides the content reference for the TFs. And the TFs, utilising that reference, can then target any namespace content as its focus.

If this is done (WikiProject/TF space, MoS space, and NC space), what would that leave in "Wikipedia" space? Essentially policies/guidelines/essays related to user behavior; misc essays about wikipedia or wikipedians; humour pages; and "Help-style pages that don't quite qualify to be moved/merged (or just haven't been moved/merged) to the "Help" namespace. (WP:Image seems to at least somewhat duplicate Help:Image, and partially include a MoS about images as well.)

So essentially what's left is a "Wikipedian" namespace.

So "in a nutshell":

• Create a Task Force namespace of "some name"
• Create a Manual of Style namespace (and maybe a Naming Conventions one as well)
• Move/merge help-related pages to the Help namespace.
• Rename the Wikipedia namespace to the Wikipedian namespace

I think that this would be clear, and useful for us all. - jc37 13:32, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Just so you guys don't embark on something you regret, make sure you contact all the WikiProjects before even considering doing any namespace change. I can already see Mathbot going berserk over such a radical change which means loosing about 400K+ assessments/version changes. I urge you guys to discuss this in a broader community other than proposals, I was lucky to drop by to tell you that. Lincher 18:30, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

"New namespaces" should be in a FAQ or perennial proposal somewhere.

There are only nine namespaces (excluding the talk ones, which every namespace gets). To get a new namespace, you'd have to come up with something that's one of the top 10 most important types of content, and most of the suggestions above aren't top-ten.

Furthermore, many of the namespaces exist for clear technical reasons (eg. MediaWiki:, Image:, Category:, and (historically) Template:), and only a handful exist for content-separation reasons (Talk:, Wikipedia:, Help: and Portal:), so you really need to come up with a top-5 most important classification of content. Historically, Wikipedia: and mainspace have been very large tents... and there isn't a clear reason to change that. Wikipedia: holds a lot of different articles... By volume, AfD clearly takes up the most space, and XfD and RfA pages are an ever-growing segment as well. MoS and Wikiprojects and policy/proposals/rejects take up space too. But I don't think there's a clear need to separate them when they're generally clearly marked. Similarly, mainspace includes a variety of types of pages: proper encyclopedic articles, disambiguation pages (which get to ignore most MoS guidelines), and lists, as well as other non-prose pages. Especially for Wikipedia:, I think it's more or less accepted that a variety of different content will be located there. --Interiot 19:00, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Seconded. There's no benefit to making an artificial distinction between WikiProject stuff and all the other material that's in the Wikipedia namespace; the important point is that they're all Wikipedia-internal meta-work (as opposed to articles, images, etc.).

(Not to mention that the amount of work needed to move the thousands of pages in question to a new namespace would be simply insane.) Kirill Lokshin 19:15, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

New Photo Matching Service

Have you seen an article on wikipedia that needs a photograph but you can't travel a thousand miles to take it? Do you love taking pictures for the wiki but aren't sure what our needs are? I've created Wikipedia:Photo Matching Service to solve both problems by matching photographers with articles that need photos. To a certain extent it duplicates Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Photographers, but its a bit more useful for finding someone to take a photo because its sorted by location. Additionally, the page also includes a list of needed photos for any given location so anybody can see what photos we need and take them for us even if that person doesn't want to list themselves as a photographer. Anyway, the page is pretty bare-bones at the moment and I would appreciate any comments that people have. GabrielF 17:58, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi - It seems you're thinking along rather the same lines as User:Gphoto and me who are trying to revisalize Wikipedia:WikiProject Photography. Your idea is a good one, though place-level photo requests are already available via {{reqphotoin}}, with volunteers and their locations listed at Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Photographers. The existing setup can certainly be improved, though, and in particular I'm hoping to get some way of grouping requests not only by location but also by subject-matter (nature, household objects etc) as well as by type of photo (close-up etc). That's being worked on by User:Doug Bell. How about joining forces for a team effort? --MichaelMaggs 18:42, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Easier Citations

It seems almost pointless to ad {{sources}} on pages as 95% of articles on wikipedia are unsourced. I'll admit I almost never cite sources, the entire formating of different types becomes such a burden that many persons don't even attempts it. I'd like to see something a little simpler to encourage users to cite sources. Perhaps amungst these insert boxes? RichMac (Talk) 08:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

• What do you mean by "amungst these insert boxes"? (Radiant) 11:51, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand: Do you not leave any citation information? No inline html link or statement of source ("In the book I Can't Believe How Hard I Hit Francince,") or secret HTML comment? Those are all pretty simple, although the first two are preferable. At least give another editor the option to check your work and maybe take the time to fix your citation instead of just deleting it. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 12:06, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have been more clear. I meant the insert boxes on the edit screen. I was just thining a simple link that would impose cite book or cite website might help make sources a little more prevelant and make life a little simplier for the newbies... ie myself RichMac (Talk) 12:31, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

If you memorize these, they'll cover about 95% of the cases you'll run into:

• {{reflist}}
• <ref>[http://link/ title], Publisher.</ref>
• <ref>{{cite web|url=http://.../|title=Title of the piece|publisher=[[BBC]]|date=2006-11-20|accessdate=2006-11-30}}</ref>

I guess you could have one button that adds == References ==\n{{reflist}}" and another button that adds a {{cite web}} with the most important fields listed? --Interiot 23:55, 30 November 2006 (UTC) --Interiot 23:55, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

That would be the ideal. Especially for the novice user. Most stubs seem to be created by new users and sourcing them seems like an unsermountable task. RichMac (Talk) 03:14, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I know there are different ways of doing things, and while merely using {{reflist}} works in some cases, it doesn't allow for inline citation. Writing it like this:

==References==

<div class="reflist <!--

-->{{#if: 
   | {{#iferror: {{#ifexpr: 1 > 1 }}
     | references-column-width 
     | references-column-count references-column-count-{{{1}}} }}
   | {{#if: 
     | references-column-width }} }}" style="<!--
-->{{#if: 
   | {{#iferror: {{#ifexpr: 1 > 1 }}
     | column-width: {{{1}}};
     | column-count: {{{1}}}; }}
   | {{#if: 
     | column-width: {{{colwidth}}}; }} }} list-style-type: <!--
-->{{#switch: 
   | upper-alpha
   | upper-roman
   | lower-alpha
   | lower-greek
   | lower-roman = {{{group}}}
   | #default = decimal}};">

{{#tag:references||group=}}</div> non-inline refs go here, like those from above

allows for someone to use either one. {{refs}} puts in the code necessary for inline citations. -ΖαππερΝαππερ ^Babel_Alexandria 13:18, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Gaeilge sa bhficipéid (Irish in wikipedia)

I am not an expert on the Irish language, nor am I a fluent gaelgóir, however, the use of the word "Vicipéid" as the title for the Irish language version of wikipedia can not be correct, as there is no V in the irish language. Would the name not be far more suited as "An Bhficipéid"? or something along these lines.

Mise le meas, Robeárd MacThoirealaigh

• You should probably ask this on Meta ([meta.wikipedia.org]), since this is not something the English-language version of Wikipedia can decide on. (Radiant) 11:51, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Date pointers -- to keep articles current

Some entries written in the future tense have a definite "expiration date" -- a point when the future becomes the past. Tracking such entries could be useful for updating articles.

Proposal:

A way for "tagging" any entries subject to change in the near future, so they could be indexed and monitored, and easier to locate. Words, phrases and even predictive dates can be tagged.

Examples:

1. A cosmic body that might be visible with a telescope at *some* date and time. If that entry stays unchanged after the specified date, it's still referring to the future after it's happened already.

2. Mention of a president (whether of a club, nation, or business) might change to "former president" at a given date, but the article might not reflect that.

3. Phrases like "will soon be", "up for reelection" or "planning to introduce" will likely be tagged.

Method:

Each date pointer could send a duplicate tag to one central place; the first page contains a list of all tags bearing today's date, and a sidebar lists date pointers which haven't been "updated" yet (special labels could mark the updated ones, for efficiency).

Users can note the approximate date on which to expect a possible change. Anyone else may udpate a tag with a new approximate date if the entry is still relevant. Boozerker 22:11, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

See WP:DATED which discusses some of the ways to deal with statements that date quickly. What you are suggesting seems to be covered by {{update after}} Tra (Talk) 00:24, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Reference Desk

A recent discussion has cropped up over whether the Reference Desk has become too in-jokey and full of inappropriate comments. Please see Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#The tone of the Reference Desk and discuss there. User:Zoe|(talk) 18:31, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

WikiCV

Just a thought: An increasing number of entries in the wikipedia seems to be people who create entries about themselves. A bit pathetic maybe, but apparently there is a need for that.

Would it be possible to create a special Wiki for CVs? This would allow people to create entries about themselves, and they don't have to bother about making it 'sound like a dictionary entry'...

Another possible Wiki could be for company presentations...

(I'm discovering new features at the Wiki every day, so this may already exist...)

Similar proposals have been brought up before. One major concern, because the information is not verifiable, how do you make sure that people do not simply create attack pages? Because Wikipedia articles need to be verifiable, we know that some information is in many books with known authors you can find in library, or reliable magazines, academic journals, etc. With a biographical directory, how do we know that www.billjones.com is not a fraudulent "source" to attack the real person, who has info on www.billjones.org (and how do you distinguish between the hundreds of real Bill Jones'). It is not a workable project, and it also is not within the educational mission of the Wikimedia Foundation. —Centrx→talk • 10:37, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

A separate Wiki, using the MediaWiki software but not under the Wikipedia aegis, is entirely possible, if you want to set one up. User:Zoe|(talk) 17:16, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. See also WikiCities, Wikia, this download page and many other webhosts. (Radiant) 11:52, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure why one would want a wiki for CVs. A person's CV is not something that will be maintained or improved by collaborative editing. People upload entries about themselves here because Wikipedia can be used as a free webhost, not because they want other people to edit it. Choess 16:56, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

homepage search field

I use the search facility a lot and am one of many typists who resent having to use the mouse; would it be possible to put the cursor ("focus") automatically in the search field when the page opens? Users then can start typing immediately, without grappling for the mouse first.... Yours..... Mark

• Quite possibly, but you'd have to ask the Developers over at Bugzilla since this requires a software change. (Radiant) 10:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

  The search field is left out of focus so that you can use the arrow keys to scroll down the page (this doesn't work with a test box in focus). You can get the behaviour you desire, however, by using the multilingual homepage at http://www.wikipedia.org/. Tra (Talk) 00:09, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

• You might be able to change it with a custom style javascript or css for your own account. Autofocus can be pretty annoying. When I am automatically sent to Google (as homepage on some browsers), it focuses on the search box while I am typing an URL in the address bar, resulting in stuff not going where it is supposed to go. - Mgm|^(talk) 13:19, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

List of Effect Libraries

Is there a page that lists effect libraries like script.aculo.us?--//Mac Lover ^Talk_C 05:14, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

• I'm pretty sure this is not a Wikipedia proposal. Please visit the reference desk. - Mgm|^(talk) 13:19, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh, sorry. I guess I just forgot. Thanks. --//Mac Lover ^Talk_C 03:48, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Live Collaboration

Hello, everyone! I am interested in doing a Live Collaboration via Google Docs (formerly Writely) sometime later this week. If you are interested, please join me in discussion here. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 02:31, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Automatic charts

There is currently an effort by some users to migrate charts to the svg format. This project is a step in the right direction, but I think we could go much further. We could keep data in separate text files (.dat). Then we could use a template or a special kind of link (just like the one to insert images) to create charts. For example, the world population could be kept in a file called world_population.dat which contains lines like the following:

1995 5674380

2000 6070581

2005 6453628

In the world population article, we would just add the following:

{{chart | data = world_population.dat | type = line }}

The template would generate an svg file which would then appear in the article.

So when the world population statistics come out for 2010, all we would have to do is add one more line to the .dat file and all the charts that use this data would get updated automatically. Another advantage is that the charts on Wikipedia would have a uniform look. Finally, generating all the charts from the same script makes it very easy to change the look and feel of all of them at once.

I just looked at the types types of charts available in OpenOffice.org Calc. Most charts fall into one of the following eight types:

• lines
• areas
• columns
• bars
• pies
• xy
• stock

with a few variants for each type, e.g.:

• normal
• stacked
• symbols

Of course there are many other possible options when you create a chart (e.g. the range of the x axis), but we could get by with a minimal subset at first. 64.229.249.9 22:00, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

This is, of course, a great idea. Please suggest it at MediaWiki Bugzilla. This might not even be as scary an extension as it appears if we exploit an existing graphing package. Deco 01:24, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Pop-up Summaries

I probably have not looked hard enough for this, but a totally cool and obvious addition to Wikipedia would be to have a

pop-up containing a summary (if available) for a link when then cursor hovers over a link for more than 2 seconds.

This could be achieved using AJAX to reduce server load.

I know I want a quick precis some times and do not want to navigate away from the article I am reading.

As I said, I assume this has been suggested before. Please send me in the right direction! - — Preceding unsigned comment added by Penguin020 (talk • contribs)

There is Wikipedia:Popups - an extension to the wikipedia navigation system which seems to function as you say. It takes about 30 seconds to install / enable and doesn't require any downloads. --Neo 09:05, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

The "summary" this uses, incidentally, is the first paragraph + first image of the article. It's a very good example of why keeping to the standard style is helpful... Shimgray | talk | 20:19, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

CD

I also propose the option to buy a CD for Wikipedia, a bit like a souped up version of encarta. The system could be regularly updated via the internet, as well as bringing more money into wikipedia

Brilliburger 19:03, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Compressed, the current Wikipedia text is 1.8 GB. Images are something like 70 GB. It wouldn't all fit on a CD, though there are projects (e.g. WP:1.0) working to create selected offerings on CD. Dragons flight 19:30, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

See 2006 Wikipedia CD Selection if you're interested in a partial CD suitable for children. I think, though, that Wikipedia could probably fit on one Blu-Ray disc if we were willing to shrink the multi-megapixel images and maybe rasterize the more complex SVGs. NeonMerlin 13:28, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Saving pages offline

I propose that an option to save pages offline and store them as files on your computer/laptop should be added. A viewer (like google video player) could be downloaded to read the files.

