Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 17

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Medical advisory message

I was wondering if we could create a message for pages concerning medical issues such as emergencies and diseases, to the tone that Wikipedia does not mean to advice anyone on medical matters and appropriate medical opinion should be sought after if one suspects of illness or injury...Antonio fake dr. Martin (dimelo) 05:05, 9 April, 2015 (UTC)

I think it is a good idea. I remember having read somewhere that people often look up information online about illnesses that they may be having, and Wikipedia is often the first result in Google. But the "message" cannot be too big or annoying to readers, but still noticeable. Perhaps a template of some sort? Tony Tan · talk 22:47, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
It's done at some Wikipedias, and it's been discussed here. Someone like User:Bluerasberry could probably fill you in on the current state. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:17, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
It is a complicated situation. There is no alternative to the current disclaimer which has broad support. I think it is fair to say that many people feel the current disclaimer is good enough, even though many people are open to hearing ideas about how it could be improved. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:35, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
I cannot speak for Antonio, but I think part of his suggestion is to have the reader see that there is a disclaimer when they are reading the articles. Perhaps incorporating part of the disclaimer (or a link to it) in a template that is placed in articles dealing with medical emergencies and serious diseases? Tony Tan · talk 20:08, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
If you'd like to see an example, w:de:Template:Gesundheitshinweis is what the German Wikipedia places at the bottom of medicine-related articles. The text roughly says, "This article is about a health issue. It is not for self-diagnosis and does not replace medical care. Please read the medical disclaimer." A few others place a template like this at the top of the page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:41, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

English

I am going to say a few things in the same section. We know there are two separate Wikipedias : One Simple English another Main English. I haven't seen much difference between the two. Now there are lots of Wiki pages with average english(spelling mistakes , grammatical error) Pages develop over time.


If I feel an article needs better English I need to contact a volunteer with High English writing skills.

1)-If we click user rights , we can see whether they are Check User , Administrator , rollback rights , pending changes reviewer. We must add one more category "English Expert" or any other suitable name. Administrators or arbitration committee will decide who will get this facility.English barnster award should be given to senior editors who are good in English . Talk page discussion , or any other discussion is the best place where we can see the exact command over the language . Then it is upto administrators to propose him/her as "English Expert" .


2)-We must be allowed to put a maintenance template "This page requires better English" , which might get the notice of a an English Expert.Cosmic Emperor (talk) 08:19, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

There is a {{copyediting}} template, among many others. Praemonitus (talk) 22:37, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
I think the userbox templates fulfil this function well enough. Most of the people here are entirely competent in English so there is more a need to show those who are less proficient than the reverse. SFB 20:30, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Size difference indicator during edit

One thing that has bothered me for a while is the inability to get a quick estimate of the increase or decrease in character count as the result of a pending edit. The work-around for me has been to paste the old article or section into a sandbox, save it, then edit it and paste the proposed change over it, save it, and finally look at the sandbox article history to see the change in article size — a time-consuming and cumbersome process. There must be a better way.

When I click on the "Show preview" or "Show changes" buttons, I'd like the Wiki software to compute the change in character count and display it just below the editing pane before I commit the change and save it. If there's a script solution that I could save in my user space, that might be alright, although I'd like to see it permanently embedded in the standard editing interface. I'm using the syntax highlighter gadget in my user preferences; with very long articles it times out and stops highlighting, so any add-on script shouldn't make the machine run slower and exacerbate the problem. Thoughts, anyone? — QuicksilverT @ 18:13, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Simply out of curiosity, but why is the character count increase/decrease important to check before saving an edit? Sam Walton (talk) 18:15, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
One might also ask why an odometer or speedometer is important in an automobile. Seriously, a character count check can be used to prevent editing goofs, such as wanting to delete a single character on one line, but having the cursor accidentally slip down a line or two, removing dozens or hundreds of characters. It's happened to me more than once, requiring another time-wasting and storage space wasting edit to fix. Having a character count difference display would provide a simple secondary check before committing an edit, helping to reduce editing errors. — QuicksilverT @ 15:08, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
I can understand the value in showing this in the preview, but it's not entirely obvious where you would place this, or how it would show in relation to editing a section (which technically is a different calculation form the overall article edit count). SFB 20:31, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

WRCP

I spent a few hours doing recent change patrol and quickly got fed up with Special:RecentChanges. To try to scratch that itch, I've written WRCP, a Wiki Recent Change Patrol tool. The goal is to make it easier and more efficient to spot edits that are harmful to the encyclopaedia.

I'd be grateful if others could try the tool out and give ideas for improvement and constructive feedback at User:GoldenRing/WRCP. GoldenRing (talk) 06:21, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm curious how yours compares to tools like WP:Huggle and WP:Snuggle? (Please {{ping}} me; I'm a bit behind on my watchlist this week.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:18, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Creating A Wisdom Wiki Wikimedia Project

Wikipedia is rapidly becoming the foremost repository for organizing, summarizing, referencing, and accessing the world’s knowledge. We can think of it as the world’s Knowledge Wiki, the place to go to find out what is.

Our world is beginning the transition from a knowledge basis to a wisdom basis. Examples include the call to transform academic institutions from knowledge based to wisdom based and a recent essay on the rise of the wisdom worker. What aids can help us make wise decisions? Where can we go to obtain sound advice?

If the question motivating knowledge acquisition is “what is?” then the question motivating wisdom acquisition is “what ought to be,” or “what should I do?”

Quora is a popular question-and-answer website where questions are created, answered, edited and organized by its community of users. Today users can ask questions, including “what should I do?” and users post answers. To excel as the world’s wisdom wiki, Quora will have to improve by: refining the questions asked, structuring the questions and answers to improve searching, browsing and retrieval; refining searching, generalizing and structuring linking, refining the answers, encouraging collaboration, adding references, and building upon existing information to become an enduring and reliable repository.

Quora has shown little interest in moving in this direction, therefore I propose that a new Wikimedia project be undertaken to fill this gap. Let’s call the new project WikiWisdom.

WikiWisdom would be driven by user’s questions. Questions asking “What is” would be answered in a wiki with a brief narrative providing links to existing Wikipedia articles. Questions asking “What ought to be” would be answered in a wiki using newly developed material. Original research, often in the form of opinions, would routinely appear, but statements intended to be factual would be held to the same standard of verifiability used in Wikipedia. Typical questions worthy of thoughtful answers and an enduring presence in the WikiWisdom might be:

  • How do you learn to believe in yourself?
  • How can I get my priorities straight in life?
  • What can I do to make the world a better place?
  • Who is the wisest person who ever lived?
  • As a 17 year old, what should I do now that I will thank myself for in later years?
  • What is the difference between alone and lonely?
  • What government is the most humanitarian?
  • Has evolution stopped with the emergence of the human race?
  • How do you know if something is right or wrong?
  • Plastic or Paper?

Developing the WikiWisdom Mediawiki project can help accelerate us into a wiser world. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lbeaumont (talk • contribs) 02:49, 15 April 2015‎

Ok, here's a question to start off with. Why do you think that crowd-sourcing is a suitable method to answer such questions? AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:05, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
Multiple points of view are especially valuable in answering "ought" questions. Offering several valid points of view in answers to "ought" questions provides a rich set of alternatives for the reader to consider, even thought they may lead in different directions. There is often no one correct answer to such questions, even though each answer is valuable and presents an important truth. I believe a model that draws from the best features of Quora and Wikipedia will provide the most valuable WikiWisdom. The Quora site elicits a wide range of questions, but the answers are not as well crafted as those on Wikipedia. If the best Quora-type questions had the best Wikipedia-style answers we would be creating a valuable, enduring, and continuously improving repository of wise advice.--Lbeaumont (talk) 10:46, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
Imagine a student at an extended family gathering asking "what should I do after high school graduation?" Aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins will all offer their own variety of well-intentioned advice. This provides a rich set of alternatives to consider and choose from. Imagine the same student going to a job fair or on a cross country listening tour and asking the same question. More well-intentioned advice will provide more alternatives to consider. It is these well-thought out, but often mutually exclusive alternatives that we can develop and share with the WisdomWiki.Lbeaumont (talk) 12:15, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
You could start by looking at the existing Wikipedia:Reference desk and think about ways in which it could evolve. Regards, HaeB (talk) 05:52, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for this suggestion. As a Q&A resource, the reference desk has features useful for a WiseWiki, but would have to change in several important ways:
Rebranding – Today’s reference desk is described as providing answers to questions of fact. It is oriented toward “what is” type questions, not “what ought to be” type questions. This would have to change to invite “ought” type questions.
Page per Q&A Pair – Today’s reference desk concatenates the next question after the most recent existing answer. To encourage collaboration, clear exposition, and navigation the WiseWiki would be better structured using a separate page dedicated to each Q&A, as in Wikipedia and each of the other Mediawiki projects.
Collaborative Editing – Today’s reference desk concatenates each editor’s response after the most recent existing previous response. This style does not permit collaborative editing of the overall answer. This reduces the clarity of the answer and limits the style of the exposition. WiseWiki would be better structured allowing collaborative editing of each page, as in Wikipedia and each of the other Mediawiki projects.
Navigational Aids – Only very basic navigating is provided for today’s reference desk. More advanced navigational aids would be needed to find relevant questions in the many that will make up the WiseWiki.--Lbeaumont (talk) 01:55, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
@Lbeaumont: I think the third point here is quite a crucial one. We're looking for multiple (conflicting) opinions on each question. The wiki format which allows collaborative editing also tends towards giving one overall "truth", if you like. The openness of the text leads to one overall voice, which may present conflicting views in context, but ultimately is opposite to the differing opinions model you seek. The fact that these will be opinions also greatly changes the challenge. In an open, shared text, how can we decide and craft the "right opinions"? Which opinions should be near the top (and thus have greater prestige – an important facet of judging wisdom)?
Sadly, these are the kind of challenges which lead to much anger and wasted time on Wikipedia, rather than the kind of problems which lead to a greater understanding. I suppose my point is that the "limited-to-user postings" and "order by user-rating" format typical of traditional Q&A sites (e.g. StackOverflow) solves these problems much more efficiently than an open wiki does. Can these two models be reconciled? Or is there a third way? SFB 13:37, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
@Sillyfolkboy: Do we dare identify a referee / chief editor / arbitrator / curator for each page (or perhaps for particularly volatile pages)? This person could exercise judgement, having more weight than other editors, to decide the order in which points-of-view are presented in the answer. The person could be selected (or volunteer) as: 1) the first person to post an answer, 2) the person who demonstrates the most knowledge or passion about the issue, 3) nomination by editors active on a page and is subject to overthrow or a vote of no confidence by active editors. We can experiment to turn the dials to adjust the relative weight this person's judgement carries in settling debates. At a minimum the curator can break a tie (or endless ongoing dispute) between editors to resolve an issue that has been thrashing too long. At a maximum, the curator has veto power (able to silence some editors) or "the power of the pen" where editors make suggestions but only the curator makes the final edits. Lbeaumont (talk) 16:05, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
@Lbeaumont: Power of curator has been advocated by many editors, but it is somewhat contrary to the (openly-stated) overall Wikipedia culture. In practice, many people do act as curators of specific articles, but often numbers and editor persistence win out. Wikipedia seems slightly averse to election (hence the adminship issues). I'm not saying that it's impossible, but the WisdomWiki would be quite a departure from the ethos here. On the other hand, Reddit has a similar admin capacity to the one you're advocating. Ultimately, I think this is a good idea, but I'm not entirely convinced that the wiki software and its techno-cultural implications are the best fit. Could this be just as effective with a different form of software that has (a) an admin/curator rights role, (b) a segmented, editable, user-controlled response mechanism, and (c) a discussion page to give suggestions of improvements to those responses? SFB 20:15, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

DevCom

After perusing through the Media Viewer arbitration case and the circumstances that led to the arbitration case becoming one, perhaps enwiki should form a new Committee to handle development of the MediaWiki interface (let's call it DevCom for short). Responsibilities of said are simply to review and impliment changes to the namespace as proposed by the community at large.

In essense, this is what I propose:

  • Create a new group DevCom in the mediawiki LocalSettings.php file (of course adding the relevant messages to the MediaWiki namespace)
  • Moving the editinterface permission away from the sysop group and assigning it instead to DevCom
  • Granting DevCom the additional permissions editusercss and edituserjs (but not removing these from sysop who'd retain them for emergency purposes)

The global group staff will still, of course, retain editinterface - both for legal and for scope reasons (namely their perimssions exceed enwiki)

Proposed membership:

  • 1/3 composed from WMF's current developers
  • 2/3 from the enwiki community (with a demonstrable knowledge in MediaWiki's operation)
    • This 2/3 should ideally be those who volunteer to be in such a group.
    • The only real requirement for membership should be proof you can code (as class examples, Extension developers, most [if not all] Bot coders, and other people involved in WP coding such as Twinkle and AWB; though none of these would be an absolute requirement)

Size of the committee I leave to the community at large to decide. Also up for thoughts I leave the methodology as to how one gets accepted (two thoughts, others may have more: either via ArbCom's existing process of how OS/CU is handed out, or through a general community election much like how ArbCom's own election process is undertaken)

This will not only reduce the number of chances for someone to accidentally render the site unusuable (a few messages in MediaWiki: are incredibly touchy at the best of times, and a typo in them can have some very far-reaching effects as we all noticed in the aforementioned ArbCom case), but could also be used as a stepping stone for general enwiki denizens to perhaps get a starter into MW development at large without worrying too much about the larger under-the-hood picture.
On the other side of the coin is that, of course, this would be another layer of beauracracy.

Dax Bane 06:24, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
@Dax Bane: Just to try to encapsulate the root issues here: are the primary aims of this change to (a) devolve choice of MediaWiki implementation from the Wikimedia Foundation to the community, and (b) to prevent edit-warring on technical implementation? SFB 13:54, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
My focus would be more on (b) with this idea. Dax Bane 00:04, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
@Dax Bane: I think (a) is actually the key focus as it inevitably injects a level of community consensus into the implementation. (b) could also be achieved without that by limiting implementation to WMF developers instead, but that doesn't appear to be what you've advocating. What are you looking for in this change if not allowing the community to resist technical changes? SFB 00:29, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
My goal would not be allowing the community to resist technical changes rather allowing the community to engage with WMF developers directly whereupon changes could be pushed through. I'm aware of bugzilla, but that is more of a platform in which to bring bugs to the dev's attention where this is creating a conduit between community and foundation (at least, a subset of that foundation). Community proposes, committee considers/debates/gets clarification, and - if satisfied - impliments.
As a third of that committee would be developers already within the foundation, it would also have a means to ensure that the changes proposed would not begatively impact the operation both of enwiki, and the foundation's servers at large (subject to the occaisional mistake, of course). With regards to the ArbCom case that inspired this idea, a community concensus was formed to make Media Viewer opt-in as opposed to opt-out, though the admin's intentions behind the edit would have been the best intentions so far, the net result of a single edit created more friction between this community and the foundation (to be fair, I'm not singling the admin out in particular, just highlighting a cause and effect - it could have happened by any admin). I acknowledge that, to date, it has been an isolated event but there is never a guarantee that any one of our 859 current administrators won't cause the same issue again.
Dax Bane 04:29, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Isolating format elements of an included page

Providing some means of limiting the scope of format elements for an included page would be beneficial. For example, on the WP:AfD sub-pages, I keep finding that basic layout errors (such as not including a closing 'div' tag) will propagate downward to the succeeding sections. Thank you. Praemonitus (talk) 17:01, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Analytics and socking

Should we have an analytics tool that objectively rates the likelihood that two or more accounts are actually the same person based on linguistic queues in their contribution history.

