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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals).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

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sex stub heteronormativity

i think the sex stub pic is heteronormative since it shows a symbol for a male and a female and excludes two men or two women.

 This sex-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

any thoughts?

could a man/man and woman/woman symbo, be added in? or somthing else that represents sex like a bunch of flesh of differant people in a collage?Qrc2006 05:32, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Because heterosexuality is the normal state. The typical symbol for human draws him(her) with two legs and two hands, even though there are people with less limbs. The typical hand symbol is drawn with five fingers, even though there's a lot of people with four left and some born with six. The typical symbol for car draws it in normal state, not with smashed hood or three wheels; same for everything. While we try not to discriminate crippled, homosexual, mutated and so on, symbolics is to be simple and use symbols representing the common state. --CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 05:55, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree with CPM 1000% Raul654 06:02, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
What about man/woman/woman polyamorous couples? And woman/woman/woman/man/woman couples? To make this stub politically correct, I conclude it will need to include about 700 combinations and be 30 lines long :-) --W.marsh 06:07, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

heterosexuality is not the normal state you biggot, you should be blocked for your homophobic remarks, that implies that gay people are not normal. In fact the normal state in nearly all species studied is 8 to 10% gay and bi and 90 to 92% straight. Who cares about hands, people with lees fingers are gentically defected or mamed, homosexulaity and bisexuality is natural and innate, and why should articles on gay sexuality have to have a male-female symbol on them if they are a stub? I'm not syaing we need a gajilion combinations, but the symbol could be more inclusive by for instance having 6 or 7 sex symbols in a line or circle alternating between male and female, and that way it does not imply any specific combination.

OR as i stated before a collage of pictures of legs and chests and breasts and penises and abdomens or arms intertwined might be an alternative? Qrc2006 08:12, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I think something obvious is being missed here. It's related to sex, it has the symbols for gender. No endorsement of anything is implied by that, and there is no obvious replacement which would be any better. In response to Qrc2006, actually, yes, heterosexuality is the normal state in the sense of the most usual. That does not mean homosexuality is abnormal, just less common. You are assuming bad faith I think. Just zis Guy you know? 11:54, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Cool. I'm glad to know I'm in fact a homophobic biggot. Should I add myself to the Axis of Evil already?
But you just said the same thing yourself: over 90% people are heterosexual. A symbol doesn't have to reflect all the spectrum of possible sexual behaviors. Just look at the section with ICD 302.0 - ICD 302.89, no sensible symbol could include all this. Everyone understands what the standart symbol means, and it is actually less ambiguious than pictures of intertwined penises, abdomens and breasts (and here hentai fans could also demand inclusion of tentacles). It's true for all symbols - they only need to be unambiguious, not include everything possible.
However, if you are concerned with use of the common symbol in articles on homosexuality, it's fine - just be bold and make an alternate version of that template with corresponding symbols. I think other editors of related articles will have no objections, so you can replace the appearances of the generic template with the more specific one. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 12:39, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

The symbol in the sex stub is as inclusive as necessary. It has a symbol for each possible participant. It is up to each sex article to describe who participates in what with whom, not the symbol itself. --Dave 12:50, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Ditto! -- Dwheeler 22:23, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Archived proposals

Feel free to add your comments to these archived proposals.

Proposals for the Main ("article") namespace

Subject Description
Dealing with vandalism Should some editing restrictions be placed on new or unregistered users to help reduce vandalism, or at least be reviewed by others before taking effect? Should high-visibility articles be protected from editing?
Search engine How could Wikipedia's search engine be improved?
Spell checker on Edit pages Should Edit pages have a built-in spell checker?
Always fill the summary field Should the summary field below the edit box be required to be filled or automatically filled?
Votes for Creation Should there be a Votes for Creation page to complement the current Votes for Deletion?

Proposals for the Talk ("discussion") namespace

Subject Description
Discussion format Should Talk pages use a wiki interface or a more traditional forum format?
... ...
... ...

Proposals for Wikipedia's relationship with the outside world

Subject Description
... ...
... ...

|}


Very good idea - anyone up for implementing this should go ahead immediately - It would be a long job though, and the page may have to be locked while it's being done. Wierdy1024 20:04, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree; excellent idea. — Catherine\talk 19:20, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

4288

Please support bug 4288 which is an enhancement that allows general tagging of revisions. This will allow user and group defined tags which can then be used for things like this project and possibly other stuff in the future. Thanks. --Gbleem 23:22, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

WP:EPISODE

I wrote this page a few weeks ago as the beginning of what I hoped would become a guideline. Not knowing how to propose a guideline, I forgot about the page until today, where the link on {{historical}} led me here. This page simly clarifies that episode summaries need sources like any other article. Reasons I have been given in the past that episode summaries are okay without sources:

  • "The episode is the reference!" — from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Peter's Got Woods
  • "That's nonesense. It is cited, and the source is the movie/book/tv show being summarised. And if that's "original research", then every page where something's expressed in the writer's words instead of being copy-pasted from a book or encyclopedia - which is to say, every single page in wikipedia - is guilty of original research" — from the same debate, someone has no idea what OR is.
  • see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Death Has a Shadow

Out of frustration that no one seems to notice that episode summariies aren't above un-ignorable WIkipedia policy, I made the page to clarify. -- Chris chat edits essays 17:19, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

And I'm afraid you ultimately missed the point. Summarising and paraphrasing are well-known and acknowledged processes, and in doing them no content is ever produced. WP:NOR allows these to be used as long as no speculative work is performed. Of course, referencing another summary again strengthens the article, however, and should be encouraged. LinaMishima 18:14, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
I think a much larger debate needs to happen here, and that is whether wholesale summarizing of fictional plots is appropriate fodder for Wikipedia articles. If so, then you're out of luck. If not, we'll have thousands of articles to delete. Fagstein 19:10, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps a user perspective might clarify this. I myself do not intend to write such articles--many many of the people here have more skill in this than I, with a greater memory for names and places, and a more extensive collection of original material to refer to.

As a user of WP, long before I though of editing, I've found this material enormously useful. For major works of any medium, there are good conventional sources; for fandom, the web has always done adequately. But for an organized system of high-quality articles , this is the place. I see no need to extensively document this, unless the fairness or accuracy of the summary is challenged. The purpose of documentation is so others can check your work. But for these topics, the episode itself is the documentation. Anyone who thinks the editor is careless automatically knows exactly where to check. Otherwise a reference would need to be given for every page of the book or frame of the video. If challenged, then it can be quoted or described. As I understand it, it might even be a copyright violation to give to paraphrase the whole. ----

To respond the original post: Of course such episode summaries need sources, and true, the source is often the work itself, but the work itself must be cited in the usual manner in this case. If I recall correctly we have some guidelines that say something like this (look through Wikipedia:Citing sources and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction)). On a technical note, keep in mind that deletion discussion pages cannot be referred to using the syntax WP:AFD/Blah (doesn't work). Deco 05:47, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

The WP:NOR policy clearly states:

Primary sources present information or data, such as
[...]
artistic and fictional works such as poems, scripts, screenplays, novels, motion pictures, videos, and television programs (whether recorded in digital or analogue formats).
[...]
Original research that creates primary sources is not allowed. However, research that consists of collecting and organizing information from existing primary and/or secondary sources is, of course, strongly encouraged. All articles on Wikipedia should be based on information collected from published primary and secondary sources. This is not "original research"; it is "source-based research", and it is fundamental to writing an encyclopedia.

So use of the primary source is not original research. Original research is what creates primary sources, not what uses them. There are quite frequent cases when WP:NOR is misapplied to articles based on works of fiction and describing them, but the policy in fact directly endorses it, as long as no new fiction is introduced. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 23:34, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Episodes summaries may not be OR, but surely most of the page is. For example, the "cultural references" section on the Family Guy pages ( i don't know which others include it) is purely primary. The information is not common knowledge, or at least not common enough for the average person to assume. Majorities of sections of most Episode Summaries are OR. Perhaps one could make this cast that one can use the source to write the article, but that's like saying I can write an article on a tree by looking at it (pretending WP:N doesn't exist). Hell no I can't! Can I write about MySpace just by using its service? No. So why is it that I can write about a TV episode just by watching it once? -- Chris chat edits essays 02:33, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
There are long-standing debates amongst the 'truth' policies (NOR, VERIFY) as to what can and cannot be drawn from a primary source. In my opinion, trivially obvious details may be drawn without needing the analysis of a secondary source, as such matters are often overlooked as being obvious by subsequent authors. Episode summaries should be written in a manner becoming of an encyclopedia, and should be devoid of analysis of character motivations over those stated. Trivia and cultural references must be obvious to the general public if no secondary source is used. And yes, you can write about myspace by just using it, just only in such a manner as appropriate for using a primary source (assuming, that is, you're talking about wikipedia). The problem of aspects of a subject being assumed to be purely trivial and obvious by secondary sources is a real one. LinaMishima 03:22, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject

The presentation of most WikiProjects isn't very attractive. On fr: there's a standardized presentation for projects which gives results such as this one or that one. Is there anything similar here ? Sigo 16:46, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know, we use a very simple text preserntation as default, and most Wikiprojects use it. While a lot of projects are already well used to that, I'm sure many others would like something more complex and attractive, like on the French wiki. It would be nice if you modified that code a bit (just change terms) and uploaded here as a subpage for WikiProject, linking it as an alternate template. I'll assist if needed, I know French a little. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 17:00, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
Good idea! LinaMishima 18:20, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
You could also talk about that at the project : Wikipedia:WikiProject Council so that the people who are well versed in creating wikiproject pages can help you and know about this. Lincher 01:56, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the idea. Sigo 19:29, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Currently, at WP:WPSG, we have a beautiful layout that is loved by its members. Other projects could use our layout. Tobyk777 02:24, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Great layout but maybe a bit too elaborated for a project. It nearly looks like a portal :) Sigo 19:29, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, BTW the French one as well. Since many WikiProjects have corresponding portals, maybe it's even good. I've been around on other language WPs, and they usually run with less rules, so I guess they might combine portal and wikiproject functionality. However, the WPSG layout seems more fitting to me - the French one is maybe a little too tight. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 04:04, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Please help contribute to the See alsos straw poll

Please help contribute to the See alsos straw poll. Wikipedia:See alsos is a straw poll being developed and almost ready for polling. The purpose is to find consensus on good editing technique regarding see alsos--something not listed anywhere. I'd like those interested to help improve it. Anomo 11:15, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Almost ready for polling? I don't see much of a discussion there, or even a suggested guideline. Am I missing something? Fagstein 19:19, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
I can hardly get anyone to contribute. Anomo 19:53, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Wiki for each country for local info?

Why not have a wiki for each country where local information could be put that is not important enough for an article in the global wiki, and where articles that would be considered 'vanity' in global wiki could justifiably be inserted for local personalities of interest in their own country but not globally? For example, Joe Bloggs of Nowhereville, Country X, is a local headmaster and expert on Country X legends. He doesn't rate an entry in global WP but would look dandy and relevant in the WP for country X and would be referenced there by locals (or even non-locals) who have not found him in global WP. Lgh 03:07, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

There are already Wikipedias for many languages. Your proposal would introduce too many Wikipedias, which would be very difficult to grow and maintain. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 04:17, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
I disagree that there would be 'too many Wikipedias' (and indeed I note on your user page you are pushing for a Singapore wikiproject, which is essentially the same thing I'm proposing). The original concept has grown too far and too fast. There is a vast backlog of all sorts of things that should have been sorted out ages ago. I think a local wiki for each country would attract a loyal band of dedicated editors for that country. Maintenance would actually be faster because it would be a local concern. If it were established it would simply double the existing number of wiki's. For example, there would be a general French wiki (as exists now) and a local French wiki for local info and personalities. Indeed the local one could be supported by local advertising, something which is not appropriate to the spirit of the global WP. Lgh 04:35, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
I think this could be a good idea if carefully implemented, though off the top of my head I don't see an easy way in which this could be integrated seamlessly into Wikipedia (maybe soft redirects from the main wiki, but that sort of defeats the point). It would fix up a lot of notability problems with local celebrities and schools.--Konstable 04:43, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
It could be as simple as expanding the current sentence in the Wiki default box that reads: 'Wikipedia does not have an article with this name, to start an article'... etc, to read: 'Wikipedia does not have an article with this name, if of global and notable importance, start an article in the box below. Or, try the Wikipedia for your country if the item is of local importance, and if appropriate, start an article there...' Or something. I don't know. As far as links goes, the local wiki could have hot/link words in the colour green, say, as well as in blue. The green would link to other local items and the blue would link to the global WP. Once these local country WP's are established, it would be grand opportunity for global WP to transfer all the articles about high schools and headmasters to the appropriate local WP. I estimate it would reduce the number of articles in English WP by about 25%. I regularly trawl through articles at random and at least 50% of the time I'm thinking - that shouldn't really be in a global encyclopedia. What is to be done? Pravda. Lgh 05:01, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
This seems not a very good idea. If these subjects interesting and significant, and verifiable information is available, they deserve an article, else, if information is unverifiable (OR, POV-only), Wikipedia can't include it even in "local" form. Splitting WP into many wikis would only harm both readers and editors, with no possible benefits. What's the objective reason for splitting, if we can keep it in one database? Problems with deletionism should be faced directly, not by obscure workarounds. I consider obsession with notability a major problem when it goes beyond WP:V requirements, because it will ultimately lead to information being scattered around with extreme redundancy over a large number of sites, deteriorating quality and ruining accessibility. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 13:30, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
On the contrary, quality may be improved by having a second category of WP in which less notable/local information is contained versus the global WP with important and notable information. It seems intuitively correct that information needs to be categorised and ranked in order for efficient sorting and access. However, I concede that this intuition may be wrong given the virtually infinite capacity of the internet and the efficiency of search engines. But the notion of an infinitely expanding morass of non-notable information somehow irks me. Maybe I'm simply too referential in my thinking to an assumption of the need for informational organisation. In the end the internet may prove me wrong and a new paradigm will emerge: a universe in which minutiae can be instantly found: an intelligent haystack which will hand you any needle you like. Instantly. Bring on all the non-notables. I am about to write an article for WP on a small piece of broken tile found in my vegetable garden, so I can't hang around to chat. Lgh 23:29, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
You seemingly don't get what I mean. Wikipedia is a product of the information age. A predictable, obvious one. There is not much, if anything, in idea of creating it; it always lied on the surface, and had a lot of implementations before this digital one. Wikipedia is only as good as it is useful, as supported as it is useful, and it is as useful as it is informative. Potentially, WP or a similar system can be the sum of human knowledge, and I see no RL objections to it.
I wholeheartedly agree that information needs to be sorted, by many categories. Including being sorted by notability. But it should be sorted, not scattered. Sorting is only possible inside a system, so it should be sorted here. There's no need for scattering it around all the web again, and keeping people to make inter-site sorting would be a huge waste.
Yes, feel free to write the article about that tile - but first think: Is it interesting or useful to anyone outside? If not, it will be scrapped everywhere. Is it verifiable? If not, it has nothing to do with WP. But if both questions return 1, you will probably write it anyway, and publish it somewhere. To be interesting or useful to someone outside, your tile piece should be really unique; to be verifiable, it needs media coverage, like some photos and an article in your local newspaper. It would have to contain Elerium-115 to get all that, but suppose it does - then people will be interested, and it will be a worthy piece of encyclopedic info for E-115 article, telling about how it was discovered.
Any artificial separation, not related to usefulness and verifiability, will only lead to scattering the same info across hundreds of sites. Today Wikipedia is repairing the consequences of an error made in its founding, with the Interwiki project. Do we need to make another similar disruption, only to waste time fixing it later? Breaking info into several sites is already a problem; the worst thing that can be done is breaking these sites into even smaller pieces. --CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 00:06, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
you raise a good point. Maybe each article could be given a notability rating at the top which once given would be very hard to change. This would deter non-notables from writing articles about themselves - if they knew they'd get a prominent "rated 1 out of 10 for notability" at the top. What is potentially happening now is that non-notables could use WP to boost their notoriety be referring people to their article: 'see I am famous, look at the article on me in the wikipedia!' As far as sorting versus scattered; this is a red herring. Hotlinks can instantly take you anywhere in the internet - there is no sorting or scattering as such, or rather it is all both sorted and scattered - so maybe you are operating under the old paradigm I mentioned above. Lgh 00:39, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
In my opinon, such system, but with 3-5 levels, would be a fine idea. The actual thing about Wikipedia is that it finally implements the next-gen net structure, proposed long ago, in 1960s, by Ted Nelson as Project Xanadu, with two-way links and permanent edit history. Besides that, it has a common categorization system. All this improves accessibility so vastly that other concerns become barely noticeable. Including the concern of misuse - after all, the Verifiability policy can easily deal with the harmful ones, and others are in the worst case no more than some kilobytes on a practically infinite (growing times faster than all humanity can possibly fill it) disk array. So the better way is to keep everything worthy of some notice here. I fully support the idea of notability assessment, and, if you can suggest a way to implement it, it would be very useful. Even more if we can push it ahead enough to become at least minimally accepted; for instance, as a small icon for articles non-notable by general standarts. I'm not sure it wouldn't be hard to accomplish, but it is a far better way. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 01:16, 5 September 2006 (UTC
maybe this process could start with articles about people. All new articles about people (such as vanity articles) could be assessed like the articles for deletion and voted on to either keep or not keep; and if 'keep' then an icon for notable or not-notable could be voted on; then applied in a non-deletable way by an admin. I think the words 'notable' and 'non-notable' need to be used, maybe in a bright colour or accompanying an icon; this is for naive users of wiki - otherwise they won't know what the icon means. If a non-notable subject later becomes notable they can then apply to have the rating changed to 'notable'. They would have to justify their applcation and get the application voted on. if this process works it could be extended to other articles, eg about schools, etc. Lgh 04:35, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
Not sure - this is an issue of being a public person. However, we have a few articles about Board of Trustees members, which don't even say anything interesting about their subjects, and don't keep up with the policies. Ironically, their subjects themselves put them on VfD and AfD, but failed. For people it may be a sensitive issue.
For other subjects, "nn" is often a problem, because it's hard to assert notability, and there are people willing to keep only what Britannica would. Maybe you would be interested in the Wikipedia:Non-notability (or WP:NNOT) proposal, which suggests keeping only policy compliance as the barrier, and not extra guidelines. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 02:01, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia on mobile

i could like to post the suggestion to start wikipedia for mobiles so that mobile users can also use it through wap or other such service.pl reply to my talk page as well.Yousaf465