Brilliburger 19:03, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

• Why use a viewer when you already have a browser. I can select "Save as" from the file menu in my browser when reading Wikipedia. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:52, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

People could also download wikipedia 1.0 or whatever. People don't want to install software. 99.99 percont of OSs have some way of showing html visually.--//Mac Lover ^Talk_C 23:53, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

new article entitled "List of area code cross-references"

As a programmer I often consult the Wikipedia to find data to help me create help files or references. A good example is the list of area codes contained in the Wikipedia. From this list I have created an array to index City and State using area code. Problem is that sometimes programs need to provide users with even more information. For instance, if the program is calculating sunset and sunrise it needs to know latitude and longitude as well as the local time zone. The program could ask the user to input this information but if he uses his modem for dialup chances are he already provided the answer.

Since Windows XP has no provision to provide user location information beyond area code such programs need to be able to use this info to get whatever else it needs. Since others may have a similar need I would like to create an article entitled "List of area code cross-references" in either CSV comma delimted or in wikitable format depending upon the preference of each editor who responds. Adaptron 07:36, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Field#	Field Name	Data Type	Field Description
1	COUNTRY CODE	nchar(3)	Three-digit national prefix for dialing TO listed country FROM another country.
2	IDD PREFIX	nchar(4)	Three-digit international prefix for dialing FROM listed country TO another country.
3	NDD PREFIX	nchar(3)	Three-digit intranational prefix for dialing WITHIN the same country.
4	NPA	nchar(3)	Three-digit North American Numbering Plan Area Code.
5	NXX	nchar(3)	Three digit local telephone number exchange.
6	COUNTRY	char(2)	Two character ISO 3166-1 country code.
7	STATE	char(2)	Two letter USPS state abbreviation.
8	CITY	vchar(35)	Name of city.
9	ZIPCODE_POSTALCODE	nchar(7)	ZIP code or postal code.
10	COUNTY	vchar(25)	Name of county.
11	LATITUDE	nchar(4-10)	Signed decimal representation of latitude.
12	LONGITUDE	nchar(4-10)	Signed decimal representation of longitude.
13	TIME ZONE	nchar(3)	Signed integer representation of offset from UTC.

Format:

COUNTRY CODE, IDD PREFIX, NDD PREFIX, NPA, NXX, COUNTRY, STATE, CITY, ZIPCODE_POSTALCODE, COUNTY, LATITUDE, LONGITUDE, TIME ZONE

COUNTRY CODE

IDD PREFIX

NDD PREFIX

NPA

NXX

COUNTRY

STATE

CITY

ZIPCODE_POSTALCODE

COUNTY

LATITUDE

LONGITUDE

TIME ZONE

Detail

+1,011,1,813,231,US,FL,TAMPA,33610-1029,HILLSBOROUGH,28.015502,-82.437883,-5

+1

11

1

813

231

US

FL

TAMPA

33610-1029

HILLSBOROUGH

28.015502

-82.437883

-5

I see you have been BOLD and created the article. You may wish to request feedback on it. Do note that Wikipedia is not a directory or an indiscriminate collection of information. (I'm not saying your article is; but you may wish to bear that in mind.) --J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:39, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

List of User Add-Ons

I think that it would be good if there was a list/catagory where all the "user add-ons" (like the scripts a person can add to thier monobook.js files, or the monobook.css files, if they use monobook.) are listed, as there are plenty of them, but they're hard to find, as there is no list or catagory where they are.--//Mac Lover ^Talk_C 02:51, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts, Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts and m:Gallery of user styles. Tra (Talk) 03:13, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Okay, but those are 3 different places, I was thinking about 1 place.--//Mac Lover ^Talk_C 05:16, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Automatic transliteration for languages with different orthographies?

Some languages do have several official written forms, the different wikipedia language projects however just choose one most common ones to use. What I was thinking of, would be an option of automatic transliteration for those languages in question (such as Serbian) - having an additional page in the other writing for each article - and each edit would automatically result in an tranliterated update in the sister page. This way, Belarusian wiki, would there be a lacinka version, would be accessable to Polish speakers; Croats could use the Serbian one; Tojik could be used by Persians etc. Aside from that people in different counties may use the same language, but different writing systems - such as the Molodvans and Romanians (their two wikipedias were recently merged after some hot debates), or Chechens living outside Russia; It maybe should have been submitted as a software feature request via the bug report thing, but, well, let's first hear what you think about it! It's somewhat politically controversial after all. Mind that the languages in question (Yiddish, Serbian, Chechen etc.) do not have that many articles and wouldn't take that much space in doubled form. EDIT: Actually, serbian wikipedia works exactly that way. The Azeri or Roma versions, however, do it in a strange way. The front page in both is typed in two scripts, articles seem to be random - I rephraze the question: What about using the Serbian way as standard for the diff. lang.? Maybe for am./br. English as well? Turkmenbashy 13:51, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I aggree with this idea. It could be applied to so many language sets. List of languages to which transliteration can be applied: Hindi and Urdu (there are many online and offline transliteration tools availble for free) Charles.2345 16:20, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Hereby I quote LuYu from Slashdot.com "In my opinion, the biggest division is caused by encoding systems. The separation of Chinese writing into Simplified and Traditional, and Wikipedia's initial choice to support Simplified as "Chinese" forced one version of people's perception to dominate. However, even though many articles are now in Traditional Chinese, this artificial separation still affects the exchange of information greatly. The real solution is that software has got to stop treating Simplified and Traditional Chinese as separate languages. Which glyphs are viewed should be a simple matter of user preference. I should never have to see Simplified or Traditional Characters if I do not want to. This way, virtual borders between "Communist China" and "Traditional China" will not exist. Chinese will be one unifying (and unified) writing system again -- as it has been since 221 BC. " Therefor it would also make sance to add an option to view Wikipedia in Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese.84.167.243.126 19:11, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (comedy)

Could some editors take a look at Wikipedia:Notability (comedy)? It has already been used six times in AfD discussions:

1. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/All Sorts of Trouble for the Boy in the Bubble Sketch Comedy
2. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Swami X
3. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Foe Pa
4. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Women Fully Clothed
5. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Memphis Improvisational Theatre
6. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Wiseguys: Comedy You Can't Refuse

The most recent discussions, for the Wiseguys, highlighted some area of the guideline that possibly might be improved/clarified, so I will take a look at doing that. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 07:47, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

This proposed guideline is a mess. There are, what, over a DOZEN secondary inclusion criteria? That is rediculous. When any guideline includes any criteria over the primary notability criteria it should do so only for specific, narrowly defined reasons. For a good example of a guideline that does this, see WP:CORP. If there are not non-trivial third party references to cite in an article, we can't include enough information to make the subject notable. All secondary criteria are either redunant with the primary criteria (and thus pointless) or they extend it beyond what can be used to write a good article. In the WP:CORP example, the secondary criteria DO extend inclusion to articles otherwise not-notable, but only for a narrowly defined reason, which is the solution to a unique problem. There is no evidence that ANY of the secondary criteria in this guideline serve any purpose except to allow editors to circumvent the clearly defined standards of the Primary Notability Criteria which only allows for the creation of substandard or unverifiable articles. --Jayron32 06:19, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I adopted this from Wikipedia:Notability (music), and other than modifications for the genre, it is largely very similar. I'm not really sure I understand how to address your arguments. Actually, I'm not really sure I understand your arguments. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 21:53, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

"For other uses" of what?

We have this template {{otheruses}}. It's very convenient for linking to a disambiguation page, printing out:

For other uses, see Pagename (disambiguation).

But imagine yourself as a first-time visitor, new user, or someone whose first language is not English. In many contexts, it reads as if it's saying "For other uses of this article's subject", instead of "For articles on different subjects that have the same name as this one".

When someone sees "For other uses, see Woman (disambiguation).", do they think "For other uses of women", or do they think "For other uses of the term 'woman'"? It doesn't even make sense in certain contexts, like "For other uses, see William Herschel (disambiguation)."

I and several other people think it needs to be worded better. There have been several suggestions, but none have stuck. Either they aren't "inaccurate" to the purpose of disambiguation pages ("not all the articles on a disambig have 'similar names'!") or people just want things to be done the way they always have been. But I bet someone can come up with a clear, concise, accurate phrase. Some of the ideas so far:

• For other meanings, see...
• For other senses, see...
• For other articles with similar names, see...
• Not what you were looking for? Try...
• There are other articles with similar names. See PageName (disambiguation) if this isn't what you were looking for.
• Disambiguation: for other uses, see...
• For other uses of this term, see...

Please suggest alternatives. See Template talk:otheruses and Talk:Disambiguation. — Omegatron 04:44, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Haven't been to those talk pages yet, but a quick fix might be a new otheruses template:

For {{{1|other uses}}}, see [[{{PAGENAME}} (disambiguation)]]

or

For {{{1|other uses}}}, see [[{{{2}}}|{{{3}}}]]

Individualizing the treatment of articles with regard to the wording of the template might help resolve the ambiguity inherent in the template and its wide use. Nihiltres 05:00, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think making the template more complicated helps anything. Why must it be a variation on "For other x"? — Omegatron 08:29, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

AFAIC, {{Otheruses}} is just fine most of the time. Where some variation is appropriate, just use {{dablink}}. I don't see much point to constructed an elaborate array of templates -- but then there are a lot of things on WP that I don't really see the point of (like stub-sorting, or overly specific categorization). older ≠ wiser 14:11, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

No offense but anyone who reads "for other uses, see Woman (disambiguation)" and thinks "other uses of women" needs to get their head examined. I personally think that on the long run, uniformity in the presentation is more important than avoiding problems with the occasional idiot. That being said, I don't mind tweaking the wording of the template but I'd rather have a single template that we use in all situations, for the sake of uniformity of presentation. Pascal.Tesson 01:05, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Haven't been to those talk pages yet, but... That is where you should take up this discussion. That's where all the previous discussion is stored and that's where all the dab experts hang out. Read first, read deep, then comment. Thank you. John Reid ° 09:54, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm trying to bring more people into the discussion. — Omegatron 00:27, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I think "For other meanings" is the best alternative. Many Wikipedia readers are not native speakers of English. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:49, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Policy: Television

I propose we get a policy going on television personalities, because WP:BIO isn't really enough and there is a bit of controvery in some AfD debates. Atlantis Hawk 07:47, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

• What, specifically, do you suggest? Are we too quick to delete TV personalities? Or too quick to keep them? It might help if you link to some of the relevant AFD debates. (Radiant) 11:50, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
• I agree with Radiant, how specifically would it be differerent than WP:BIO? BIO criteria seems quite approriate and relevant for TV personalities to me... - Tutmosis 17:12, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
  • WP:BIO currently isn't being applied properly to reality contestants. There is a decided lack of discussion regarding it at WP:BIO, to boot. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:17, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Can you give an example of that? The primary notability criterion would seem to be pretty simple to apply to !reality show contestants; the major problem people have in applying it is confusion over the difference between the topic of the article being the subject of the source or merely mentioned there. JChap2007 18:24, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Badlydrawnjeff said the magic word himself: contestants. A contestant is just that. That the contest was televised makes no difference unless we want to hand out articles to everyone who was ever a contestant on Match Game and Wheel of Fortune. Contestants, be they on game shows or reality shows, are not actors and actresses. They are not emcees, hosts or personalities. They are simply... contestants. And that doesn't automatically imbue notability. wikipediatrix 18:43, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
      • I agree...articles for every contestant from every game show is by no means neccesary, but some (Michael Larson, Ken Jennings) are probably exceptions. But then that brings up the question of where to draw the line. Paragon12321 00:33, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
        • It seems that particular line would be if the contestant is ever mentioned (in reliable sources) in a different context than the show itself. If not, all sources are really talking about the show as a whole, and the contestant should redirect there. (Radiant) 09:38, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
• Instead of "in a different context than the show itself", I'd say "in a non-trivial publication that focused on the person in question rather than the show". The show can still be mentioned. - Mgm|^(talk) 13:26, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I've been thinking about this subject recently and tried to organize my thoughts at User:Dina/Workshop/Reality Television Characters. Please edit mercilessly, or give feedback. Cheers. Dina 13:54, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Change The Deletion Policy

I think we should shange the deltion policy to where if follows all sensiable rules and if it does not hurt anything we should keep it. A article was recently deleted because it did not have importance on the subject, and that was the only reason it ws deleted.The topic did have importance to some people-just not the administrator that saw- so there was no reason to delete it. The people of that fourm created it to have a quick helpers guide and overview for members on it. The article helped some and hurt nobody so there was no real reason to delete it, and this is why i think we should change the deletion policy to where as long the article follows all other rules than the importance rule and it is not spam it should stay. Spartan 7 04:33, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Even though anyone is free to edit wikipedia, the project is about building an encyclopedia. In the course of this, we've had to develop certain standards and policies. An important one helps us define not what WP is, but what wikipedia is not. Among other things, it is not a how-to guide. Please don't be discouraged by a bad experience, there are many ways you could help contribute to wikipedia; writing a whole article from the ground up is a tough one; maybe it would be better to start small and work a little bit on other articles while you get to know the ropes. --Doc Tropics ^{Message in a bottle} 09:18, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Why does the forum need to use Wikipedia space for their forum-specific information? Why can't it be stored on the forum's webpage? User:Zoe|(talk) 22:52, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I think some people are wa-a-a-a-a-y too overzealous to delete, and adhere to all sorts of letters of policies that get in the way of building a unique and reliable encyclopedia. I am completely in favor of revisiting the subject on many fronts. CyberAnth 22:58, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Deletion is largely based on the ability (actually, the lack thereof) to provide reliable, third party sources which can be referenced to write an encyclopedia article about something notable. If an article cannot be referenced to provide more information than say, a telephone book or high school yearbook entry, would provide, it has got to go. Every fact in an article should be verifiable. If all of the verifiable facts are non-notable, then the article should be deleted. It is that simple. It has nothing to do with harm. Likewise, there should be no benefit to having an article here. If deleting an article makes its subject less notable in the world, it didn't belong here in the first place. --Jayron32 06:11, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

We've seen this complaint a thousand times, so let us go over all the points. First, to user Spartan7. The point of Wikipedia is to provide useful information not a forum guide for members of a forum. Period. The fact that you think it is important does not mean others do. If it "was" important, there would be some sources which would point out it's notability. Without those, why should there be an article on it? To CyberAnth...I'm really wondering if you realize what you said. A reliable encyclopedia does not just include articles about anything, especialy things that aren't verifiable, noteworthy, and encyclopedic. I cannot stress this enough : the goal of an encyclopedia should be factual, notable, verified, encyclopedic content, not "what you think should be here". The more things of that nature that get added, the tighter the deletion, exclusion, and removal policies get. Dismissing them as "letters of policies" only makes you look like someone more concerned with pushing what they think belongs rather than actually trying to contribute something useful. --Elaragirl^Talk|Count 17:14, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikicite program - proposed name change

Wikicite is a .NET program that helps people to properly reference their Wikipedia articles. Recently User:CyberAnth attempted to create an article about it, but the article was rapidly deleted. CyberAnth created the article because he felt Wikicite was a valuable tool but it is very difficult to find without an article on Wikipedia that shows up in a search.