For example, say there is an SPI investigation that involves 30 alleged socks. The analytics tool may say that user:Notasock has different syntax patterns in their editing than the other accounts. This may lead to exonerating that editor, whereas otherwise a good faith editor would have been blocked. CorporateM (Talk) 04:23, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

A smart user may "create" various oddities, and forget to use them in one account; this test would be unreliable. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 03:46, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
This presupposes that such a tool could be created. I have my doubts that it could, at least to the extent that it was reliable enough to use - and I can't think of any way to test its reliability. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:01, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
You could test it by asking users to create a bunch of socks - which, of course, is a very disruptive way to test. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:37, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
A few notes:
  • Feasibility: The first step would be a grant request to do a feasibility study and see how possible it is
  • Accuracy: I think this is essentially already done by humans and could be done more accurately by an objective machine in seconds instead of hours.
  • Testing: The way to test it would be to use it on pre-existing SPI cases. See if it comes up with different results than SPI investigators than look more closely at those cases, or, use it on obvious socking cases and see if it correctly identifies socks already identified by checkuser.
CorporateM (Talk) 14:47, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
I found a couple papers[1][2] where an academic already used 200+ writing style indicators to evaluate whether two accounts were the same person using analytics, and found the same results as SPI in almost 75% of cases. I pinged them on Facebook to see if there is some way we can make the tool he already developed available online and take a closer look at it. CorporateM (Talk) 15:00, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Good Lists

Discussion continued at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Good Lists. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:03, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

A new class of article to be introduced. it will be a good list. It would be similar to a good article but in a list format. We need this because the step from list to FL is too great and we need something in the middle. TheMagikCow (talk) 17:34, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me. If we can come up with a reasonable set of criteria which is applicable to almost any list, and which would tend to be similar to GA, then we can make those be the GL criteria. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 16:33, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
Here they are TheMagikCow (talk) 17:06, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

It covers a topic that lends itself to list format (see WP:List) and, in addition to meeting the requirements for all Wikipedia content (particularly naming conventions, neutrality, no original research, verifiability, citations, reliable sources, living persons, non-free content and what Wikipedia is not) a good list has the following attributes:

  1. Prose. It features a good standard of writing, with no copyedit issues,
  2. Lead. It has a lead that introduces the subject and defines the scope and inclusion criteria.
  3. Comprehensiveness.
    • (a) It comprehensively covers the defined scope, providing all of the major items and.
    • (b) In length and/or topic, it meets all of the requirements for stand-alone lists; does not violate the content-forking guideline, does not largely duplicate material from another article, and could not reasonably be included as part of a related article.
  4. Structure. It is easy to navigate and includes, where helpful, section headings and table sort facilities.
  5. Style. It complies with the Manual of Style and its supplementary pages.
  6. Stability. It is not the subject of ongoing edit wars and its content does not change significantly from day to day, except in response to the good list process.
This has been discussed before, though I don't have any links handy. Personally, I do not believe there is much value in creating another review process that is ultimately redundant to the Featured List process. There will not be enough difference between a "good" list and a "featured" list to make the process worthwhile. Resolute 17:11, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Add link to latest revision in Talk page signatures?

I've just opened a discussion here around a possible idea for adding a default signature link to more easily access the revision of the page a person was likely talking about when they made their talk page post.

Per instructions there, I'm putting a note here. What do folks think?

If somebody believes the idea is worth putting up for consensus polling, perhaps after some further development, please go for it (and crosslink to that discussion!) :-).

--WBTtheFROG (talk) 23:37, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

To which URL would you link from your sig in the above comment? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 08:57, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

New sports section on home page, no longer part of "In the news"

I think Wikipedia should follow the same format as just about every other form of media and not mix sports with news items in the "In the news" section on the home page. Maintaining the current situation leads to an overemphasis on sports items and it can easily be solved by just creating a sports section which is the standard in TV, radio, newspapers and news websites. I think this would be the best solution since it would still allow for the sports items to be featured on the home page but it would also allow for more "news" items to also appear.Monopoly31121993 (talk) 07:14, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

As said on Talk:Main Page right now we are in a time of year when there are a lot of sports holding their championships(the ones whose seasons occur over the winter) and we will have another in the fall (when sports holding their seasons all summer have their championships). That's why it seems like there is a lot right now. This also is a slow time for non-sports stories, at least ones that regularly occur, which can be counteracted with more nominations to discuss.
How exactly would you change the layout of the Main Page to fit in another box? 331dot (talk) 09:53, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
Tabs? I had a really, really basic concept for how it could look for the old "GAs as DYK" arguments from a few years ago. Could work here as well, but I have no idea how hard that would be to implement in the page code. Resolute 13:16, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
I would also wonder what would go in a sports box during the times of year when there aren't a lot of championships. 331dot (talk) 09:56, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
I agree with the above, it just so happens there have been lots of sports events in the last month (Cricket World Cup, end of football seasons, Snooker World Championship, Kentucky Derby, Grand National)- most of these are annual events (Cricket World Cup is every 4 years), and it just happens that they're all now. When it gets to June/July, there won't be many, and most of the year there won't be either. Also, as far as I can see, there isn't much significant other news anyway. I can't see the need for a sports news box in October or November for example. Joseph2302 (talk) 10:06, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
I also agree the number of sport and non-sport stories varies too much for separate boxes. We are not a news media and actual news media don't limit their main page news section to a box in the corner, so a comparison to news media has limited relevance. At Wikipedia talk:In the news/Archive 44#Shorter stays for sport I made another suggestion, to let sports stories stay shorter than other stories. It didn't get support. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:06, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Aesthetics: code vs. mono

The CSS for <code> (and thus {{code}}) currently uses a grey background, which I find appalingly ugly since it's meant to display source code inline. See, e.g., C string handling#Strcat/strcpy replacements. See also qsort, where I changed qsort to qsort in violation of the instructions at Template:Mono; change this back to {{code}} and hit preview to see just how ugly it can be.

I'm not sure what to do: either try to get the CSS for <code> changed, or get the instructions for the {{code}} and {{mono}} changed so that inline code snippets should be displayed in {{mono}}. I'm not really sure how to do either (via RFC?). Suggestions? Thoughts? QVVERTYVS (hm?) 10:34, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

qsort does not need any styling at all, as it is just the name, so I removed the styling there. However, finding something ugly is not a reason to make such changes. You can try propose a style change at WP:VPR, but I don't think there will bu much incentive to change the styling. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 11:45, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
@Edokter: the name is an identifier in a programming language, and it's customary to typeset those in a monospace font. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 15:23, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
Not on Wikipedia. Please review MOS:COMPUTING; there is no mention about how to typeset programming languages. The only use of monospace is detailed in MOS:CLI. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 16:57, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
@Edokter: according to MOS:CLI, at least the "syntax of shell commands" goes in <code>. By convention at least, that includes the names of ls, cat, etc. When used once, the grey background stands out, but in articles about these commands, it gets really annoying. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 19:34, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
My question is: who thought it needed anything but the default (inherit) background color? Something lost to time I'm sure, since the element's had that styling since 2007ish at least. --Izno (talk) 13:45, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
Proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Change formatting of inline code snippets. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 15:23, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
Presumably an 'apallingly ugly' feature in CSS can be addressed via a reskin by the user? There shouldn't need to be a mass change just to suit one person's taste. Praemonitus (talk) 15:58, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
Praemonitus, if you disagree with my taste, you're free to say so. I think I have some feeling for good presentation, but I haven't been trained in that area. I simply find pages that pages that use a lot of {{code}} hurt my eyes, and I've read and written quite a few of those. Of course I can change my settings, but I don't want to bother the entire reader population with that. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 19:34, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
In Special:MyPage/common.css, try 
code { border: none; background: inherit; color: inherit; }
to restore the styling as it was until a few months ago. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:54, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
Light grey backgrounds seem to be everywhere on Wikipedia and I haven't seen much concern raised about it. Is this an accessibility issue? Some of the source language templates can make it more difficult to read due to the colors selected. Praemonitus (talk) 19:57, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
I don't mind grey backgrounds on, e.g., blocks of code, but they're very distracting when they appear in large numbers in the prose. I started noticing this when I wrote (pseudo)code examples with explanations that mentioned variables from the code. For pseudocode, I've so far used either {{mono}} or {{math}}, depending on context.
Re: accessibility, I guess not.
(Agree with the syntax highlighting bit.) QVVERTYVS (hm?) 20:18, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Why can't protection icons be part of the UI directly?

Right now, templates are used to generate notices and icons indicating that particular pages are protected. My only major problem with them is that they are manually added and are not specifically tied to the article's protection status (meaning that they do not necessarily "disappear" upon the expiration of the page's protection. Some, uneducated editors also believe that adding or removing said templates can change the article's protection status. Plus, it would also make a bit more sense to display the protection status in a location that is contextually

My idea is to replace the inline protection templates with a variation of them that is implemented directly in the software and MediaWiki skin. What I envisioned was a sort of minimalistic padlock icon next to the relevant function that is protected, accompanied by an indication of whether the user can edit the page. So for instance, a page that is semi-protected would show a faded grey padlock next to the Edit button; if the user is eligible to edit the page, the lock will still appear, but it will shop up as opened. A different icon could be used for pending revisions, mainly because I do not feel the padlock is an accurate symbol to signify this process.

Any thoughts? ViperSnake151  Talk  00:29, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

This may be technically possible, unless you wish to have different colors for diffferent reasons of protection - which I think I remember it did. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 03:45, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
It's not like it's impossible to have different sprite graphics for the different states, or use an icon font. ViperSnake151  Talk  06:35, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
I suppose I should finish up development of User:Technical 13/Scripts/Gadget-pageProtectionLevels.js which will put the appropriate icons for the current protection level at the ver top of the page next to the user's name. Currently it uses words instead of icons. I'll move it up in my todo list soon™. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 13:49, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
I really like this idea - it's similar to implementations of access levels on other websites I've seen. ViperSnake151, why don't you try VPPR? APerson (talk!) 13:32, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
ViperSnake151, you might want to write a Phabricator: task for this. There are some WMF devs thinking about better ways to handle "metadata" like this. There are instructions at mw:How to report a bug. Leave a note on my talk page if you need help. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:42, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
Templates that use either {{documentation}} or {{collapsible option}} will automatically add a prot padlock where applicable. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:51, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Knowledge, Objectivity, Neutrality, Facts, and Truth

proto-proposal

This one is rather a large body of suggestions, and written in a rather stern and esoteric prose, so I ask that you try to tolerate it as best that you can. The form it would take as a Proposal would be much simpler, and not some kind of discourse like it is now.

My apologizes to those with smaller displays.

There are some ways in which Wikipedia must be limited, and consequently deficient. It will never be a true compendium of truth, but merely a collection of knowledge, and even then impaired by the need for consensus. Consensus, of course, is neither good or evil alone, as are all things.
However, consensus is derived from a source, the same as any opinion, and in the interest of all users of Wikipedia that source must be chosen so as to provide the maximum appeal.
Fortunately, Wikipedia is not attempting to exclude beliefs in the process of consensus, but only to find the foundation upon which describe those variant beliefs in a way which is accurate for all involved parties. (Here the word 'beliefs' is to be read sans any religious or moral connotations, and is used merely because 'opinions' has other denotations.)

Thus, Wikipedia serves as a documentation of reputed knowledge moreso than as an authority deeming evaluation for it. I.e., in the interest of so-called neutrality, notability is more significant than any pretenses at correctness.

Enough with the musings. Well, not so much, alas, but I'll consider implications to some examples:

Bias inherent in any appellations aside, these are two broad groups which mostly agree on recognition and definition of their own ideals as well as on the ideals of the other, yet they disagree on the evaluations of those ideals, both of themselves and of the other.
This is a concern when documenting or reporting opinions. Applied to concepts such as science, it must be remembered first what the word 'science' means, and secondly that it is merely a collection of opinions, albeit determined by criteria attempting a nearest-match to facts in a mutual experience.
Certain groups may not use the same approach to their POV as others. Neutrality in the interest of documentation, in this situation, is to avoid bias by favoring any specific groups, even if it seems obvious which is more correct.
That's what this place is all about, really: a collection of human knowledge, not truth, and certainly not ideal facts as such but optimistically the nearest approximation possible.
Here I dissent from the guidance seen here, and will use one of those examples to illustrate. It may seem to be a fact that the capital of France is Paris, or that Mars is a planet, but really these are merely descriptions given by people.
What if the definition of the word 'planet' was changed? What if the seat of French decision-making was in actuality an underground cabal, and Paris was merely a front for their influence? One of these sounds absurd, and one certainly is much further removed from the accepted knowledge than the other, but both share a logical basis: some people say that Mars is a planet, and some people say that Paris is the capital city of France. That body of people must be recognized, at least once but in such a way that is consistent.
I am not arguing that all such statements must reference a source, as mentioned in the aforementioned guidance; but, to avoid delving too much into philosophic considerations here, I will re-iterate that Wikipedia must develop some consistent approach to reporting the facts of beliefs, as best it can, rather than the facts of some objective reality. Besides, once you get into the scope of experience and its significance with regards to knowledge, you can either accept something like Wikipedia for what it's worth or you can dismiss it entirely.
  • Descriptive versus Authoritative
This is seen in some of the disambiguatory templates used as hatnotes for pages, and is a milder recommendation regarding the tone of writing to be used in Wikipedia.
Compare this, as seen in the extant version of {{disamb-term}},
The term "{{{1}}}" may refer to:
with these phrases:
The term "{{{1}}}" may be referring to:
The term "{{{1}}}" could be referring to:
I could go on about unconscious traditions regarding encyclopedia, and whether it is important, and whether it is imparts anything besides a minor irritation to the concept of Wikipedia, but I'll stop here.

I suppose that I should thank you for reading.

JamesEG (talk) 01:13, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

responses

I...don't understand what your point is, with any of this. That Wikipedia represents reliable sources and not "objective truth"? Yes. That's...the very premise of Wikipedia. Ironholds (talk) 16:15, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

I also can't make out any sort of proposal here. What, specifically, ought Wikipedia to implement, change, or remove? What particular problem ought we to address? While this Village Pump is certainly dedicated to developing incomplete ideas … this thought seems so incomplete that others can't build on it. JamesEG, can you clarify things for us? {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 18:21, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Well, thanks for being constructive. Mostly, I was curious as to how some people would respond. The core of it was that certain articles may present controversial interpretations, but that this isn't consistent throughout others on related or subsidiary topics. Bias from editors et c., and that if anything contrary is to be added it becomes disruptive to the "flow" of an article. (e.g. “According to, ... However, ...”) The fundamental structure of the MediaWiki software probably needs modified to accommodate this.
So, you may consider Fossil, which assumes the interpretations consistent with Geologic time scale et al. It presently has very little mention of any disagreement; if it did, such inclusion might not accurately portray the relative proportions of the various groups espousing differing interpretations, such as if there was one interpretation producing the main passages with ancillary remarks either like a zig-zag, viz. a claim and rebuttal format, or relegated to a single Criticism secion. On the other hand, I can see how some people might find including some (rhetorical) viewpoint that fossils are evidence of Hollow Earth lifeforms as ridiculous, especially if most people reading an article aren't expecting that and thus infer that Wikipedia is full of "crackpots".
There's another example, too: Structure of the Earth and Hollow Earth. (Take no implication that I concur with the Hollow Earth, because that's not what I'm addressing and I needed another example.)
It just seems inconsistent. Regardless of what we may think, or if we may find some viewpoints so silly that they only belong on their specific pages, if someone believes it then Wikipedia should develop a format that not only presents them, but also properly prefaces them accordingly so that a reader notices the school from which it evolves.
— JamesEG (talk) 05:32, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
It sounds like your proto-proposal is "Get rid of the WP:GEVAL policy".
The English Wikipedia doesn't take an even-Steven approach to ideas. We do not present all ideas and let the reader decide which one is right. Instead, we presents them in WP:DUE proportion to their representation in reliable sources. If 99% of fossil-related scientists think that the geological time scale is a good thing (which is pretty much the likelihood for that one), then our fossil-related articles should be firmly in favor of the geologic time scale, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:09, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
I'm also having trouble figuring out what the "proposal" would be. As best I can tell it would be to add an "Alternate Theories" nav-box or something, so that articles like Structure of the Earth could link to fringe articles like Hollow Earth? There is an "inconsistency" in how we treat them because Reliable Sources treat them differently. One topic has a vast body of Reliable Source literature describing it as widely accepted science. The other is an extraordinarily rare idea, and to the extent that Reliable Sources do discuss it they discuss it as a discredited fringe idea. Linking Hollow Earth would be Undue Weight because virtually zero readers of Structure of the Earth have any interest in Hollow Earth. On the other hand there is a significant chance that readers of Hollow Earth will be interested in the Structure of the Earth article. Alsee (talk) 18:12, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Detect wikilinks from mainspace to Draft: namespace

I believe that namespace articles should not link to Draft: articles. Am I wrong?