See Wikipedia:WAP access Tra (Talk) 12:12, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Multi-level articles and subpages?

Hi, I'm still a relative newbie, so please forgive me if this topic has come up already. I've been involved with some science/math articles and it's often difficult to find the right level; what some people find obscure and difficult to understand, other people find trivially obvious and belabored. (See Talk:Hamilton-Jacobi equations and Talk:Photon, for example.) Also, it'd be nice sometimes to show a derivation or explain something in more detail than can be covered easily in a footnote, but which might be too short for its own article. So I was thinking of using subpages for these kinds of "extended footnotes". That way, the same topic could be covered in different depths, depending on how many subpages the reader was interested in following. We could even have subpages of subpages for readers who really wanted to delve into a topic. Intuitively, I suspect that this scheme won't work, but I can't exactly say why I think so. I'd appreciate everyone's opinion about the idea, or other suggestions for multi-level articles — thanks muchly! :D Willow 15:35, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

There are two solutions for this. First is creating a simple article and a series of in-depth ones. Second, for topics needing high detail and not as critical to referencing, is Wikibooks, though, admittedly, it is a bit too complex to work. Subpages for footnotes is a good idea, but today we've settled with just using a section main page with extra detail. It has the simplicity advantage. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 15:46, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Consensus polling

"Consensus is a partnership between interested parties working positively for a common goal." -- Jimmy Wales

Consensus can sometimes be hard to achieve in practice, and often harder to measure. Consensus polling is a method of adducing consensus for a given proposal, using a structured polling method which can easily indicate how many people are in support of a proposal, and how many people are not yet in support of a proposal.

A consensus poll is unlike traditional (evil) votes, which produce winners and losers; in a consensus poll there is only one proposal, which can be edited by the participants in the poll. This method aims to help people achieve a high level of consensus, rather than a low level of consensus (such as a mere majority or supermajority). Having only a single proposal aims to ensure that participants do actually work together to achieve a result which pleases as many people as possible, rather than encouraging them to compete against each other in order for their own proposal to succeed.

More information about consensus polling can be found at consensuspolling.org, and at the MeatballWiki. I encourage people who are interested in this method to try it out; the proposal page already contains a full set of instructions for setting up a new poll. I also encourage people to leave their comments at the talk page. --bainer (talk) 14:39, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Adding users to watchlist

Would it be possible to add other users to our watchlists. I know that we are supposed to WP:AGF, but if a user has been vandalising a lot recently, I think it would be a good idea to be able to keep an eye on them without having to go through to their contribs page every time. --GW_SimulationsUser Page | Talk 20:30, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I've frequently wished I could add a User's contributions page to my Watchlist. User:Zoe|(talk) 23:08, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

So have I, especially when it comes to vandals. Georgia guy 00:08, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, thought, I could see many people feeling that such a change would be creepy and encourage wikistalking. What I normally do is add their username somewhere and use that to occasionally check their contributions (popups are good for this!). After all, most of the time the RC patrollers will catch the changes, so the most important thing to do is to scan their changes for ones that are still at the top. LinaMishima 00:38, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Assuming good faith works because there are more good users than bad users. This feature has massive potential for abuse. Besides being used for wikistalking, it could be used to give one an advantage in an edit/revert war. There is little point in watching vandals because they will usually be blocked pretty quickly. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 06:40, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
While there are wikistalking problems, there are also users who need to have any eye kept on them but are not conventional vandals and therefore cannot be blocked, or at least indefinitely blocked. They have some non-vandalistic edits, often fairly insignificant or crummy, but they also do things like adding inappropriate external links to articles (but not spam) or adding a mention of their hometown/state/country or their favorite college, subject, actor, movie or TV show to articles when it is inappropriate or rearranging lists and disambiguation pages so that their favorite things appear at the top (I like to make lists alphabetical to help prevent this). However, I do not know if the help in watching problematic users is outweighed by making stalking easier. -- Kjkolb 07:38, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Or sometimes people do formally legitimate things, but ones that may need to be countered. For instance, one user added deletion tags to tens of articles at a time, and I have to watch all of them now for repeated actions; however, a contribs watchlist could be an easier way. Not sure if this could be implemented inside current watchlist, though. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 11:32, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
I've made a javascript tool that does this. It's not as good as the real watchlist but it's a start. Tra (Talk) 13:27, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Alerting other users of problem edits one is unable to fix?

I often come across the following on Wikipedia

  • An edit or paragraph which looks suspicious, but I'm not sure whether it's wrong.
  • An edit or paragraph which contains problems which I cannot fix.

For example, the Freewebs article has a section entitled "Use of a Freewebs website as a reference to Wikipedia". This section looks suspicious, as Wikipedia articles generally avoid self-references. However, I'm not sure whether it should be deleted.

I suggest we have a page for reporting such edits/paragraphs, where they may be double-checked by another editor. The disadvantage of this idea is that the page may eventually have a backlog. Alternatively, we could place a template on the article to alert other editors. The disadvantage is that it would be harder to monitor such a template, and that the editor who fixes the edit must also remove the template.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:12, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

One alternative is to go to Wikipedia:Cleanup resources and select an appropriate template. That automatically categorizes the article with others that need attention and alerts future readers to the possible problem. Durova 21:18, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
These templates are great when a whole article or subsection is suspicious, but they can seem overkill when you just want to query a single statement or paragraph - they're big, in your face, and not very specific about which content is actually being queried and why. What I've done a couple of times is create a section on the article's talk page to explain the perceived problem, and then insert something like <sup>&#91;[[<name of talk page>#<title of section>|clarification needed]]&amp#93;</sup> next to the relevant passage. Matt 17:47, 10 September 2006 (UTC).
Actually, further to my comment above, I see there are already some templates, such as Template:Citation_needed, that are much more discreet and specific than the big banners. (I'm not sure if they're listed at Wikipedia:Cleanup resources though, or if any allow you to link to somewhere where you can explain what the problem is.) Matt 18:43, 10 September 2006 (UTC).

Onomastic pages created by Sheynhertz-Unbayg

I posted a message about this on Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous), but that page seems to be essentially dead, since no one has posted to the page at all for a day and a half. Anyway, I was hoping that I could get some help in fixing the damage done by banned user Sheynhertz-Unbayg. You can check out what happened here. -- Kjkolb 00:43, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

To avoid forking, please follow up at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)#Onomastic pages created by Sheynhertz-Unbayg. Deco 10:36, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Names of cities/towns

How come the state/province etc. is included in the article title proper for every US city/town, most Canadian, Australian and Japanese cities/towns, a few Chinese cities/towns and almost none for other countries? If the intention is to disambiguate, then why include the subdivision in Hakodate, Hokkaido or Revillo, South Dakota which are the only places with those names? If including the subdivision for consistency, why Sydney and not Sydney, New South Wales (a redirect) when almost all Australian places have the state?. And if Sydney in Australia is the most likely article one wants if searching for Sydney, then why Los Angeles, California? Ohwell32 10:55, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements). I believe the original intent was that place names would be disambiguated only when necessary. Nearly all of the US articles were added by a bot that consistently created them as "city, state". Nearly all the Japanese articles were added by a single user, who consistently used "city, prefecture". This is a contentious issue. Some editors seem to intensely dislike adding a disambiguation (of any kind) to city names. To some extent, I think this may be a cultural difference between the US and the UK (not sure how most other places weigh in) with, e.g. "London, England" sounding perfectly natural to an American but looking bizarre to someone who lives there. There is a wealth of prior discussion about this at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements) and its archives. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:18, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Difficult to switch language on Wikipedia

A suggestion for improving Wikipedia.org:

As a non-native english speaker I often do seaches in other languages than english (most often Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian in my case). However once at the language specific sites (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page, http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forside, http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huvudsida) I have found no other way to switch search language than going back to wikipedia.org and choose a new language. It would be really, really useful to have a "switch language link" on each language specific site, that would give a list of all the other language specific sites. So please....

Best regards, Jens Lund, Denmark

PS: I am aware of the "in other languages" side box. However, this box only appears for searches that give results for the same words and only list languages with results for the current search. The cases where I most often want to switch language is when my search do NOT return a useful result, and then the side box is not available!

(This has also been posted as Ticket#2006090510004272 to info-en-o@wikimedia.org where I got a reply to make the suggestion here. By accident I also posted this on the VPT page where it might not belong. Sorry for that!) 194.239.194.210 14:36, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

So you'd want an "other languages" box for searches, which has that search on the other language Wikipedias? Sounds like an interesting idea. But wouldn't it mean we'd have to include all language Wikipedias in that box? Fagstein 05:46, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
That would be useful, an option to return results in every language, or on the search page, have a checkbox for every language (wouldn't fit on the sidebar obviously) Ohwell32 10:33, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

great idea, the side bar could have a link to an advanced search page, or any search page could have it, and it could have a scroll box where u ctrl or apple key the desired languges or select all, or the side bar could have a scroll list of languages with more thna 50,000 artiles and with a to search additional languges kinda think, idk but great idea! maybe a all encompassing international wikipedia search page, click on the languages you want to search in, then do your search and click the languges you want to search withinQrc2006 03:21, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

new pages: new users

I had meant to take a quick survey myself, but had not gotten around to it, so I thought that first I would ask if any previous, similar policy discussions had been asked about before. First a couple of questions: What percent of new pages are listed for speedy deletion? What percent of speedy deletion pages are by first time editors? Has the general wiki-population considered blocking brand new accounts from creating pages? I myself am guilty of creating a new page or two that has been speedily deleted, and, especially, when I was newly registered, uploading a copyrighted image, unaware of the difference. Couldn't wikipedia bar a new user from creating a new page until they have a minimal amount of edits under their belt, say 25? Also, couldn't the create a page script include text stating that one should not create an article about themselves, their band, their high school (basically, everything listed on Wikipedia:List_of_bad_article_ideas? It is my understanding that the new focus of this encyclopedia is to be quality, not quantity, so these changes might be due. Wouldn't these minimally invasive policies be a substantial improvement over the consideration of edits not becoming immediately available, instead having to be approved by a trusted editor? Just my 2 cents. Autopilots 06:07, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

  • Non-logged in users are already blocked from creating articles. If you also block new accounts from creating them, you'll probably get a lot of people signing up, then never return again. Adding those links to the script is a good idea, although experience tells me some people don't read stuff like that even if the links are big, red and flashing. It can't hurt to try. -- Mgm|(talk) 08:07, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Hiring full-time Wikipedians in low-wage nations

I propose that a portion of either the Wikimedia Foundation's funds or a private fund generated by Wikipedians go towards paying the salaries of full-time Wikipedia contributors in low-wage nations. These people could be chosen from among prolific active Wikipedians in these nations, or experts in certain areas could be hired and trained to address specific systematic biases. It would be relatively cheap, allowing quite a few to be hired; more importantly, many of these users would be native speakers of the language of a small Wikipedia project, allowing them to substantially push these projects forward in addition to contributing to larger projects. I believe this would also have positive repercussions on people and communities in these nations, providing a new external income source and spreading the importance of knowledge and learning. This isn't to say that there isn't also value in hiring Wikipedians in the U.S., Western Europe, Canada, Australia, etc., but the yield per dollar would probably be not quite as good. Thoughts? Deco 11:09, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

"Wikipedia: The Encyclopedia Sweatshop!" *Dan T.* 11:25, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
With the current ideology, editors are supposed to be volunteers. Generally it would be a good idea, if not psychological issues, which can make it not useful. Of course, such a solution could well be considered for the tech team, or possibly some additional part, but these decisions are to be made by the board, and today it's probably not worth the complications. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 19:06, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
I would oppose this. If they get a salary, I want one too. Even if its only 3 bucks a day or whatever. I also think we shouldn't have paid members of corporations and government agencies working on wikipedia for pay either, but there's no stopping that. User:Pedant 21:15, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Ever heard of foreign aid?--Light current 21:27, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
... What of it? --Golbez 21:33, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
If low wages in foreign countries are a problem, why not lobby for increased foreign aid to those countries? Why do we need full time paid wikipedians anywhere? And if we did have them, would that guarantee elimination of 'systematic bias'. What is systematic bias anyway? Is it global POV? --Light current 22:32, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
'Systemic bias' is the fact that most of the English Wikipedia's articles are written from a western, Anglo-Saxon perspective, causing a claimed deficiency in the articles on Africa, etc. --Golbez 22:52, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Well we certainly need to get proper world views on ALL subjects. Just how it can be achieved is another matter.