One of the issues contributing to the difficulty in searching is that Wikicite is also the name of a template, and a (unrelated) project. Some people have suggested a name change for the Wikicite program to avoid such confusion. But what should the new name be?

As the author of the Wikicite program I will go with a reasonable consensus. So its over to Wikipedians to decide on a new name, or to keep it as Wikicite. To find out more about the Wikicite program, take a look at User:Dmoss/Wikicite. To follow the discussion so far, take a look at User talk:Dmoss/Wikicite. Over to you. What should we call it? --Dave 23:23, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

From your dscription it sounds more like something that should be mentioned in Wikipedia: name space. How about wikiref or wikireference? ~ trialsanderrors 01:40, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Names mentioned at User_talk:Dmoss/Wikicite include WikeRef, WikiCitator, WikiBiblio, EasyCite, SimpleCite and QuickCite. I favor keeping it as Wiki[Something]--keeping "Wiki" in the name. CyberAnth 07:34, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

If the desire is to keep "Wiki" in the name, I'd go with "WikiRef", "Wikiref", or "wikiref". Reference is synonymous with citation. The citation templates use the <ref> and </ref> codes so there is a parallel there and a memory "hook". "WikiReference" or "Wikireference" are too long, in my opinion. The name also needs to be a generic "umbrella" name; the tool already handles three varieties of citation templates for web, book, and journal, and I believe Dmoss would like to expand its capabilites in the future.

Since the citation templates are in all lower-case ({{cite web}}, {{cite book}}, etc.), perhaps keeping the name in all lower-case as well—"wikiref"—would be appropriate.—Chidom ^talk  12:53, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

• And don't forget to put it in the Wikipedia namespace. It's not a good idea for an article. (Also, I link on WP:TOOLS may be appropriate if it works. - Mgm|^(talk) 13:29, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

"WikiRef" is cool. CyberAnth 04:00, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikilyrics

I thought it'd be sweet to have a lyrics section. I can never find the lyrics to my music, so I could just post it! So everyone will eventually make the biggest lyrics site around.

Try http://www.azlyrics.com . —Mets501 (talk) 19:42, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikisource does lyrics but many song lyrics are copyrighted, so they cannot be included. Tra (Talk) 20:16, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Why does this keep coming up every week? Durova^Charge! 02:06, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

• Another task for WP:PEREN? (Radiant) 10:48, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
• Um, copyvios anyone? The ubiquitousness of lyrics sites on the web seems to give many people the impression that lyrics are in the public domain. They are not. They belong to their copyright holders, and we, nor anyone else, does not have the right to reproduce them without permission. Period. Full Stop. --Jayron32 06:07, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Nor may we link to sites which violate copyright. User:Zoe|(talk) 19:56, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
    • For details see Wikipedia:External_links#Restrictions_on_linking. Deco 01:30, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

LyricWiki

One of the articles in my watchlist has just been given a {{Lyricwiki}} template, which points to a Wiki with lyrics. Am I the only one who thinks this is not different from creating a {{piratebay}} template to point to copyrighted software torrents? -- ReyBrujo 03:51, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Bohemian Rhapsody has one of these. I'm tempted to edit the {{Lyricwiki}} to be blank. Comments please on the template talk page Template_talk:LyricWiki. PeterGrecian 15:04, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

There is an edit war between two sites with copyright violating lyrics. See the edit history of Tie Your Mother Down. Warning: obscene username used. Is there a good way of bringing this to the attention of administrators ? PeterGrecian 15:11, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

He has already been blocked indefinitely. -- ReyBrujo 16:01, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

see Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 December 5 for action on this. PeterGrecian 17:34, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Latin transliteration of Indic scripts in editing

Kindly provide Tamil Lexicon = IAST = ISO 15919 characters among the clickable ones below the edit window. This is the standard system to transliterate the Indic scripts into Latin, and has a billion potential users. —Masatran 13:34, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Fully locking closed discussions: afd / tfd / cfd / mfd

I was wondering how come we don't fully lock closed afd/tfd/cfd/mfd discussions? since no one is adviced to edit them after they are finished anyway. Who actually checks the history when looking at old discussion to see that they are no temperered with? Furthermore since an admin closes the discussion it would be pretty convenient to lock it at the same time. - Tutmosis 22:20, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

You should probably take this to Wikipedia talk:Protection policy. Fagstein 23:17, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

New Project for Physics

I think there should be a new wiki project for Physics. It would include articles for how specific things work. Like there may be an article just on Speakers. The content would include (in more detail) how the voice coil creates an electro-magnetic field to act against the magnet to push the cone up and down to make pressure waves that produce sound. And then it can have reference links to an article on electromagnetism, and pressure waves (sound), etc. The difference between this project and a regular encyclopedia will be that this will directly focus on how things work and the physics aspect of it, and it won't have much to do about the history or pop-culture (unless it would also include how/why it was invented/realized).

I figured a good name for it would be Wikinstein, for ol' Einstein. But people would probably confuse it with Frankenstein - who is a great work of physics himself; however, as of now, he is only fictional.

I don't think a whole new project would be needed just for that. You could probably just add that information to its Wikipedia article. If, however, you still want to start a new project, try m:Proposals for new projects. Tra (Talk) 19:03, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

As an aside, a lot of that information (from your specific example on speakers) is already in our article on loudspeakers. Still, if you wanted to start a How Things Work wikiproject you might meet with some interest. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:09, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Flagging blocked users

At the moment there is a mechanism that allows a user or an IP to see when they have new messages; this box appears at the top of every page until the message is read. I propose that we have something similar for blocked users: to have a message, at the top of each and every page they look at, reminding them they have been blocked for bad behaviour - including the blocking time, date and reason.

• Most useful in schools - if someone is blocked, it is immediately obvious to teachers in which class a block was raised, and that can possibly be pinned straight onto a person. Accountability increases, and hopefully reduces the rate of vandalism. More visible to a non-WPer than finding the talk page and then searching down it to find the reason.
• Marginally useful for dynamic IPs - same reason of visibility, though this time to innocent parties who arrive on the back end of someone else's ban.
• Deterrent - being blocked from WP does not affect the ability of the user to research content; I don't believe that ability should be restricted, but it at least makes printing the page more difficult without flagging the vandal student.
• Deterrent - for those who never found the talk page, and the warnings on it. I thought the talk page was obvious, until I saw someone blithely researching pages with a new-messages box at the top of his screen, who simply determinedly checked his email more often.
• May be clearer to innocents who want to edit a page? If the message begins "This (IP, machine, computer?) was blocked from editing Wikipedia on..." it may be more informative than the current message recieved when a blocked user hits edit - not sure how true this is, haven't been banned!

Negatives:

• May aggravate the problem of people going round on multiple machines and getting banned in as many places as possible?

It should hopefully be simple to implement since the mechanism is already present from the new-message dialog. I want to propose the inclusion of latest-warning at the top of the page instead, but I think that's probably too complicated for now and would really be a second version of this proposal. Please add +ve/-ve to the list above if you think of any! --Firien § 10:35, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

What an unnecessarily aggressive, almost vindictive proposal! I am pleased to see the complete lack of support so far. Sumahoy 03:29, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with this. It should be as clear as possible to a new user that their IP has been blocked so that they can ask for it to be unblocked or they can register if they want to edit. This could make it easier for well-meaning editors to use IPs that have been blocked by others' actions. --Chris Griswold (☎☓)

Closing deletion debates

I'm currently working on a new way to archive deletion review debates, which if it works could eventually replace the archiving system at all XfD's. I'm soliciting feedback, both technical and procedural, on the idea. An example is here; User:Trialsanderrors/DRV, discussion at User talk:Trialsanderrors/DRV. Thanks, trialsanderrors 08:37, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Nice. Very stylish, and it would be a lot easier on your eyes in the list-closed processes. I'm not sure how this would work for AfD and MfD, since they use subpages which don't require list viewing. --tjstrf talk 09:29, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

They're still transcluded on the daily log, and slogging through the logs to find XfD's to comment on (as I assume most regulars do) can become a bit easier when the closed debates are moved out of the way. One problem I see is that the load time might increase. ~ trialsanderrors 20:24, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• Makes viewing archives considerably easier on the eyes. How do the colors work? You need some way to make it clear for closers how to get the color correct. - Mgm|^(talk) 13:34, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

references text box when creating a new page

Why not create a second text box for references when creating a new page. Like when editing a Non-existant red link page, we can have a second text box below the main one with a title of something like "Enter sources used here". It's not a requirement to fill the box out but atleast the creator will be easily exposed to such an option, good example: new user. All the information entered in this box could automatically be put into a software-pasted "Reference" section. How does that sound? - Tutmosis 18:47, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

• I'm not sure that would actually help; "casual" contributors are likely to ignore it as they do now. The 'edit' screen already shows some warnings about sourcing and not making copyvios, but people still do that anyway. (Radiant) 10:51, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
• As far as I am aware it isn't possible for when one follows dangling hyperlinks, such as the aforemented, but one can set things up so that new articles come pre-supplied with text when one clicks on the "Start the article" link on MediaWiki:Noarticletext. It's the same mechanism that is used at Wikipedia:Articles for creation. I've created Template:Noarticletext preload that pre-supplies a "References" section. It would look, and work, something like this:
  • Start the Project:Sandbox/Village Pump Demo article
• Please discuss at MediaWiki talk:Noarticletext#Preload.Uncle G 17:46, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
• Preload text is currently used in WP:AFC and while it requires reliable sources in order for an article to be created many of the people still ignore the warnings. I don't see how a separate box would help if it's not mandatory to use it. - Mgm|^(talk) 13:40, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Overhaul of Userpages, userboxes and user signatures

In response to a number of landmark deletions, I think there needs to be a review of how userpages, userboxes and signatures are used in Wikipedia.

Userpages

The majority of pages I am seeing now are becoming nothing more than social networking pages (which violates WP:NOT), which make no relevance for inclusion into helping Wikipedia. By this I mean pages full of photographs, use of code designed for other pages (ie. picture of the day or the featured article of the day) which bear no relevance for that user or helps that user to contribute, vandalism boxes which encourage vandals to vandalise, lists of personal information and pranks on user pages.