But I have spotted such links (example) so how about a bot/script/something that would detect them? And either remove such links or create a backlog.

Cheers! Syced (talk) 06:45, 23 April 2015 (UTC) (Note: Example has been fixed. Alsee (talk) 19:03, 15 May 2015 (UTC))

  • Support requesting a bot operator to add a check for article links to Draft space (and maybe other inappropriate namespaces). I checked a few relevant policies and I couldn't find anything prohibiting such links, but it's pretty obvious. We don't want readers unknowingly landing at a draft thinking it's an article, and we don't want promotional/non-notable/POV pages deliberately buried in draft space and stealth-linked from articles. Alsee (talk) 10:45, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
Revised to Support toollabs, or any other method to hunt down Article-space links to Draft-space, after noting Technical 13's comment below. Alsee (talk) 22:52, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose as a bot operator having a bot to do this task. There is nothing really here for a bot to do except to "find" these links, and that task is much more suited to being a tool on toollabs where user's can be taken to a page with the issue or be given a list of pages where there are such links. So, I don't oppose the idea, just the suggested method. Give me a set of criteria and I'll get started by the end of May (it's finals week in school right now and next semester I have a 3 week summer class that is going to beat the poo out of me). — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 11:33, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
Any method is better than nothing :-) As for the set of criteria, it is really simple, just find mainspace wikilinks to "Draft:". Thanks a lot! Syced (talk) 03:11, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

WikiDesign

Proposal for WikiDesign - a cloud based open source design tool. WikiDesign would incorporate all of the tools to design modern devices and processes in a web based application similar to Wikipedia as well as an intellectual property conservancy user's agreement. Some tools to consider would be autocad and gis applications such as Arcview. There would need to be the other tools for the entire design process. For example a package for economic analysis, a tool for modeling process/controls, and a mechanism to pursue patents on any new intellectual property collaboratively developed by users. The intellectual property user's agreement would state that any design and intellectual property is open source and available to any user who follows the user's terms of agreement free of charge. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RBenn38486 (talk • contribs) 12:21, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

@RBenn38486: Are you suggesting a project that would create opensource versions of Autocad and ArcGIS? These are copyrighted software programs, so they are inherently not compatible with a wiki concept. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:35, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
@Oiyarbepsy: It depends on how their licensing agreement works in an open source platform. Can one purchased license allow multiple users? Are there any alternatives that would enable a WikiDesign platform? RBenn38486 (talk) 05:04, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
@RBenn38486: Autocad's licensing scheme is pretty easy to describe: They'll sue your ass off if you even think of sharing anything. So, no, Autocad, nor any other major proprietary system, would be suitable. Such a project would require open source software. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 05:50, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
A pretty cool idea, but probably years ahead of its time (like WikiData was in 2005). One can easily imagine though that as 3D printers' user base increases, implementing something like WikiDesign will start making total sense...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 27, 2015; 17:43 (UTC)
Inquiry - Are there any existing open source design tools? Google Earth has rudimentary GIS tools, but very useful. If there are governmental applications free for download, that could work. The only other alternative is to start each of the components as open source applications.RBenn38486 (talk) 12:33, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

"Recommended Viewing" or "See Also: Videos" section on articles

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, taking full advantage of the capabilities of a massive interconnected network and an evolving information medium to display an amount of information that would normally be impossible by any other method. However, Wikipedia relies almost exclusively on the same methods of the classical encyclopedia to convey information to the readers of its pages. Text and pictures can only provide so much of an idea of a concept; and at a point it becomes difficult, to a degree tedious, to slog through the massive walls of text that are the amazingly well written Wikipedia articles. While the rest of the internet continues to evolve in ways to convey information to wide audiences, Wikipedia continues to lag behind, still caught up in the vintage methods of textual context with the occasional picture.

I propose that Wikipedia encourages editors to include external links or recommendations to videos discussing the topics contained in an article. Whether Wikipedia encourages this through the implementation of new systems or simply provides the documentation to appropriately link videos is not of immediate importance; the most important thing is that Wikipedia provide editors with the methods to facilitate the use of informational videos on Wikipedia articles. Embedding would of course be a great solution, as would a dedicated "Recommended Viewing" or "See Also: Videos" section at the conclusion of an article.

Either way, Wikipedia needs to take a strong stance to promote the use of informative videos as a medium of information on their articles. Important to note is the fact that not all videos would have to come from unverifiable, unqualified sources on YouTube. In fact, there are multitudes of open source instructional videos to be found on the internet, a stellar example of which is the MIT OpenCourseWare website: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/audio-video-courses/

Wikipedia should aim to inform their readers in the most efficient and effective means possible. Video and audio means of information communication are arguably the best methods to convey information to wide audiences with varied characteristics.

Also, WikiEducation online courseware would be the next big thing, but that's a whole different topic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NuclearLemon (talk • contribs) 01:48, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Why can't links to these videos be added to the "External links" section? --NeilN talk to me 01:51, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
@NeilN They certainly can, and Wikipedia policies allow for it. However, I am proposing a that Wikipedia encourage a discrete section for video links and recommended viewings in an article. This could be done mainly by providing documentation on how to do so properly and perhaps adding new tags. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NuclearLemon (talk • contribs) 01:56, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
"See also" is for links to other pages on the English Wikipedia (usually other articles, but also Portals or Books) which don't already appear in the text of the article. It is not for links to external pages, which belong in "External links" or as part of a "Further reading" section, either of which appear after the references. That's what MOS:LAYOUT says to do.
We also have the {{External media}} template that can be used to insert a link to a video in the body of an article in cases where we'd directly display the video if we could host a copy of it on Commons. For example, a video under copyright without an appropriate license can be linked, and someday if that situation changes, an editor can upload the video and swap out the link for the actual video.
I don't know that adding additional heading options are necessary to encourage the inclusion of videos in our articles. Imzadi 1979 → 09:21, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Possible new namespaces, maybe "News" and "Almanac"

I think we all here have, well, reservations, about the effectiveness of wikinews, including even some of its bigger contributors. And, unfortunately, as can be seen about the recent creation of a WikiProject devoted to a single candidate in the upcoming US Presidential election, there is a real chance that we are going to get a lot more "news"-y editing and information about all the candidates, which we are going to have to, of course, try to insert in our comparatively few overview articles in an NPOV way which doesn't violate WEIGHT, which is, let's be honest, all but impossible.

So, maybe, and possibly even as a provisional matter to deal exclusively with matters of elections, maybe we might be better off effectively allowing some of the people who want to add "news" material to wikipedia, not wikinews, to do so here. In a separate namespace for news articles particularly. I expect we are going to get pretty much daily changes to some of these articles as is shortly, creating any number of problems and sinking the time of lots of people which could be better spent elsewhere.

That's why I'm thinking, maybe, to create a separate namespace for "news" pieces, which would still have to meet the same basic notability requirements, which could then have a link to the category or news portal for the election, or the race or the candidate or whatever, and then, on a fairly regular basis, maybe once a week or month or whatever, updating the main articles to reflect the lesser news updates. If this news site were also used to include information on other matters, like, say, developments in the Catholic Church, or the UK, Russia, or China, or the UN, or any other large entity with an article that gets a lot of coverage in the news, we could do pretty much the same thing.

Alternately, for the latter point, maybe we might institute a second namespace, an "Almanac:" or similar, which could be used to summarize the news stories on a weekly or monthly basis, which could then itself be used to allow for regular, scheduled, updates to the relevant main articles on, maybe, an annual basis for "smaller" items, unlike say natural or man-made disasters, wars, or similar things whose impact generally does reasonably get recorded in articles quickly.

Anyway, any ideas? John Carter (talk) 14:48, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Two new namespaces seem a lot of overkill. We need more editors, not more content for our existing pool of editors to curate. Ironholds (talk) 00:56, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
@Ironholds:Realistically, we can't wait for more editors; we can't predict when they will show up. What we can do is to have contributors edit their work for themselves by introducing things like two namespaces.

@John Carter: Right now, Wikinews is the "news" while you could say the "almanac" is what we see on the wikipedia main page "In the news". So it's already been implemented. 117.221.189.51 (talk) 03:00, 20 May 2015 (UTC)POV

Good Wikipedians

Does anybody have any ideas about how Wikipedia could change to be very efficient at enabling most newcomers who want to become a good Wikipedian to be able to easily get trained to do so? I don't know how to create a WikiProject that does that. Blackbombchu (talk) 22:01, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Timothy. We have the Adopt a User program, and more recently, the Co-op, which matches newcomers based upon their area of interest (i.e., content creation, technical, policy, etc.) to a mentor who is familiar with that area of editing. Do you have ideas on how these systems can be improved? --Biblioworm 22:16, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
We have Wikipedia:Teahouse. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 08:58, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
There are many basic introductions, like WP:Introduction and WP:The Wikipedia Adventure (check Category:Wikipedia quick introductions, plus WP:Edit-a-thons for in-person training. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:39, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
I found out about Teahouse after years of using wikipedia but as for the rest...Please include them somewhere in the "anyone can edit" article from the link on the main page of wikipedia.117.221.189.51 (talk) 02:17, 20 May 2015 (UTC)POV

External Links should be embedded in Wiki page content

What about external links which open up actual websites of what is referenced or of the subject. For example if I am seeing a Wiki of list of USA newspapers, all the papers open up their own wiki pages. Well, I would expect to be taken directly to the paper website, right. So how about like two links or option to go visit the actual website.

I interacted with Wikipedia Contact-us representative who mentioned this embedding within content is not found because it would be open to a lot of spamming. This is perfectly a valid reason. But could we find a way around this. Wordpress seems to have a way in preventing spamming on their blogs which are the maximum around the world.

So ive put this in the IDEA LAB to generate a feasible proposal if possible. I am not such a techie person but this handicap of not having external links sure does put one off on researching new subjects. It means again I got to go and google out the actual website. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tb kol (talk • contribs) 08:44, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

@Tb kol: Please see WP:LINKFARM also WP:ELPOINTS item 2 specifically, and the rest of WP:EL in general. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:31, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
I disagree, external links are a pain, and used by main companies for free advertising of related products. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia mot a search engine, if a topic isn't notable for a Wikipedia article on it, then it's perfectly easy to use Google instead. Allowing external links would lead to linkspam, as highlighted in WP:LINKFARM. Joseph2302 (talk) 17:32, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

LINKFARM says: External links or Internet directories. There is nothing wrong with adding one or more useful content-relevant links to an article; however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Wikipedia. On articles about topics with many fansites, for example, including a link to one major fansite may be appropriate. See Wikipedia:External links for some guidelines.

It does not say external links may not be used. Further it says its appropriate to include a link to the main website (fansite).Tb kol (talk) 16:07, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

In the External links section, not in the article body. --NeilN talk to me 16:11, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Could you show me where it says 'in External links section'. Tb kol (talk) 16:45, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

@Tb kol: WP:ELPOINTS --NeilN talk to me 16:50, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

I checked Wikipedia:External_links#Important_points_to_remember When you read a blog or article, the company referenced to, or the subject if there is a website, it links directly from the article. On wikipedia when its perfect to include links in article of wikipedia pages (internal links)/ why the distinction and step-motherly treatment to external links. Why should good sources not be rewarded on the same footing as wikipedia pages as sources of information on an article. This is bias and injustice.

And when you bring in an excuse as spamming, it shows you don't just like the idea. We know that these spam links can be removed. The authors can be traced and warned if excessive spamming. I mean we can have policing and policies on it.

But it is simply unjustified when you have one set of rules for wikipedia links and another for external links. This is not a proprietary website. It is an open source website.

The advantages you get being open-source and contributed website i guess are a) a lot of people from various subjects of interest writing about their specialization. Surely some external website may be a point of reference on that subject. Now when you don't allow linking of it in the article you are taking it out of consideration for maybe 50-60 per cent of the viewers least. That is imposing a rule unjustifiably. It is giving a picture that wikipedia is the only god-source of online reference.

b) The other thing i ask you is why should wikipedia not be a repository of good reliable online references of external links where required, where justified. Being an online open source project funded by everyone in the world, you are sort of leaving a lot of room empty when you dont upfront say this and this website is worth visiting. And you demand they be inclueded right at the bottom, for all their worth.

As viewers, as supporters, as contributors, as donors to wikipedia we need external links pari passu with internal links. I mean wiki just cannot differentiate between the two when referenceing for an article and say we'll put internal links up in the article and external links right down. And then call yourself open-source. It should be illegal. Please check your licences and rule books. Else I'm going to take this up with open-source licence people who-ever they are and where-ever they be.

This is an Idea Lab, when you come here, and i am saying this to veterans, expect that new people will ask what they think should be asked from Wikipedia. Be considerate, understand from our perspective. And don't stone-wall us out. Most of us may be asking out of wikipedia, spending our time, effort and taking interest for it, for something due to us from this project Tb kol (talk) 11:40, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Simply put, Wikipedia is interested in readers reading Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not interested in shilling for other websites. We have encyclopedia articles, not Internet topic portals. Also, reading your misinformed comments, your understanding of open source could use some improvement. Reading Open source might help. --NeilN talk to me 17:34, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

A) By open source I mean not discriminating between sources and on exhibiting sources. Therefore whether it is a wiki-page or an external webpage, both must be held equal while lending a reference within an article. Currently only internal wiki pages have rights to be linked within an article. External pages have a lesser right, that to be mentioned at the bottom of the article.

I would like to draw the meaning of 'No Discrimination', 'Must not restrict' and 'Neutral' from the definition of Open-Source at opensource.org opensource.org/definition

B) Wikipedia is on the Internet as an encyclopedia. It is but natural and contextual to have meaningful and expert links to resourcefull web-pages of the internet. I truly believe it fails in its avatar as an encyclopedia and limits is depth and thereby its readership when it chooses to not allow external links per se within the articles.

Your policies must be framed then to disallow any bad links and check on them. And not have a principle of dis-allowing external links within articles. Tb kol (talk) 07:39, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia's articles aren't source code. You are welcome to take the open source MediaWiki code and change it however you like. You are free to take Wikipedia's content and set up your own website and format the articles as you wish. You are even free to propose on Wikipedia that external links appear in the body of articles. However don't expect that proposal to go very far, and certainly not on a misguided notion of "open source". --NeilN talk to me 16:37, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Actually, Open Source (Technical) people at Wikipedia have done it! That is adding a pop-up Reference Tooltip for external links that are cited within the article. I just noticed days back pop-ups opening within the article itself (as i would have liked it) where Reference numbers are given. I was waiting to ascertain the exact date this change took place, but cannot place it. It seems to have come out of a Technical Proposal Reference_Tooltips and see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reference_Tooltips .