--Light current 23:12, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I doubt if paying people in these countries is going to solve any probelms (assuming WP had the money)--Light current 22:54, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
No foreign aid is going to raise wages in China from $100/month to something more sensible. Well, in theory, if the Wikipedia was run by AI and if all psychological human concerns (like expressed by Pedant) were ignored, and especially if we included some ads - then effectiveness of Wikipedia could be improved this way, providing WP with many thousands of editors with tens of thousands edits each (and helping some people) - but this is not the case. WP is an effort in completely freeware development, and, since it makes a large part of our PR, major changes in modus operandi are out of question. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 23:00, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
When WP takes over the world (which may just happen) I suggest we look at this one again. 8-)--Light current 23:03, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Sure! So let's work on taking over the world for now [putting on his Cabal Uniform and laughing maniacally in violation of Dark Overlord's rules] --CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 23:12, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
What I should have said was; When the world community IS the Wikicommunity then you may be able to do something.--Light current 23:14, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
And that's why you always should wear the Cabal Uniform when laughing maniacally; the rest of the time should be spent wikifying the world. -- CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 23:23, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reward board is a first step. CG 13:15, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I dont know if this is the place for this or even whether this has been discussed(if not implemented) already. My suggestion is, instead of hiring editors in low wage countries, how about gifting poor schools in poor countries where poor students study with couple of computers and internet connections on the condition that they introduce wikipedia as part of the school curriculum. Students should be expected to contribute regularly(say atleast one article every 2 weeks in a language of their choice) or alternatively the teacher should give assignments which students would be required to put on the wikipedia and earn points. This will be a great way for disadvantaged students from poor financial backgrounds to lay hands on technology, be a part of it and learn a great deal in the process Sarvagnya 09:55, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I would suggest that once provided with computers, the learners will naturally find projects that are appropriate and valuable, as we pereive this to be. On a less high-minded note, the reputation and skills achievable from working extensively on this project should be transferable to more renumerative situations. DGG 22:46, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

User image space

I think we should be able to upload images to our user space, or at least have a namespace for images that would be considered in one's user space. Many people use custom images in their userspace. 'FLaRN' (talk) 19:26, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

And this would help us write a free (as in freedom) ensyclopedia how? I'm afraid I just don't see any benefit to it, we can community build just fine without unfree images. I know you young ones love to adorn things with pictures of your favourite comics, cartoons, movies or whatever else, but please realise that doing so is not what Wikipedia is about. There are tonnes of other sites out there that will let you do such things though, but let's not try to turn Wikipedia into one of them. --Sherool (talk) 20:03, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
IT's all right to have one or two public domain or GFDL-compliant images on your User page or in your User space, but galleries wouldn't be acceptable. And I endorse Sherool's comments. User:Zoe|(talk) 20:08, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
  • I do see some merit in this, although I'm not sure it is worth the work. Of course copyright stuff still applies. But images in that space doesn't have to be encyclopedic and it would make abuse of userspace pics in attack articles and such easier to spot. How often are userspace specific pics abused? - Mgm|(talk) 18:15, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Search all Wikimedia

Is there any way to search not only wikipedia but the whole foundation including wikispecies and wikinews etc.? If not, there should be, this could only help wiki users as they can find specifically what they want. Jonwood1 15:18, 7 September 2006 (UTC) 15:17, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

There is http://vs.aka-online.de/globalwpsearch/ though it isn't quite what you are looking for. Martin 15:22, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, but I still think its a mistake on Wiki's behalf not to have an all encorporating search function! Jonwood1 15:18, 7 September 2006 (UTC) 15:17, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Automated welcoming of new accounts

As per consensus, this bot has been withdrawn and will be removed from Requests for approval. Thanks for everyone's comments

I have designed and developed a bot that welcomes new accounts automatically. It is currently under disucssion on the Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval page (see here for the discussion) and requires more input from the wider non-bot comunity. Please see:

I appreciate all feedback and comments - it will be held in the highest regard.

Thanks very much. Ale_Jrbtalk 16:25, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I've got one question: does it welcome new accounts after at least one edit, or instantly? If second, I'd suggest to change it so it requires at least 1 edit, to conform with never used accounts cleanup, and it isn't needed anyway. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 16:48, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
It welcomes (some) new users instantly. You can view the full reasoning behind why I think the bot is needed, how it works, and the discussion so far about it here. In short, however, I belive it is better to pre-empt a user to contribute by making them feel welcome, than waiting for them to already be a part. In my opinion, it is a waste to welcome users once they are already a part of Wikipedia and know, at least vaugely, how to use it. It is better to make them feel welcome and so on, without needing them to edit - in case, for example, they are unsure how. Ale_Jrbtalk 18:11, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
First, I would suggest to seriously reconsider. Over 80% accounts never contribute and aren't going to. Ones who are going to contribute will start from at least one edit. Welcoming one before their first edit is only a good idea if you know them from somewhere else. Otherwise it is undesirable. We'll soon implement a policy to remove never used accounts after 90 days, and it can only be done if there is no userpage for that account. It would be considerably harmful for that to automatically welcome every account, not only every (real) user.
Second, there's quite common objection of turning welcoming from a personal real welcome to something that you get on free email services and usually don't read. If I welcome a user, I include a suggestion to contact me whenever he has any questions, and I'm responsible for that. If the user asks me anything by talk page or email, I answer, and jump in to help if needed. It is a kind of very informal mentorship, helping the new user to familiarize himself with Wikipedia. I can also remember my very first experience here, when I wasn't well versed in details of operation, and didn't know where to ask. The first people I turned to for help with questions I considered trivial (though they turned out to be not) were the ones who welcomed me (though in my case these were people from Esperanza). It is a good system that works well and gives new users someone to ask. Will you be responsible for helping everyone your bot welcomes? If yes, you'll probably do fine with welcoming them manually, or with cyborg system. If not, it would surely be better if they were welcomed by real people who would really respond to any their question. I would prefer to be welcomed after 50 edits, but by a human, rather than instantly by a bot with the same useless message you get when signing for another email account. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 19:34, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your reconsidering suggestion. It is still being considered the first time around, so this isn't needed! I do not know if you read what I wrote, but a made a table with my asnwers to common questions/disagreements people might have. This is what I said:

Disagreement

Resolution

A bot is less personal than a person. This defeats the point of welcoming them, doesn't it?

I do not think so as such, no. Firstly, it is highly possible they won't even realise they are being welcomed by a bot, unless the bot is set to sign its welcomes. This could be done, so a not to try and hide the fact, but still think it would help. Surely any message is better than none, where a user will feel lonely, confused and left out? Even if they ignore the welcomeness from the message, it still provides good links for the user to use.

A bot like that would never be able to welcome everyone as if it tried, it would be to much of a server hog. What's the point then?

It is better to welcome some users, than ignore them all.

Some users like to go around welcoming users. You'd be stopping them from doing what they want to do.

As I said earlier, the bot would not welcome everyone as if it were set to, it would use up quite a few resources. This would leave users that other people are welcome to welcome. Even if it were set to welcome everyone, it would not be running all the time and this in turn would leave users to welcome. Even if it were running all the time, and welcoming every single account created, people could still leave a Hello note or even a different welcome temaplte. There is nothing to stop them.

What happens if the bot goes haywire and wastes resources by welcoming all users 50 times in a few seconds. It is a menace I tell you!

Heh heh! Although this even is very close to impossible, there are plenty of safeguards in place. The bot is emergency shutoff compliant, as well as being able to be shut down by any normal user as well. It wouldn't happen, and if it did, it could be stopped.

Users that haven't helped Wikipedia don't deserve to be welcomed! It would be a total waste!

How could anyone say that? Just because they haven't made an edit doesn't mean they are not a person. Even if they never make an edit, you could save a person from depression simply by saying they are welcome somewhere. You never know what the results of your actions could be - it is always better to try.

If it is going to be automated at all, why not let the wikipedia syustem do it?

The software running the encyclopeida, and a bot, are two very different things. A automated message added by the Wikipedia software seems the least personal of all. A bot is less personal than a person, but slightly better. Even if the software added to the talkpage of the new user, as another user, it would not be hard for the person to figure out it is the software doing it. Also, for a bot, it is clear someone independant has gone to the trouble of writing and running it - this makes it yet more personal that an auto-message as such. Furthermore, as some users will not be welcomed by the bot running at a reasonable speed, it makes the users it does welcome feel even more special than they would normally, even before they have made the giant leap into editing. For those that are 'left out' by the bot, thy can be welcomed after their first edit as people are now, or welcomed by other users. Even if they don't get welcomed at all, some users and better than no users.

Of course, I would not wish to do anything without a large amount of support, a be bold policy or not, and if people disagree, I shall leave it to be removed from the bot page - after all, it was just a hobby which I thought might be useful. If you haven't read what else I had to say, and wish to, it can be viewed at [[1]].

Regards, Ale_Jrbtalk 20:27, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm concerned by your answer to the last question above. You seem to want your bot to fool people into thinking it is a real person. It's bad enough that the text comes from a template, but making it fully automatic would just lead to it being ignored. We shouldn't try to fool people. And I like the idea of the human touch here. Machines can't hug people, and we shouldn't be trying to get them to. Fagstein 21:26, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
OK then. This sort of response was what I was told to expect, but I thought I'd try anyway - there can be no harm in that. As the general consensus seems to be very highly negative, I shall wait for the bot to be removed from RFA. Thanks very much to all responses, maybe I'll find a more useful hobby next time!

I find it odd, however, that you should think I was trying to make it trick people. I am unsure of what question you were referring to, but the one about why not let Wikipedia software do it automatically, I was not saying it was a person - I said it was less personal than that. I simply said I think it is more personal than an automated message from the sopftware to everyone. It may be helpful to my future writing skill if you would be so kind as to clarify how I could better put across the ideas I have. If you wish to do so, that is - say what I could improve in the future, please do so on my talk page as I shall no longer watch this page.

Thanks again to all responses. Regards, Ale_Jrbtalk 21:43, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, thanks for taking the opinions into account. As the final line, I agree that greeting by a bot is slightly better than instant auto-greeting or no greeting at all. However, greeting by a real human, who volunteers to be the first person you may ask for help, is so far better that it outweights any speed bonuses of a bot. As long as we can greet any new volunteer in person, let's do just that, and consider bots only if and when we become unable to do that. --CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 22:43, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
My comment was about the following: "Even if the software added to the talkpage of the new user, as another user, it would not be hard for the person to figure out it is the software doing it."
It seems to imply that it would be more difficult for a user to figure out it was automated if a bot was doing it. In the short-term that might be true, but I think eventually people will catch on, and then we'd have to create another welcome template for welcomes from real people.
It brings up a good point though: If it's to be done by real people, then it shouldn't be necessary. We should make sure all that information is clearly accessible to new users whether or not they've been welcomed by others. Fagstein 07:05, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Move to Wikibooks/Wikibooks Cookbook/Wikisource are now Copy to x

Announcement: I've moved the templates Move to Wikibooks, Move to Wikibooks Cookbook, and Move to Wikisource, to Copy to Wikibooks, Copy to Wikibooks Cookbook, Copy to Wikisource. In case anyone is interested, or wishes to congratulate me or vigorously disagree. See the talk pages for each of the templates. --Xyzzyplugh 05:06, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Protection tag proposal

After briefly reading User:Shanes/Why tags are evil I came running here with an idea. I propose putting all the tags listed in Template:protection templates on the page where you actually edit the article (In other words the page that comes up when you click edit this page). Why? for the reason why Shanes belives this tags are disruptive on the article page (See User:Shanes/Why tags are evil). What do you guys think? - Tutmosis 00:04, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

For some templates like these, the read-only reader need not be concerned about them, which seems to make this a good idea. Unfortunately it's also currently technically impossible. Deco 01:34, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
A minor point perhaps, but there is no edit this page tab on fully protected articles. Instead it reads "view source". Fagstein 04:20, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
The tags will indirectly help readers understand that anyone can edit Wikipedia, and may encourage readers to become editors. For example, a reader who notices a stub tag on an article may contribute some information to the article. In fact, when reading Wikipedia articles on dot-com corporations in November 2005, and spotting several factual errors, the tags encouraged me to create an account and fix the errors. For this reason, I believe the tags should remain, but I think they should not appear on Wikipedia mirrors, as such self-references may be confusing. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 11:25, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
The protection tags could be done as HTML comments, visible only when editing. In fact, the George W. Bush article already has an HTML comment in the source that attempts to discourage vandals (but doesn't mention semi-protection). -- Rick Block (talk) 15:00, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

A few thoughts to add to the frey

I have been plodding around Wikipedia for a while, and i'd like to think that i have a decent feel for the nature of things.

I cant really fault the system; it's obvious that alot of careful consideration and planning, not to mention efficient management, has gone into the establishment of the growing internet resource that is Wikipedia.

I have but a few ideas that i'd like to air, with apologies in advance if what i say is either presumptuous, innapproprate, or simply old hat.

Firstly, i have come across several articles that are so complete and succinct, so fulfilling of any academic criterea imaginable, that i see no reason why they should continue to be open to change. These articles are often even authored by qualified experts on the subject, although it is often hard to tell- and ill get onto that in a moment. However, should it not be that such articles be given a special status? Something that prevents further direct editing to the article, so that its validity is maintained? The accumulation of such articles may provide an inspiration for further "professionalisation" of other important topics in wikipedia, contributing to the overall reliability of the site.

This should even go towards quelling the professional distrust of Wikipedia that is nurtured by private academics.

The edit-locking would not have to be as absolute as that which is declared on the articles that are subject to constant vandalism; merely something that designates it as especially meritable.

Secondly, as i briefly brought up, it is often frustrating for me to be unable to know the name author, and/or the qualifications thereof, of the article that i am reading. To be sure, this anonymity grants all authors the equal chance to submit an article that is read as credulously as the next. Yet isnt the goal for wikipedia to be self-improving? Surely, naming the creators of an article would encourage both a wider readership, and a more competitive authorship of similar articles?

Fellow wikipedians, feel free to comment, criticise (nicely :D) or even add further suggestions. Elysium 845 13:05, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Incidentally, these are both fairly frequently proposed ideas. Regarding the first point, I've seen featured articles that have significantly improved since they were featured. Regarding the second, see Wikipedia:Replies_to_common_objections#Attribution_and_references. Deco 13:34, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
And, if the articles you're thinking of are not already featured articles, please consider nominating them as featured article candidates. Articles that are "complete and succinct, so fulfilling of any academic criterea imaginable" should be featured articles. There is a software change in the works to implement some sort of stable version mechanism, see 2006 proposed approval for anonymous edits. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:11, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Actually it might be better to nominate them as good article candidates first. Standards for featured articles have become quite high and few articles pass without some intermediate good article status and/or peer review. Durova 19:06, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Well there you go, years ahead of me. Another (no doubt similarly outdated) suggestion, has the creation of a "Wiktionary" been suggested? I would need to think more about how the user-editing system would work, but im sure something could be arranged. The same goes for a thesaurus (Wiki-saurus??) perhaps even - and im getting ahead of myself here - a basic translating service? (cant seem to make a digestable portamenteau out of "Wikipedia" and "Translator". Wikslator?) I havent the foggiest notion about how much of a workload this would add to the current ministry of Wikipedia.

The other immediate issue is that, if such a resource were appended, would this be getting beyond the bounds of an encyclopedia? The answer, by definition, is yes... and yet, has "Trying new things" ever been an issue for a western corporation? I say, on the internet, regularity and decorum are both increasingly endangered species - and rightly so! Elysium 845 07:54, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

You are a century behind us. Wiktionary already exists. WikiSaurus exists as part of Wiktionary. And Wikipedia is not run by a Western corporation; it's run by the Wikimedia Foundation. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 11:34, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Tab Button Please!1

I was in History, [meaning that I was looking at a page's history [if you need more clarification, please let me know]] but instead of going to the article's talk page, I wanted to edit the article's talk page, more specifically, post. But, alas, I there was not direct button to do so. Same request; could you developers remedy this please?! Thanks! I'll post this in its own section, & I'll take these requests to Proposals.100110100 08:50, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

207.118.42.253 Page?

I would like to see the opinions of the community before creating a (potentally conterversal) Wikipedia page about this. As you may know, 207.118.42.253, added the the "Steve Irwin is dead LOLOLOLOL" etc. to the Steve Irwin artical earlier this morning. His antics have attracted the attention of the international news media, and IMHO the incident/207.118.42.253 deserves an artical. Opinions are appricated. Old TI-89 (u|t|c) 19:05, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Will be quickly forgotten; I say leave it there. RadioKirk (u|t|c) 19:23, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Hehe, you have the same sig. But seriously, it will die out. If there are more incidents, then he gets an article. Viva La Vie Boheme!
WP:DENY. An essay, but well supported. We've deleted almost all LTA pages (thanks Cyde for being bold, ignoring rules and risking his sysop level while doing that for good of Wikipedia).
The article at Australian news website doesn't mention the vandal, only the fact of vandalism, its removal and semiprotection. No one gets an article for that. Even the widely recognized among wikis Willy on Wheels has no articles. So forget about creating articles on petty one-time vandals like this. Even if there are many more incidents, he won't have an article here. Well, you can make it for Uncyclopedia or another wiki, though. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 20:41, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Let's not glorify vandalism here. --GW_SimulationsUser Page | Talk 20:43, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Strongly oppose the idea of an article drawing attention to this vandlism. See also WP:RBI. For those interested, there is discussion of the pros and cons of semiprotecting prominent timely articles against vandalism raised in a pending request for arbitration. Newyorkbrad 16:19, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Template for requesting admin intervenetion

If you wish to get help, place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will respond.