Also included in this proposed overhaul is the use of complex code within userpages, to which I am gulity as charged! A number of comments made to the Esperanza user page award speedy deletion stated that people spending hours designing and redesigning their user pages distracts them from making valuable contributions to the article. At the very least guidance needs to be given regarding the appearance of user pages. Some are turning into mini websites to say the least and less about the main aim of the user pages, which I quote:

“ Your userpage is for anything that is compatible with the Wikipedia project. ”

--tgheretford (talk) 12:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Specific comments

I am inclined to agree with some of the conerns voiced here about uesrpages, especially with respects to categorisation of users. I am not against a little humour going into userpages every now and then - but some of the Wikipedian self-categorisations do seem rather frivolous. I have left details about myself on my userpage which either (a) help to explain my academic credentials (for example, the fact that I teach at a university, have access to a university library and intranet site, have an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. (b) clarify my interests (that I am interested in psychology and belong to the British Psychological Society); (c) give indications of my reasons for interests in particular areas (the fact I am left-handed, suffer from Type One diabetes and have low bone density explains why, for example, I may wish to consult the articles on osteoporosis or hypoglycemia; give indications of my likely bias in editing papers (for example, that I belong to the categories of "Christian Wikipedians" and "Interdenominational Wikipedians" should indicate a fairly liberal Christian perspective which will give Wikipedia readers an indication of my particular bias when editing articles on religion). I thought that categorisation of users was to serve useful functions such as these - all right, I know that on my userpage, one can see I do not smoke and drink tea, but at least the latter would explain my interests in the article on tea. ACEO 20:11, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Social networking is, like it or not, an essential part of community formation, without which we are not a community at all but only a number of individuals who do not work together. I agree that I've seen many user pages that seem nothing but a waste of time but we don't have a minimum ratio of work vs humor edits to which all must conform. If an editor spends essentially all his time in userspace and never does any work, then NOT MySpace/blog comes into play; such editors should be very gently moved in the direction of article editing -- or out. I object to userpages which break my browser; otherwise, I do not endorse the extreme position taken against elaborate userpages.

certain aspects of user pages are valid. Listing articles you have worked on, projects you belong to, tools you find helpful, essays or guidelines you want others to read, background and expertise areas that might help others identify you for help in editing are all very good things. Even barnstars and awards are not entirely objectionable, as it lets others know that the wikipedia community values you as an editor. However, some user pages, as cited above, clearly go over the limit. What should be done? Hopefully nothing more drastic than a friendly comment on a users talk page. We are faced with the possibility of an unenforcable policy that cannot avoid instruction creep in order to be enforcable. All we can do is tell others what to do correctly; it is difficult to enforce any rules on this... --Jayron32 05:58, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

• Social networking is an important part of keeping the project up. I won the latest Esperanza userpage award even though I use it mainly for WP-related info. I think deleting the userpage award project was a mistake. This idea needs to be refined. Vandalboxes are clear counterproductive, but I can't think of anything other than that that's problematic on userpages. - Mgm|^(talk) 13:45, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Userboxes

Specifically the ones in userspace. Although Jimbo Wales on the May 27, 2006 quoted:

“ The middle ground is to let people do as they will in the user space, and merely use reason and argument to teach people over time why one ought not use Wikipedia userpages for political or other campaigns.... while at the same time saying, no, really, the template namespace is not for that, that we do not endorse this behavior. This is the solution that the Germans have put into effect with great results. ”

The number of userboxes that are appearing in userspace which do not help contribute to Wikipedia are now starting to get numerous, and again, I am gulity as charged. For example, having a userbox which says that I have a girlfriend or have a dog or post in a certain forum don't make any contribution to the encyclopedia and in all respect, should be deleted. As I quoted above, userpages should be for anything compatible with Wikipedia, having a userbox that says you have a cat doesn't. Again, a review (but not a mass deletion) into the boxes which have migrated into personal userspace may be required.

--tgheretford (talk) 12:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Specific comments

Sorry to be blunt but where were you during the last year of debate on this subject? Jimbo has been quoted over and over, to indeterminate effect. Almost our entire community has weighed in on the subject of userboxes, sometimes at enormous length. You are not going to settle the issue here by starting all over.

Userbox migration is, for better or worse, in full swing and contents many editors. I've spoken against the idea since we generally agree that userspace enjoys much greater latitude than other namespaces; thus it's more difficult to "review" userspace content. Now that the boxes are there, though, we have to deal with them there. The entire point of the former-German solution was to escape delete-warring over UBX.

Userbox policy has been heavily edited by those on all sides of the issue. It has been taken around and around, run through the wringer, and beaten into a semblance of consensus. I suggest you take your UBX concerns there, preferably by editing that page. John Reid ° 09:16, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

User signatures

I am coming across more and more fancy signatures across the talk pages of this project. Now, creativity is a good thing, but where does it stop? More and more fancy signatures are coming along, which although are given guidelines at Wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages I don't think go far enough. I myself was thinking of a fancy signature myself, but held back a bit thinking that it would be distracting.

What I am noticing a lot of is messages and even a case of someone providing a link to a category for deletion and asking people to delete the category. I don't think this is necessary of helpful to Wikipedia in the slightest and would suggest myself that messages be deleted from signatures altogether. Again, a review and tighter controls need to be implemented to stop the ever growing complexity and messages appearing into signatures.

So, to summarise, what I am asking is a review into the use of non Wikipedia relevant information, code and userboxes userpages and the design of user signatures on talk pages as outlined above. --tgheretford (talk) 12:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Specific comments

This should, of course, be discussed at Wikipedia talk:Sign your posts on talk pages, where similar proposals have come up in the past. Fagstein 06:59, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I added a proposal at Wikipedia talk:Sign your posts on talk pages#Proposal to discourage changing the background color.

This is a perennial issue. I agree with the general position taken; overelaborate sigs are an annoyance and, in some cases, disrupt the editing process. I don't agree that policy needs to change.

I don't know all the editors in our community -- I wish I did but I can't; there are too many and more coming in daily. When someone I don't know makes a comment, it's useful for me to try to understand who he is. That goes past knowing his username; I want to know if he's an adult, a child, an expert, a crank. If he's stated a fact or proposition this is irrelevant but if he's rendering an opinion, it's crucial. To get an accurate "read", I need to check out his userpage, go through his contribs, and see what he's done. A light scan usually isn't enough; most edits are trivial. It may take quite a lot of digging to learn what I want to know: Who are you?

Sigs -- created freely by each editor -- are a wonderful shortcut. I've learned that editors who use bright colors think they're more special than other people; those who use dark colors, especially white or yellow reversed out of a dark background, imagine themselves as subversives. Editors with a number of self-referential links have insecurity issues, especially those with visible text that reads how'm i doin? or equivalent. Those who provide links to their own talk pages are open to discussion; those who omit a link to their own user pages are secretive; those who pipelink their usernames to some obscure alias are deceptive. Cleverly technical sigs are a sign that someone a) is real smart and b) wants me to know it -- not a sign of maturity. Images in sigs always indicate a confrontational person -- oddly enough, not always a partisan of any particular position but simply a trollish type who likes to get in one's face. He who links to pages outside of userspace is telling me what he thinks is so important that everybody needs to know about it -- and I'm happy to know what that is; if I follow the proffered link I'll learn a lot about who he is. Finally, those who use special characters that require me to have another language font installed to read them are people who just don't care about anybody else.

Any editor who has an elaborate sig does me a service by telling me more about himself and by giving me a visual handle by which to recognize him the next time he surfaces. It's probably of secondary interest that most such editors lose much of my respect, having declared themselves unsuitable to participate in mature discussion.

The only addition to SIG I'd endorse would be a specific caution that talk pages are routinely refactored and managed by other editors and that some sigs may interfere with some templates, word processors, and bots. If somebody or something munges your overelaborate sig or simply replaces it with your username, you don't get to complain. This is the standard at AN. John Reid ° 09:48, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

There must be a happy medium. A few color or font changes are fine, as they help ID specific users easier, and aren't that invasive. However, if a sig ever eclipses the length of a comment on any talk page, it gets too far. When a sig makes it hard to weed through comments on the edit box, it gets too far. But again, what to do about it? Friendly note on a talk page saying something to the effect of: "Your sig is so long it is making it hard for me and others to read your comments on talk pages. Please consider simplifying it" Any policy on sigs would be unenforcable in an equitable way. --Jayron32 06:02, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

• Using sigs to solicit votes is clearly out of line. Other than that, I just ask someone to change their sig if it's annoying. The rules are clear enough and if people don't respond to a mass request to change a sig they can always be blocked after thourough discussion. - Mgm|^(talk) 13:48, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

I don't think it's harmful to let people express some personality on their userpages, userboxes or signiture. I'm personally in the belief that as long as the amount of "socializing information" and "for fun boxes" are balanced by decent genuine contributions to wikipedia as an encyclopedia, then it's fine. A gallary of pictures from someone who hardly contributes anything to wikipedia as an encyclopedia is probably a violation of WP:NOT, where as a dozen "favourite pictures" or "pictures i've contributed" on the userpage of someone who's done a lot of work in the image namespace of wikipedia would probably be fine. --`/aksha 12:12, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

About the signature part: If there is a violation of the signature policies, then shouldn't we enable admins to change your signature preferences?--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 16:37, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

So what if we have userpages and userboxes that violate some policy? As long as it doesn't get out of hand. That really doesn't matter; what does matter are our contributions. I particularly agree with Yaksha. About the signatures, Ed has a point too. This is getting way to out of hand. Does everyhting that is fun to help Wikipedia grow have to be deleted? It's much too strict. --Kyo cat^(T)•(C) 18:35, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I've just visited Tgheretford's userpage, and it seems to violate the WP:NOT as much as the other's do. Marital status? Favorite music? A picture of yourself? I really don't see why you brought up this proposal when your page is as violating as what you just proposed up there. My apologies if I sound rude, but I just don't get it! Kyo cat^(T)•(C) 19:02, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Just pointing out that hypocrisy does not in itself invalidate an argument. The speaker shouldn't matter so much as the content of the speech. (See ad hominem) --tjstrf talk 19:06, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

If you believe it violates WP:NOT, please feel free to edit or nominate the pages for Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion. One of the beauties of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit, and that includes my userpages. --tgheretford (talk) 20:15, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

No,no, I won't edit it. I never edit userpages, with fear of being grudged or hated by that user. I'm sorry if I offended you or anyhting. I was just confused. Kyo cat^(T)•(C) 20:44, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion none of these things does significant harm. Fancy userpages may not aid the project directly, but some users enjoy decorating things and it provides them practice with templates and coding if nothing else. Joke userboxes make me ill personally, but I think banning them is unnecessary. As for user signatures, unless you're doing something insane like adding categories(possible [2]), AfD vote canvassing, or adding 12-layer colour gradients I think those should be allowed as well. My own userpage features a brief personal description but everything else is project-related, btw. (1 WikiProject userbox) --tjstrf talk 19:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I would amend that to say "for the most part none of these things does significant harm". The problem I see is that there appears to be an increasing trend towards doing many of the these things, and there are certainly a number of cases where it has crossed "the line". The problem is with trying to define the line too sharply, but I agree that this needs to be reigned in, or at least discouraged. Where I might be a little stronger is with the language regarding signatures. Since these get populated all over the place, an annoying or disruptive signature is much harder to ignore than an gratuitously decorated user page—although I wouldn't complain if those were reigned in somewhat also. —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 23:30, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

• "use of code designed for other pages (ie. picture of the day" correct if I'm wrong here but wasn't the POTD template originally created for userpages. The template predates its front page usage when user pages was practically all it was used for  YDAM TALK 20:31, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

"then shouldn't we enable admins to change your signature preferences?" <<no, i think it's way too much room for abuse (or pranks). However, something like allowing admins to just reset someone's signiture (so it turns your signiture into the default one that everyone has before they change their preferences) may not be such a bad idea. But letting admins change other people's preferences is going too far IMO --`/aksha 07:09, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

• We have in a few extreme cases blocked a user for having an outrageous signature. There have been occasional calls to the developers to disallow images in signatures, or reduce the maximum length in bytes, which have not so far led to an implementation thereof. (Radiant) 10:53, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

The developers are unwilling to use technical enforcement on issues such as this unless it's required. For example, disabling transclusion in signatures was done because users were ignoring the various problems these presented. Images and HTML in signatures don't constitute those sorts of problems, although they can piss people right off. :) There is a statement somewhere to the effect that if users commit egregious abuse of the fact that one can make one's signature look a bit nicer, then such abilities will be revoked. 164.11.204.56 20:57, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Even if the signature setting in the preferences was changed/locked/reset etc, there's nothing to stop a user from just pasting in their (inappropriate) signature manually at the end of each comment. Tra (Talk) 21:09, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

• Yes, but that would be WP:POINT. We do not take kindly to gaming the system. (Radiant) 10:09, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Fair use in portals

There is a discussion in Wikipedia:Fair use/Amendment/Fair use images in portals about whether to allow fair use images in portals. Although it might have been brought up before, it has not closed as consensus has not been reached for either side. Ddcc 20:46, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Dissimilar color usage in charts and diagrams

There are so many people (including me) who have trouble differentiating between similiar/close colors/hues. Therefore Wikipedia should have a policy on this. Let me illustrate my point. If you see the chart of population at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:World_population.PNG you will find countries marked in different (but close colors).

The problem is that we can not find out the population values using the legend as the color/filling pattern is not easily distinguishable on the legend. Now I would know that the population of Guyana is more than that of French Guyana (see image http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Suedamerika-klein.jpg to see the location of these countries (top of the continent 'South America')). But it is very hard to find out what actually is the population range of French Guyana. Is it 100K+ or 50K+?

As you would aggree the first information was easy as we were comparing two shades close to each other (color filled in the two nearby countries) but when we want to find the value, we need to compare the shade in the country with that in the legend which is far away from them. But if it were a pattern like 'diagonal blue lines', 'checkered red pattern', 'black and white circles" etc it would be easier.

What I want is that we should not just depend on colors. There should be some more aid; hover-on text-information (which I think is best) or the legend should use patters along with colors and the colors should also be strikingly different (please read my comment on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_talk:Audiocv.gif#Why_so_similiar_colors.3F)

If one is making a chart like above where only a handful or colors are needed then we must make them as contrasting as possible. Because for charts with many items in the legend (as in the population chart which we saw above) we are anyway going to do some more reasearch to find out the values, unless one does put the effort to make them strikingly different by using patterns, designs, differnt styles of lines, dots and finally colors or one makes it dynamic with 'hover-over-the-item-to find-the-value'.