It would be good to view their Hypothesis and Rationale:

Rationale Currently, Wikimedia sites list all references at the bottom of the article. For large articles, especially those with many references, this is sub-optimal. Checking an article's references requires several traversals over the entire length of the article, during which time the reader will often lose their place.

Hypotheses This is a general usability feature. It is hypothesized that readers will be more likely to visit references if they are immediately accessible without having to traverse the entire page length.

But its been quite a while for them to roll it out globally in Wikipedia. The dates on the proposal are 2012. But they've done it.

So we're done i guess. Thanks everybody !! Tb kol (talk) 13:38, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

WP: Teahouse mention on Wikipedia Introduction

There is no mention or link to of WP: Teahouse on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Introduction_2 or the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Editing pages. It would be a good idea to add the Teahouse so that new users can get help on editing. 59.96.197.51 (talk) 10:35, 18 May 2015 (UTC)POV

Agreed. It would also be helpful to have standalone linkage to the Teahouse invite within the Twinkle(?) Welcome stuff. Shearonink (talk) 15:56, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Suppressing redirects

Currently, global rollbackers have the permission suppressredirect. This allows for a page to be removed without creating a redirect. The purpose of rollbackers on enwiki is to combat vandalism, and sometimes page move vandalism occurs. In the past the permission has been proposed on this wiki, but was shot down because of the fear of page move vandalism. I want to gauge the general opinion on giving suppressredirect to rollbackers here. Just like with the normal rollback, this would be only to combat vandalism and using it otherwise would result in sanctions, including but not limited to removal of the tool. What does everybody think? Kharkiv07Talk 02:44, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

I have issues with administrators using it (since there should be two log entries, why was it moved and why was redirect deleted), so certainly not to rollbackers. It's not that hard to put the speedy delete tag on it. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:40, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
Suppressredirect cannot be used for reverting vandal moves as it results in the de-watchlisting of pages. If A is moved to B, and then B is moved back to A without leaving a redirect, A will no longer appear in the watchlists of those who were watching it. 103.6.156.167 (talk) 16:54, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
This is not true, I have just tested this. If A is moved to B, and then B is moved back to A without leaving a redirect, both A and B will appear in the watchlists of those who were watching it, even if they were only watching one of the two prior to the first move. This is exactly the same behaviour as a move with creation of a redirect. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:43, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
@Redrose64: You're wrong. You moved A to B without leaving a redirect in the first place. That's why A still appears on your watchlist after reverting. B appears on your watchlist because you probably checked the "Watch both the pages" option while performing either of the moves. It's alright if suppressredirect is used while moving the reverting both, or if it is not used both while and moving and reverting.
  • A is moved to B with the creation of a redirect, and B is moved back to A with the creation of a redirect: no de-watchlisting.
  • A is moved to B without leaving a redirect, and B is moved back to A without leaving a redirect: no de-watchlisting. (This was what you did.)
  • A is moved to B with the creation of a redirect, and B is moved to A without leaving a redirect: de-watchlisting occurs.
  • A is moved to B without leaving a redirect, and B is moved back to A with the creation of a redirect: de-watchlisting occurs.
103.6.156.167 (talk) 03:26, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
Whether I selected the "Watch both the pages" option or not is immaterial, since I have two logins: the page moves were done by Redrose64, but the watchlist concerned is that of Redrose64a (talk · contribs), whose watchlist is purposefully very short, so as not to lose the wood in the trees. Here is the initial watchlist of Redrose64a:
User:Redrose64/Sandbox14 (talk | History)
User:Redrose64a (talk | History | User contributions)
Both were bluelinks. For your third bullet above, Redrose64 made this move of User:Redrose64/Sandbox14 to User:Redrose64/Sandbox14a with creation of redirect, after which Redrose64a's watchlist became:
User:Redrose64/Sandbox14 (talk | History)
User:Redrose64/Sandbox14a (talk | History)
User:Redrose64a (talk | History | User contributions)
All three were bluelinks. After Redrose64 moved User:Redrose64/Sandbox14a to User:Redrose64/Sandbox14, with the suppression of redirect, Redrose64a's watchlist became:
User:Redrose64/Sandbox14 (talk | History)
User:Redrose64/Sandbox14a (talk)
User:Redrose64a (talk | History | User contributions)
The first and third were bluelinks; the second, a redlink. Redrose64a then unwatched User:Redrose64/Sandbox14a so as to restore the initial situation:
User:Redrose64/Sandbox14 (talk | History)
User:Redrose64a (talk | History | User contributions)
Both were bluelinks. For your fourth bullet above, Redrose64 made this move of User:Redrose64/Sandbox14 to User:Redrose64/Sandbox14a with suppression of redirect, after which Redrose64a's watchlist became:
User:Redrose64/Sandbox14 (talk)
User:Redrose64/Sandbox14a (talk | History)
User:Redrose64a (talk | History | User contributions)
The first was a redlink; the second and third were bluelinks. After Redrose64 moved User:Redrose64/Sandbox14a to User:Redrose64/Sandbox14, with the creation of a redirect, Redrose64a's watchlist became:
User:Redrose64/Sandbox14 (talk | History)
User:Redrose64/Sandbox14a (talk | History)
User:Redrose64a (talk | History | User contributions
All three were bluelinks. It's clear that whatever combination of redirects and suppressions is used, both A and B end up watchlisted. I'm curious to know how a user who isn't logged in can make claims of this nature, since you need to be logged in in order to watch or move pages, and you need to be an admin to suppress a redirect. What do you normally log in as? --Redrose64 (talk) 17:07, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
  • I think it should be implemented because it would help revert page-move vandalism more efficiently. However, this should only be used sparingly, so maybe it should be a separate permission? Epic Genius (talk) ± 19:44, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Suggested allowance for small nations

Do we take into consideration that small countries with low literacy rates may find little access to Wikipedia for their missionary history if only commercially published sources are trusted, and if use of publicly accessed archives is suspect. Scholars within former colonies must travel abroad to access archives where missionary materials are held. And those outside the country are dependent on unpublished works within the country. I suggest that a provision be added in the case of former colonies to legitimize substantiation through archival material and through books and materials not commercially published. Let the control device be editing or deletion for statements found to be false or where the motivation for placing a statement is suspect.jzsj 12:04, 10 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jzsj (talk • contribs) jzsj 15:15, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

I am not sure what you exactly propose here. Primary sources, like archives can sometimes be used so that is already ok; although such archives should be in principle accessible to the public (ie no secret government archives). The problem with allowing closed archive sources is that wild claims can then be made without any possibility for verification, and that is an allowance we cannot make. Arnoutf (talk) 15:26, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification, I'm certainly not speaking of closed archives. But how about the issue of books published by organizations, like a diocese or religious order, rather than commercially which is not realistic in many of these cases?jzsj 18:55, 10 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jzsj (talk • contribs)
There is nothing against using these right now, as long as they are not biased. In addition using such sources in an article about that diocese or order maybe frowned upon as the neutrality of such self-published sources is often doubted.Arnoutf (talk) 19:08, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
Jzsj, there are a lot of extra limitations on using that type of source. The best place to ask about it is at the Reliable Source Noticeboard: WP:RSN. You'll need to identify the source you want to use *and* what information you want to use from it. For example diocese sources could probably be used to cite uncontroversial information about themselves, such as a list of their current and past leaders. It would probably be usable to cite their opinions about outside things - something like "The diocese criticized colonialism". It probably wouldn't be usable to cite factual-claims about outside people and events.
There needs to be some reasonable availability for a motivated-editor to independently check it, even if it means they have to find someone in that country to check it for them. Closed internal archives wouldn't work, but diocese publications that are floating around in public would satisfy availability. Alsee (talk) 20:20, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Jzsj, you might be interested in m:Research:Oral Citations. It was featured in a recent Research Data Showcase (which I missed, but which might still be available on YouTube). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:48, 14 May 2015 (UTC)


Jzsj, it's hard to tell what specifically you're advocating here, but it seems to be about having a seperate set of reliable-sourcing standards for developing countries. This would be a bad idea, as it would create the impression of bias. In fact, if anything I would say we need to be even more careful about sourcing for subjects in developing nations, as they likely wouldn't have access to the public-relations and legal defences available to those in more affluent countries. If Wikipedia publishes libelous content about Bill Gates or Lady Gaga, it would be cleared up quickly. But libel about an activist or academic with no hired staff in a country with limited Internet access may not even be noticed for a long time. Therefore, it's extremely important to make sure such information is accurate and well-sourced initially. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 17:16, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Content bias is definitely present in Wikipedia for a number of reasons (e.g., the interests of the people who edit, the dominance of US editors leading to a dominance of US-centric content, etc.) and the reliable source "bias" is definitely one. It becomes increasingly hard to demonstrate notability for articles about less developed countries (and the people and companies from these countries) as accessible sources are hard to find, let alone reliable ones. In addition, accessible sources are often presumed to be biased (try writing an article about Iran for example). I presume this is the thrust of the original suggestion - that we soften the standard for less developed countries in acknowledgment of the difficulties. While agreeing it is a problem, I don't see an easy answer. UnreliableWiki perhaps? QuiteUnusual (talk) 12:14, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Color codes for policy-guideline-essay pages

Linking the idea here for a possible incubation. Logos (talk) 22:42, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Not everybody can see colour and those of us who can really prefer words. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 06:28, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
There is a wider point about the semantics of wikilinks (see Semantic Mediawiki for one approach) and although colour can represent semantics to those readers who can see them on their device, colours don't help the software work with the semantics. I'd be interested in some way of indicating the purpose of a link and then perhaps use CSS to colour different types of link in different colours, but that's moving away from the current discussion. --Northernhenge (talk) 21:19, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

An Icon for the Main page to read random articles

How about an icon on the main wikipedia page featuring a daily random article? There is a link to the side but it would be more useful as an icon on the main page of wikipedia because it would encourage the following advantages:

    • This would ensure that all articles are reviewed even if they are not popular or they are unknown.
    • It would also help users get more involved, know more, and get a better experience of wikipedia.
    • It would help with POV and balancing issues.

59.96.197.51 (talk) 10:28, 18 May 2015 (UTC)POV

I'm not sure what you mean by a daily random article. We have 4.8 million articles. Do you mean a random of them should be selected each day and be featured on the main page for 24 hours? Most articles would never appear and I don't see the point. Most of the time it would be a stub of interest to nearly nobody. The editor time used to revert or fix bad edits would be much better spent elsewhere. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:32, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
I support this idea, as many stub pages do get ignored for months (or even years) on end!--Sigehelmus (talk) 22:50, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: Which proves my point actually; no one notices the random article link in the toolbar to the left. 117.221.189.51 (talk) 02:13, 20 May 2015 (UTC)POV
It seems you are suggesting a random article drawn once, which is then fixed all day. This would, as PH suggests, send many many people to one specific, often bad article. In contrast, the random button gives a different random article to each user, so that it does not have the effect of sending lots of people to one specific random page. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:12, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Tying users to tags.

Would having user's screennames attached to cleanup tags allow for responsible tagging? Here's my example: {{ {{{|safesubst:}}}#invoke:Unsubst||$N=Confusing |date=__DATE__ |$B= {{Ambox | name = Confusing | subst = <includeonly>{{subst:substcheck}}</includeonly> | type = style | class = ambox-confusing | small = {{{small| {{#ifeq:{{lc: {{{1|}}} }}|section|left}} }}} | issue = This {{{1|article}}} '''may be [[Wikipedia:Vagueness|confusing or unclear]] to readers'''. {{#if:{{{reason|}}}|In particular, {{{reason}}}.}} | fix = Please help us [[Wikipedia:Please clarify|clarify the {{{1|article}}}]]; suggestions may be found on the [[{{{2|{{TALKPAGENAME}}}}}|talk page]]. | date = {{{date|}}} | editor = {{user|[[User:Discuss-Dubious|Discuss-Dubious]] ([[User talk:Discuss-Dubious|t]]/[[Special:Contributions/Discuss-Dubious|c]])}} | cat = Wikipedia articles needing clarification | all = All Wikipedia articles needing clarification }} The flipside for me is that this may be an irresponsible crossing over of articlespace and userspace. However, it would help people ask users what they do and do not like about the article in question. Discuss-Dubious (t/c) 19:08, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

It looks like you've made a copy of {{Confusing}} (and not a particularly good one, as demonstrated by that safesubst: stuff at the top) and added one parameter - |editor= - which is not in fact recognised by {{ambox}}. Also, who or what is User:Discuss-Dubious, and why has the {{user}} template been misused? It takes one parameter, a bare user name. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:13, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
It won't let me modify the template, but I want to mention the user's name in the tag, so you can ask them about it. People don't write things on the talk page. Discuss-Dubious (t/c) 21:56, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Opposed to displaying usernames in articlespace. As far as I'm aware we don't do that. Not only does it seem wrong on principal, we don't need readers getting confused or upset seeing some username like GodIsALie on the article page about their favorite religion. Especially if they tagged the religion as non-notable, chuckle.
You can always pull the tagger's name out of the article history instead. It's not as convenient, but it's better than usernames in articlespace. If we really do want to do something like this, I'd suggest hiding the name inside <!-- UserName --> so it's only visible in edit mode? Alsee (talk) 06:11, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
This could work. Discuss-Dubious (t/c) 01:56, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
Alsee: Just for context: speedy deletion templates display the username and timestamp associated with the last user to edit the article. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 06:28, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
Nihiltres, ah, yes, that's an interesting exception. Although speedy templates aren't expected to have any significant public visibility. The template is removed fast no matter what the outcome is, and speedy-candidate pages don't usually have much public traffic. Alsee (talk) 06:56, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
  • We should value edits independently of the editors who made them. This proposal seems inconsistent with that principle. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 06:28, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Automated Tool to Identify Category Discrepancies and Bad Links

To whom it may concern at Wikipedia,

I am currently a Business Analyst at a financial institution.I majored in the Computer Sciences, with a minor in Mathematics. I was curious one day to find out how many pages fell under a mathematics category in Wikipedia, in the event someone wanted to learn as much as they could about mathematics using only "Mathematics" as their starting point. To accomplish this task, I built a process that queries Wikipedia and looks for pages that have the same top level category as the parent or "seed" site, in this case "Mathematics". While the process looks for pages that fall under "Fields_of_mathematics" (the primary category for "Mathematics"), I noticed that the process was finding something probably more valuable than it's original purpose:

  • Pages categorized incorrectly
  • Broken links
  • Degrees of Separation
    • This one interested me more as I am watching the tree of relationships grow as there are subjects that may fall closely under Fields_of_mathematics, but not entirely.
    • There were also articles that were good to know for a well rounded mathematical background.
    • I plan to run this information through my analysis software to build a graphical map of pages that branch from this top level category tree.

I was hoping to learn a little more about managing sites, and get some input on how this information could be used to assist others in their efforts. I also have no problem taking a more active role and helping improve link integrity and categorization of Wikipedia websites. I am willing to dedicate time to this as I have been looking for a new project to work on in my spare time. I also fear that this process could be accidentally perceived as malicious in nature (due to the automated nature of querying pages), if it is not registered or the right team isn't made aware of its existence.

I am also curious if I have just re-invented the wheel and if this is just a waste of time. I am curious to get feedback from anyone. Thanks for taking the time to read this! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:CD12:4550:65B0:316E:2407:DC3B (talk) 13:40, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi User:2602:306:CD12:4550:65B0:316E:2407:DC3B. We welcome any analysis to improve the encyclopedia. If you were considering a large number of changes, or if you want to discuss the issues in more detail, I recommend posting at WikiProject_Mathematics. That seems to be a reasonably active page, and they should be well familiar with the mathematics categorization structure. Alsee (talk) 14:43, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Too many policies and guidelines?