I am suggesting a similar template for placing on the talk pages of articles which require the assistance of an admin. The template would contain parameters for telling the admin what is happening and what help you need.

For example, I currently wish to place the proposed template on Talk:MapleStory, with the following message:

There is currently an edit war between two anonymous users, 219.75.107.97 and 68.78.148.16. 219.75.107.97 has violated 3RR. In addition, two other anonymous vandals, 203.45.125.4 and 203.164.95.238, are repeatedly vandalising the article. I request that the MapleStory article be semi-protected and all three IPs be blocked. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 07:18, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

P.S. If you are an admin, please help me with this, if the issue has not yet been resolved.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 07:05, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Just so we know, there are more information found at Third Opinon and Semi-Protection Request

--Mapletip 07:14, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

My purpose in posting here is not to seek help on this dispute. I posted this to suggest a new tag. This tag is used to request administrator intervenetion on a particular article. For example, in the above case, there was an edit war between two anonymous users on the MapleStory article, and several other anonymous vandals were attacking the article. If this tag is implemented, I could place it on Talk:MapleStory to request an admin quickly step in to semi-protect the article and block the IPs involved. (MapleStory has since been semi-protected; this is just an example to illustrate how this template may be used.) --J.L.W.S. The Special One 11:56, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Desysopping Inactive Admins

Should they be desysopped after say 6 months?--Light current 15:33, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Why? Melchoir 16:28, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
  • I don't really see the point. I think I've been inactive for 6 months. If I had to bother to get those privileges back, I might not have bothered. The only thing I can see this do is help get rid of some fine admins. They should only be desysopped if they fail to get up-to-date with policy changes that happened in the meantime before they start using their admin abilities again or consistently abuse them. -Mgm|(talk) 17:55, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Why desysop? One can really leave for 6 months, for instance if he serves in military. The admins who cause problems are exceccively active ones, not inactive. I understand the safety reasons, but it doesn't actually matter much whether one is active. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 18:11, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Inactive administrators (2005). -- Rick Block (talk) 18:49, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

THey promised to deliver before they were elected, now they just sit on their hands! Its an insult to the Wikicommunity!--Light current 20:48, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

A promise to be active forever is not required of anyone who wishes to become an admin. Given your well known biases against admins and irrational cries of admin abuse when you were blocked for being obviously uncivil, your proposal is the insult to the community, not the other way around. pschemp | talk 20:58, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Im sure you didnt mean that as a personal attack on me! I am biased against unfair treatment of users only. I detect a hint of paranoia here! Anyway you are quite active (maybe too active) so it wouldnt affect you! Any way you had your revenge so leave it!--Light current 22:50, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
You display your paranoia well. pschemp | talk 01:10, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Thats because Im always being attacked!--Light current 01:14, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
No, you imagine you are always being attacked. That's quite different. pschemp | talk 01:17, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
THats because I am being -- by you!--Light current 02:09, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
One issue with inactive administrators is that they make it easier for hackers to get elevated privilege to the site, since it's relatively easy to crack one password among hundreds as compared to one among dozens. For this reason I think it should after a certain period of inactivity automatically reset the password of admins and send them an e-mail about it. An alternative is stronger, software-enforced password complexity requirements for admins. In any case this problem is best solved by technical means. Deco 23:00, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Regarding your first suggestion, unless someone selects a ridiculously obvious password or fails to keep his/her password a secret, it seems more likely that a third party would gain unauthorized access to an inactive sysop's Wikipedia account by seeing his/her new password in the notification e-mail (given that someone else might have access to the computer). —David Levy 23:14, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

A promise to be active forever is not required of anyone who wishes to become an admin. OK So I could get elected and then do nothing other than protect myself in wheelwars when attacked by people like you?! can you see my point?--Light current 23:03, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Please stop trolling or go away. Sam Korn (smoddy) 23:04, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Please do not use that word! Please do not make personal attacks. See WP:NPA. I asked the damn question here!--Light current 23:06, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
What a wonderfully uncivil response my dear Light Current. pschemp | talk 01:15, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Could you please tell me what was uncivil about my last reply? I cant see it. Thanks--Light current 02:12, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Well that's not surprising. pschemp | talk 02:36, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
OK rather than play guessing games, can you please tell me what was uncivil about my post. Thank you!--Light current 02:41, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Generally someone is originally given admin privileges because they need them at that time to do something useful. Beyond that though, they're certainly not required to continue to use them in perpetuity. Deco 23:07, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Perennial proposal, I'm sure. Kim Bruning 23:12, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

And what were the outcomes of these proposals? (as if I need to ask)--Light current 00:13, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Assuming it's been proposed before (I'm sure it has), it was obviously unsuccessful.--digital_me(Talk•Contribs)
Are the reasons still valid?--Light current 00:36, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
The reason are here, as referenced above Wikipedia:Inactive administrators (2005). pschemp | talk 01:10, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Light current, I don't think you're going to have to worry about becoming an admin. User:Zoe|(talk) 02:54, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Guess what? Thats the LAST thing on my mind! 8-)--Light current 03:02, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
It's a volunteer gig. We're all free to come and go. Some people need to get on with their lives, and then have time again, and return; some people get frustrated, leave for a while, and come back when they realized they really loved the project, and miss working on it. Would we deny RickK the mop if he returned? Or Lucky? Or Fvw? Or Hephaestos? These people did immense good for the project and in my opinion it would be silly to disallow them adminship because of a time lapse. Antandrus (talk) 03:08, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
I have never heard of any of the above users and Ive been here over 12 months. Hwever that is a good point you make. Im talking about poepole who become admins, do a very small amount then disappear. Maybe there should be a minimum period of activity to establish their motives? During this time time could be de sysopped if theyre not doing the job.--Light current 14:23, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Clearly you have a particular administrator in mind, since I do not recognise this description from any of the admins I know. If you have a specific name in mind, and want them desysopped, you probably need to take it to ArbCom with some evidence. Just zis Guy you know? 12:27, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
No I I dont have any one in mind in particular--Light current 12:49, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Are the existence of inactive Admins a problem? The only instance that I believe an absent sysop should be de-adminned is when that person publically announces "I'm leaving Wikipedia" -- & does. My reason is more to discourage people with Admin rights from throwing hissy fits than for security reasons, although security is an important point too.
If this is a problem, then the proposed policy should be something simple, like the following. Once an Admin has failed to make any edits for 6 months (to pick a number out of the air), someone sends the Admin an email asking if the Admin will be returning to Wikipedia; I feel it would be best if this came form another Admin or a Bureaucrat. If the answer is no (or the email bounces), then the user is de-Adminned. If the answer is yes, then no action is taken until another 6 months have passed. And this doesn't even have to be a formal proposal; anyone who thinks this should be done is more than welcome to do it. (And this makes such common sense that I'd be surprised if this hasn't been done already.) -- llywrch 22:39, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

General response to thread. I think priveliges should expire automatically after a certain period of inactivity. We think we have 1000 Admins but since most are inactive, in effect we dont. --Light current 13:19, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Most Wanted Stubs?

Would it be possible for a bot or program similar to that that maintains Most Wanted Articles to create a list of the most linked to stubs, to help target work? smurrayinchester(User), (Talk) 18:02, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Forget the bot idea, it seems to be based on SQL querying rather than a bot. Never the less, is such a facility possible? smurrayinchester(User), (Talk) 18:05, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes it certainly would be possible, and you're right, a bot would be the preferable method, for "server hog" reasons. (Counting links on the live database for a small number of articles would be fine, but for all half-million-plus stubs would be a "public lynching to loud cheering from all" offence.) I can't do this right away, as I don't have a working copy of "pagelinks", add to which we're somewhat "between database dumps" (and going nowhere fast, it seems), so after the next one might be a better time to do this, rather than starting working with three-week-old information immediately. But is there an actual demand for this information? How would it be presented, and who would actually use the information? Is this something particular wikiprojects would be interested in for "their" articles? Is WP:MWA currently being maintained and used, incidentally? Generating the two lists would be a very similar process, so there would clear advantages in doing both together. Alai 00:20, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, MWA is certainly being used, with red links being removed daily. I don't know what kind of demand there is for the Most Linked-to Stubs, but it could certainly be merged with WP:COTW, to better target the stubs for improvement. smurrayinchester(User), (Talk) 07:14, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
It could be presented in a similar way to Most Wanted Articles where a list of the most wanted stubs is generated and ordered by number of links to each stub in descending order. This list is then put on the most wanted stubs page where links from similar topics can be manually moved around and grouped under their own topic heading. If this topic is associated with a wikiproject, the project page could then either link to the relevant section or copy over the links associated with that project. Tra (Talk) 18:14, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

D'oh. Doesn't seem to be updated too often, though. Alai 17:44, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Fix Please

Ok, so here's the situtation: I was recently on an article's talk page history. But then I wanted to go to the article's history, so I clicked on article. But, unfortunatly, I went to the article page instead. So I realized I there was no way to go from a talk page's history to an article's history, and probably vice versa. Hopefully the programers could add something that could help? Was this post confusing? Please let me know on my talk page, if there's anything you don't understand. Thanks.100110100 23:11, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

It's just one more click to get to the history. What's the problem? --Golbez 23:25, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Yeah you need 'View article history' in the menu at the bottom of the talk page history and vice versa.--Light current 00:28, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia policy/guideline/help page about encyclopediac tone

I have noticed the following tag been placed on some articles, such as Yahoo! trolling phenomena:

However, the tag does not include a link to any page regarding tone. The guide to writing better articles does not say much about tone.

For most similar tags, there is a link to the relevant policy page. For example, the word "neutrality" in the following tag:

Perhaps we could create a policy, guideline or help page about tone, and add a link to it from the template, to help contributors who wish to improve the tone of the article.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 11:25, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

  • The explanation "seems not to be written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopaedia entry" seems pretty clear and straightforward to me. Not that I'm saying guidelines shouldn't be written, just that for me it doesn't seem necessary. Matt 11:37, 2 September 2006 (UTC).
  • We have at least 1000 featured articles to give one an idea of what an encyclopedic tone is, and if a newbie can't find those, there's always the paper variant. The explanation even says "formal tone expected of an encyclopedia". "Formal" would be the operative word there. - Mgm|(talk) 14:13, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
I actually don't see serious tone problems in that article. Low prose quality, yes, but the tone is OK for the subject. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 14:56, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses. I'm not pushing for a policy page that states all articles must be written in encyclopediac tone. I'm pushing for a page - probably a guideline - that offers tips to those who wish to write encyclopediac tone or improve the tone of an article. It is one thing to know an article is not NPOV, and another thing to fix the article to make it NPOV - the same applies to tone. For NPOV, there's the NPOV tutorial.

A couple of days ago, I cleaned up the lead section of the AdventureQuest article to fix some serious tone problems. As Mgm has pointed out, by reading many Wikipedia articles, I have gotten a feel for encyclopediac tone; what do you think of the tone of the new lead section? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 04:44, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree that a page giving advice and good and bad examples of encyclopedic tone would be an excellent idea, such as avoiding first-person, being brief, and avoiding too-informal or exaggerated language. Some of this is covered by the Manual of Style. Deco 09:44, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Search box ideas

For some reason people aren't finding the WP:VFAQ. Newbies still don't know the search index lags behind and even more fail to note the search box is case-sensitive. Perhaps we should put a helpful link to Wikipedia:Search in the search box to give them some guidance on how to use it most effectively. What do you think? - Mgm|(talk) 17:53, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I recall Tangotango has a searchable index of FAQs. To increase exposure to the VFAQs page, add links to it from pages that newcomers wishing to contribute are likely to visit. This strategy successfully increased traffic to my new initiative, Requests for feedback. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 08:29, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Proposal that search box should be made entirely case-insensitive

Wikipedia seems to have some complicated and arcane rules about case sensitivity in the search box, which means that you sometimes aren't taken to the article you're looking for unless someone had gone through the process of setting up multiple redirect pages with different combinations of case. To give just one example, searching for "wir bank" doesn't take you to the "WIR Bank" article (in fact, it doesn't even find it on the first page of the search results). Pretty much every other web search facility I've ever used is case-insensitive, and my guess is that case-insensitivity is what 99% of people want and expect 99% of the time. I think, therefore, that it's high time Wikipidea search was fixed to be entirely case-insensitive. Matt 10:40, 2 September 2006 (UTC).

  • I think it was a limitation of the software that is used for searching. I think the software was called Lucene. It used to be worse apparently. The update to Lucene was reported on WP:SIGN (the report is still in the archives there). - Mgm|(talk) 14:11, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Couldn't find your reference, but I wonder then if it might be easier to just fix the "go straight to article" function without hacking into the general search engine code. For me this is possibly more important. I think it's silly that, as per my example, entering "wir bank" doesn't take you to the "WIR Bank" article. I can't imagine why anyone ever designed it that way, and I can't believe it would be that hard to fix. I'm personally less interested about what the general search facility does (the one that returns the pages of hits I mean): it's so unhelpful and idiosyncratic that I never use it anyway - I always use Google's site-specific search. Matt 13:06, 3 September 2006 (UTC).
      How the "go straight to the article" function works is described at wikipedia:go button. Article names are case sensitive, e.g. "WIR Bank" and "Wir Bank" and "Wir bank" are potentially all different articles, so the "master" article index has to be case sensitive. "Go" currently does a pretty good job of finding articles, except in cases (like "WIR Bank") where the article name includes a mixture of upper and lower case letters (all caps works fine, all lowercase works find, every word with an initial cap works fine). Even in the cases not currently handled, if "Go" can't find a matching article name it then hands off whatever the user entered to "search" which already is case insensitive, so if the search index has been rebuilt since the article was added it will be found. I agree it would be nice if "Go" were enhanced to do a case insensitive lookup as well. I recently entered this as a bugzilla report (see bugzilla:6650) which was resolved as "not a problem". -- Rick Block (talk) 16:16, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
      • Thanks for the info. I'm guessing then that the reason the "WIR Bank" article is not found when "go" finally falls through to "search" is not because of case-sensitivity issues but because the index has not been rebuilt since the article was created (Aug 10 2006)? I didn't realise that there might be such a delay. But to return to the main issue, how anyone thinks that this is "not a problem" baffles me! Just to give another example, if you type "isle of man" in the search box and hit Enter then you first get taken to "Isle of man" which then redirects to "Isle of Man". Someone has presumably had to create the "Isle of man" redirect article specifically to get around the problem. There are numerous similar examples, some which have these redirect pages that shouldn't be necessary, and some which don't (so "go" does not find the article). The fact that there may be a tiny number of genuinely different articles whose titles differ only by case shouldn't mean that the software isn't fixed to work for the remaining 99.999% of cases. I'm not too au fait with Wikipedia procedures for these things, but I really think someone should be prodded again to fix this. Does anyone else agree/disagree? What would be the next step? Matt 17:13, 3 September 2006 (UTC).
  • Can you explain to me why some people don't bother using capital letters? - Mgm|(talk) 08:04, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
    • If you are asking why people don't enter exactly the right combination of case in the search box when they want to go to an article, then there are two reasons. The first is that it's generally assumed (in my experience) that there's no need to bother about capitalisation in searches because the search software will by default be case insensitive - that's the way these things usually work. Typically case-sensitivity, where offered, is an option that you explicitly choose (e.g. by ticking a check box) for those odd occasions when you want it. Secondly, it may not be obvious what combination of capitalisation has been chosen for the article title. An example would be "Falkland Islands pound". If I had to guess at the capitalisation of this article I might well guess "Falkland Islands Pound". In fact, that search text only goes to the correct article because someone has gone to the trouble of setting up a separate article titled "Falkland Islands Pound" that redirects to "Falkland Islands pound". A random example of an article where such a redirect hasn't been set up is "Firth of Clyde". Thus, typing, say, "firth of clyde" in the search box and hitting enter doesn't take you to the "Firth of Clyde" article. It thinks there is no such article and falls through to the search results page (where, admittedly, "Firth of Clyde" is the first match - but that's hardly the point). The whole thing is totally daft in my opinion. You should be able to create one article titled "Falkland Islands pound", and regardless of whether the user types "falkland islands pound", "Falkland Islands Pound", or any other permutation, he should be taken straight to "Falkland Islands pound". You can see that this is a problem that many people have encountered by the large number of pages that just redirect from one case variant to another. Matt 11:20, 4 September 2006 (UTC).

cc emails sent by E-mail this user

This doesn't appear to be perennial, so:

  • Suggest user has option to cc any email s/he sends via the E-mail this user sidebar link to his/her own registered email address.