Please second this if you aggree and also tell me if I should suggest it at some other place in the Village pump or Wikipedia. Charles.2345 17:00, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Accessibility guidelines are at Wikipedia:Accessibility, which are incorporated by reference in Wikipedia:Manual of Style. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:31, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Rick. I now found the right place to point to the people who contribute without sticking to these guidelines.Charles.2345 04:52, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Featured Diagrams

Diagrams keep getting shot down at Featured pictures, which makes sense since they are not pictures. So I would like to start Featured Diagrams as an area for diagram makers to be recognized and hopefully to build community. After a number of diagrams were "featured" they could then be put into the rotation for picture of the day. -Ravedave ^{(help name my baby)} 04:45, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Depends on whay kinds of diagrams you're thinking of. Can you direct me to an example?--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 04:52, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Everything on this page is diagrams that made it through FPC: Wikipedia:Featured_pictures/Diagrams,_Drawings,_and_Maps -Ravedave ^{(help name my baby)} 04:55, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

And as a note both the villian and the animated horse have been nominated for removal more than once. -Ravedave ^{(help name my baby)} 04:57, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

e-mail notification of talk page messages

Strange, I got to thinking that this might be a good idea this morning. I guess it's just some big cosmic coincidence that it is a new feature at the commons. Are there any plans to enable it here at the 'pedia? It would be very useful to me. Checking my talk page is like having to check e-mail twice! Mike 22:31, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

The trouble with lists

I'm sure this has been noted before, but quite often references on a list will differ from the articles to which they link. For instance in the list of most luminous stars lists the luminosity of the Pistol star as 6,500,000, whereas the page itself suggests a value of 1,600,000. Currently I've tagged this as , but I suppose thats not quite the correct tag to use, and so I wondered if there were something along the line of ^{[Double Check]} or ^{[Inconsitant]} with which I could tag particular facts, rather than a tagging a whole page as needing cleanup. --Neo 12:53, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Overcategorization

This is a list of kinds of inappropriate categorization, as extracted from existing policy/guideline as well as CFD precedent. Comments wanted. (Radiant) 14:49, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Article Improvement Drive 2

We have WP:ACID, which chooses an article to collaborate on once a week. I propose (although it is likely to get rejected, as my proposals always do) that we start a second Drive that, unlike its sister, collaborates on the chosen article until it is featured. --Gray Porpoise 22:33, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I actually like that idea but if you have an "until FA" approach, then focusing on a single article does not appear reasonnable. We all have different areas of expertise and it would make sense to have a project that picks, one article in science, one in history, one on technology and so on and only replaces them when they have reached FA status. One problem with the collaboration of the week is that there are many weeks where I don't feel like I can bring much except picking up typos and adding {{fact}} here and there. Pascal.Tesson 22:41, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• You may be interested in this: Wikipedia:100,000 feature-quality articles. (Radiant) 11:52, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Helping Wikipedia editors see purpose of Discussion pages

I shall plead guilty, but I have to admit that I have used the Discussion page to discuss a topic, rather than - as Wikipedia discussion pages are meant to be - discussion of the article as it appears in Wikipedia. Would it be an idea to include, heading the occasional article, examples of what would be and what would not be acceptable commentary on the "Discussion" page, so that new Wikipedia editors can learn? ACEO 20:07, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Some of the more well known articles have templates such as {{talkheader}} at the top which give the information you're looking for. This uses a parser function to only tell you not to discuss its subject if it's in Talk: space, as opposed to Wikipedia talk: space etc. Tra (Talk) 22:50, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Pay no attention to any of that. You can discuss anything you like on talk and many editors do. It's good to stay on track and relevant to the matter at hand but the only thing I really care about is that you remain rational, polite, and fairly respectful of your fellow editors' status as human beings. John Reid ° 02:24, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree with John. Talkheader and those types should only be introduced when there is a huge problem with that or, like let's say on a Soap Opera, the article is a stub yet there are hundreds of comments on the discussion page talking about "how hot he was" "did you see what she was wearing?" "can you wait till next week?" "can you believe they did that".... In instances like that, it is okay to introduce those templates to get the ball rolling. Cbrown1023 02:27, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Hatnotes inactive? (continued)

Old discussion copied out of archives for further discussion. Carcharoth 13:09, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Radient placed inactive tags at Wikipedia:Hatnotes, and his comment on my user talk page reveals that he feels the page is an inactive proposal. I disagree (I thought it was an active guideline), but the page hasn't been updated in a while; should this page be rejuvinated and/or perhaps integrated into the MoS? —AySz88\^-^ 15:28, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

• Note that the page was never marked "guideline". I would have no objection to it becoming part of the MOS, but must point out that the last serious discussion was in July. (Radiant) 15:46, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

End of copied section.

I think this is more a case of a proposal being written to reflect practice at the time, and to help prevent diverging practices. It seems that either people started following it, or they always did follow it (from what I can tell, the hatnote templates are widely used). I suspect the proposal just never got tidied up and pushed forward to being a guideline or merged into the Manual of Style. The absence of anything on hatnotes in the MoS is rather a glaring omission. I would support this loose end being tidied up and accepted, rather than just tagged "inactive" - which struck me at the time as very strange - people add hatnotes all the time - the practice of using hatnotes is not inactive, which is what some people might have thought when they saw the page tagged as inactive (I realise that Radiant was probably tagging the proposal, not the activity, but not everyone clearly understands this difference). Ditto for the recent tagging of the Wikipedia:Death threats proposal as inactive (by me, not Radiant) - some people might interpret this to mean that they can get away with death threats! I think we need to be careful with these "inactive" tags. Carcharoth 13:09, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• The obvious solution against death threats would be redirecting it to NPA, which already has a clause on it. I have, of course, no objection to a MOS page about hatnotes, but I have not had sufficient experience with hatnotes to write it myself. Hence, until someone can be found to write it, we don't actually have such a MOS page, and this proposal is presently inactive. (Radiant) 15:19, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Actually, the rewritten tag I had there was my initial attempt to avoid this, but the redirect you did for 'Wikipedia:Death threats' looks good. I've moved the tag to the talk page to prevent people adding discussion to that talk page, but still leaving the talk there for people to read, plus a link directing people to the talk page of WP:NPA. I've also updated the archives box at the top of WT:NPA to link to the talk page when a subpage has been turned into a redirect. Hopefully people following old links to Wikipedia:Death threats will work out what has happened here! As for the hatnotes, I'll wait a bit to see if anyone else wants to volunteer, and then I'll see about setting up something in the MoS. I'll add a note over there. Carcharoth 15:36, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Agree that Hatnotes does summarize current practices and is a useful guideline. older ≠ wiser 16:19, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists of works)

(reposting because of very little feedback)

I've overhauled Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists of works) based on a 2nd round of feedback. This guideline is intended to bring a minimal consistency to the basic formatting style of bibliographies, filmographies, and discographies.

Possibly it's complete, and ready for {{style-guideline}} status? Feedback (at it's talkpage) or improvements welcome :) --Quiddity 03:47, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Email notification of talk page changes

I think it would be a good idea if we implemented the option of receiving email notifications when you have new messages on your talk page. Users would receive messages quicker and it would help a lot with communication. This is already in place at commons. Does anyone else agree? —Mets501 (talk) 17:11, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

• I believe it is disabled for reasons of server load (given that enwiki is WAY bigger than commons); you'd have to ask Brion for details. (Radiant) 10:49, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Ug! Some people get several new messages on their talk page every day. I don't check the e-mail address that's linked to my Wikipedia account every day - I'm lucky to check it once a week. It gets enough spam as it is, it doesn't need more telling me I've got a message that I've probably already read. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)} 21:39, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Users will only check their talk page when they have time to go on Wikipedia, anyway, so emails seem somewhat redundant, despite the idea being neat. In my opinion, it only makes sense for a few cases, and all of those can be dealt with manually using the Emailuser function if it's really urgent. What I'd suggest: a user template - "Please email me about important issues using the emailuser function." Nihiltres 03:05, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Exporting pages

When clicking on Special pages in the left margin and then selecting Export pages the name of the current or last article is not automatically inserted by default. After manually entering the name of the page to be exported and then clicking on Export, viewing getting the xml listing of the page in text format in the browser window and then clicking on the browser's save command (save in the file menu of Internet Explorer) the default title of the page in the File name box is Export.xml instead of the name of the article. The name of the current or last article should be automatically inserted in the Export page article name box window as well as in the save File name box of the browser as the default name followed by Export.xml such that the name of the article on Nickel metal hydride battery would appear as Nickel metal hydride battery export.xml. Doing this would greatly reduce the possibility of the wrong article being save when a composite of articles must be saved in a limited amount of time. Adaptron 21:04, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org 164.11.204.56 20:59, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Edit summaries when not logged in

If I'm wrong here, please correct me. When I'm not logged in, I cannot use an edit summary when I make a change to a page. Shouldn't users who are not logged in be able to use edit summaries, as when surveying recent edits on WP:RCP, it would be much easier to filter out good faith edits if they had summaries with them? Thanks, 0L1 Talk Contribs 12:04 17/11/2006 (UTC)

You cannot mark them as minor, but on Wikipedia at least, anon editors can (and should) make edit summaries. Other MediaWiki sites may disable this, I'm not sure. -- nae'blis 15:39, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Correct. If other sites have crippled summaries for anonymous editors, then they've applied some hack in order to do that, since MediaWiki contains no such option out of the box. 164.11.204.56 20:54, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Wanted: Easy PubMed referencing

It's a good thing that Wikipedians are making good quality scientific articles with detailed reference lists. Unfortunately, actually setting up those references seems like a lot of trouble. Forgive me if I've missed something, but it seems like at the moment there is no automatic way to transfer title, authors, and literature citation to a new reference. Yet all of that data exists in the public PubMed servers of several nations, available in a variety of standardized formats, with special machine-readable formats used by reference management software such as EndNote. So in theory it should be possible to type something like "ref PubMed 948762", and have all the other data appended automatically on submission. PubMed is the most important database for biological abstract searches. 948762 is the unique PubMed identifier (PMID) of the article - an identifier stable enough to use in interlibrary loan requests, for example. That should be enough information for a complete reference to be generated automatically. Alternatively, I and others have already committed the sin of entering references like so [3], trusting that this is sufficient for people to actually find the content. However, such a link can and probably will go dead eventually - although it ends in the PMID, which should always be possible to look up by some means.

It would be very nice to have both the template system for entering new references easily yet correctly and some kind of bot going through Wikipedia entries and substituting properly detailed references for the quick Web links to NCBI wherever they appear, and either one would be an immense help. Mike Serfas 18:25, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

As I discovered while querying something at WikiProject Clinical medicine, if you type PMID followed by the unique id, it is automatically converted into a URL to PubMed, in example, PMID 948762 becomes PMID 948762. Is this what you were asking for? -- ReyBrujo 18:34, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, also note that just "importing" all the information from a page would not work for Wikipedia because of several reasons, including a) licensing and copyright issues; b) formatting; and c) inappropriate content. Note that an almost copy of a PubMed article was sent to deletion (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/PMID 8474513) because it is considered not appropriate for Wikipedia. -- ReyBrujo 18:37, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

That's a nifty feature I wasn't aware of! Until I you pointed this out I hadn't realized that such references weren't just URL links. They should be useful in that a single change to whatever code is interpreting the string could fix a future change in the URL of a PubMed server. Even so, the effect is a bit disappointing - the article still doesn't accumulate an impressive-looking list of references at the end, and more to the point, you can't read through the titles and authors to quickly recognize familiar papers or the most relevant topics. I can't believe there are any copyright problems involved in rifling through the U.S. government PubMed server for a list of titles and authors, journal names, volume and issue numbers, and dates of publication! I understand the abstracts would be on shakier ground, but they wouldn't look right in the references anyway.  :) Mike Serfas 19:17, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Is this helpful? It coverts a PubMed ID into cite info that can be pasted into an article. John Broughton | ♫ 17:10, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Auto Log-in Box for Edit Tab or Long Edits

ELApro: It would be nice if the Log-in window would pop up automatically when the edit tab is clicked. A cancel or anonymous user button could be provided for anonymous users. I have often gotten the majority of an edit completed before noticing that I forgot to log in. If I try to log in after the edit is begun, all the edit work will be lost after logging in and returning to the page. I have also noticed that if a period of time passes after logging in, the log-in is somehow lost while the user is still in the process of editing. It would also be nice if the log-in option would be offered before dropping a logged in user that is in the process of a long edit.

I second this motion. I've had a few edits go astray because I didn't notice they were posted anonymously, and once they're posted that way I don't remember to revisit them because they're not in my edit history. Technically, I'm not sure a pop-up window is the best option - I think that fields with name and password copied from the standard log-in screen might simply be put at the bottom of the edit form. Mike Serfas 17:55, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

You could just copy the text out to your clipboard, and then paste it back in after logging in. Most modern browsers retain text in pages in the history, so it's safe to log in and go back to the edit page before clicking save, too. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 23:38, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I would like a way to prevent myself from editing anonymously. Especially from IPs that I don't want associated with my account... — Omegatron 15:11, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Mac Wikipedia Software

Not sure if this is the right place for asking this, but I think it would be useful if more Wikipedia related tools became available to Mac users. The majority I have found are for Windows. 152.78.254.245 15:13, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

What would be your top three? John Broughton | ♫ 14:50, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

• An application for browsing without a web browser, i think on Windows it's called WikiBrowse, but would only be useful if it could do edits as well.
• Editing apps like AutoWikiEdit, extensions to BBEdit, that sort of thing
• Not applicable to me, but some of the anti-vandal tools would be nice.

Sorry, was slightly more vague than a top three. Littleandlarge 14:23, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Inclusion V Advocay (Paranormal and pseudoscience)

I'm not sure if this is the right place to suggest this, but....

Having run into a number of problems with users over controversial subjects, particularly those where myself and other users have been trying to document pseudoscience or the paranormal, I'd like to suggest that there be some form of guideline (a policy would be too strong) over the differences between inclusion and advocacy of a notable claim. For example, something with clauses explaining the validity of including information that is unproven, pseudoscience, or which has been since been proven false, as object illustrations of the beliefs of proponents, but NOT as a claim of it as being true, and defining the difference between inclusion of such things, and advocacy of them as being true.

My primary motive for requesting such a guideline is that I've run into several user who are constantly reverting pages or arguing over content when people have been trying to record what exactly it is that pseudoscientists are saying, and what the history of a given area of pseudo science is, on the grounds that what they said "can't be proven to be true" and the belief that "stating that they said it means advocating it as being true". perfectblue 12:35, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Is Wikipedia:Fringe theories helpful? or Wikipedia:Don't be a fanatic? John Broughton | Talk 15:48, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Cheers, "Fringe" is useful to know, but not entirely helpful in this case because most of the inclusion = advocacy users that I've come across would instantly hone in on "fringe theories that may seem relevant but are only sourced by obscure texts that lack peer review should not be included in the article". This part of a general problem that I've found with Wikipedia policy and guidelines. They are science and journal based. This is great if you want to stop somebody putting up their own pet hypothesis and making out that it is widely supported by scientists, but it is not so great if you are trying to write a history of the contactee movement.