There are many policies and guidelines lately. Are there too many? What about WP:NCCAPS or WP:CIVIL? I am not saying they are unnecessary or bad. I was setting up examples to review. If they work out well, there must be any other rule that must be deregulated or repealed. --George Ho (talk) 04:03, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

CIVIL is the most basic policy on user interaction, I see no reason to even cnsider reviewing it. NCCAPS is related to Wikipedia:Article titles, a part of manual of style. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:23, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Ignore all rules should be tossed because it is entirely subject to personal interpretation. Praemonitus (talk) 22:37, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
Most policies and guidelines require some personal judgement. WP:IAR is a fundamental pillar of Wikipedia. --NeilN talk to me 23:56, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
This very proposal proves how important it is to have those policies and guidelines. Obviously they are not instinctively apparent. If some course of action or behavior is necessary, but is not apparent, then it needs to be put down as a direction. That is is exactly what happened.
Wikipedia started with very few policies and guidelines, because the first Wikipedians were more closely knit and they knew what they were supposed to do. But, when we grew in number simple things did not remain so simple anymore. Most of the policies and guidelines came about because there was some problem or other. All were discussed in length.
No one like a lot of regulations. That is why Wikipedia discusses thousands of policy proposals and reject them regularly. Only the very necessary pass through. Obviously the necessity has grown in volume and so did the policies.
But, if you are sticking to building an encyclopedia without getting into trouble with people and keeping academic standards high - then most policies will never bother you. They mostly come into play if you are disrupting the encyclopedia or the community, or if you are trying to get an article to the highest quality.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Aditya(talk • contribs) 03:07, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
Perhaps it is written that way, but trying to implement it in practice generally leads to considerable conflict. That alone is getting in the way of improving Wikipedia. Praemonitus (talk) 16:38, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
Well if the edit relying on IAR is causing conflict, that's a good sign other editors don't regard it as an improvement. --NeilN talk to me 16:51, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
The degree to which people value these rules varies; we might both agree that a certain change is an improvement, but disagree on whether to take the short or the long route. I'd wager that that's far more likely to be the cause of friction in the application of IAR. Alakzi (talk) 17:07, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

I emphasize with the too many policies idea, the question is what we can get rid of, and nothing obvious comes to mind. Here's a crazy thought, though -- Change the meaning of no-consensus, so instead of maintaining the status quo we just delete the contested passage (unless the page would make no sense without it). Oiyarbepsy (talk) 03:31, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

IDEA!

Hello, I have an idea that will help the new users greatly. I myself have only been a Wikipedian for 10 days, and discovered the Village Pump by default. I propose that there should be pages written an easy format for new users to understand. I don't understand how to create a user page myself! It is extremely hard to understand )-: anyway, thank you for reading my proposal! (I think the pages, or file of pages should be called the NEWBIE ROOM. From, Marshamallow 360! Much love xxx--Marshamallow 360 (talk) 18:06, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Marshamallow 360. The complexity and intimidating nature of editing is a known problem. Unfortunately there's no easy solution. There are already some easy-to-read pages to help new editors. For example, Wikipedia:How to use your user space is a quick intro for user pages. You might also find Wikipedia:User page design center helpful. If you type "Help:" into the search box followed by some keyword relevant to what you want to know about, you may find many other helpful pages of interest as it autosuggets. Cheers, Jason Quinn (talk) 21:15, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
Marshamallow 360 -- you may also be interested in the Teahouse. Eman235/talk 22:20, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Require an edit summary for edits by IPs and non-autoconfirmed users?

Since it is considered good practice to provide edit summaries, would it be a good idea to require IPs and non-autoconfirmed users to supply an edit summary when making edits to the article namespace? This would help prevent misunderstandings and make it easier to patrol edits, and encourage using edit summaries in general. Currently, many new users/IPs do not use edit summaries, even when making constructive edits. Tony Tan · talk 22:55, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

It's an attractive idea, but my experience with developers who are paid to put summaries on source code checkins is that there will always be some who won't give a meaningful edit summary. If you introduce a mechanism to force a summary, they'll enter a single '.'. If you put a filter in requiring at least six characters, they'll put 'aaaaaa'. If, after a long-running battle, you implement a mechanism that somehow requires a meaningful English sentence in the summary, you'll end up with abuse directed towards the admin who implemented the mechanism. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. GoldenRing (talk) 06:11, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
I also think that this would end up being a deterent from users to start editing here - and the same users who don't know about edit summeries probably need their edits to get extra scrutiny. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:14, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
Why limit it to "IPs and non-autoconfirmed users"? I think having the edit summary as a required field for all would serve a useful purpose. While some may 'game the system' with glib entries many others will be nudged to take notice and give thought. And as 'required fields' are fairly ubiquitous in interfaces on many sites I don't see it as any sort of surprising impediment to new editors. Some sort of 'what is this' icon/link/hover-text/pop-up/etc.—such as the present "Edit summary (Briefly describe your changes)"—should suffice to aid those who may be particularly naive.
Hmm, a pop-up message with a link to the talk page when the edit summary field character count gets maxed out might be a complementary feature as well ... --Kevjonesin (talk) 10:31, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
This is a Good Idea. Require something in the Edit summary. It would get editors in the habit of using it. I suggest adding the word below to Briefly describe your changes. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 06:10, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
Requiring something in the edit summary has been suggested before. If it were compulsory, we'd see a lot of edit summaries like "dvk", "h,jkwqlu" or "dfjkbvdhgblak;", which would not be an improvement. As it is, we get a lot more edits these days with what is tagged as a "canned edit summary" - if you look at the last fifty edits that are so tagged, you'll find that the edit summary is probably one of four: "Added content"; "Added links"; "Fixed grammar"; "Fixed typo", but you'll also find that the actual change is something else. This one, for example, claims "Added links" - but no links were added or even altered. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:34, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
Edit summaries are optional, so blank edit summaries are a good way to spot suspicious edits. Forcing everyone to give edit summaries is a bad idea because it would make vandalism harder to spot. But if you come across a goodfaith editor who isn't using edit summaries then a quiet word can be helpful. ϢereSpielChequers 21:43, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

YouTube Wikiproject Proposal and How Bold can I be?

So I've got a proposal on the go for a YouTube Wikiproject (Not blatant advertising) and I'm wondering how bold can I be with such an endeavour. I want to create a Template header and WP: project space to get the infrastructure going and an audit of all the articles. While WP:BOLD is a policy I don't want to find someone getting upset for some unforeseen reason.

--- :D Derry Adama (talk) 23:37, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

  • I would consider that generally not a good idea. Very little of what goes on on YouTube is supported by Independent Reliable Sources (by Wikipedia standards, anyway), and pages on people's YouTube accounts are often deleted as not being notable or verifiable enough. Even linking to YouTube is generally discouraged for spam and copyright reasons (and it can't be used as a source anyway). There is a YouTube specific wiki on Wikia here which might be a better fit for documenting YouTube stuff. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 23:37, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
  • See I am personally of the opposite view point. YouTube personalities far outstrip traditional media personalities in terms of viewership and many of them are notable. The creation of a WikiProject Youtube sounds great. Re: how forward. Wikipedia was built on being bold to my understanding. JTdaleTalk~
  • YouTube is generally not considered a reliable source, so it would depend on what the goal of the project is. If it is just intended to be a place where people can go and ask "is this video reliable" and the people there say "it's a CNN news report, so yes" or "it's some person's blog, so no" and if there is interest by enough community members to monitor such a thing, then I suppose I wouldn't object. I can't see any other potentially useful purpose for such a project. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 16:31, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Might this be better as a subproject of Wikipedia:WikiProject Internet culture? Sam Walton (talk) 21:10, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
  • What about Dailymotion, Vimeo and the many other video sharing websites? --186.50.114.232 (talk) 19:41, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
  • as proposed I would advise against it, the project would continually be mired in debates about people who are only known on youtube and therefore not yet notable under our current rules. Better to start with an RFC on those rules. Better still if you are interested in youtube we coould really do with more youtube videos explaining how to do various things on Wikipedia. ϢereSpielChequers 22:11, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Age restrictions

I think we should introduce age restrictions to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects. Vandalism, unwise selections and childish, non-encyclopedic content popping up is the reason. So the new bit is not allowing under-teens create accounts, and all Wikipedians must have a proper account while editing instead of editing from IP adresses. Is this a good way to prevent vandalism on Wikipedia? --Corsicanwarrah (talk) 10:53, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

@Corsicanwarrah: Impossible to verify, and against policy. See foundation:Privacy policy and WP:ANONYMOUS. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:56, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
How would you implement that? In order to validate the editor's age you would need to review some kind of proof of date of birth before allowing the account to be created. So even if it was a good idea I don't see it being feasible to operate. QuiteUnusual (talk) 11:58, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. That is the most important principle. Most minors are here are constructive. Some have even written hundreds of high-quality articles and/or gained administrator status. Furthermore, one good editor is enough of a net positive to balance out hundreds of vandals. You also couldn't prove it without forcing people to prove their identity. We know how well that works. So, no. An absolutely terrible way to prevent vandalism. Like chopping off an arm in response to a cut on one finger. --Jakob (talk) aka Jakec 12:05, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
Outing minors is absolutely unacceptable and in fact presents a potential threat to their security. Banning IP editing has been proposed many times, it will never fly as it violates the fundamental "anyone can edit" principle. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:40, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
With the rise of smartphones and similar devices which are impractical to edit on Wikipedia has become much more of a broadcast media for children and teenagers. We probably still have some legal minors who edit, but far fewer than a decade ago, and we now have computer programs that remove most vandalism. So even less need to restrict minors than there used to be.
As for IP editing; Assuming the theories are true that most vandals do the minimum necessary to do their vandalism, that many perhaps most of our editors are recruited via IP editing, and that restricting IP editing would lose us some very privacy conscious editors; Banning IP editing would have two drawbacks, some goodfaith edits will be lost, and if vandals continue to do the minimum necessary to do their vandalism, we will have the same amount of vandalism but it will be slightly harder to spot. I'm not aware of any advantages to losing IP editing, and they'd need to be big to offset those disadvantages. ϢereSpielChequers 13:52, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
Also, it should be noted that although anonymous schoolchildren are responsible for some vandalism, there are sophisticated vandals who spend large amounts of time finding ways to vandalize Wikipedia in the most damaging ways possible, or without being noticed. These are likely not children (if they are, they're incredibly intelligent...). Secondly, prohibiting IPs from editing is a perennial proposal, and will almost surely never gain traction amongst the community. Finally, verifying identities and ages would very much complicate things on Wikipedia, and would, overall, probably end up causing more inconvenience than what it was supposed to prevent. There is actually a a website that does this, and has not produced good results at all. (17,000 articles vs. Wikipedia's almost 4.9 million.) It should also be noted that their articles are not of exceptionally high quality, even though they're supposed to be, and some well-known topics have either no article at all or a very short one. --Biblioworm 15:46, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

List of hoaxes on Wikipedia‎

I posted something to the talk page a while ago concerning this, but I now see that what interested users even look at that thing will probably never it.

Anyway, the list is unwieldy. My suggestion was to narrow the criteria for inclusion in the list, and also to possibly justify the list itself. The biggest reason I can see for which we want a list of hoaxes is to record any resultant infections: the utility whereby someone can study motivations behind the hoaxes is dubious, at best (it provides very little helpful information); reading some of the other comments on its talk page, I wouldn't go so far as to say that it promotes Herostratus, but it certainly looks like people are only interested in added to the list.

Hmm, however, encouraging people to find an undiscovered longest-standing hoax might be a good thing, too. So, that might be another, albeit superfluous, reason to keep it, but I digress.

What should be done with hoaxes that have no known repercussions? Should they be maintained in a list somewhere? That list?

What about those which are obviously not hoaxes, but mere vandalism which happened to escape beyond Wikipedia?

Again, I think the most important reason to keep a list of this stuff is for spin control and to try and regain some ethos when something does spill out.

JamesEG (talk) 11:14, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

It appears that you could separate the list by year of creation. Possibly the data could be used in the future for research purposes (whether for a human psychology study or some potential form of automated hoax detection), so it makes some sense to preserve the information. Praemonitus (talk) 17:03, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
I was trying to say that the list has value, but some of the content seems lacking useful info or even pertinence. We could file them apart for length, but what about eligibility and repercussions? I yet think that most of them could at least benefit from some perfunctory attempts at classification; i guess it's not of enough importance to gain much interest here. — JamesEG (talk) 06:09, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
  • I wouldn't mind some sort of more stringent inclusion criteria but I have to say that I have used the list in the past, partially to help explain the importance of using and verifying sources and to explain what can happen if something falls through the cracks. I know that I've referenced The Travails and Tribulations of Geoffrey Peacock since that ended up getting listed in a few books that referenced the Wikipedia article. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:11, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

An easier way to deal with RM

Requested moves has a backlog that just keeps on going; adding to just one more thing that admins have to do with. Hypothetically; what do people think about giving editors who have several RM closures the powers to:

  1. Suppress redirects
  2. Move pages over redirects
  3. Move move-protected pages
  4. Move large amounts of subpages

These permissions could only be used to either close move requests or fix obvious page-move vandalism. I fully realize that this is yet another unbundling of the tools; however it seems that it could be given to editors who perhaps aren't quite qualified for the mop, and that it could easily be removed from an editor if there was an issue. Thoughts? Kharkiv07 (T) 00:37, 30 May 2015 (UTC), amended 00:48, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

There isn't an admin level "move over redirect". If the redirect has exactly one revision, and its a redirect to the page being moved, anyone can move it. If the redirect has any history at all, a deletion must occur to make way for the move. As a result I don't think there is a good way to debundle this role, more than it already has been. However I think it would be interesting to explore the possibility of RM clerks, while it would be contrary to the long held NAC rule of only closing in ways you can technically implement, for something like requested moves, I think the stakes are such that we could have a trusted group of closers who could deal with determining consensus, and then just use tags to get an admin to do any part requiring the mop. (The time consuming part is judging consensus, not the technical move) The concern with this approach is always that the admin needs to be fully responsible for their own tool use, but I think we could bend that a bit here and let admins rely on the close of established and vetted non-admin RM closers, and only be required to use judgement for the technical stuff. Monty845 01:13, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
Current state of the backlog: The oldest discussion, which was re-listed, is about six weeks old. The oldest non-re-listed one is four weeks old. It would be interesting to know how this compares to past months or years. I've got a very vague impression that this is pretty much normal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:57, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
FWIW, earlier this year, there were some RM's that were months old (I mean at least 2 months...) IIRC. --IJBall (talk) 03:09, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
Just out of curiosity, and I'm in no way suggesting this, but would you support "closers" in XfDs, with admins that simply press the button when somebody judges consensus? Kharkiv07 (T) 03:43, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
At AfD, no, as its one of the deletion processes that people get really heated over, and where any mistakes or problems are likely to cause huge amounts of drama. For other XfD venues, I'd be willing to consider it if there was a sufficiently serious backlog problem. WP:CFD would seem to be the only plausible candidate on the deletion side. Monty845 13:36, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
Concurring with Monty above, at AfD, outside of non-admin closures, no. Any closures of even moderately controversial outcomes and unclear consensuses performed by non-admins are likely to cause drama and sticks. Esquivalience t 17:05, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
Related: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive272#Backlog: Too few active administrators to handle the workload? --Guy Macon (talk) 17:52, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
I'm not aware of any technical reason why any editor can't move larger numbers of subpages. The massmove.js script currently checks for the sysop bit, but there's nothing stopping an editor from making their own script (which I had to do not too long ago to clean up a botched move of a Portal page out of Draft space for AfC). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 01:39, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Merging some processes