If I've missed setting this option or the like, apologies; please indicate. Thanks, David Kernow 14:50, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

This would probably have to be done by sending two separate e-mails. If it's done by filling in the cc field with the sender's e-mail address then the sender would (by looking at the copy they receive) be told what the to address is, therefore a spammer could simply send a load of e-mails to Wikipedia users with cc turned on and receive back all their e-mail addresses. Tra (Talk) 15:08, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
It could BCC it to the person it was being sent to. This is a minor detail. JoshuaZ 15:16, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure how your observation relates to the E-mail this user page, Tra; apologies if I'm missing the obvious. All I'm thinking is that once I click [Send] on that page, whatever message I've just sent may be lost to me (unless say it's copied to my own email address, or perhaps a "Sent" page in my userspace) because the software automatically loads a 'Your message has been sent' page; if I then try to see what I've sent by stepping back through my browsing history, the message I entered may not be preserved. I'd also say such recourse is inelegant. Regards, David 19:12, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
    What I mean is that your idea cannot be carried out by using the cc field of the e-mail. Here's an example of what I mean:
  • Say bob@example.com wants to send an email to george@example.com. With the normal way, Bob sees this when he sends the e-mail through the website:
From Bob
To George
Subject Hello
Message This is a test
  • Note that Bob does not see George's e-mail address. George, however, can see Bob's e-mail address In the e-mail that he recieves:
From Bob <bob@example.com>
To George <george@example.com>
Subject Hello
Message This is a test
  • However, with cc enabled, Bob would see this when he sends the e-mail:
From Bob
To George
Send cc Yes
Subject Hello
Message This is a test
  • And George would receive this e-mail:
From Bob <bob@example.com>
To George <george@example.com>
cc Bob <bob@example.com>
Subject Hello
Message This is a test
  • This is all OK. The problem arises where, because of the way cc works, Bob's copy of the e-mail will be exactly the same as George's, so he will see this:
From Bob <bob@example.com>
To George <george@example.com>
cc Bob <bob@example.com>
Subject Hello
Message This is a test
  • As you can see, the e-mail that Bob receives contains George's e-mail address, so Bob has been able to obtain a fellow Wikipedian's e-mail address without their consent simply by sending an e-mail. Now, imagine Bob was a spammer. He could just send out e-mails with a bot to loads of other users and receive back a bunch of e-mail addresses and do pretty much anything with them. Therefore, giving the sender a copy through cc is not going to work.
  • JoshuaZ suggested bcc-ing it to the recipient. With this technique, George would recieve this e-mail:
From Bob <bob@example.com>
To Bob <bob@example.com>
bcc George <george@example.com>
Subject Hello
Message This is a test
  • And Bob would recieve this e-mail:
From Bob <bob@example.com>
To Bob <bob@example.com>
Subject Hello
Message This is a test
  • This would work, but it has the disadvantage of George not seeing his own address in the To field, which could be confusing sinc the e-mail is to him. I also suggested sending out two separate e-mails, which would look like this:
From Bob <bob@example.com>
To George <george@example.com>
Subject Hello
Message This is a test
  • And this:
From Bob <bob@example.com>
To Bob <bob@example.com>
Subject Hello
Message You sent this message to George:

This is a test

  • A disadvantage of this, however, is that it would potentially increase the load on Wikimedia servers. David suggested that the e-mail is copied to userspace. This would probably not be an actual page in userspace because one of the reasons for using e-mail is that it is confidential. This would therefore require asking developers to modify the database to allow the e-mails to be stored there. Using this option means that e-mails are kept with other Wikipedia stuff but they cannot be sorted around using the e-mail program. Tra (Talk) 22:30, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the step-by-step explanation!  However, if Wikipedia already has both email addresses (i.e. of recipient and sender) why not send the message to each separately...?  Hope I'm still not missing something obvious, David 13:44, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
    Yes, as I suggested before, that could be done but it would probably increase the load on Wikipedia's servers because more e-mails would need to be sent out. The amount that the load increases by will depend on how many e-mails are sent, say, per month. Does anyone have any statistics about this? Tra (Talk) 14:24, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Oh yes; sorry to overlook. Yes, the statistics would be something to consider; perhaps your query might better be made on the Administrators' noticeboard (or even Bureaucrats' etc noticeboards, if they exist...)...?  Yours, David 14:39, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
It has been said by the tech team many times that being concerned with server load is only needed in cases of very high load increase. The server load for sending emails is very low. Besides that, we have no more than 10-50 thousands users with email enabled, and Wikipedia email is only used between them, so no more than one or two emails is sent a day per user, in average, totaling less than one email per second. This is a negligible load for a server, especially considering how quick SMTP is, so we shouldn't worry about this. Of course, you can ask any developer, if you are not sure. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 14:55, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for info; this suggests a query/suggestion at Bugzilla might be in order...?  Regards, David 01:34, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Just suggest it. The load is not a problem here, so I think devs will implement this workaround at some time; if there's some problem, you'll get a response. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 19:14, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't have e-mail enabled, but if I did, and e-mailed another user through the Wikipedia-provided function, could I go to Gmail's "Sent Mail" folder and find the mail?--J.L.W.S. The Special One 15:13, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

No, since it isn't sent via Gmail; it's sent via Wikimedia's servers. *Dan T.* 15:17, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Improving the Mediawiki namespace

I've noticed that on the English Wikipedia (in contrast to most others!) pages like Recent changes, Page history and Diff view are really hard to use and intimidating to novice users and non-geeks. I have posted a list of improvement proposals here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Helge.at/Wording --Helge.at 23:39, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

The 'Show new changes starting from $1' message is a tool that lets you see everything that has happened since you last loaded Recent changes. For example, you might load Recent changes, review everything there, and then click on 'Show new changes starting from $1'. You would then get a new list of changes which you know you haven't seen before and which shows you what happened whilst you were reading the first list of changes.
I like the idea of expanding some of the abbreviations, like 'diff' and 'cur' because their meaning is often not obvious until you have actually clicked on the link to see where it takes you. A problem with this, however, is that the longer words would begin to seem unnecessary as they are repeated down the page, taking up space. A particular issue is changing the M and N for minor edits and new pages. The page layout depends on them being one letter long; if this was changed, everything to the right of that letter would be shifted to the right, bringing it out of line. Tra (Talk) 00:25, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
There's a reason these shorthands and abbreviations evolve. They're useful, they save space, and they avoid clunkiness and redundancy. I don't see much in your list that would take a new user more than a second or two to figure out (for example, is anyone really confused about abbreviating "difference" to "diff"?). Opabinia regalis 02:12, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Separation of deletion capability from other admin powers

Carnildo's RfA led me to wonder about separating the ability to delete pages from other admin powers. I'm pretty sure I've read discussion of this somewhere else, but I can't find that discussion at the perennial proposals page, so I thought I'd ask about it here. Carnildo seems a very clearcut case; the community can't agree to entrust him with the blocking bit, but a lot of the opposes and neutrals are indicating they'd like him to have the ability to delete pages, because of his sterling work with images.

I would assume this would require a change to the underlying software, so perhaps this discussion should be at Meta, which I'm not yet very familiar with. If the software supported it, however, then I would assume we would have an RfDb process which allow users to request only the deletion bit; RfA would still result in users being given all the current admin capabilities. Perhaps we could call users with only the deletion bit "Janitors", and have an RfJ process? Mike Christie (talk) 12:45, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

The software can easily be adjusted; it's called MediaWiki for a reason. But the overcomplication of power structure is generally opposed. In my opinion, if one can't be trusted to control user blocks, there is no reason to entrust him to delete pages. Don't forget, that, first, Wikipedia is about pages and not users, and, second, that user blocks can draw a lot of attention, and generally are temporary, while page deletion is quiet and rarely reversed. We've got a lot of people who could be trusted both without extra problems.
There are occasional discussions here and there about creating an intermediate "advanced user" access level, which would require only a considerable and clean edit history to get. But, if (when) it works, these users most certainly would not be able to delete pages, probably rather to view deleted pages (to consider undeletion), perform quick reverts, use cyborg tools and so on. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 23:41, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I once proposed a new level of adminship, called "trial adminship", which would entrust the new admin with a basic set of admin tools, so their admin actions could be reviewed by more experienced admins (not other trial admins), and they could be subsequently promoted to "full admin". This would give Wikipedia more admins (there are plenty of backlogs which need admins to clear) with less risk. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 15:20, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I actually think individual powers should be assigned to admins based on the kind of tasks and policies that they are familiar with. This would have a number of benefits such as those described above. Admins needing additional powers at a later time could simply request them and let a brief discussion - nothing as involved as a typical RfA - settle whether they need it. Deco 23:02, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
I think the only admin powers I have ever wanted is the one to view deleted pages. That is my biggest bugbear - when I come across a deleted page and I want to review the content to see if I agree with the reason for deletion. Unfortunately, I suspect the "view" function is tied in closely with the "undelete" function. All the others are stuff that I've read about and viewed with interest, but I've never really wanted to block people or delete contentious stuff (ie. non-speedy stuff that goes through AfD). Although worthwhile, that doesn't really interest me at all (I'd prefer to talk at some length about the subject under debate). Anyway, I think there could definitely be a case for separating out the "editing" admin powers (being able to tidy up the encyclopedia and clearing backlogs by accessing some of the technical stuff) and the "enforcement of policy" admin powers (things like blocking, closing AfDs, etc).
I also like the suggestions to have trial periods (maybe even having sessions being mentored by another admin before being nominated at RfA). Though maybe that all gets to cliquey.
The idea of temporary admins to help clear backlogs might also work. Where I work, people are taken on temporarily all the time to clear backlogs. Carcharoth 01:18, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

A deletion view log

Concerning [2], does anyone think it might make sense to bring up with the developers having a log visible to admins of who has viewed deleted edits from what articles? This would make it easy to deal with admins who are posting deleted content elsewhere. JoshuaZ 14:06, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

  • I think that would come suspiciously close to stalking. It would be akin to running random checkusers. - Mgm|(talk) 17:59, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Give them a warning instead of a locked site

I understand why some people want to change wikipedia to a locked site (where viewers can't see changes till they have been approved by editors).

I make the following counter Proposal:

Instead of hiding edits until they are approved, show them but label them as 'unexamined'.

Color code it as well - unexamined edits could be in pale yellow instead of bluish white.

The first line at the top of the page could say:

This page has recently been changed. It has not yet been examined for accuracy. If you suspect it is in error, click here to request a Wikipedia editor examine it.

Links to those pages could also be color coded as dark yellow, instead of the standard blue.

Gurps npc 15:12, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

And what would you colour information that has been removed? Fagstein 19:40, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
What would color blind people do? Durova 19:49, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
For that matter, what would blind people do? —David Levy 19:54, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
I am intrigued as to how blind people use the site ATM. 8-?--Light current 20:47, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Blind people generally use screen readers of one form or another. Use of color to convey meaning is discouraged, see Wikipedia:Accessibility. -- Rick Block (talk) 21:28, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
But how is this supposed to work? Most of vandalism is either: 1) complete gibberish or nonsense, which is obvious without warnings, or 2) text removal, which these color codes would either not show anyway, or they would obscure legitimate edits.
I'd rather suggest a lighter variant of stable versions, where only unregistered users (and unless they set some cookie preference) would see the last stable version, if present and not more than a week old, or even the last stable+all minor edits, with suggestion to view the new one, and all other would see the latest one. Marking version as stable would be checked by default for any edit by user with over 5 days of experience and over 25 edits (current pagemove and semiprotect bypass requirement), and available to him w/o editing. This would be minimally disruptive to wiki process, but would shield readers from about 80-90% of vandalism.
This is almost unrelated to Wikipedia:Stable versions, though, as it is designed not to emulate paper, but just to be a vandalism filter. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 00:13, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Talk page layout and protocols guideline

I have a proposal on the above topic. Where should it be posted?--Light current 02:53, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Right here if you'd like: depends what it affects. You can post here and if seomeone sees a better place for it they will move it. —Mets501 (talk) 12:52, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

searching for meta vocab

Since Wik insists on making the instruction and guide pages extremely hard to find and use, maybe a search function for editing and use vocabulary could help. For example, some-one trying to find out what some (stupid) abbreviation (e.g., MWA) means or how to do a revert could use such a function. Kdammers 02:03, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

It's the Wikipedia:Glossary. —Mets501 (talk) 02:18, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
And where is that to be found??? (Yeah, I can link on Your entry, but where is it (for general use)? Kdammers 10:49, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
It's on the main help page, linked under the first entry, "Getting started". Mike Christie (talk) 12:48, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia:Tips can be helpful too. Just Ctrl+F and search for a relevant word to get a quick consise explanation on pretty much any help topic imagineable. - Mgm|(talk) 18:03, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Random article whithin a category

I think it would be a great improvement to the "random article" feature if one could limit the articles generated to a specific catergory (or categories) as people have fields of interests, and no one is really interested in everything. It could be done in an easy to use way if once the user chose a category in wikipedia's main page, the "random article" buttom will generate only articles from that category.

Please consider

Yair Yairlavi 20:23, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

  • It's not really a bug, but I suggest reporting this to Wikipedia:Bugzilla. I've considered it a good idea for ages, but for some reason it's not being done. Reporting it, lets the developers know that's what we want. - Mgm|(talk) 18:09, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Bureaucrats blocking admins

Would implementing a way so if a 'crat blocks an admin the admin can't unblock his/her self? (other admins could still unblock). This would be a useful feature so if an admin goes on a rampage and there are no stewards around, the b'crat could temporarily "disable" their admin powers but other admins can also "reenable" them too so it would be kind of like desysoping but less powerful. GeorgeMoney (talk) 21:04, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

That strikes me as a solution searching for a problem, as admins 'run amok' pretty infrequently. Moreover, an admin who unblocks himself – except in the case of an inadvertent autoblock – will tend to find himself desysoppped in short order anyway.... I can see bureaucrats being given the power to desysop in 'emergency'-type situations, as the admin can always be re-sysopped if things get straightened out. I strongly suspect that bureaucrats don't want to get involved in any sort of temporary desysopping, for fear of wheel wars and other types of unpleasantness. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:22, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
  • The Bureaucrat is not another layer of management at Wikipedia, it is just a set of extra tasks we grant to some users. Furthermore, they are selected to be on the front end of the admin process (the selection of admins), not the back end (desysopping or punishments). When we selected them, we did not evaluate their judgement at blocking admins, since that was not a part of the job they applied for. Whenever I see proposals to expand the bureaucrat job (beyond minor technical things) I want to say "Only if all the bureaucrats stand for RfB for the new power, we should be able to approve/disapprove each candidate on whether we are willing to grant them that new power." NoSeptember 12:19, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
    • I don't know, I think this is a legitimate concern. If an admin account for compromised by a vandal (remember, all our passwords are sent in clear text), it could do deletion vandalism or rampant blocking and repeatedly unblock itself using scripts. We don't have any mechanism to protect against this short of desysopping. Deco 12:43, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
      • One solution would be to stop admins from being able to do any admin actions when they are blocked, including unblock themselves, then a compromised admin account could just be blocked as any other. Martin 12:55, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Kind of pointless, if there's no steward around, why rely on bureaucrats. If we are to implement some feature that disallows blocked admins from using their tools it should work just as well when a fellow admin blocks them. - Mgm|(talk) 18:11, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Upload modifications

I think that Wikipedia users should be able to upload anything that doesn't violate copyright or have personal attacks, including ZIP files and EXE files, but downloaders of these formats should be faced with a disclaimer about viruses. 'FLaRN' (talk) 19:23, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

...why? Media like this isn't much use for an encyclopedia, and we're not trying to provide some kind of file-hosting service. Shimgray | talk | 21:11, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Sorry Flarn, but I can't agree with this one. Such files are generally not encyclopedic and while disclaimers may warn off the user, if viruses were contained in such files, they could in theory run rampant on Wikipedia's servers and destroy the project. - Mgm|(talk) 18:17, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Portal:Help

Hi, I'm from Slovene Wikipedija. It's medium sized, however us is to little for any more portals. I wnt to make Portal:Help - Help portal. English Wikipedia is big and portals revive easily. On this portal I wnt to have three sections:

  • Did you knew? - about computer language WikiWiki
  • Selected term
  • FAQ and
  • Help Contents

How does semm to you? Grettings, Mihael Simonič 09:57, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

  • I don't see how that would be different from Wikipedia:Help, but I'm not sure if you want to create this on the Slovenian Wikipedia or here either. - Mgm|(talk) 18:18, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

New tag for readability

I have found that of course an encyclopedia must use encyclopedic, well wikipedic choice of words that are academic and even pedantic wording to get the point accross the best way possible, but i have run into some articles whose wording uses technical jargon to such an extent that the majority fo readers probably would have a hard time understanding it without looking up several words per senatnce thoughtout the article, this is why i propose a new tag for overly complex and esoteric articles so in the hardest to read places explanations could be provided in parenthases or more common but not laypeople's terms could be used in exhcnage for exessive jargon

any thoughts?