I'll give you an example of the kind of thing that I've seen. For example:

A page about X a notable and verifiable as existing group of spiritualist. User 1 writes a history of the group, they include the events that lead each member to come to the group, the famous cases that they were involved in, and a machine that they build which they say lets them communicate with the spirit of a Native-American Chief. They include source material from a range of books dealing with the paranormal and spiritualism.

User 2 comes along, deletes any and all claims that the group members made about spiritualism, and most of the details of their cases on the grounds that their claims can't be backed up by science, and that recording their claims = advocating the truth of claims. They then delete most of sources saying (in so many words) that because the person who wrote the source believed in the paranormal the source didn't meet WP:RS (I've often seen this kind of user use WP:RS to mean must be from a mainstream scientist). Then demands a peer reviewed source detailing the groups machine from a scientific perspective.

It's a grand pain. -- perfectblue 17:22, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd be inclined to do two things. First, WP:NPOV includes a provision for not giving something undue weight, and WP:NOT says that Wikipedia isn't an indiscriminate collection of information. So just as we don't include verified sightings of celebrities (as reported, say, by the New York Post in biographies of celebrities, so too is it inappropriate to go heavily in depth on minor things. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a collection of book-length articles. Use those as a basis to shorten articles to the most important claims and facts.

Second, where information comes from a book or article from a fringe publisher or magazine, and discusses controversial matters or makes outlandish claims, then the sentences in the Wikipedia article should say "X said that A occured" or "Y wrote in Z-book that B happened" or even "A claimed that C took place", rather than "A occurred", "B happened", or "C took place". Obviously this shouldn't be done for everything - if a book says that N joined the group in 1997, there isn't any basic reason to doubt that. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof: "X said that A happened" isn't an extraordinary claim, while "A happened" is. John Broughton | Talk 19:53, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I've been doing this for some time, so I know the boundaries. The problem is that when we are writing about notable people/claims/incidents (Big foot, for example, is highly notable) and are hedging our words to keep perspective ("this is the way that they said it is" rather than "this is the way that it is"), the slant on policy towards science, history and Bio, still means that there are users abusing these policies to try and keep the information that we provide down to "names and faces".

"extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" That would be WP:OR in most cases, which is against wiki policy.

I guess my main argument is that wikipedia needs some policy clauses stating that demanding peer review for the paranormal is a waste of times, and that users shouldn't use it as a means of stifling pages about unscientific subjects. I mean, is it even logical to demand peer review on something that is a hoax, urban legend, or is a cult? perfectblue 07:51, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand your reference to "peer review" - the term is used for (see Wikipedia:Peer review) for proposed featured articles. If you're saying that demanding WP:RS or WP:N for paranormal and pseduoscience and hoaxes is "stifling", I'm not sure why. If you're saying that editors object to "He said" and "she said" type sentences, and remove these, I suggest you just keep insisting that they state the Wikipedia policy that disallows these, or the policy that says that there are to be minimized, because I'm not aware of any such policy. And if they can't come up with such policies, then deleting relevant information from reliable sources is POV, in my opinion. It's fine to argue about reality (e.g., does the strength of gravity vary significantly anywhere on the earth); it's wrong to argue that Wikipedia can't cite people who (by all reasonable measures) have an incorrect view of reality, if the subject of an article is those people. That they have such views is reality. John Broughton | ♫ 15:02, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

By peer review, I mean peer reviewed science journals. A peer reviewed journal is pretty near the peak of WP:RS. It can take a coupe of years for an article to be deemed good enough to be published in one. Except in a few very very rare cases they simply won't touch experiments involving the paranormal. Not even experiments using science to disprove phenomena.

Users demand peer review because they know that it won't exist, and they do it because they want to reduce articles to "He said he saw a Bigfoot, but he doesn't have proof".

Telling them about WP:RS doesn't help because they already know that they are in the wrong, but hope that you don't know that.

perfectblue 16:22, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

An end to vandlabots?

Here is an idea that may eliminate vandalbots/automated spam. I know that when creating an account, it is nessecary to answer a math question to protect agianst vandalbots. What if a math question had to be answered before an edit can be saved, at least for IP's? Yes, this would decrease productivity and be annoying, but it would protect agianst vandalbots very well. Or is this too big a change in Wikipedia's policy, and would not even be used because of policy problems? (This post is also in the policy section.) Seldon1 00:18, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

• Well, a CAPTCHA would be a better idea. Bots are probably better at simple arithmetic than 99% of us anyway. I wouldn't be opposed to a CAPTCHA but I'm not sure if Mediawiki supports it easilly. Plus it adds to server load, generating all those images. --W.marsh 03:01, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

True, but would either method be worth it? --Seldon1 13:43, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

They could just run the vandalbot anonymously. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 13:51, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I would support the idea of having anonymous IPs having to answer a math or knowledge question every time they attempt to save or show preview of a page. It just might deter their edits. If they become a regular user, it becomes easier to block a vandalizing user. Ronbo76 13:54, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

A CAPTCHA for anonymous edits would be a good idea. Maths questions would deter those who failed Maths in school (i.e. some of my classmates). --J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:00, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Please not on show-preview (that would just discourage anons from previewing their edits). I'm inclined to disagree with this even on edits, because it would discourage casual editing of this site, and vandalbots normally get usernames anyway (because otherwise they're too easy to block). --ais523 14:09, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

It shouldn't. Anyone sincere enough to make a good edit probably won't be discouraged by a CAPTCHA. The only problem I see is the increase in sever load needed to load all the images. Seldon1 16:58, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

They don't even need to enter a captcha to register... anyways, I don't think it is worth the problem. I noticed that some Wikipedias (in example the latin one I think) do ask you to solve a math equation if you try to add an external link to an article. I would not object that, as I am more worried about spam than vandalism. -- ReyBrujo 19:18, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

On one of the smaller Wikimedia wikis (not sure which one), I was reverting blanking and got a simple sum to do when I saved a page containing an external link. If anything, this would slow down spammers if enabled for registered users (not sure if it was an anon only feature, as I wasn't signed in when I made the revert). Perhaps something to request at the buzilla. Martinp23 21:09, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

It would have to be a real CAPTCHA, not a silly math problem (umm, yeah, computers can do math). And it would be very inconvenient. Are vandalbots really such a large problem? I don't think the inconvenience we'd be placing on millions of edits would make it worth it. --Cyde Weys 21:29, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Isn't there a votation?

—Nethac DIU, would never stop to talk here—
18:41, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
We have a very fast bot. I fell in edit conflict to put the sign, 5 seconds after.

Centralised discussion at MoS on flag icons

Proposed MoS guideline. Please contribute to the centralised discussion on flag icons at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Flag icons - manual of style entry?. Please add comments over there, not here. Thanks. Carcharoth 14:07, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

TfD of {{user wikipedia}}

This went up for TfD in August 2006 with the result of keep. This result was more of a vote and not consensus. It seems that a lot of the people saying keep were of the WP:ILIKEIT variety. Since this template is a tautology and of no direct value to the project, I think it should be userfied per WP:GUS. However, before starting what I know will be a contentious discussion, I wanted to hear a little feedback here first. —Dgies^t c 05:46, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Only it we're userfying it at User:Jimbo Wales/Userbox/User Wikipedia. Otherwise keep. --tjstrf talk 05:59, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

US State infobox/template things

I have a proposal to tweak the infoboxes that currently appear on US-State related articles, the big colorful ones with the state flag that link you to the state's largest cities, state flower, etc etc. Where is the best place to make my suggestion? How do these things even get changed? --Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 20:12, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Try first the infobox talk page. Also, Wikipedia:WikiProject United States is a good place. -- ReyBrujo 20:24, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Where do I find this talk page? That's exactly what I was looking for in posting this question. Thanks--Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 20:29, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

You could try Template talk:Infobox U.S. state. Tra (Talk) 20:43, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

If you go to Longmont, Colorado and look at the bottom of the page, there is a big box. That is the thing I am wondering about. I think the template referred to above is a different one.--Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 21:18, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

That would be {{colorado}} -- ReyBrujo 21:26, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

CotW on Main Page

I think it would be a good idea to have a "Collaboration of the Week" on the Main Page. This is a quick way to introduce visitors to collaborative editing and shows them how Wikipedia works. In addition, if there is a topic that grabs the readers' attention, we might gain a few good contributors to the project. Nominations for the Main Page could come from the various Wikiprojects which already organise CotW's amongst themselves. (side note: should I cross-post this to Talk:Main Page and send them here or should I move this there and cross-post from here?) Zunaid©® 09:52, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I recommend that you post to Talk:Main Page, and that anyone interested follow the link to that page. John Broughton | Talk 19:27, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

So done. Please jump in and discuss at Talk:Main Page#CotW on Main Page Zunaid©® 07:16, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

History of deleted articles upon recreation

As a new page patroller it would be really useful to be able to access the history of a page upon recreation after if it has been previously deleted. This would allow new page patrollers to assertain, once the article has been recreated, whether or not it merits retaggting for deletion, or whether significant changes have been made so that the article is OK. It would also allow quicker removal of recreated articles RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 23:14, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Article history is not available to non-admins due to past copyright and potential inflammatory edits which have been removed. If all users, or even all logged in users, had that capability, every one of those inflammatory and copyvio edits would have to be WP:OVERSIGHTed. User:Zoe|(talk) 00:02, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

However, most deleted page histories are non-problematic, and can be provided on request. Additionally, an extension that permits admins to quickly view the deleted contributions of a user (to help spotting things like chronic recreations of articles) is currently under development. --Slowking Man 08:58, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Reference reliability statistics

As much as Wikipedia stresses the importance of having references in articles, the quality of references on the site is still very much a mixed bag. When I'm reading an article, and I want to know how reliable the information is, it can be quite tedious to stop at each citation and hunt down the source statement that matches the one in the article. I'd like to see some kind of feedback/rating system for references which goes something like the following:

When a Wikipedian checks a reference, he/she can mark it as "good", "bad", or "mediocre". The reference will then keep track of how many users have reviewed it, who those users are, and what its average rating is. To view these statistics, users can hold their mouse over the reference link in the article, and a tooltip will appear over the reference displaying something like:

16 reviews. 2.3 average rating. Click here to display list of reviewers. Click here to submit your own review.

Pros that I know of:

• Provides a way to quickly ascertain the reliability of a reference. Useful to non-Wikipedians who are browsing the site to do research, and useful to Wikipedians looking for weak references which need help.
• If the references keep track of their reviewers, abuse can be weeded out fairly easily. The ability to review a reference could even be restricted to users who have been registered for a certain period of time, or who have made a certain number of edits.

Cons that I know of:

• No real way of knowing what standards reviewers are using when rating the references. I guess a WP policy would be written to address this.
• Depending on the manner in which the reference statistics are displayed, it could add clutter to the pages or make them look gimmicky. The statistics would be more useful if there were a way to display them beyond just the tooltip - perhaps color coding for the reference numbers, or a small icon next to them showing a "star rating" - but that's where the clutter/gimmickiness comes in.
• Might be a programming hassle.

I'm interested to hear what people think of this idea. If I left out any considerations, please let me know. G Rose (talk) 08:43, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

It's been tried with templates that people could mark the references with. Allowing submitted reviews would be a major change in the software and require recognizing references as objects with reviews attached to them instead of just pieces of text that are parsed when the page is. What happens when someone changes around the referencing on an article? Ignoring the technical issues, it seems fundamentally flawed. Would you even trust these reviews? A source is either reliable or we shouldn't be using it, and if information is taken from an unreliable source that's an issue that rating a source poorly can't fix. If a source sucks, say it on the talk page, try to replace it with a better one, or just remove the material drawn from it as unreliable. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 09:04, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

This proposal would just create yet another backlog: "References to rate". --J.L.W.S. The Special One 09:07, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

See m:Wikicite and m:WikiTextrose. (SEWilco 06:29, 14 January 2007 (UTC))

Wikipedia:Avoiding common mistakes

Wikipedia:Avoiding common mistakes has been around for a while, and may make a good 'official' guideline. --Barberio 00:09, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

• Responses should be posted at Wikipedia talk:Avoiding common mistakes#Promote to guideline. John Broughton | Talk 19:40, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia + digg like links for each subject could make wikipedia as integral as google, if not more.

If you haven't used digg, check it out. Basically the collective users vote whether or not links are of interest. But the thing about digg is it's extremely focused on the present, forgetting the past. It's all about the latest links, the newest trend. This form of social bookmark promoting would also work well per subject. Perhaps for every wikipedia subject. How would this work for wikipedia? Now for most wikipedia pages you get a few links to outside pages, but no real sense if the links are worth going to. If people could submit links to each page/topic and then allow the collective users to vote whether or not those links were of interest, and then promote the more heavily voted on links to the top, as well as show how many votes the links got, people would be able to find the best outside links for each subject. Saving time and leading people deeper into the subjects. I would have the outside links categorized: news items, interviews, pictures, videos, audio, official websites, unofficial websites, forums, etc. For example if say the page was about Bob Dylan, for the digg-like voted on section, people could post links to their favorite videos of bob dylan, of links to their favorite audio samples of bob dylan. Then other uses could vote, and when you go to the Bob Dylan page, you could easily find the most popular pictures, sound files, video files, interview, etc about bob dylan. It's one thing to read about bob dylan, it's another to see a the web communites favorite video of him, and also read the most interesting interview with him. Any page would have these digg-like links that could be added. You could also choose to view these list of user submitted links based on most popular recently, or all time.