This idea has been churning in my brain for a while now, so I might as well throw it out here since it's related. My idea is to merge requested moves into redirects for discussion, and rename the process Article titles for discussion. Disambiguation pages would makes sense in this process too. Discussions about all three of these center around what titles should be and where they should point, so it seems to make some logical sense to put them together. And having fewer processes could hopefully reduce these backlogs we got. I'm curious what people think of this idea. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:08, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

RfDs often are trying to get a redirect created though, it's not a bad idea in principle but it could cause confusion. Kharkiv07 (T) 13:25, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Example of complex nested referencing

I tried to upgrade the information in a company infobox by using the company's annual report. One thing led to another so my bold edit has now resulted in something that is too complex both as it appears to the reader and to an editor. The result probably uses the Footnotes/References section of the infobox totally incorrectly. It also probably over-references the source, which is a 300 plus page report with the data scattered all over it. I am unsure as to how to improve the style without cutting the referencing down to something that is not as friendly for someone who is checking the references. Maybe there is another template out there that can help me. I would have preferred to use a separate footnote list created with the Short Footnote template, but that would have meant changing the existing referencing style of the article. I am hoping that whoever reverts my edit can suggest a better alternative.My Gussie (talk) 14:38, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Hey My Gussie . How about just changing the named reference from "AR2011" to the updated "AR2014", and then placing next to each place where you cite it {{rp}}, i.e., the first use would have ...</ref>{{rp|6}}, the next <ref name="AR2014" />{{rp|7}}, the next <ref name="AR2014" />{{rp|177}} and so on. Technically this template was created for situations where you are using a single reference so many times that even shortened footnotes would be a bit silly, but this would work here to make verifiability much easier and would solve your problem I think. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:21, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
Thanks Fuhghettaboutit, the {{rp}} template that you pointed me to is exactly what I was looking for, being both obvious and simple. In trying it in the article I encountered a formatting snag. In the company infobox, the note number and the page number are often separated from each other when the wraparound at the end of the line is reached. Is there a way to "glue" them together? A non-breaking space doesn't work so I was hoping for a template to enclose the whole thing in — or some such thing. My Gussie (talk) 11:01, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
@My Gussie: According to the template's documentation, you can add add the word joinder code &#8288; to avoid this. If that doesn't work, there always {{nowrap}} and the paired {{nowrap begin}} + {{nowrap end}}. I have had problems in the past using these though when trying to wrap templates with their own functionality inside them.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:38, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
Instead of the {{rp}} template, you can use the {{r}} template for second and subsequent references, like this: {{r|AR2014|page1=7}} . It saves some typing, and I used it quite a bit when tidying up much repeated references in The River War. That's where I go to now when I need to remind myself how to do it! Chuntuk (talk) 12:06, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
@Chuntuk: The name {{r}} is really minimalist, as is the amount of typing it needs to work! I decided to use the (marginally) more obvious {{rp}} template. Thanks for pointing out the article The River War. I'll take a look at it when I decide to improve my style to the next level. My Gussie (talk) 07:24, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
@Fuhghettaboutit: I decided on a final set of changes and I like the result, but I couldn't get any of the options to prevent the undesirable wrapping to work. I overrode all the line breaks in the ugliest wraparound failure (in the key people parameter) and left the rest. There is an opportunity for improving this formatting behaviour, but I guess that it requires someone with technical expertise to weigh in. My Gussie (talk) 07:24, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
PS I just realized that the problem I had originally (i.e. the note number and page number being separated from each other by the wraparound) seems to have magically disappeared. Maybe I was imagining it. The only real improvement in formatting I can see has to do with separating the note number from the preceding text. This is the behaviour that I can't seem to be able to fix, and it only shows up in the Key people section of the infobox. Maybe it's a browser-specific quirk. My Gussie (talk) 07:37, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
PPS Here is another example of the undesirable wrapping behavior (in the note numbers after the financial figures). It seems to be connected to the use of {{ublist}}. Does anyone else see it or could it be the way my two browsers show it (or just my stylistic taste that is telling me that it's not desirable)? My Gussie (talk) 09:34, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
It looks perfect on my browser (Firefox)! I don't know what you mean about the separation in the Key people section. It looks the same as all others, with the footnote number snugged up against the text it follows – which is the way it's supposed to be. Yes, in the Salini Impregilo article the footnotes in the infobox are wrapping. Haven't the foggiest idea for a fox except to avoid ublist.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:28, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Extra power for Check Users

You really need to stop with all of this. The functionaries are well aware of resource distribution and utilization, as well as what proposals are useful and what are not. There is plenty of cleanup and antivandalism work to be done on Wikipedia, and I suggest that you concern yourself with that instead of going on about something you clearly don't know that much about. NW (Talk) 20:52, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Some check users are very busy with SPI cases. I don't want to burden them. There are other users who have Check User powers but, I don't see them much in SPI. There are some sockmasters who have two three sock accounts. But there are some sockmasters who are socking for more than a year. After sometime they become inactive. But there is a huge chance that they might come back as a new user and pretend to be different. Check Users must be allowed to run surprise checks on known habitual sockmasters after months of the blocking of last sock account. Don't call this fishing.

I don't want that, they(sockmasters) should get vandalism hall of fame status, but we need to find their socks.--Cosmic  Emperor  10:37, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

The use of CheckUser is goverened by a global policy and cannot be locally varied, although it can be adapted as long as it does not extend the global policy - i.e., by allowing more reasons for checks. If you want to alter the policy, your best approach is an RFC at Meta. From a practical point of view, CheckUser data is only stored on the Wikimedia servers for 3 months, so running a check on an account that has been inactive for more than 3 months will return no data. QuiteUnusual (talk) 11:12, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
Global policy is more lax than local practice/policy. The standard in the Meta Policy is "There must be a valid reason to check a user." There has been rather little public discussion on what exactly constitutes a valid reason. While is of course debatable, I would suggest that a previous and still active block triggered by checkuser evidence within the technical lookback period should qualify as a valid reason to re-run the check in search of post-block socking. Monty845 12:40, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

link of RFC at Meta.?Cosmic  Emperor  12:28, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

(A former CU writes) This is impossible without a redesign of the Mediawiki software, which there's no possibility will ever happen. Checkuser data is only retained for three months. Even if it were possible to check further back, it would be meaningless given how often IP addresses are reallocated; I doubt one editor in fifty is still on the same IP address as they were a year ago. There would also be a glaring ethical issue if the WMF did choose to retain data for longer, given how leaky they've proven to be in the past. – iridescent 12:33, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
My impression is that this proposal is mostly aimed at the blatant socking that often occurs within that window, though many people don't know how short it is as many editors who do know avoid mentioning the exact time. Monty845 12:43, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
True, although I've never really understood the reluctance to discuss it as it is publicly documented. QuiteUnusual (talk) 16:10, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

This will not happen. We are not the NSA and are not going to be running surprise checks on IP ranges or random users. Reaper Eternal (talk) 00:46, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Reaper Eternal (talk)Reaper, It's not about random users, but sockers.Cosmic  Emperor  05:34, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

You are an IP, too!

Please consider my reflection and challenge, found here. 74.127.175.164 (talk) 00:52, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Citation search

I do a lot of searching for citations to re-use, so I look for the citation title, edit the article, grab the citation template, then merge it into another article. Do others follow this practice much? I'm wondering how efficient it would be to consolidate the lot, so I search on a citation and it pops up a template to use? (Yes I'm familiar with {{cite doi}}, but sometimes those can result in inconsistent template layouts.) Praemonitus (talk) 21:51, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Proposal for neutrality

Unfortunately most of Wikipedia shows a distinct affinity for US politics or military. The English Wikipedia is international therefore I propose that all items(images) relating to the military or political activity stay to articles strictly of military or of political activity. Eg.: Physical exercise 117.248.15.77 (talk) 11:55, 18 June 2015 (UTC)Inc

You're proposing that certain use of images be censored on the basis of anti-Americanism, despite the fact that they satisfy the Wikipedia criteria for use? Praemonitus (talk) 18:29, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
@117.248.15.77: Welcome and thanks for regurgitating the argument presented in Wikipedia:Systemic bias. We already know that there's an issue with our presentation and coverage. We're working on it. Hasteur (talk) 18:40, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
We already have a policy on neutrality. All that can be done is for users to try to make neutral articles on a case by case basis. I would agree that the photos on the Physical exercise article do not give a global view. Be bold and add/remove images to make it better. This is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, which means you too. Try to fix the problem. Cheers, Jason Quinn (talk) 12:50, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Adding section in a movie page

I request you to please add Sound Designer and Production Designer section in the page for movies. Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1.187.110.160 (talk) 02:58, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean but Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film is probably a must better place for you to discuss this than here. Jason Quinn (talk) 15:42, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Expanding news section on the Main page

The news section on the Main page just gives a handful of recent news stories. Has consideration ever been given to having a blue link on the Main page news section to a longer news section (perhaps an article entitled "Recent news events"), which would cover more issues? This could make WP a better news resource than it is currently.OnBeyondZebrax • TALK 10:53, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Portal:Current events is already linked. It's admittedly not terribly obvious. —Cryptic 11:33, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Should users be discouraged from using their sandboxes to create draft articles?

On this information page Wikipedia:User pages and in various other places, new users are encouraged to make draft articles in their sandboxes. Often these "drafts" are then moved to mainspace, leaving a redirect, and the sandboxes are then reused for different topics. This leads to the creation of each subsequent article being attributed to whoever moved the first draft. Here's an example of an article that is attributed to me, although I have never edited it at all: Atacama B-Mode Search. If there are any notifications sent to the creator of this article, I will be the one notified, not the real creator.

Now that we have Draft: space, IMO we should rewrite any text which encourages draft creation in user subpages named "Sandbox" to encourage only temporary and experimental material there. If users want to work alone or collect information over time for a topic, they can always make a subpage with a more descriptive name which won't be recycled. This seems sensible to me, but maybe I'm missing something. What say?—Anne Delong (talk) 16:07, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

There are often excellent reasons not to use the Draft: namespace. Draft pages are treated as if they were articles, complete with "anyone can edit", and any user is within their rights to move a draft into the mainspace without asking the original writer. ("An article created in draftspace does not belong to the editor who created it, and any other registered user can decide that it is done and can be published. Editors who do not want that to happen should use their sandbox or talk page subsections, just as they did before draftspace was created.", if you want chapter and verse.) I will regularly use userspace to draft articles, as keeping them in userspace has the implicit "leave this alone, it isn't ready", meaning I can (for instance) cover just one side of a debate even though it breaches NPOV, as I know I'm going to add the other side before it goes live, and I know a lot of others do the same. – iridescent 16:16, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
Iridescent, I totally agree about userspace subpages; I do the same, and give each subpage a title of my choosing. My concern is with the user's sandbox, which has a generic name. When drafts are "moved" out and a new article started there, it messes up the attribution of the next article. I think that the above text should be changed to "Editors who do not want that to happen should use their user page (not talk page - that's for discussion) subsections, just as they did before draftspace was created."—Anne Delong (talk) 18:07, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
Anne Delong I agree with the substance of your comment and those above. A minor point of terminology. I would not use the term "user page subsections". To me that would suggest something like User:Example#Newdraft: a subsection of Example's user page. Instead I would speak of "user subpages" or perhaps "userspace pages" to mean User:Example/Newdraft. But I would always give an example when this is being discussed, as anyone who needs the explanation probably won't find the precise terms always clear. I would also urge the use of named user subpages rather than "a sandbox". Iridescent, would you agree here? DES (talk) 22:16, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
Sort of. I honestly don't see why User:DESiegel/Draftarticle is any better (or worse) for these purposes than either User:DESiegel/Sandbox or Draft:DESiegel's new article, though; assuming each of them is moved into mainspace with a suppressed redirect once ready, I struggle to see how the end result of working in any one of the three would be any different. – iridescent 22:27, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
DESiegel, I agree that "user subpage" better. The "subsection" terminology was already in the text; I was trying to change it as little as possible, but perhaps that wasn't a useful goal. Iridescent, let me see if I can explain by describing a problem scenario:
  1. New Editor A creates a draft article about Purple Widgets in his sandbox and submits it for review at AfC.
  2. Reviewer B approves the draft and moves it to mainspace, leaving a redirect behind in the sandbox.
  3. Editor A is elated, erases the redirect and writes and submits a new draft about Yellow Flingles.
  4. Reviewer C approves the second draft, and moves it to mainspace, along with its history including the redirect left by Reviewer B.
  5. Reviewer B now appears in the edit history as the creator of the Yellow Flingles article even though she has never set eyes on it. —Anne Delong (talk) 23:26, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
It occurs to me that part of the problem here is sloppy terminology. Some people refer to user subpages as sandboxes. However, that usage is incorrect. A user sandbox is not really the same as a user page, and the advice is as if it was. So I agree with Anne that the advice should be changed. Articles should be created either in draft space or in named user pages. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:36, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
I'm not sure what is meant by a "suppressed" redirect, unless you mean no redirect. That makes it difficult for new users to find the page, especially since often the title has to be changed when the draft is moved to mainspace, and breaks links in discussion and help pages. Having a unique subpage name for each draft instead of calling them all "Sandbox" avoids all that.—Anne Delong (talk) 23:34, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Iridescent, the example above shows one possible problem. It is true that if the redirect is suppressed (i.e not created) when a draft is moved to mainspace, then this problem won't occur. However, quite aside from the reasons that Anne Delong mentoned above to retain such a redir (which i don't fully agree with), many AfC reviewers aren't admins. Only admins can supress the redirect when doing a move, unless I am badly mistaken.

As for the difference between User:DESiegel/Draftarticle and Draft:DESiegel's new article, the latter invites other editors, while the former discourages them. There are cases where a user may want to complete a full draft before inviting others to edit. (and other cases where having other users join in is the best possible thing.) As for the difference between User:DESiegel/Draftarticle and User:DESiegel/Sandbox, it isn't so big, IMO. If a reviewer moves the 'sandbox' to mainspace wihtout supressing the redir, the problem of false attribution can later arise, as described above. The "Draftarticle" name helps indicate what is going on, and will help reviewers find and return to the Draft at need. It also encourages working on multiple drafts. But none of these are major issues, in my view, except for the false attribution one. By the way, Up thread you seem to be discussing revising a specific help or project page. Which one? It doesn't seem to be Wikipedia:User pages, but that is the only page I see linked in the thread, unless I mised the link. DES (talk) 01:45, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Well, there's Wikipedia:A primer for newcomers, which seems to use the terms sandbox and user space interchangeably. There's Wikipedia:Your first article which says "You can create your personal sandbox for article development by clicking this link." (which creates User:Whoever/Sandbox).—Anne Delong (talk) 02:59, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
Well that's odd. EVERYONE already has a sandbox at the top of their window, between the links to "talk" and "preferences". Its name is User:Whoever/sandbox. Why would someone want to create an additional one called User:Whoever/Sandbox? Something odd there. Softlavender (talk) 03:41, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
That is a fairly recent addition to the defualt skin, Softlavender. I suspect the help text predates it. Also, everone now has the link, but not the page until an edit creates it. DES (talk) 12:17, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

latest game version

Would it be plausible to include the latest version of a program/game (patches) in the corresponding template? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.30.5.208 (talk) 18:02, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Plausible, yes. But we've decided that this kind of information is not particularly encyclopedic in an infobox (which I assume is what you're referring to). --Izno (talk) 01:26, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

More stringent requirements on admin activity

There has recently been discussion of admins who perform a very low number of edits each year and thus retain their admin tools due to the inactivity desysopping requirement being zero edits or actions for one year. Additionally, primarily sparked by the recent desysopping of AntonioMartin, there has been discussion of those admins who received their tools in the early years of Wikipedia when adminship was viewed much more lightly than it is now. I'd like to request opinions on a number of related aspects of these two things.