{{readability}} or {{too-complex}} could be it.

Qrc2006 01:48, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like template:technical or template:cleanup-cliche. There are a large number of existing cleanup related templates and categories, please see Category:Wikipedia cleanup categories. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:57, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
I agree. This type of tag is much needed. I recently tried to read about RNA and got nowhere. Two words into the first sentance I has to click on Nucleotide. A few words into that article I had to click Basic aromatic ring. That page said: "A basic aromatic ring is a type of Simple aromatic ring" so I had to click on that. Then Delocalized electron and then Covalent bond. I have to say on the one hand, if I had the time I'd love to learn all about all these things and I certainly don't want wikipedia to "dumb down" but could we maybe get a sister articl or something that could sum up the most vital information about RNA. That way I could learn about that when I want to and worry about Aromatic rings later.--Matt D 16:21, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
It's really difficult to handle things like RNA without a lot of arcane terms. Even the Simple English pedia had trouble avoiding the word 'enzyme'. --Golbez 16:56, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Overpossessive editors

On many of the pages on Wikipedia that I have tried to add accurate information on there have been people who are very possessive of those articles and delete any info that is put on "their" page. This is very discouraging for anyone, especially new people. I didn't find any policies on Wikipedia that deal with this problem. I believe there should be a written policy that states that article are public domain, and warns people not to become possessive of articles. I believe a lot of editing wars a the result of people believing that an article is theirs.

There is a policy on this, and I agree that it's a big problem. See WP:OWN. —Mets501 (talk) 17:05, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you I was unable to find the policy before.

It's a major problem, and sometimes people even start to "guard" articles they made no significant contributions to, often protecting some existing POV. Most of such people can be convinced by policy and consensus. Not much can be done about others (for instance, one editor demanded that "All criticism sections must be deleted", and deletes any hints of criticism from Conservatism article, which is obviously his political position, and a lot of people could do nothing about that, even organized), except bringing it to attention of admins if 3RR is violated, or, in severe cases, further. However, usually you should just point to the policy. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 22:29, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

While that may be true for a few individuals, usually a request for comment resolves the deadlock. Most editors concede the point or look at things a different way when a consensus emerges. Durova 23:54, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes a person forms a strong personal attachment to an article. When this happens adding content that does not fit with that person's world view can be extremely difficult. In the case of the Alireza Jafarzadeh article, one particular editor reverted the article a couple of times a week for months. A browse through the history will show periods where one or more people took an interest in the article, improved it, saw their work repeatedly reverted and eventually gave up. Articles where two people, or groups, with opposite views edit may erupt into edit wars. Where one editor is fanatical about a POV and other editors have a mere intellectual interest it may end up as a war of attrition. It is usually the fanatic rather than the intellectuals who have the tenacity to win such a war. This is a serious flaw with the Wikipedia philosophy. --Dave 00:00, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

  • Make sure you cite sources for any any additions you make. If your sources are reliable, getting backup from other editors is a lot easier and means the protective editor can't claim he was reverting uncited sources he thought to be vandalism. - Mgm|(talk) 18:27, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

better research

hello,

i got an idea, may be not the first one, but: what about activating the cursor/field where u can tipe in the word to search for yet when loading the page for the first time. most people wanna find a special article, i guess, and have to click it first.

it speeds up the search and makes it a lot easier.

a good example is "dict.leo.org"


so far

thank u all for that important resource!

Sebastian Hümmeler University of Regensburg

This has been suggested before, but it is seen as very counter-intuitive. Moving the caret to the search box will not occur until the page is fully loaded, which means that focus is lost from whatever you were selecting, highlighting or typing in, all of a sudden (since you begin using the page before it is fully loaded). This even means that if you type in the box before the page is loaded, whatever you've typed may be lost; if the box is selected while there's text in it, the text is selected as well and then immediately removed if you continue typing. —msikma <user_talk:msikma> 10:51, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
I don't like pages messing with my focus, for the reasons noted above. *Dan T.* 20:48, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Also, a lot of people come here to edit Wikipedia. If the cursor is focused on the search box each time you load a page, editing gets annoying quite easily -- not a good thing.- Mgm|(talk) 18:31, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Lists of people with special status

I would like to create some lists of people of special characteristics:

  • List of geniuses
  • List of polymaths

The list of geniuses just got deleted. None of the reasons had anything to do with whether or not the people on the list were geniuses or not. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of geniuses.

A similar fate happened to the list of polymaths not too long ago. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of polymaths.

I really liked those lists, and found them quite informative. As far as I could tell, neither of those lists included any information that wasn't included in the articles about the people listed. Both lists were about people who were leaders in their respective areas of endeavor, and very effective achievers. Just the type of people who make great mentors and great exemplars. People worth emulating. Unfortunately, those articles are gone now, and there aren't any other articles remotely similar to them that I could find on Wikipedia. (If there are, whatever you do, don't point them out, as someone may immediately try to delete them.)

I tried to create a new list of geniuses from scratch, and it was speedily deleted, so it appears the concept is being censored.

Is it acceptable to censor the above list ideas?

Are these not allowed on Wikipedia for some reason?

My question is, how would one go about creating the above lists without them being censored, AfD'd, speedily deleted, reverted, etc.?

My proposal is that we find an acceptable solution for lists of this type to exist.

Any input/advice you could provide would be most appreciated.

--Nexus Seven 04:20, 22 August 2006 (UTC), aka The Transhumanist

I think this is pure censorship if the lists is well-referenced. If it is not then it should be deleted. IMO, these lists should stay on wikipedia if there is no original research involved in their creation. Lincher 13:39, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
The (unanimous) consensus from the above linked deletion discussion was that this list had no objective criteria for inclusion. This point has nothing to do with whether the people on the list are "geniuses" and everything to do with how an editor decides whether to add someone to the list. Without objective criteria, the list violates one or both of Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Verifiability. Everything in Wikipedia article space (which includes lists) must adhere to the three basic rules of no original research, verifiability, and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view (and anything that doesn't is deleted or modified until it does - and if you view this as "censorship" I guess that's your perogative) . If editor A were to add someone to this list, how would editor B verify the addition was appropriate? Perhaps "everyone knows" Albert Einstein was a genius. How about Karl Marx, or Hitler, or Osama Bin Laden? Do you see the point? -- Rick Block (talk) 14:24, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
That's odd. The criteria for inclusion is the term "genius". Although subjective, it is still pretty straight-forward. Either a person is a genius, or he's not. If you cite a reputable source, then what's the problem? The matter should be decided on a genius-by-genius level (on whether he deserves to be listed) rather than disallow the list itself because the term is "subjective". We can't let subjectivity cripple the advancement of Wikipedia. See how they dealt with the problem of subjectivity at List of major philosophers. --Nexus Seven 04:09, 24 August 2006 (UTC), aka The Transhumanist
It's still subjective. That's not a minor issue. "Bad", "stupid", "evil" are all straight-forward terms, but the criteria for inclusion is entirely subjective, and is hence original research, a violation of a core Wikipedia principle. And as for the philosophy list, that list appears to be currently undergoing a dispute because of that exact same issue: that the criteria for inclusion is subjective. Fagstein 05:09, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
What is "criteria for inclusion?" Are you talking about the name of the page? If you are talking about the subject as listed in the title of the page, please specify this and not use some trumped up jargon that nobody knows what the *&^%$#@! you are talking about. --The Transhumanist 05:36, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
An acceptable solution for this to exist is Wikiinfo. Here not all editors are sure that we need lists at all, and especially questionable ones. While there are lists with verifiable criteria for inclusion (like Prime Ministers of Luxembourg), even they were questioned on AfD, and not always kept. Lists by nazionality had non-unilateral results, though kept on no censorship grounds, like the List of Jews (I think Das Viertes Reich will be very grateful and provide strong support for Wikipedia). --CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 18:19, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I suggest we start a list here, and when it achieves the quality of an allowable list, we move it to the appropriate page. Does anyone disagree that the following individuals were geniuses?

Nexus Seven, aka The Transhumanist

Yes. I do. Without objective, verifiable criteria, these people are not geniuses, as far as Wikipedia is concerned. Fagstein 05:09, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Can you speak English please? In precisely what context are you using the term "criteria"? It seems to me that you are saying that these people are not geniuses because the word "genius" is subjective. That has got to be the stupidest argument I've ever come across. --The Transhumanist 05:36, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
I have to aggree with trans here as these people have gotten to the genius status as we can find references that say they are geniuses and in that matter they should have their list (see List of famous families for another example). There has to be a consensus as to what can be included in those kind of lists and clearly defined criteria about that. Verifiability actually means that if they are referenced lists or footnoted lists ... they are verifiable. As per original research ... if they are referenced then again this argument doesn't stand as tertiary source can be found that can support such claims. Lincher 11:50, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
I'll try again. The question is how does someone decide who gets included in this list and who doesn't, that's what we mean by "criteria for inclusion". If it even boils down to the consensus opinion of all wikipedia editors, which it would have to without a precise objective definition, then it's original research which violates one of the three core priniciples of Wikipedia (see WP:NOR). Wikipedia is not a magazine, or a blog - it's an encyclopedia that (by policy) includes only verifiable information from reliable sources (please read both of these pages). -- Rick Block (talk) 14:05, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
I will rephrase what my comment meant. Lists for special people can be created off of reliable sources and in that matter it is not original research and thus verifiable. For example, is Da Vinci a genius, yes, find any book about polymaths, scientists, painters, etc. and it will explicitly say it. In that matter, lists for special people can exist only if they are well-referenced (meaning, several footnotes per entry) and consensusly accepted. An example of this would be List of famous families where there is now a need for referencing these famous families and as a whole community decide which names should be on the list.
If the NPOVness of the list is disputed then the consensus driven initiative to include or exclude some individual is to be taken into account. Lincher 17:00, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Now find a source to prove someone is *not* genius. Community consensus is the last resort, when nothing else helps, and one should never introduce something that would rely primarily on consensus into article namespace. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 17:52, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, "genius" is a widely enough used positive term that it will be attached to people who are not associated primarily with intellectual pursuits. For example, here is a page with two published authors referring to Mohammed as a genius [3] - and if you add him, every other religious leader will want to be added. Here is a book referring to Jay Gould as a genius right in its title [4]. Here is are Wikipedia articles about musical albums referring to their artists as geniuses: The Genius of Ray Charles, Genius: The Best of Warren Zevon. And of course Genius (rapper). Are these people you intended to have on your list? Any list of people who have been referred to as geniuses by verifiable sources will contain a noticeable fraction of the content of the Wikipedia, and therefore will be useless. AnonEMouse (squeak) 17:35, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

When WP:VfG gets blue, it will work as... Intended or, maybe, considering it all, not? CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 17:52, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for bringing new light into the discussion. I rest my case as I see that there is no point in arguing since I didn't know the word genius was used to almost all instances in the news and for that matter trying to figure out which sources are good ones and which ones should be left out is too much to put on WP. I agree that once a religious figure is added who knows what will be added next and the list will thus degenerate, go to ArbCom, Disputes pages, be POV and who knows. I also agree that bringing the community consensus into this would make an article really look like original research as there will be disputes to add or delete entries. Lets leave it to Uncyclopedia if they want it. Lincher 19:42, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Genius is unquantifiable, even though we do have standards above which a person is classified as a genius. We can't, for instance place people with genius scores on the Stanford-Binet test on the same list as people considered to be geniuses. Say Isaac Newton or Leonardo... do they (who cannot be objectively quantified) have to share list space with for instance me? I may have scored genius on the Stanford-Binet test, but I would never put myself on a par with a historic genius... who of course would never make the list because of no quantifiable objective criteria with which to categorise them. I'm not against lists, just that some of them won't work. User:Pedant 05:40, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

It seems pretty straight forward to me. Could one make a list of people who had been called geniuses? Yes. Could one make a list of people who had been called geniuses and be definitivly correct? Probably not. Could one make a list of people who had been called geniuses and not open a pandoras box where everyone from 50 cent to Kim Jung Il could be added? No because at one time or another I'm sure someone has attached the tag "genius" to all of them. It is too bad. A list containing all the "real" geniuses would be very useful. Perhaps finding a differant name for the list could solve this problem.--Matt D 16:08, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Should articles reference games? Pull the Plugs.

I have been going around wikipedia and I have seen many articles about middle aged weapons, bronze aged buildings and modern systems reference games, saying it is featured in games like Civilization. I think these references is cruft and the game's own article should reference these weapons, buildings and systems instead. I propose we remove game references that are not highly relevant to an article. This will stop game developers plugging games all over wikipedia, which is spam, and help cut down on article size keeping the most notable parts, thus raising the quality of articles. --OrbitOne [Talk|Babel] 15:43, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

  • I agree, but you're understating the problem. The "popular culture" section in lots of articles add very little to the understanding of the subject. "There was an XXX as a subplot in Episode 33 of Futurama" -- so what? "XXX is shown in issue 45 of Beat The Martians comics" -- so what? I don't think the problem is commercial plugging; I think the problem is the lack of distinction between trivia and useless trivia. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 16:22, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Ein) I can say for sure that devs have nothing to do with that. It's fans. And it's not exactly cruft.
Zwei) Partial support. I never understood why an article about an ICBM-carrying SSBN must include link to an arcade java or flash game where it's one of 100 units, or to RA game with something vaguely similar. Well, I never remove them, but I just don't think it is relevant. I'd like some advice on whether these refs should be cleaned. Of course, movies (or games) featuring some weapon in the main theme (like Tom Clancy books and movies) are to be kept.
CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 16:32, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
En) The whole "Popular Culture" area should be cleaned of references unless the reference has had a solid affect on the view on whatever the article is about.
To) I would suggest removing those references, but I have come up against resistance to this, thus I am bringing it up here as a possible policy change.
Tre) Shouldn't we be using English instead of German and Danish?
Although I agree, alot of non-notable stuff can be removed, I would like to focus on commercial plugging as a problem of its own and get a policy in place to remove them.
--OrbitOne [Talk|Babel] 16:37, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
I agree with OrbitOne on this one. There is too much useless crap in some "Popular Culture" sections. Quality comes before quantity. --87.52.25.155 17:53, 19 August 2006 (UTC). Forget it. I forgot to log in anyway... --87.52.25.155 17:56, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Un) If we clean it ot references, what will be left?
Deux) I think we shouldn't remove them all. Only ones irrelevant. For instance, if the sub is featured in Silent Hunter, it deserves a mention in both articles. But I support removing refs to games where the subject plays only a minor role.
Trois) Non! C'est amusant! --CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 22:34, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
I disagree with OrbitOne. I find the "popular culture" sections interesting to read. Moreover, with many phenomena, the popular culture occurrance is the primary way that people are introduced to the phenomenon in question, and thus often determines how they think about said phenomenon. Of course, it's only relevant if the phenomenon figures prominently in the popular context given. It's pointless making pointers from gun to every computer game that features guns. Finally, it's not like we need to conserve space. As long as the section is decently written and correct, I don't see why it should be removed. Wikipedia aims to gather knowledge - not to make brief articles. And the popular culture section is usually placed at the end of the article anyway, so if you don't care to read it, just stop reading when you get there.
That said, commercial use of such references is an entirely different problem and something that I do not think should be tolerated. That is, if mention of a computer product or film is inserted into the article on a given phenomenon, not because people in fact know this phenomenon from the given product, but in an attempt to advertise said product, it should be stricken. --Pinnerup 18:05, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
CP/M's second point and jpgordon's conclusion really sums up what I feel: It's useless trivia and should only be kept in case the weapon is a central part of the game. --|EPO| 17:57, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Pinnerup: But what is the distinction of game plugging and a honest reference? What I am against is the reference says simply, "Weapon 'X' is featured in game 'Y'" or variants of this.
--OrbitOne [Talk|Babel] 18:11, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
I think you're very much overstating the issue. How are these references hurting Wikipedia? In fact, I would even go so far as to say that I'd like to see more of these kinds of references. --Gau 18:18, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
I think such references fall under Wikipedia:Fancruft. --OrbitOne [Talk|Babel] 18:25, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Don't forget that "Fancruft" is just an essay. Something can't be deleted as falling under it, it is nothing more than an opinion of a few wikipedians. --CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 22:34, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
In many cases, it seems to be really stretching. I can imagine games like Civilization to be particularly bad offenders of this. Someone can go through any of the historically motivated movies and find thousands of weapons, etc., that played a very minor role in the work itself. If people are looking for other works that include that minor unit, it seems more like a game/movie related discussion and would fit there instead... If people like seeing a compiled list of references of games/movies/books including these units so much, couldn't we create a page listing such references for that object rather than clutter up an article about the "real" item or building or whatever?
One thing that might be worth considering is that (rightly or wrongly) the popular culture sections are often used to justify the exitance of otherwise unusable images in the articles (since they are discussing the movie or game, they include an image of the movie's depiction of the object, etc.) I have a feeling these sections are often motivated by this more than anything else. When the images are removed, they pop back up with a description of the commercial product to permit their inclusion. Sometimes this seems almost like an advertisement, but without a policy it's hard to distinguish. —LactoseTIT 18:36, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
You cannot get rid of these references - believe me, many people had tried. The pop links sprout out immediatelly after you prune them out. What works is to create page "XYZ in popular culture" and move the games etc there, similar to the Gorilla article. Gorilla was once so badly infested that 1/3 of content were popular references, now it is clean. Pavel Vozenilek 20:00, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
I syill want to introduce a policy against plugging games. Right now, there is no well define policy against it. --OrbitOne [Talk|Babel] 21:29, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I would like to cite another user who made a very good point on Talk:Saint_Basil's_Cathedral