This might not be as beneficial for every subject, but for some it will really make wikipedia a more vibrant and useful resource.

Along side a seperate part of each wikipedia page for digg like links broken into categories, I would also have a place for rating and polling. These would be subjective, and not included in the factual section. Again an example for bob dylan, the web community could rate each of his albums (1-10), as well as his songs. Then you could see which is the most beloved album by bob dylan, as well as his highest rated song. Or if page was about an author - say H. G. Wells. You could quickly find out what people think is his best book.

I think adding both of these sections to a wikipedia page (perhaps not on the main page) would add incredibly useful features that will make wikipedia more useful than google.

-Isa Kretschmer —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.124.87.54 (talk) 03:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC).

• Including ratings from Wikipedia editors (even in a separate place, such as the talk page) would be original research. If you want to know the ratings of various artistic works, infoboxes often include a list of the professional reviews, and/or sales statistics. —Dgies^t c 16:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Thanks for your suggestion, but, ehem, Web 2.0 and me don't carry on well, so I am biased here. No, we do not need "ratings". We already have a 3-star scale: Article, Good Article and Featured Article. We also have some kind of votation to improve an article at the different collaborations of the week/month, peer review and requests for feedback. Finally, and I am blunt here, we don't need people to tell us which articles they like more, but instead, to help us improve those that are still stubs. -- ReyBrujo 17:34, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Just to clarify I'm not suggesting rating wikipedia articles, or voting on them, I suggesting voting on outside links (non-wikipedia) that relate to the wikipedia article's subject. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 129.237.173.17 (talk • contribs).
      • Ooooof, I really don't like the Digg link ideas. For a variety of reasons. Mainly, because we're an encyclopedia, and it just doesn't make sense. --Cyde Weys 21:27, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
        • One huge difference between Digg and Wikipedia is the ratio of articles (of interest) to editors. I'm guessing that there are thousands of people voting on any given day regarding a hundred or two articles (and, even if more, most only look and vote at the top ones). By contrast, there are 1.5+ million articles on Wikipedia and in any given month there are less than 5000 people who do 100 edits or more in any given month. (Statisics from here. And if the voting is on external links, then we're talking about 2.6 million external links. Because each article is of interest to a very small subset of users (unlike Digg), it certainly would be easy to "game" the system - for example, Scientologists voting to remove all external links to cites that attack Scientology. Wikipedia already has edit wars - why would we want to have external link voting wars as well? John Broughton | Talk 19:35, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

"LOG SEARCH STRING" function added to wikipedia

Create a way to "add" articles to a timeline or list and email them to you or someone else —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.161.115.65 (talk) 03:14, 11 January 2007 (UTC).

• That sounds like two different ideas, and what you mean by the first is unclear (at least to me). As for the second, it's not clear why one wouldn't just email a link; because Wikipedia is a wiki, it changes all the time - who would want to have an old, outdated copy of an article, rather than a link that always points to the most recent version? John Broughton | Talk 19:37, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Introduce points system and reduce powers of Admins

Now Wikipedia (esp Engligh one) seems to have acquired critical mass in terms of number of users and there are over 4000 'very active' users so I think there is no need to have separate Admin or may be very active users should be able to vote them (bad admins) out or only on basis of points system (acquired over a long period of time from positive edits to very broad range of topics) can one become an Admin. This will hopefully resolve the issue of US Federal employees/contractors controlling Wikipedia. With this points system in place, very active users can be given extra privileges like giving access to number of watches to a page data which they can use to improve their own productivity over Wikipedia. Vjdchauhan 06:41, 8 January 2007 (UTC).

Who decides what is a "good edit"

Couldn't you accumulate a bunch of points through trivial work and then spend them to push POV in your pet issue?

"US Federal employees/contractors controlling Wikipedia" is hardly a pressing issue to reorganize our admin system over. It's just one guy having a feud with an imaginary Wiki cabal. —Dgies^t c 07:02, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

POV pushing will anyway be reverted and thus reducing your points. All edit is good as long as it survives and is not reverted (including minor edits like spell checks, spacing, changing indirect wikilink to direct wikilinks etc).

From policy point of view "US Federal employees/contractors controlling Wikipedia" is a serious issue even if incorrect/non-pressing and the system should have inbuilt machanisms to prevent/revert such things. Not all (very active) users want to become admin but they too feel themselves very committed (if not as much as Admins) to Wikipedia cause and they too should have better say in deciding how the the system is taken forward.

Lastly 'very active' users still need access to number of watches to a page data. Vjdchauhan 07:35, 8 January 2007 (UTC).

How can it a be a serious issue "even if incorrect"? Surely then it's not an issue at all. Edit count is never a way to measure judgement, at any rate. Trebor 07:39, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure whether its correct/incorrect but it is one thing that is bound to happen over time whereby Govt will try to control the content of Wikipedia as its gaining popularity and ranks very high in Google Search. The Algo of granting points may not be that simple, it should have proper weightage attached to kind of changes (e.g. more weightage to new page creation, category maintainance etc). Why are you so sceptical, have faith in decentralization/democracy. Vjdchauhan 08:53, 8 January 2007 (UTC).

If government were to assume control of WP, then the current system for admin selection would be much safer, since it is all in the open. If the selection were based on some complex algorithm, the numbers and the algorithm could be manipulated by government agents who would have control of the WP databases and servers. Crum375 19:44, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

"Why are you so sceptical, have faith in decentralization/democracy". A little ironic, considering you seem to be a little paranoid and obviously don't have any faith in our current democratic system! Is there any evidence that the US government (or any other government) is controlling or seeking to control Wikipedia? I certainly haven't seen any. -- Necrothesp 04:43, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

"An example of over use of admin power is 'Everywhere girl' where one person with admin capability has chosen to censor all content. Now I accept change wars happen and an admin can be needed to reflect all points of view, but for someone to decide that admin power gives them the right to ultimate authorship challenges wikipedia validity at its core. Of course in the wider world those in power write history but if wikipedia is to be more than a factional mouthpiece and to aim for verifiable encyclopedic content then the fact that this sort of behaviour happens means that some form of check or balance needs to be enacted, tested and where necessary reenacted" X-mass

• See also WP:PEREN. >Radiant< 13:48, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Wiki Books

Creating the ability for the users to organize the data in Wiki into a book format so schools, profs and students could use Wiki as a "Book", with indexed, Table of content, high-liter feature, bookmark etc etc.

Ex: lets say I'm a teacher of Biology, I already have a course outline and know the topics I want to cover in my class. So all I would need to do is gather this data into a central organized way so students can just read the mat'l I would want to cover... Maybe there could be an online testing ability too or an area to put practice test Q/As....

This might not be what you're looking for, but do you know about Wikibooks? --ais523 15:43, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

And Wikiversity (in beginning stages still). —Quiddity 20:28, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Sheet Music Section

There is much sheet music out there that is out of copy right and is currently public domain. There should be some sort of repository for storing this music on wikipedia. Music is an important aspect of human history and should be availible through this site. If possible a seperate wiki project dedicated to this would be the best thing. If that is not possible could it be included in wikisource or wikicommons? -Vcelloho 03:22, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Check out Project Gutenberg. — Miles (Talk) 05:59, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

And Mutopia. Dar-Ape 22:19, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

And Chroal Wiki! RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 22:42, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh my! Dar-Ape 00:18, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree that there are other places where this information can be found however I still believe that there should be a wikimedia wiki repository for this. I don't think that redundancy is such a bad thing in this case. Redundancy of this sort in literature exists and I don't think that its such a bad thing. I do however see your argument however my proposal was infact prompted by seeing the short comings of each of these sites. -Vcelloho 03:15, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

choral wiki is actually really good for it. We should probably link to these pages in articles RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 03:17, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

• If you really want to submit PD sheet music to a Wikimedia project, you should visit WikiSource rather than Wikipedia. - Mgm|^(talk) 13:32, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank's for the suggestion. I'll make sure to take this proposal to the proper location. -Vcelloho 20:20, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

humble proposal for improving editing

Dear All, As a newcomer to Wikipedia (but rapidly becoming "addicted"), please forgive me if my humble proposal has been suggested elsewhere. Much of my time reading Wikipedia articles includes correcting minor spelling errors, punctuation, etc. - (I'm not complaining, it's kinda fun!). However, on visiting articles on the French Wikipedia I have come across a simple improvement which I think should be included for all articles: the save page function is not activated until the editor has clicked the show preview, thereby ensuring, in principle, that any changes made are checked before appearing in public. As it is not a change in policy, only an extension of a feature already being used on Wikipedia, I hope to see it incorporated soon. Many thanx and keep up the good work! 83.191.28.226 13:00, 12 January 2007 (UTC) (Ps. My New Year's Resolution has been to find time to create an account and log in correctly.)

This is a good proposal for people that are just editing articles, but for things such a vandal reversion, speedy tagging and all the other mundane tasks on wikipedia it would just cause more hassle, especially where the idea of these tasks is to get things removed as quick as possible RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 14:14, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I think it should (and probably already does) turn off and allow direct saving once a user becomes autoconfirmed. --ais523 14:42, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Main Page to Portal:Main

In the Main Page FAQ, it mentions that the Main Page is only in the article namespace due to 'historical inertia', and mentions Wikipedia:Main Page (presumably an old proposal to move it). However, the Main Page isn't an article or a project page, but a portal. As there doesn't seem to be any very good reason to keep it in article space (I imagine the cross-namespace-redirect from articlespace to portalspace that would be left behind would be kept forever to keep links from outside to Wikipedia active), I'm proposing that the Main Page be renamed to Portal:Main (with double redirects and MediaWiki-space updated accordingly). Any ideas? --ais523 15:26, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

This is one of those - "I've thought about that myself" - ideas : ) - jc37 17:03, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

There is ongoing discussion of this topic at Talk:Main Page. User:Zoe|(talk) 16:54, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

If so, I can't seem to find it. Have a direct link? - jc37 17:03, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, sorry, it got closed and archived. See Talk:Main_Page/Archive_87#Requested_move. User:Zoe|(talk) 17:29, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Strangely, though, it seems to have been deliberately closed/archived per WP:VIE; so if voting is a problem, there's still a need for a discussion, or nothing will ever get done even if everyone wants it to be (although judging from the poll that was held, there are many people on both sides). I was unaware of that poll before I posted it, but now taking it to WP:VPR seems like a decent idea. --ais523 17:33, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

The only point I can see in moving the Main page out of article space is to free up Main page as a potential article title. If we never replace the redirect from Main page to Whatevernamespace:Main page anyway then we win nothing by moving it. Kusma (討論) 17:40, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, redirects are caps-sensitive, so it might make sense to redirect Main Page to Portal:Main and Main page to home page; the hordes of incoming external links that might be expected will point to the version with the capital P. --ais523 17:46, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

The main argument against moving, was being in the mainspace allows us to use fair-use images there. All the alternative titles already exist and changing to one of them wouldn't appear to be a technical problem at all. It's 100% just the fairuse image thing (see that archived discussion Zoe linked). eg main page, Wikipedia:Main page, Wikipedia:Main Page, Portal:Main page, Portal:Main Page, etc all work fine. —Quiddity 19:53, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh come on, if namespace decides fair use then you're just getting into quibbly wikilawyering. Namespace is a shorthand for legitimate article use. Main page only allows fair use for featured articles without free images anyway. Those are never up on the main page for more than a day at time. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:25, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I didn't take part in that discussion, I was just summarizing the only point that seemed particularly pertinent, see more at Talk:Main Page/Archive 87#Fair use. —Quiddity 21:53, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Night Gyr - the technical namespace has zero relevance for the fair use question. Necessary images would be okay as fair use on the main page even if we move it to User talk namespace. Kusma (討論) 22:06, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry if this is an ignorant question, but the main page has a lot of incoming links... could it be problematic from a technical standpoint to move it? Should probably be mentioned in the FAQ if anyone has a definitive answer. --W.marsh 22:13, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Not really. Redirects are too cheap to care about, and most people don't type Main page anyway. We can just change the sidebar and template links to the new location, and redirect the old for anything we missed.

There is Precedent for such a move -- Current Events was moved to Portal:Current Events a while back. The old name is still a redirect, but the portal title indicates what it is, a portal, rather than an article. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 23:07, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Moving out of the mainspace would also result in the Main page losing the "cite this article" option from the toolbox; that seems to be a good thing, because of the non-stable (templatized) nature of any "permanently linked" diff here. —Quiddity 07:33, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I rather like the idea myself, and think it should be done. --Cyde Weys 21:31, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

• It doesn't open up any space as we still need a redirect for old incoming links and the new location wouldn't be easier to type (it would rather mess up what established editors think they knew). I simply don't see what could be gained by moving the highest traffic page we've got. - Mgm|^(talk) 13:39, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Just to mention here (and prevent forking of the debate), the requested move on Talk:Main Page has reopenedbeen restarted and people are discussing it there again. --ais523 13:42, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Lists

I know that this idea is most unlikely to take off, but I will float it anyway.

We all know that all sorts of "list of" articles get submitted. Some are eminently sensible - list of battleships of the Royal Navy, list of victories of Napoleon, and so forth; and some are incredibly pathetic - list of left-handed people, list of people with only one arm, etc.

Is it feasible to submit ALL article called "list of..." to immediate peer review, to determine if they should go or stay? As it is, the few good ones are left alone, which is fine, and the vast majority go to, and fail {{AfD}}, wasting everyone's time.