  1. Should the inactivity desysopping requirement be changed? If so, what level of activity would be suitable? Some have argued that zero edits for a year is too relaxed; an admin can make one edit per year and retain their admin tools indefinitely.
  2. Should a review of those administrators who were elected in the very early years of Wikipedia take place? This could raise awareness of other admins like AntonioMartin who are not using their tools in line with current policy. Issues with this include it turning into a drama-fest and there potentially not being a way to actually desysop any admins who are deemed to not be acting the way they should.

This isn't an RfC and isn't a discussion for assessing new policy, rather I'd like to have a discussion about these points with the view of taking something actionable to WP:VPP for an official RfC once we've ironed out the details. Discussions on this topic are worth a read and can be found here, here, and here. Sam Walton (talk) 21:21, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Inserting: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive272#On the brink of collapse and other discussions this year at WP:VPR seem relevant. Whenever all of this turns into one or more RfCs, it will be perfectly okay but not necessary to repeat any or all of this in those RfCs, we'll be reading everything relevant and taking it all into account. Just a reminder ... the goal of these RfCs will be to address everyone's concerns, not to decide who wins and who loses. To do that, we'll need to know what the concerns are, so guys, when possible, don't just tell us what solutions you favor, tell us what problem you're trying to solve ... even if it's just a possible problem, even if you're not sure. Of course ... even better is data that supports a claim, or an argument or position that's acceptable to a wide range of voters. - Dank (push to talk) 14:41, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
In my opinion, yes, the requirement should be changed. As you say, right now an admin can keep the tools indefinitely as long as they make a single edit a year. Not even a single admin action—a single edit. In my opinion, the "at least one edit or action" could safely be upped to "at least one administrative action or a substantial number of edits", be that substantial number 50 or 100 or whatever. Possibly even "at least 10 actions or a substantial number of edits". If they're not active in their role as administrator, then let them at least be active in their role as editor if they want to keep the mop. I can imagine some good reasons for an active editor-with-tools to want to keep the tools even if they barely use them, as well as good reasons for an admin to take a step back from administrative actions for a while without immediately giving up the mop. I can't quite imagine any good reasons to hang onto the mop for someone who makes less edits in a year than ClueBot NG makes in a minute.
As to the review-of-administrators, I don't really have a clear opinion of that at this moment. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 21:46, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
I just saw the post elsewhere directing people here, so I'll post here. I read Beeblebrox's comment and thought... so, the people in question rarely use admin tools and make the occasional bad call but don't make a habit of it. What was the problem again?
I am arguably biased, as a recently returned admin after long inactivity, but this feels like a "bad cases make bad law" situation. Nobody's yet offered up any other examples of "legacy" admins demonstrating plainly unsuitable behavior, but we have seen some evidence that RfA date is not correlated to desysop-worthy recent behavior. From my perspective, the degree to which Wikipedia has changed over time is usually overstated, but one thing that definitely hasn't changed is the tendency to react to an isolated bad situation with "We should have more rules and processes about that!" Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:53, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Anyone proposing a requirement in terms of the number of logged admin actions ought to have a look at some statistics. Here are some stats for the number of admin actions over the last year. As you can see we have a lot of admins who rarely use the tools - a requirement of 10 actions per year would eliminate about half of our admins. Hut 8.5 22:02, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
Serious, non-snarky question here: If they aren't using their tools, why do they need to keep Admin status? What's the benefit to the project or the community? --IJBall (talk) 22:10, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
I'm presuming that was directed at my suggestion above, Hut 8.5? If so, I am aware of that, yes. Which is why I suggested 10 admin actions or a substantial-to-be-further-determined number of edits—and it was a secondary suggestion to one that required just one admin action or said to-be-determined number of edits. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 22:29, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
Not directed at you specifically, I posted that link at one of the discussions mentioned above and was directed here. Hut 8.5 06:50, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Under the principle that "Admin privileges should not be a lifetime sinecure", yes to Question #1. My personally preferred standard would be the entirely reasonable, "use of Admin tools once a month" which works out to "use of Admin tools 30 12 (stupid simple math! [grumble, grumble...] ) times (or more) per year" to stay "active" status. Anything less than that, and I don't think an Admin is "active" enough to be all that useful, and it should be time to look for new candidates. And current rules can still apply – a simple request for "restoration of Admin" privileges for Admins labeled "inactive" will suffice to get Admin status back. That all seems entirely reasonable to me.... I'm also in favor of Question #2, but such a review should be non-invasive, and should include some of the suggestions that have been made elsewhere, in the topics linked to above in Sam's original post. --IJBall (talk) 22:08, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
I'm confused. Once per month = 30+ times per year? Do you mean 12+ times per year, or do I misunderstand something? Nyttend (talk) 22:26, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
(site crash conflict)Dang, Nyttend, you aren't supposed to catch my stupid math errors so easily! ...Fixing the above – and I think the actual "cutoff" level should probably be about 10–20 Admin tool uses per year. --IJBall (talk) 23:03, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
:-) I simply wondered if I'd misunderstood something, if you were somehow proposing something in addition than the one per month. Nyttend (talk) 23:06, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
More stats!! just to put some numbers in to this discussion – It's about what I figured: Wikipedia:List of administrators claims there are 599 active Admins (as of today), and based on this there are 591 Admins that have logged 12 or more Admin tool uses in the last year (May 27, 2014 – May 27, 2015), so that works out about perfectly. (Only 544 Admins used their tools 20 or more times over that year.) Other stats: 615 Admins have used their tools 10 times or more over the same period; 703 Admins used tools 5 times or more over the year; and 914 Admins used tools at least once in that time. And, yes – 471 Admins didn't use their tools at all over the past year. For a total of 1385 who are still logged as Admins (as of today). Actually, it's less that 1385, as anyone in the table who's missing an "A" next to their name is no longer an Admin, as of May 27, 2015... --IJBall (talk) 07:19, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure I see the point in making the activity requirement stricter. After all, big changes like this always end up causing boatloads of drama, and I really don't understand how any great amounts of harm could come about as a result of admins not using their accounts. --Biblioworm 22:29, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment I think this is a solution looking for a problem. It has not been demonstrated that admin inactivity causes problems, until that happens this all seems pointless. As for the second question, the big question would be when the date would be called, but again it seems a bit pointless, with most "bad admins" having been admitted more recently. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 22:41, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
It is a problem because any time anyone quotes the "there are 600 active Admins" number, it's completely phony. As this discussion has demonstrated, the real core of "active Admins" is probably 200–300 currently, and they're doing almost all of the work... Which gets back to the other point – Admin status is a privilege not a "right", and if an Admin isn't using their tools to actively improve the project (not including straight-forward editing here, obviously – just Admin tools), there's no good argument that they should keep Admin status (esp. when they can make a simple request to get them back if they decide to become "active" again). Again, "Admin privileges should not be a lifetime sinecure". --IJBall (talk) 22:50, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
But you have not really demonstrated a real problem with admin inactivity. And if they can easily regain their tools why remove them in the first place? --Jules (Mrjulesd) 23:14, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
It's a pretty simple difference of opinion here – you think Admin status should remain in perpetuity unless some "defect in duty" arises; I think people should only have Admin status if they're going to (actively) use their tools for the betterment of the project. I don't think we're going to see eye-to-eye on this. But the "problem" on my end is that I don't see why someone should have "greater" status than the bulk of other editors and have unfettered access to potentially "dangerous" tools that they're not even using... --IJBall (talk) 23:20, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
Philosophically, I think admin status ought to be about trust. People who are reasonably believed to be trustworthy should have access to the tools to make this place better, whether or not they use them regularly. On the other hand, it should also be easier to remove access to people who violate the community's trust. That said, I also think we should appoint far more admins than we do (perhaps another 1000 from the current pool of active editors), so ultimately I'm more interested in encouraging more access to the tools rather than less. Dragons flight (talk) 00:34, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
There are 471 "active" admins who've done 0 admin actions. Why should they have the tools if they aren't using them? Liz Read! Talk! 01:04, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
Clarification: There are 471 "active" Admins who haven't used any tools in the last month year (in the other thread, they said the stats covered a year). That's an important distinction. (But I agree with your general point...) --IJBall (talk) 01:40, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
  • The possible elephant in the room is whether an enhanced activity requirement gets the less active administrators to engage and make more good administrative actions, or whether it encourages a quick burst of activity and bad administrative decisions. That said, if there is going to be any increase in the activity requirements, it needs to be a substantial number, so there's enough actions carried out to determine how good or bad each administrator actually is. 5, 12 or even 30 actions isn't really enough to make rational judgements on ability. Finally, I'd also say that there needs to be an easier way for administrators to be kept up to date with changes to policies, administrative guidelines, arbitration enforcement, discretionary sanctions etc. I'm 140 on the list and I'm fairly regularly left looking to see why the options for blocking, deleting etc have changed, or what policy change has been tweaked when reading through unblock requests or deletion reviews. Nick (talk) 22:59, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
  • In one of the other discussions, someone pointed out that existing processes (ANI, ArbCom) can catch those who are making a large number of admin actions, because they are statistically more likely to be called out on one of them if they are a bad admin. This new process should be designed to evaluate the admins who are not using the tools or using them both poorly and infrequently. Gamaliel (talk) 23:38, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
  • 7@Samwalton9:, with this proposal, do you intend to make such adminship removal permanent (i.e. they cannot re-request without an RfA) or temporary (i.e. the current system)? I ask because I'm not sure how the latter would work here; would the now-former admin have to be active again for, say, 2 months before requesting tools back? StringTheory11 (t • c) 00:40, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
    • Honestly, I'm not personally certain, I saw a few discussions going on about this, shared some of my own views, and agreed we needed a centralised discussion about this. I think that if, say, the community decides that one admin action per year is required or an admin is desysopped, it would make sense to me that they can still just re-request unless they're then inactive for three years, per the current wording of WP:INACTIVITY. I don't personally see a need for them to be active for some months before re-requesting, I think this would introduce an unnecessary barrier. Sam Walton (talk) 17:52, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
  • FWIW, I also agree with that – I'd keep the current systems that Admins deemed "inactive" (whatever the eventual cutoff ends up being – and, FTR, I still think the cutoff should be 10 or 12 Admin actions over a year) can simply request "active" status again. I don't see any need for "inactive" Admins to have to go through another RfA just to get tool backs (separate from the unrelated "Term Limits" proposal below...) unless they actually "resigned" their Admin status like Opabinia regalis did. --IJBall (talk) 19:41, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
  • I find I am having difficulty discussing this. I am also somewhat biased, for a number of reasons. As a result this is an issue that I have made a particular point of keeping an eye on and calling out problems when I see them. Sometimes they throw a fit and tell me what a whelp I am compared to them. Sometimes they undo their actions, and pledge not to repeat them. Or anything in between. And I don't wish to "name and shame" any of them, thus the difficulty in expressing how often I have come across abuses by old-school admins. There are new admins who do such things too, but as has been mentioned they also have a greater tendency to call tooo much attention to themselves.
I'm number 142 on that list, and it includes most of last year, when I was on arbcom and severely curtailed my use of admin tools. That isn't good. But these type of chamges are so hard to get through anymore, I really think we should start small and work the problem from both ends. Like little, incremental changes at RFA, I mean like really small and we'll see if the world ends or not. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:38, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
  • This feels a bit like a solution to the wrong problem. At the moment, admins desysopped for inactivity can regain the tools automatically upon request until three years of inactivity has passed. If you set a new requirement - such as must perform 10 edits - all they need to do is come back, ask for the tools, and they're in exactly the same place they would have been if they'd been desysopped for no edits. I presume the problem that you want to fix relates to lengthy inactivity, where the admin has to go through RfA to get the tools back, rather than simply inactivity, which is the 0 edits in a year desysop. - Bilby (talk) 07:36, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Some of the Admins at the bottom end of the list are excellent editors and I've no doubt are good Admins. It would be interesting to find out why they are so inactive. Doug Weller (talk) 09:35, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
  • I think WP should be like Meta, in that any admin who has not performed X number of admin actions in any given year should be automatically de-sysopped via bot. I also think any admin who makes less than a very substantial number of edits per any given 12-month period should be automatically de-sysopped by bot. Either someone cares about the project and keeps up with it, or they don't. There's absolutely no reason on earth to have the latter group running around with admin tools, and there's every reason not to. Softlavender (talk) 09:48, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
Sincerely, what are the reasons to remove rights from rarely active accounts? Of current admins, roughly 70% edited less than 100 times last month and roughly 50% edited fewer than 10 times last month. That sounds bad, but a large fraction of admins have been sparsely active for years without causing much harm. There are a few examples of bad behavior and hundreds of examples of basically nothing bad happening. However, there are also examples of admins returning from large gaps and being super active. For example, current #9 on the activity list took a 3-year break, #13 had a 2-year break, and #25 had a 5-year period of low activity. Creating barriers for those editors might have driven off some very useful admins today. Dragons flight (talk) 11:00, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
The flip-side to that, which I find more compelling, is why should inactive or rarely-active Admin accounts retain their "special status" as Admins? I really do get the feeling that some around here think that Admin status should be a "lifetime" appointment, and if I had to guess I'd expect that a substantial portion of the community would not agree with that view. --IJBall (talk) 19:41, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
No actual solution here, but some thoughts that have been rattling around my head: Activity requirements for advanced user rights is one of those things that requires us to either choose one of two bad options, or to have someone(s) human personally making decisions on each case, which is also a pretty bad option in realistic terms. In pure mathematical terms, it is of more use to have someone not-particularly-active take a handful of actions per year - assuming those actions are correct - than to have them taking none. Especially if you factor a number of not-particularly-active people into that equation, you'll find that actions taken collectively by not-very-actives still add up to a notable proportion of all actions taken. I ran the numbers recently for oversight actions, and if memory serves it was something like 30% of actions being taken by the long tail of people who, in any given time period, appeared to be doing almost nothing; I'm going to go out on a limb and assume admin actions have similarly significant chunks done by less-active admins. Objectively, that's a large chunk of work you don't want to lose by de-bitting those people. On the other hand, we have no way of knowing whether that long tail of people is keeping up with community discussions - it's very easy to, say, delete a page or two a year that you happen to encounter, in entirely good faith, without noticing that policy has changed around you.
So the initial choice would seem to be "lose good work done slowly" vs "keep poor work done under the radar"; in picking either of those, you'd be sweeping up a number of people doing the opposite as well. The only way I can think of to balance those is to have someone(s) individually looking at each privileged user's situation, to judge their competence. Not just a "if you see a problem, bring it to Arbcom", but a body that would be pro-actively analyzing admin logs and noticeboard discussions and judging whether a) the actions were, on the whole, reasonable, and b) whether the user participated enough in both action and discussion to evince competence with current policy. And that would be...let's just call it an extremely heavyweight process, at best. Not only in human-hours consumed, but in selecting those qualified to make the decisions, and selecting enough of those people to be able to check every, or at least a representative sample of, logged action. I'm not sure we have enough people left at that activity level to be both examiners and examined. Which, I guess, brings us back to having to choose between good work done slowly, including occasional not-good work, or no work done in that group, including good work. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 06:42, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
To answer Dragons flight (Sincerely, what are the reasons to remove rights from rarely active accounts?), I've seen admins who are so sporadic they can't even take responsibility for the random appearances + admin actions they make, after which they disappear for days, weeks, or months. I've seen admins who return after several years and have no clue what WP is now like or what the protocols. policies, tools, and best practices are. And so on and so on. Either one believes in and supports the project and is up to speed, or one is not. All of the other wiki parts (meta, commons, etc.) have this automated de-sysopping when an account has made few admin actions per 12-month period. Softlavender (talk) 06:55, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
I have a somewhat different view to answer the same question – basically Admin tools are "special rights" that are granted by the community to specific editors to do specific (special) tasks on the project. The "granted by the community" part is important because, ultimately, Admins serve at the pleasure of the community (ArbCom handles this for the community, but they're supposed to represent us). If users with Admin "rights" are then no longer performing those tasks for the community, they are no longer doing the things they were given the special tools for in the first place, and thus should not keep those "special rights". I get the impression that some think that Admin privileges are more akin to a "very special gift" given out to the best and brightest editors on Wiki, like a prize, and it shouldn't be taken away short of malfeasance. That's not what it's about – certain editors are promoted to do very specific special jobs, and if they are no longer doing those jobs, then they should lose the tools and revert back to being just "regular old editors". --IJBall (talk) 07:15, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
  • I came here expecting to say that even a single good admin action a year to keep the tools is better than no admin action, and that "number of logged edits" is a very poor metric that doesn't adequately cover what an admin does (since not performing an action still requires judgement, but doesn't inflate your "score"). But then I looked at that chart, and it blows my mind that someone like myself, who is hardly prolific, is comfortably in the top 250 based on number of actions performed over the past year. I'd definitely be comfortable with a minimum activity requirement of say 100 actions a year, with a caveat that anyone just under the limit should have their contributions scrutinised and any administrative activity that is not logged considered before making a call to desysop. Lankiveil (speak to me) 10:36, 28 May 2015 (UTC).
  • How about at least ten admin actions per year, or else they get de-adminned? Sounds like a good call, since that'll get rid of the half of the admins that don't need their tools. Admin actions don't need to be blocks, protects, deletes, etc.; it can also include looking into hidden revisions or editing protected pages. Epic Genius (talk) ± 17:30, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
  • I would think that 100 logged admin actions per year would demonstrate a need for the tools and give us a history by which to judge the admin. Currently, someone who makes only a few logged admin actions per year can easily escape scrutiny even if every one of the actions is poor. Failing that, a minimum of ten logged actions per year would get rid of most of the hat collectors. It's frustrating to see a list 1000+ admins and know that only a fraction of them can actually be contacted for assistance. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 19:00, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
  • It seems to me that inactive admins aren't causing a problem while they are not editing, really, but a possible problem may occur if an admin who has edited only rarely or not at all for some time becomes active again without realizing that some policies and procedures have changed. My suggestion is this: (1) a log page could be created (unless it already exists) on which substantive changes to policies and guidelines are listed by date, with links to the appropriate pages. (2) Once a year, or right away if a big change happens, admins could receive an automated boilerplate message on their talk pages, reminding them to check the log for the latest changes before performing admin actions. Admins returning after a period of absence would find this on their talk pages, and hopefully take a peek at what's new before resuming admin activity.—Anne Delong (talk) 09:44, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
    • There is WP:UPDATE, though I don't know how comprehensive it is. Sam Walton (talk) 09:54, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
      • I don't think I've ever gotten a complaint that it omitted something. One person thought it had too much. But if somone is looking to catch up on, say, the last four years, that would be a lot of pages to read; it might be easier just to look at a diff of the policy page. - Dank (push to talk) 19:29, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
        • Ah, thanks for keeping it updated, I only said I wasn't sure because I didn't spend that long looking at it or its sub-pages :) Sam Walton (talk) 21:15, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
  • There has been a good deal of discussion, but what I am not seeing is what problem this is intended to solve. Resolute 19:02, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