I think the game references are simply trivial, whether generic or by name - inside/outside is as likely to be an accidental consequence of game design decisions as anything else, and I don't think anybody would take Civ4 as more authoritative than our actual pictures showing relative position. It would be noteworthy if a whole generation of Australians were confused because of a spectacular mistake in a 1950s textbook - we got any examples like that? Stan 21:32, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Maybe a test that asks if a generation of people were affected by a references content of any type would be a good standard of determining if a reference is noteworthy or not. Any suggestions as to what the test should be? --OrbitOne [Talk|Babel] 22:01, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

WP:WGAS? --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 22:25, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
As for a test, how about just asking whether it could stand on its own notability? For example, given some piece of armor X in the game Civilization, would "X (Civilization)" meet the criteria as a standalone article? If not, then it shouldn't be included in the article about X. It might be a bit harsh, but it might capture the idea of something truly needing notability in order to show up. —LactoseTIT 04:09, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Absolutely not true. There is a much lower standard for inclusion of a fact in an article regarding X than for writing an article about the fact itself. Do we have an article about the birthdate of Abraham Lincoln? That said, there is still a standard which would exclude a detailed list of every mention of the topic in every work of fiction ever. Deco 08:21, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
"Do we have an article about the birthdate of Abraham Lincoln?" Yes we do! Well, not really an article, but it has its own talk page: Talk:Charles Darwin/Lincoln. Eugène van der Pijll 08:35, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
I never said this was true, I was proposing it to be a standard for including popular culture references inside the main article itself. Including a reference could have a much lower standard inside a pop culture list article (if one was so created), but I was proposing that standard to cut down on the amount of clutter in articles. The general idea of the above seems to be that we don't want to necessarily just blanket cut all pop references since some are so notable--but the question is how to determine which are notable enough to include in a main article? —LactoseTIT 10:01, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

In many cases though, they are vieled directories, which in Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not is more or less bannished, their removal is more than warented as a matter of policy. --OrbitOne [Talk|Babel] 23:08, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmm... I was thinking of another motivating factor for the importance of this discussion. Nearly all Wikipedia articles could easily have a "popular culture reference" section--games that feature Einstein, Lincoln, etc.; movies that have evolution or gravity as plot points; books that discuss communism or England... I think there needs to be some very clear guideline as to when such a pop culture section is appropriate, if ever. Is anyone here suggesting that there should almost always be such a section if some video game talks about something or someone? If not, what would the cutoff criteria be? (The cutoff criteria being, ultimately, the guideline.) —LactoseTIT 01:19, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
I feel like I've heard it somewhere, so it can already be written down. If not, a guideline falling in line with others (which should be established, if it isn't yet), would be something like:
"Appearance in a work of fiction should only be mentioned, if it is non-trivial and significant, and the work of fiction is notable."
For example, a Trade Caravan in Civilization is significant, and the work is notable, but the appearance is trivial.
However, Interstellar Expedition has a non-trivial appearance, being one of the endings in Civilization, and deserves a mention.
"See You Next Wednesday" makes a non-trivial appearance in notable game Deus Ex, but it is insignificant, and shouldn't be mentioned. lbert Einstein makes a non-trivial appearance in Red Alert which has a mission to transport him, but the appearance is not significant.
Any subject may be a central part of some game, but if the game isn't notable, appearance shouldn't be mentioned.
Of course, these examples are not perfect. And one thing... I don't get a good wording for the important note that Significance of appearances should be measured in relation to subject's significance. Or, better, that Significance of appearance should be sufficient to contribute to notability of the subject. For instance, Tank (as a vehicle type) is very notable on its own, and hardly any work of fiction could deserves a mention, even being all about tanks. However, if some semi-experimental, rare tank made its way into a work of fiction, it deserves a mention. And See You Next Wednesday fictional movie should mention, probably, any of its appearances in other works of fiction, even trivial ones. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 19:52, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
  • OK, here's an obvious example. Take a look at the "what links here" for Civilization IV. It's a great game, certainly; my wife recently insisted I put it away because I was spending way too much time at it. (Damn barbarians.) In what way is it important to Steve Wozniak that an aphorism attributed to him is used trivially in the game? In what way is it important to readers of Elizabeth I of England that she's one of the iconic representatives of the English civilization? Etc, etc. Of all of the what-links-here I went through, the only one that really mattered was that Leonard Nimoy did some voiceovers. Why do we need this sort of WGAS cluttering up the articles? --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 00:27, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

May I offer a case for the other side? The featured list Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc began as a "popular culture" section at the end of the Joan of Arc article. It now includes - among many other categories including operas and literature - twelve separate computer games. To the best of my knowledge, the English language Wikipedia is the only resource that collects references to Joan of Arc in popular songs, television, games, anime, and manga. Joan of Arc isn't just remembered as a dusty play by George Bernard Shaw and a statue in Paris's Place des Pyramides: she's an emcee in the 2005 film Reefer Madness and Lisa Simpson plays her in a 2002 series episode. Irreverent? Certainly! Trivial? Not necessarily. This information helps parents and teachers who want to inspire interest in history. It also demonstrates Joan of Arc's continuing relevance to modern life. It's so simple to copyedit and organize and even verify these submissions that I wonder how some editors manage to take offense - and not one of the many entries I verified proved to be a hoax. Durova 16:51, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

But still, irelevant. --OrbitOne [Talk|Babel] 18:17, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Irrelevant? Tolerance of "crufty" video game references within an article contributed to the creation of a featured list. I call that very relevant. Durova 03:33, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

It is, indeed, possible to write good "X in (popular) culture" sections or articles but it takes a lot of work and the typical such section is quite poor and possibly worse than nothing. Some of the problems:

  • References tend to be contributed by IPnonymous editors unfamiliar with Wikipedia style. More experienced Wikipedians are often loathe to improve them.
  • The sections tend to be consist of a list of references with no connecting prose and no attempt to put the references in context.
  • The references tend to be very haphazard. Typically a popular culture section in article XXX starts with someone adding something like: "In the YYY computer game XXX is the name of a powerful artifact." I'm usually left thinking: "There must be dozens of references that are at least as significant as this one. It's misleading just to list one as if it were special but it would take an enormous amount of work to dig out all the others."
  • There is a large bias towards the last few years. Marginally notable computer games released a year ago get mentions. Novels written in the 1960's typically don't.
  • Fictional works which draw on a rich cultural heritage can cause a bombardment of "X in popular culture" references. I work on mythology articles and I don't know how many articles I've seen that mention that mythological character so-and-so played a small part in one of Neil Gaiman's works or in the Age of Mythology computer game. I've read many of Gaiman's works - they're excellent. I spent weeks playing that computer game - I liked it. But they don't need to be mentioned in every single mythology article.

I'm currently working on Battle of Svolder. I put a lot of time into writing the legacy/cultural references section and I'm putting that forward as my best attempt on how these sections should look like. It doesn't cover works which only mention the battle in passing, only those where it plays a large part. It's written in coherent prose and illustrated with freely licenced images. It covers works from the 15th century to the 21st, mentioning medieval poems as well as a rock song and a manga volume. Haukur 11:47, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I understand these concerns. Most of the growth to that section at Joan of Arc happened before I became an editor. Soon after I joined Wikipedia another editor asked for a list of literary works and I provided one. We wound up moving the cultural references material to its own page after the main article expanded. It turned out the French Wikipedia had extensive listings from high art, which I translated. The two types of information dovetailed. Now the cultural references themselves were very nonstandard when I first approached them: the first task was to categorize them. Verification was easy for song lyrics and anything in the IMDB. Just pick a table format, copyedit - there you go. I agree this process has a natural selection bias toward recent releases. That's no reason to exclude verifiable information, though. If we exclude this information now, then in ten or fifteen years it will probably become much harder to recreate. I spent much more time finding additional entries for the film section than I spent organizing the contributions that other editors had already added. Not that I'm an inclusionist by nature - but in this instance inclusionism worked. Durova 03:48, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to point out Talk:Hwacha as an example of what OrbitOne is referring to. Nowhere in the discussion does he allege that it is developers plugging games. He just seems to dislike game references, even when they are obviously not plugs. He, in my opinion is trying to ramrod the discussion about removing the references. For instance, he has represented that a 2 to 3 vote in favor of keeping the text in question as actually being a consensus. Not only that but he says it is a consensus to delete with only 2 votes to delete and 3 votes to keep. He characterises the text as a 'game directory' when it clearly is not. Personally, I think the game references are worthwhile, as they show the relevance in today's times of what would otherwise be an obscure medieval slingshot. I think that the more crossreferences there are, the better. If we keep the Bajoran wormhole and Muggle, certainly we can keep things that actually exist! User:Pedant 05:21, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I see a real problem here with people not thinking ahead. Sure, right now you look at the pop culture section and say: "wow, one referance to Civilization IV, how useless" but if this can grow over time and become a list that covers (like the joan of arc pop culture article) musical, literary, artistic and contemporary referances, well then the article is quickly becoming a valid resource (even though it may be for some abstract, hard to imagine, purpose). I find these lists interesting and despite what some may think, it is not anyones responsibility to decide which information is useful and which is not. The standard method of handling Trivia is to leave it as a reservoir of "information awaiting intigration" into the rest of the article. If it gets to be a complete mess it can be moved to the talks page or given a seperate article. Outright deletion of trivia is discouraged. I think this seems like a good way of handling Popular Culture referances aswell or anything that sparks an "encyclopedic vs. unencyclopedic" disscussion.--Matt D 15:54, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

New namespace for unencyclopaedic category

Currently all categories are put in the Category: namespace, but I think we have to create a namespace (for example called "WCategory:") to separate categories only used for the Wikipedia administration from categories used for encyclopaedic articles. For example currently we distinguish Wikipedia:Portal and Portal so I think it would be more rigorous to do the same with Category:Portals and WCategory:Portals. Hence it could be more clear and homogeneous (I mean instead of having category like Category:Wikipedia templates and Category:Portals, we will have WCategory:Templates and WCategory:Portals and the top-level category will be WCategory:Administration). Moreover, since I think a such organisation is independent of language, this new namespace should be used in all Wikipedias of different languages. 16@r 00:15, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I hope this is unnecessary, but I prefer this proposal to the deletion of "unencyclopedic" or "metadata" categories. I think we need them. Should we decide to separate these useful categories from encyclopedic content (to achieve some kind of "namespace purity") then such new namespaces are a nice answer. You probably have to ask at WP:VPT about the feasibility of having several namespaces with a category-like behaviour, though. Kusma (討論) 13:52, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
I think this is a good idea. There is so much pure junk and there is almost no support for the standards of WP:V. It's very discouraging. Maybe this would be a way of separating quality from junk. Also, the pure junk (hopefully) wouldn't show up immediately on Google, giving creators and editors incentive to upgrade articles rather than do nothing. Mattisse(talk) 14:37, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
I believe one of the developers mooted something like this as a possibility some time ago, and I'll reiterate my support for it. Specifically, I'd like to see categories restricted on a per-namepspace basis in such a way that pages categorised into the "wrong" namespace don't show up in that category (or else are explicitly rejected when submitted in the edit window). (This would have the further advantage that display of the contents could be simplified, omitting the namespace prefix as implied.) Where it's necessary for category to be "cross-namespace", this could be handled either by a separate markup to note this categorisation as an exception (syntax TBD), or my having a "catch all" category. This way we could eliminate a lot of inadvertent or confused inclusion of talk, user, and project space pages into article-space categories (and vice versa). There's an additional distinction between "proper" article-space categories and "maintenance" article-space categories that might be worth capturing. (The latter might be folded into the above-mentioned catch-all categories. Obviously categories should always be includeable in other categories, so there's no need for a "Category_Category:" namespace, and templates would need separate handling too. Alai 23:54, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

tew tag for innacuracies

i recently had to tag an article (Carriage Hills, Richmond, California) because it was full of inaccuracies, it wasnt a hoax. But for example this person called upper middle class tract houses "estates" and said certain roads went to certain places and she was only half right. so i propose the creation of the neg tag for false statements and inconsistant numbers et cetera

Sounds like Template:Not verified or Template:Disputed. For other possibilities please see Category:Wikipedia maintenance templates and its subcategories. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:06, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Template:IPUser

The anon friendly WHOIS template.. exists now, just thought I'd let you know. Happy editing--{anon iso − 8859 − 1janitor} 23:56, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Requesting greater detail on subject

You might be able to improve your database by letting people people request more detail in specific areas of the database. A button under subject headers, much like a poll, would make contributors aware that more detail is thought possible in a particular area.

Even allowing people to type in requests would be great.