It probably isn't practical, but I thought I would seek ideas. Please don't bite me!--Anthony.bradbury 22:52, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

• Comment Who's going to review them? It makes a pile of work. You can go to Special:Allpages/List of and check through them, but there are thousands of pages to look through, and what would your review be, if not AfD? Even with new ones, it seems to contradict WP:BOLD to require review and approval for edits, and it wouldn't lighten the workload any vs. AfDing them as they come up. The biggest problem today is not new lists, it's the old ones from when standards were more forgiving and WP:NOT#INDEX was less enforced. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 23:49, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I've had a look through Special:Prefixindex/List of and there's about 50 000 of these pages, so no, it probably wouldn't be practical to go through them all. Tra (Talk) 23:58, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, a lot of those (the italicized ones) are redirects, so (if you included those in your count) there really are only maybe 20-30,000. John Broughton | Talk 03:04, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

It's still way to many to sift through, though, isn't it. Ah well, it was just a thought!--Anthony.bradbury 09:32, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

• It's a lot, but that shouldn't stop you from making a start. You can ask help at WP:COTM and some Wikiprojects. Heck, I've been known to sift through every single page in the Wikipedia: namespace for cleanup purposes (and you'd be amazed at some of the weirdness I found). >Radiant< 14:28, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
• A lot of new articles are nonsensical, so I don't see why lists should be singled out. Just keep an eye on Special:Newpages and nominate the bad lists you see created for deletion (if you're sure it's not improvable. - Mgm|^(talk) 13:42, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Live function for wikipedia

Many websites these days provide a live function which allows you to press a button and it takes you straight to the page that you pressed, without having to wait for the page to load. Examples of this include Hotmail live and yahoo search. It would be a far more advanced version of pop ups. This will be essential as the internet progresses and should be an item that wikipedia addresses as soon as possible. It would be a major change to the wikipedia page, but it needs to be more accessible in an ever changing internet RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 01:22, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand what you're proposing; some kind of link to a pre-cached version of the page instead of to the normal copy? It seems a bit strange, as surely the site needs to wait until you press the button to send you the data anyway... Shimgray | talk | 01:35, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I do not agree right now. While it is true this Web 2.0, AJAX and stuff is getting pretty "common" (facebook, digg, etc), it is also true that Wikipedia is "simple" in order to handle screen readers and old browsers. If such change were to be implemented, I would like them to be at another location, like ajax.wikipedia.org or stuffthatmakespeoplenowadaysgocrazy.wikipedia.org, not the main Wikipedia sites. -- ReyBrujo 01:43, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Maybe I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. I understand wikipedia editing is about getting up to date information. But Hotmail live gets automatiacally added to your inbox without you pressing anything. For instance, without pressing anything, a new email will appear in the inbox as soon as it is received (I'm not talking about messenger by the way!). I just think that it be a good idea to look at how the page is run now, rather than leaving it till its too late. I don't know, maybe the servers would have to be updated to accomodate this but it would be an ideal function. e.g. a message automatically appears on the screen when you get a new talk page message or you click on a talk page for an article and it appears without having to wait for the page to load. RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 01:47, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you need AJAX (as in, javascript that polls the site for changes and loads it if so). You could download a Firefox extension to reload the page every 30 seconds. However, since there is no way Wikipedia can tell every browser around the world "Dude, the page you have right now has changed, reload it!", the browsers must poll Wikipedia, which may (not sure here, just guessing) impact in performance (right now I have 8 tabs with Wikipedia articles, imagine each of them asking the server if the page has changed every 30 seconds). I am sure it is rather easy to create a script that does that (as you say, it would be similar to popups). But since the server right now handles edit conflicts better, I am not sure it is necessary. -- ReyBrujo 01:54, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

It could be added in stages, for instance as I've previously said, a message automatically appears when you get a message at first and then we go from there. Surely it can't harm anything to try it. RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 01:57, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Hrm. In practical terms, would it gain us anything? Any user active enough to want or need immediate notification is likely to be moving between pages at a fair clip whilst on the site, and thus unlikely to wait more than a couple of minutes before getting the notifier anyway. Shimgray | talk | 02:10, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Some kind of automatic updating of articles when changed? Leaving aside the technical problems of implementing it, and just concentrating on the effects on the user... ugh. I can see that going horribly wrong - what if you're reading a lengthy article as it's edit-warred over, or rearranged, or occasionally blanked and reverted by vandals? Confusion ensues. Reading the FA-of-the-day, or any high-traffic internal page, would be almost impossible, with edits every few minutes causing a refresh. Shimgray | talk | 02:10, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree, thats why I would suggest maybe limiting it to a few key things such as new user page messages and watchlist. I do believe we need to implement something along these lines relatively soon, maybe not exactly what I've suggested but along the same lines. RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 02:13, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Using Ajax to hover over the (diff) to see what was typed without having to open the page would be nice. It is similiar to what you see when you hover your cursor over a link or hyper-text picture and see its description. Then, if you decide you need to visit the (diff) you could click the link. Ronbo76 02:19, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Taking on that proposal, how about something similar to popups being written into the webpage? RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 02:22, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

You can implement this now, if you want... Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups. The general policy has been to keep advanced functionality like this something a matter for individual users to choose to take up, rather than rolling it out to all readers. Shimgray | talk | 02:23, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

That point is very much true, but maybe a simplified version of popups with limited function, i.e. talk and contibs on a user or view and edit on a mainspace page (as you can probably tell I've changd my view on what should be done - but I still feel we need a change) RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 02:29, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Why is this essential? Why can't you just open your link in a new tab and go there when you're done reading and it's done loading? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:26, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Well I guess its not but the internet is ever changing. Why not look at it now rather than leave it till its too late. I do believe that wikipedia will have to go more interactive in the near future and we should discuss future technology now rather than later RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 03:43, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Huarizo

Huarizo article brand new. It needs more images. It needs more words. Please expand on this thank you my English is not so good. Interlaker 16:13, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

This is generally not the place to ask for help improving articles. You would probably do better asking for help at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mammals. —Dgies^t c 16:18, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

New template/infobox idea

I think the that, if possible automatically, articles that are not updated often (like every 2 months or 30 days or ect.) a template is automatically added to the top of the page that says something to this effect:

  "This page is not edited often. Some of the information on this page may need to be updated" 

This is good for articles like Modern Language Association or any other which lists people and places that may not be updated (especially by a credible source) for months or a year or so... It would also deter people from sourcing exclusively Wikipedia but still offer the idea to anyone to look up and add the facts.

Thanks and tell me what you think. --Alegoo92 21:16, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Alex

• In the case of current situations or living people, or articles related to current situations or living people, this idea does have a use, though I personally don't feel that ther's much benefit. The vast majority of articles however can go for a very very long time before there is cause to update them, or indeed, new info to update them with. Crimsone 21:21, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
• For specific information which will require updating in the future, you can use a tag like {{update after|YEAR|MONTH|DAY}} which will insert a tag like this: into the article once it hits its "expiration date". —Dgies^t c 22:20, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
  • P.S. Requests about new templates can be made at Wikipedia:Requested templates.
• Note that "this is not edited often" sounds like an invitation to vandalize. >Radiant< 16:20, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Protected edit request at Template:Afd

An {{editprotected}} request was left at Template talk:Afd#Edit Request, regarding {{afd}}. PocklingtonDan has suggested that we add a link to WP:AFD, in addition to the subpage link already present. Given the wide use of this particular template, I figured it couldn't hurt to seek a little input from the community. Thoughts? Luna Santin 20:30, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Seems like a good idea. Reading the concerns mentioned on the template's talk page, as long as 'this article's entry' is the only link that is bolded, it should be clear which is the most important link. However, I think only 'Articles for deletion' should have the link added, not 'Articles for deletion page'. Tra (Talk) 20:55, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Proposal: Enforce American Spelling for Jewelry and related Categories

Proposal for Spelling on Jewelry, Jewelry Designer Category

As I slowly research on WP for jewelry related articles and edits, I am pretty concerned that the English spelling seems to have been chosen over the American one. In all research defense, I believe that an enforcement of the American one is neccesary. Here's why: The spelling in the British usage is only used by two major publishers in UK as well as Germany. My library houses over 100 titles on this subject as I am a PHD student finishing my doctorate on Jewelry Design. Out of all these titles, only about 20% of the books use the British Spelling. For the sake of these categories which need serious help, and which I am willing to put my time to help write and edit, I think we need to enforce this spelling. Example: When I seek out the word Jewelry design alone, I am told no page with that title exists. This is reallybad from an editorial standpoint, and I may also add that most encyclopedias I grew up reading,(even published in UK) used the spelling Jewelry.

So, I suggest we standardize this back to the American spelling. It looks like there was an earlier version with the previous spelling that was deleted, however I suggest that perhaps there was no editor with knowledge of this area at the time and perhaps with my help we can make this, as well as decorative arts areas a great improvement.

Thanks, Archiemartin Archiemartin 02:52, 10 January 2007 (UTC) Enforce American (or British) spelling Proposal: for consistency's sake, we should pick one style of spelling (British or American, generally) and stick with it. Not a good idea because: It is widely impractical and there is no agreement on which style should be chosen, which has in the past resulted in repeated, needless edit warring. See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English, Wikipedia:Standardize spellings/Archive [edit]Editing

• Personally, I'm not bothered by whichever spelling is used. I do find debates over British/American spelling quite tiresome though, so I'll keep it very short, but concise - surely the situation you described with no pages being found could be easily fixed using redirects, and with a minimum of controversy/debate? Crimsone 03:12, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I have never sent a category for renaming, but maybe you can follow the instructions here to nominate the category for renaming. -- ReyBrujo 03:15, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

• Won't fly. See WP:PEREN for details. >Radiant< 14:24, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

• Should Fly Enforce American Spelling. I agree redirect would be a temporary solution. However the long term need to fill in this category as mentioned on WP, '"It has been requested that this category be populated.

Please add the following category tag to any articles or categories that belong here:

Combined with the fact that WP:PEREN clearly states that:

Proposal: for consistency's sake, we should pick one style of spelling (British or American, generally) and stick with it. dictates that sticking with one thing should happen and it should happen with the guidance of a scholar who knows something about the subject. Since I am a scholar who does, and also agree with ReyBrujo that we should not debate over English American Spellings as they are boring ad nauseum, we need to stick to the facts which are as I mentioned. More published hard bound titles with primary resources are under the spelling jewelry. If needed, I can give a complete bibliography however a good starting place example is: Oppi Untracht: http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385041850. This 300 page volume is known throughout the world as THE Encylclopedia on jewelry. ArchiemartinArchiemartin 20:58, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Power Entry Module Page

I have been thinking about adding a reference to integrated power entry module devices to the IEC Connector page and adding a page defining and describing power entry modules. I know enough to understand that advertising is against policy and wouldn't go there, but factual information is always useful, right?

brian 18:53, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

As long as you can cite some good sources, and aren't singing the praises of your product, you should be fine. Be Bold, you don't need to ask for approval to write something.Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:29, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Keeping search engines out of user space?

Note: this is related, I think, to the section immediately above, but originated from some other edits and work I've been doing here.

Has there been any previous discussion about the wiki software adding "No robots" to the HTML code of all userspace pages? I know that the wiki software adds "No follow" tags to all external links on talk pages and userspace pages, which helps fight spam, but user pages are still getting indexed on google and other search engines, and the results can actually show up fairly high. So before I float a proposal about removing user pages from search engines (I know there are disadvantages as well as advantages), I thought I'd check here first. Any pointers? John Broughton | Talk 16:34, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Fairly high indeed... my userpage has been #1 for "Dar-Ape" for a while now. I don't really have a complete answer for you, but if you'd like to search for "metasyntactic variable" in Wikipedia through Google without searching user pages, type this into Google: metasyntactic variable site:en.wikipedia.org -intitle:"user" and user pages will be excluded. Hope this is at least partially helpful, Dar-Ape 17:19, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I am sure there are major disadvantages to this proposal (I think that's what you're getting at). But my question is whether the Wikipedia community has ever discussed this. (I'm familiar with inurl and intitle parameters for google searches; this isn't about excluding results, its about spam and attack pages and other things that might cease to be a real problem if userpages weren't indexed by search engines.) John Broughton | Talk 02:39, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it has been discussed. General feeling has been that given the current weaknesses of our in-house search engine, that being able to google search user pages is too useful to forgo at this time. Though your points about unintended highly ranked pages are certainly accurate. Dragons flight 02:48, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

It also opens up the possibility of vanispamcruftisement in User space, something that I've thought of before. If I had a topic (say my band) that I knew wouldn't make it into the 'pedia proper, I could create it on a subpage (with an html link to my band's site), add a link to the subpage in my signature and sneakily use Wikipedia to increase the pagerank of my site. In addition, the mere fact that Wikipedia would appear high up in a Google search would lend importance to my band (Wow! you have an entry on Wikipedia!). There are many many "articles" in user space, who knows what they are being used for? Zunaid©^{Review me!} 10:29, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

External links in userspace are tagged with nofollow, so they don't increase the PageRank of websites. Tra (Talk) 17:31, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

(undent) True, but user pages still can show up relatively far up. For example, a search on "Pablo Ganguli" yields this at number 11: User:Zeouspom/Pablo Ganguli. That's a userfied article that was just proposed to be inserted into mainspace, so in that sense it's okay, but it didn't use spam tricks like repeated text (hidden in comments, perhaps, or white on white text).

I guess the question sort of comes down to whether google searches of userspace are valuable for other than finding spam. If the user pages were not indexed by search engines, there wouldn't be any reason to search them for spam because spam would be pointless (even if spammers didn't know that). John Broughton | Talk 02:52, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

The converse could that a searchable unique word or error (please see the discussion above) can render a talkpage cached. From my searches with the engines available when Wikipedia does not find an article, Yahoo seems to pick up articles a little sooner than the others. With articles being cached, it presents two problems: one, what happens when someone self-publishes an article that becomes cached; and two, conversations on talkpages become searchable once cached - what is the impact? Compound this with answer.com and other websites automatically use our articles for their articles. The bottomline is Wikipedia is becoming very desirable for a citeable source. You make it here, you make it everywhere eventually. Ronbo76 15:35, 9 January 2007 (UTC)