You can always ask for more information on the article's talk page. Click on the "Discuss this page" link. If you want to add a new article but don't have a Userid, you can go to Wikipedia:Articles for creation. If you want to request that somebody write something on a topic we don't cover, you can request it at Wikipedia:Requested articles. And please note that, despite what Encyclopedia Brittanica says, this is an encylopedia, not a database. User:Zoe|(talk) 17:52, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Named topic bias

I've brought this up before, but in the interest of permanence and citability I've now written an essay about it at User:Deco/Named topic bias. To quote: "The named topic bias is a particular natural bias possessed by all encyclopedias: a tendency to create more articles — and more detailed articles — on topics with a single, widely-agreed upon name." I'd be interested in any feedback or changes. I do not own this article, so be bold. Deco 01:45, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Opinions Page

Because wikipedia takes a neutral view on its articles, it would be nice if there was a special link on each page for opinions. For example, for articles on products, the opinions page can include user reviews on whether the product works well, what are some problems they had, etc. This can also be implemented for media such as books, movies, music. Jettabebetta

That's unlikely to fly, it would violate our WP:NPOV policy. User:Zoe|(talk) 23:24, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
There are plenty of sites on the web that allow you to do things like that; however, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and those sites are not. As said by Zoe, it would violate the Neutral point of view policy, as well as the Wikipedia:No original research policy. Picaroon9288|ta co 23:42, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
It's worth noting that we generally don't consider such reviews reliable sources, and for a reason: they're entirely unchecked and unverified, and often unverifiable (I received my X, and it didn't work!) Part of our aim is to create a more credible resource regarding such things. Deco 00:33, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
In the current Wikipedia's form it can't be implemented. If we ever make a major change, for instance integrate Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, etc, or replace talk pages with integrated forums, it will be possible to consider a branch for generic subject discussion. It's not impossible, some other wikis, like Uncyclopedia, already have integrated wiki/forum hybrids. But currently there are no such plans, and talk pages are intentionally kept from becoming a general subject discussion board. It's also somewhat of an ideological question, not just technical, to keep Wikipedia purely an encyclopedia, without generic discussion, what opinion space would effectively be. Considerable, but requires a very serious discussion. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 02:42, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

New Tag for Dysphemistic language in articles

I think there is a need for a new tag like "cleanup" or "advertisement" for articles whose choice of words may be easyly construed as offensive or rather are purposefully use dyspemisms and other potentially POV unconscience terms. I propose it read:

This article may be using dysphemisms and other terminology which may contsrue the conotation of the terminology to incite a POV or opinion. Please help wikipedia by finding alternative wording

The tag could be

{{dysphemism}}

Any thoughts? Qrc2006 01:42, 27 August 2006 (UTC)


P.S. I do believe this is a separate issue from the NPOV tag since its a subtler incidance which may be overlooked by a NPOV tag, or may remain even after NPOV cleanup and removal of said tag. Qrc2006 01:43, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I've never heard of this word before, therefore, I declare it to be far too obscure a word to be used as the name of a tag/template. --Xyzzyplugh 03:00, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure which NPOV tag you think this might be different from (there are a bunch, see Category:Neutrality templates), but it sounds very similar to template:NPOV language to me. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:04, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

The History Channel

I often look up information on Wikipedia after viewing a History Channel special, only to find the information does not exist in an article yet. While some programs are sensational or speculative, others do have good research and can have the sources and professionals in the shows used as references for an article. Of course other perspectives need to exist if the experts are too one sided. I don't care for the views or opinions as much as the research and accuracy that some of these programs have, and would like to see the important information transcribed into an article. At least for the shows that are well referenced, well cited, and can be backed up with source checking.

Sure. Documentaries are generally considered reliable sources. Let's transcribe and cite relevant portions. Deco 23:48, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Add spell check to search.

Mediawiki really needs to add a spell check to the search. Like what Google does when you misspell a word, Google offers the word spelled correctly. Wikipedia needs that.

It exists, but is disabled for performance reasons. See this bug. Fagstein 17:51, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Deletion of Wikipedia:List of images and subpages

I am proposing the deletion of this system of listing free license images which is duplicative of WikiCommons. Consensus building discussion is on Wikipedia talk:List of images. Rmhermen 15:53, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Rename all Move to templates to Copy to

We have a number of Move to templates, Move to Wiktionary, Move to Wikibooks, Move to Wikisource, etc. I believe they should all be renamed to "Copy to x". First of all, the transwiki process does not move the article at all, it just copies it, so the new names would actually be accurate. Second, there is a problem with the "move to" templates, that being that people will often remove the template in order to stop what they believe will be the removal of the article from wikipedia. This is especially a problem in that there is always a backlog in the transwiki process, putting a Move to Wikibooks Cookbook tag on an article will result in it sitting there for 3 or 4 or 5 months until someone finally gets around to transwikiing it. This is a lot of time for someone else to come along and think, "no, don't delete this wonderful chocolate fudge brownie recipe!", and remove the template. And, note that some of the templates have already had their text changed so that they read, for example, "This page is a candidate to be copied to the Wikibooks Cookbook".

For those who don't understand how this whole process works: putting a Move to x template on an article will (eventually) result in someone coming along and transwikiing it to wikibooks or wikisource or wherever. This simply copies the article there. Then the article is listed here in our transwiki log, where other people will come along and decide what to do with it now that it's been transwikied. If the article contained a recipe, they may simply remove the recipe and leave the rest of the article intact. If the article is nothing but a recipe, they may decide to remove the recipe and expand the article, or they may decide to nominate the article for deletion if expansion into a real wikipedia article doesn't seem possible. As a result of the way this works, having a Move to (or Copy to) tag on an article should not be controversial, because it in itself does nothing but proposes that a copy of the article be made to elsewhere.--Xyzzyplugh 01:55, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

New anon talk text

There is a proposal to change the anon talk page text. Please comment at MediaWiki talk:Anontalkpagetext to voice your opinion. —Mets501 (talk) 04:16, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles by classrooms as school projects

In schools worldwide, students often hand in excellent articles of research only to have those papers locked away or trashed. Those thousands of potentially great papers could be used to further knowledge (if submitted in the form of an encyclopedic entry to Wikipedia). Since many schools (and most in the US) now have computers, it would be a natural step to combine students' efforts with the goals of Wikipedia, especially considering that Wikipedia is nonprofit.

The proposal:

A system is created for allowing schools to easily contribute students' efforts. Any teacher that intends to assign students the task of writing a research type paper (in an encyclopedic form) may ask students to find an article on Wikipedia that needs cleaning, or to be created from scratch. After the students claim their subject, the teacher can freeze those topics for the few weeks that the students will be working on them (or the students might work in the sandbox and save their work for later, so that the articles are frozen for only a few days instead, when they're ready to submit).

The teacher saves a snapshot of the original article (if there is one), and checks it against the article the student submits. After all the articles are graded (based on neutrality, grammer, etc), only the articles that receive an "A" (or "B+") are allowed for inclusion. All other articles revert back to their original state (before frozen).

While frozen, the article will be clearly identified as being worked by a student as a school project. In the talk pages, credit will go to the school, and if the student wishes, then to the student as well.

A teacher applies for special membership, and afterwards signs in with a regular username to freeze selected articles during future classroom projects. A teacher may deactivate that special membership whenever it is no longer needed.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Boozerker (talk • contribs)

No offense, but that will never work. Most teachers don't value Wikipedia articles that much. And also, teachers would want kids reporting on very notable things, and having very notable articles frozen for a month is definitely not a good thing. —Mets501 (talk) 22:14, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
Read [WP:OWN]] for an idea on how this is likely to be received by most users. There is nothing currently that would stop teachers from having students change articles, but "freezing" them (or claiming "credit" on the talk page) would likely provoke howls of disagreement from most users. JChap T/E 23:31, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately, no chances. First, encyclopedic articles are different from research. Second, one-man work can meet our standarts only if he has professional knowledge and encyclopedia-writing experience. Third, we are collaborative, and not competitive.
It would work fine if we had an inherent 2D addressing system, specifically where there is a subject, and for it the definition, the article, a category of alternate articles, a category of books, a category of original works, the link repository, and so on. Something like interwiki, but without splitting and without 1D limit "one subject-one article"; and with less strict rules. At its current (and probably permanent) form, Wikipedia is not suited for that. However, another wiki could do the job well (even without software change), and then we could incorporate good articles here. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 23:51, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

The optional part is for the student to work on the assignment in the sandbox and save a copy until ready. The article isn't frozen until then, and then it'd be for only a few days (while the student uploads the article). As for teachers dismissing Wikipedia, that isn't a fact. Many teachers only recommend caution when citing from Wikipedia, and students regularly visit it. Also, any news of teachers dismissing Wikipedia is probably slightly biased and mosly pertains to the United States, but even then -- how can can anyone say for sure that many teachers wouldn't have an open mind to such a project? I know teachers who are supportive, and there's bound to be many more out there. And if students are submitting scholastically reviewed articles, the reputation of Wikipedia is bound to improve. Boozerker 01:28, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, no freezing then. But it might still be an excellent move to invite teachers to submit student-written articles (or cleaned-up articles). After the student writes an article, and the teacher views its preview in the sandbox format, it takes one simple click to submit the article to Wikipedia. Boozerker 01:34, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

If there is momentum, I can see a wiki-offshoot (apart from the Encyclopedia project) being created that acts as a sort of "Student Paper Collection"--like Google Jr. Scholar :). I'm not sure who would spearhead the creation of that wiki but if it's wanted badly enough, it will happen. If it's designed well, with a nice search engine, it could actually be used as a means of checking against plagarism. Agne 16:45, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
This sort of project might work if the school were to set up their own installation of the Mediawiki software (the software that we use to edit and display Wikipedia, as well as a bunch of other wikis) on which students could work. The students would then be free to add or merge their work into Wikipedia as they saw fit, and local adminstrators (teachers, presumably) would be able to control access and freeze articles when desired. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:16, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, the school should set up their own copy of Mediawiki and give teachers administrator privileges. Obviously, though, having a single student working on each article rather overlooks the benefits of wiki. They would ideally have students review and edit each other's work, as well as provide suggestions on the talk pages. Since it's easy to review who made what changes to an article, as well as all contributions made by a particular student, it wouldn't be hard to assess who gets credit for what. Deco 20:48, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:School and university projects. User:Zoe|(talk) 02:38, 18 August 2006 (UTC)


Conflicts of interest with WP

Teachers and students can do what they like off-Wikipedia with the Mediawiki software, and of course can integrate their newly learned knowledge and refs into any appropriate WP article. But as a former teacher, I can see real conflicts of interest between the class's needs and Wikipedia's needs. For WP's sake, I'd be really against anything that encouraged either of the following two probs:

  1. The wholesale replacement of one article by a new version (ie can't follow changes), unless the first is very short and the final article is good quality. (Students would be very likely to replace entire articles with their proud new versions, regardless of quality or POV.)
  2. Student articles would have to be in encyclopedic style, not academic "discuss this title" style: there's a big difference, and not everyone seems to grasp it. I've come across wodges of text apparently from essays which need to be picked apart from the top, because they set out to prove a thesis. In fact, since the refs have usually been carefully chosen to precisely support that thesis, and I don't have the full texts, it's very difficult to re-write the article as NPOV.

    While students can be set "encyclopedic writing" as a task, this will probably not form the majority of their written work. The investment of time required for a school/teacher to get involved with a formal Wikipedia system would encourage max use of it - ie puttting up lots of material, regardless of appropriateness.

So I strongly feel Wikipedia should be left as it is. But the suggestions for schools' own wikis are great - like a school magazine with knobs on! They can be oriented to assessment and the requirements of the learning process, rather than ruthlessly to the final outcome, and also showcase students' work (protected when finished). The more I think about it, the more better it sounds, actually. Go for it! JackyR | Talk 17:50, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

I think people have misunderstood. First, if Wikipedia encourages teachers to participate, special guidelines and suggestions would be created for just for them. Also, since I forgot to mention, it's not for just any teacher of whatever subject, but for those who mainly teach grammar, composition and writing skills. They tend to have a critical eye for structure and format. Second, the students will probably be required to start with an article of poor quality. As a result, students may better grasp what constitutes a poorly presented encyclopedic article. The suggestion for participating teachers to use Mediawiki actually removes the need to edit directly on Wikipedia. Boozerker 17:43, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Organic verification

I love wikipedia.

I want wikipedia to be: 1. open 2. comprehensive 3. accurate

There is an inherent tension between quality(as seen by an expert) and openness. A critical aspect of our wiki is its popularity, Now, if the structure of wiki is changed to make one particular version of an article more authoritative, by definition: some guy who changes something will see his change automatically reverted, or invisible or hidden under some link or etc, this is a very undesirable thing because the ONE thing that has made wiki so powerful is a new user typing: "TESTING TESTING" any change to wiki that prevents this first dip in the water is fatal... take it away and the curious user will lose interest and we him... and as big as wiki is, don't kid yourself wiki will always need new blood. So... what to do about accuracy?

I think everyone would agree with the following: the essential problem is: we don't have enough experts with enough time to go through every change, find the bad ones, revert them, AND have enough time to find and fix up bad article AND put meat on stubs. What we need is a way to improve the situation.

I am a believer in techno solutions but all improvements must be focused on the psychology of the users. I believe that JW is a visionary. In the features and policies that he has adopted; but much more importantly in the ones he hasn't adopted, he has resisted (so far) the urge to "protect" wiki thus giving it its power.

Finally I’d like to present my own proposal, which although small, has been mulled over for a long time. (please note that the wording, format or options in this proposals are just general suggestions and should be changed to whatever seems better), but essentially:

you (any user) open an article and see bad quality... you click on a link asking "does this article need improvement?"... you select options indicating the article has problem(s)... the article goes into a category of less-than-perfect articles and automatically gains a header stating "this article has been reported as not being of high quality". and it will stay that way until someone makes ANY non-minor edit to the article... at the same time a link on the main page points users (or just experts) to problem pages.

Notes:


  • this is not the same as the recent changes, watching reported articles is much more efficient at finding real problems.
  • users will become a lot more involved
  • bad editors will get quick feedback on their work without the need for a tough skinned expert with plenty of time to come along and battle it out with them just for the stubborn guy to revert everything tomorrow.
  • good expert editors can rest easy as their work will be protected by the common sense of the silent majority who will not get involved in edit wars but can make a great difference if the process is convenient
  • there is no positive vote. wikipedia is incompatible with positive selection. anyone trying to build a method of validation based on positive selection will always hit mountains of rules, loop holes and disaffected users. it is impossible. its an inherent aspect of wiki.
  • any single vote can put an article in the less-than-perfect category. though alternatively the number of people reporting the article could push it higher and higher up the bad article ladder
  • this feature is very easy to setup and would not change the structure of wikipedia in anyway

thank you for your time Esmehwk 12:02, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

other suggestions: traffic counters chat rooms in the talk pages or chat rooms dedicated to particular portals etc generally more user-friendly and topic connected chartrooms

Add Santa Clara County, CA library to Special:Booksources

Ok, I think this is the correct format:

Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 22:13, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

You should bring this up at Wikipedia talk:Book sources. There seems to be some concern over the number of libraries already listed. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:35, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Doing that now. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 02:16, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia For Dummies

I am a semi-regular user and I just wanted to say that their should be a special section for explaining the information in laymen's terms. Several times I have tried to understand what the article is actually trying to say but I have to sift through a bunch of jargon first. Just food for thought.

Try the simple English Wikipedia —Mets501 (talk) 20:00, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Random article censorship

We all know that Wikipedia is not censored. However, sometimes when the Random Article buttom is clicked, an inappropriate page will come up. So, I suggest that administrators could flag pages as inappropriate so that they will be excluded from the Random Article possibilities if, and only if, it is set in the user's Preferences. I hope you consider this a good idea, like I do.

FLaRN2005 (talk) 19:08, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Any feature that would require us to separate "inappropriate" from "safe" articles would necessarily impose a moral standard on an international, culturally-neutral work. I don't seriously believe small children will be irreparably damaged when they click "Random article" and see an objective and informational article regarding oral sex or tribadism. Deco 21:04, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
And we already have a method of slightly covering inappropriate pics - use of schematics, or, when real porn pics are used, they sometimes require to be clicked. After all, random page is not mainpage, people who click it should be ready. If we are to make Wikipedia safe for work, it should be done in articles, not toolbox code. Random page is random page, after all - you don't need an insurance before throwing the dice. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 21:53, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

An idea like the one above was proposed before. It basicly said users who wished to not view vertain images on certain articles could set their preferences to block flagged images and when they came across such an image, flag it so others who did not want to see it couldn't either. This was rejected on censorship grounds. If a person did not like what would be non-sexual or otherwise politically charge picture, they could block it for those who do not wish to see sexually charged images. It is a flawed idea and I think the author of this proposal has not considered there are moral differences between editors. What is offensive to one isn't to another. This would be a new feild for editwars. So I to think this is a very bad idea. --OrbitOne [Talk|Babel] 15:15, 22 August 2006 (UTC) This is a reasonable idea, but it'll never fly. For better or worse, Wikipedia is not censored for minors or people with sensitive dispositions. Herostratus 16:24, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

The drawback to this idea is that it creates a false aura of "safe" around everything else. Although vandalism usually gets reverted quickly, there can be no guarantee that any page is free of vandalism at any given time. Why siphon volunteer energies into an impossible goal when there is so much more we could do to make the current content better? Durova 16:57, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

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