I think our current metric for what constitutes an active admin paints a totally inacurate picture. An admin should be considered active if they make at least 10 admin uses of the tools and or discussion closures in 365 days. As always, Beeblebrox is right on topic with his coment here. I've done a lot of research into adminship over the past 4 or 5 years and I have always maintained that the most problematic admins today are those from the pre 2007 'promotions'. Not many of them are active in the drama areas and most appear to gnome away on essential but 'safe' tasks such as working through the CSD and XfD backlogs. Some occasionally come out of the woodwork to vote on an RfA. Those sysops got their bits in different times and while adminship is for life we cannot expect admins to stay on board and be active for life. A 20 year old admin in the early years of WP is now well into adult life with family and career committments. They might come back when they retire at 65 or they might not.

I don't think we're looking at boatloads of drama getting the criteria changed - we hold an RfC and see what happens. What we do need are some realistic stats and some pruning of numbers in order to plan contingencies for when we reach negative equity - when new 'promotions' no longer cover the attrition and workload.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:09, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Term limits?

This is an idea I generally don't support in either the real world or WP, but if done right it could be the right solution here. Something like this:

  • Pass RFA, you are an admin for ten years unless desysopped before then through other means
  • Whatever activity standards the project maintains still apply
  • You're not fired after ten years, but you will need to go back and run at RFA again.
  • Mass messaging, a bot or some other notification process will ensure that all admins who are approaching said deadline will be notified on their talk page, and possibly by email as well, beginning six months before the deadline, which will open the period in which they may run for a second term at their convenience, and they will be notified at least two more times before they are desysopped, and once again when it is done.
  • Failing to re-apply during the prescribed period in no way prevents anyone from running again whwnever they choose, but there will be no automatic resysopping if it is past the deadline.

Or something like that.

I'm putting this in it's own subsection because it is not an alternate proposal and is totally compatible with the current process that desyspos for simple inactivity. This would simply be a second set of requirements, like a performance review after ten years. We can determine different thresholds for the success or failure of reconfirmation RFAs if needed. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:22, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

I think this puts good admins at risk of being subject to grudge voting based on past hard decisions they have made that people merely disagree with. A reconfirmation RFA would be particularly vulnerable to it, as presumably it would still have the same 70% or higher consensus threshold. RFA has a long history of oppose voting based on disagreement with the candidate, without regard for whether the candidate is trustworthy and willing to abide and enforce policy and consensus they happen to disagree with. I think it would be better if the threshold was either 50%, or even requiring a 70% consensus on the side of desysoping. If a particular admin is really a big enough problem to justify desysoping, we should be able to form a consensus to that effect. Monty845 02:56, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
@Beeblebrox: I would suggest calling it something other than term limits. It can confuse us Americans, as in American politics, term limits are limits on the number of terms someone can serve, not a duration limit on a particular term. Calling it something like "10 year terms" would avoid that confusion. Monty845 03:02, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
I think this puts good admins at risk of being subject to grudge voting based on past hard decisions they have made that people merely disagree with. You said it. No way I would gotten involved with Gamergate and other controversial issues I tackled during my tenth admin year if I had to stand for RFA again. We have few active admins as it is, let's not make it harder for them. The problem is barely active ones, leave the active ones alone. Gamaliel (talk) 03:05, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
Make it "5 years" instead of 10 (and add in some of Monty's points), and I'd agree with all of this. --IJBall (talk) 02:59, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
Only about 200 of the current admins were appointed in the last 5 years. Dragons flight (talk) 04:21, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
Were this ever instituted (which, let's face it, is doubtful...), I'd guess it'd be "grandfathered in" in such a way that new Admins would start with a new 5-year clock, and current Admins would... well, I don't know, but I doubt it'd be structured in such a way that 1000 Admins would all "come due" for reappointment RfA's at the same time. --IJBall (talk) 05:49, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Re: "I think this puts good admins at risk of being subject to grudge voting based on past hard decisions they have made that people merely disagree with" I can only wonder why an admin should be protected from this but not an editor who does mediation at WP:DRN or even joins discussions at ANI and later runs for admin. Even editors who post a lot of AfDs or warn/revert/report a lot of spammers and vandals collect enemies, but they get none of the special protection that is being suggested for administrators here.

This gets us back to the basic problem that to pass an RfA one should spend a year or two engaging in pretty much nothing but content creation in noncontroversial areas, withdrawing and moving on to another page whenever anyone shows any sings of disagreement or opposition. In other words, prove that you are the kind of person who pretty much has zero interest in doing the sort of work administrators are asked to do. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:47, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

  • Blocking vandals and spammers might create enemies but not of the kinds that matter. A vandal or spammer doesn't know much about the internal processes of Wikipedia. They don't know what RfA is, probably wouldn't participate if they did, and nobody is going to take them seriously there. The areas which would be hit are those which involve annoying experienced editors, such as arbitration enforcement, closing complex or heated discussions, and anything which involves blocking experienced editors (especially if they have lots of friends). These are already the nastiest kinds of admin work and few people do them already. Some of this might potentially affect non-admin candidates at RfA as well, but it's very unlikely that such a person has been around for ten years. Hut 8.5 07:05, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
  • I definitely think there should be term limits, and admins should re-apply or be re-assessed after 5 years. I've seen too much admin abuse and also lording it over other people simply because they are admins; I've also seen admins who are so sporadic they can't even take responsibility for the random appearances + admin actions they make, after which they disappear for days, weeks, or months. In terms of existing admins who have been around a while, give them a 2-year window from now for re-assessment. If nothing else, this policy will keep admins on good behavior; whereas nothing much is doing that now, and we have an excess of admin abuse and a situation that is not that different from a totalitarian government where admins can't even be re-called or reviewed, and even ArbCom results in a pass unless it's something so outrageously rare, abusive, hair-raising and longterm as WifiOne. Softlavender (talk) 09:43, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
  • One thing not appearing in the stats is editing protected pages, or viewing deleted pages and files. However I would not expect a very different picture of inactivity with this either. Perhaps we copuld have something more like a continuous RFA, where each admin has a winge page, where people can pile on the dirt, or put in the praise. Then other can see what people have to say about that admin. The page could be restricted to comments on admin activity. It could be pretty ugly reading depending on who complains! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:08, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
    This is true: admin activity is not simply loggable actions like deletes, prots and blocks; besides editing protected pages, some reports can only be viewed by an admin, such as Special:UnwatchedPages using the "Page information" feature on a page with fewer than thirty watchers to find out the exact number or looking at which of my edits have been deleted. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:20, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
That's an interesting point. Is there any way that such stats could be added to the Admin stats output? (It would just be numbers, so I don't think these would violate any needed "secrecy".) It would probably be good if things like this could be included there... --IJBall (talk) 16:07, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
You people are aware that Special:UnwatchedPages hasn't existed for around a decade, right? (More accurately, it still exists but only shows the first 5000 hits in alphabetical order, which to give some idea of the scale of things takes you from "articles starting with 1" to the beginning of "articles starting with 2".)
The other type of admin action, which isn't going to show up in any kind of stats log, is negative actions: closing AIV reports as unfounded, declining unblock requests, issuing warnings which are acted upon so no action needs to be taken…). Unless they're regularly patrolling AIV, a good admin is measured on how well they resolve situations without the need to resort to the banhammer; introducing some kind of "must have made 20 blocks per year" quota is just going to drive out the people who try to take the time to resolve disputes, while retaining the shoot-from-the-hip Defender Of The Wiki types. (If the quota is just "any logged admin action", that's trivially easy to game; just head over to Category:Expired proposed deletions or Category:Candidates for speedy deletion and zap the first thing you come across.) – iridescent 16:37, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
Yes, it wouldn't be "12 blocks" per se – it would be, say, "12 logable Admin actions" per year, which includes plenty of other stuff like page protections. That is really not some unfair hurdle to overcome for any Admin who's doing any kind of steady Admin-like work. And it may be "gameable", but it would at least act as incentive for some Admins to occasionally go over to AIV or RFPP or something every so often. --IJBall (talk) 17:19, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
Can't we unbundle actions like viewing deleted pages (provided that the user has identified to the WMF or something)? And technically, any editor can write "decline" on an unblock request since it's not a software feature, like blocking, protecting, or deleting is. Should it become a software feature? There's no way to count actions like viewing deleted pages or declining unblock requests, Epic Genius (talk) ± 19:00, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
Declining an unblock request is visible (anyone can see it, and someone with a lot of time on their hands could in theory keep a count and hand-make a list). but as far as I know isn't logged anywhere. We could fix that by creating a log and asking admins to log their unblock declines. Viewing a deleted page isn't, as far as I can tell, visible to anyone. Should it be? There is a benefit to having an accurate count of how often an admin uses his tools, but is there any downside? If we decide that w want this we can request it from the developers at WMF. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:24, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
  • I don't support term limits either. Who's to say that a 10-year admin has lost his marbles and needs to sit the exam again? Also, it's highly likely that many of us wouldn't bother to go through that process again. Furthermore, resysoping would be a hayday for the anti-admin brigade (if they are still around - and some of them are still not showing signs of giving up). --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:41, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
Again, I remain unconvinced that the Admin haters will, on their own, be able to sway a "reappointment" RfA. Recent RfA's have not been hurting for votes – the last several who've passed have gotten well over 100 votes. I don't think the "anti-Admin" brigade is powerful enough to sway that many objective voters – I am quite sure that most voters would be able to see through such tactics. I find it more likely that Admins who might lose reappointment votes are those who've been unnecessarily brusk (or hasty) in some of their Admin decisions – I don't think that's a particularly large population. --IJBall (talk) 16:18, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
  • If we go with five years, it will doom this to failure. This is what I was saying above about moving slowly. If we make it ten years, it will be a small bump in the number of RFAs as most admins from that long ago are already not admins anymore. If we make it five years that means every single admin who got their bits before 2010 will have to run again in the next seven months. That would be an unmanageable mess, and would probably cost us a lot of perfectly good admins as well. I was imagining a few extra RFAs a month, probably with lower thresholds for acceptance, not a wholesale purge of hundreds of admins. That's a terrible idea. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:52, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
  • I don't like term limits because it's a "one size fits all" approach, without regard to the individual characteristics of the admin. Far preferable is provide a better mechanism for removal of admins who shouldn't be admins, or limiting tool use among admins who are deficient in certain areas. In other words, treading admin tools as tools, subject to removal or reinstatement without much drama, and not treating admins as a higher caste. Coretheapple (talk) 13:45, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Editing Wikipedia should ideally be a hobby, something you can spend an evening a month on and fit in with jobs, family and other hobbies. We already have a problem at RFA that "standards" have risen, not in terms of how civil or trustworthy someone is, but in the arbitrary areas of editcount and recent activity. There are hundreds of useful and uncontentious admins who don't have the excessively high activity level now required at RFA, and this is because RFA is broken, not because they aren't good admins. Term limits risk losing us most of our existing admin cadre as most existing admins simply wouldn't run. This has various drawbacks not least that the fewer admins we have and the more we depend on a few hyper active admins the more risk of them considering themselves or being considered a "higher caste". A ten year term limit would reduce the damage, but would still do more harm than good. ϢereSpielChequers 16:36, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Beeblebrox, there is already a process to get rid of bad eggs. The process your suggesting would create huge, unnecessary bureaucracy and backlog. There are over 700 admins who have had the bits for 10 or more years. Even if only half of them ran their new RfA, that would still be 60 a month over the next half year. It's just impracticable, especially when nearly all the admins are doing a fine job. Furthermore, community standards for RfA passage become more stringent every year. We would be unnecessarily putting fine standing admins through the ringer. As I said, there is already a process. Kingturtle = (talk) 13:56, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Bureaucrats?

What about bureaucrats? If we look down the list at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats, some of them haven't done anything bureaucrat related in years, and some are just making enough edits to hold onto the tools. --Rschen7754 04:06, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Excellent point. In my opinion, anyone who consistently makes just enough edits to hold onto the tools is gaming the system, and should be treated the same way we treat editors who consistently revert just outside of the #RR time limit. --Guy Macon (talk) 10:23, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
This was attempted back in '09: Wikipedia:Bureaucrat removal. Since then, renaming has been removed from the bureaucrat's base toolset and there is far less work for bureaucrats (if you don't count renaming on the global system). –xenotalk 11:26, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
Of the functions left for bureaucrats, we have +admin, -admin, +crat, and +-bot, all of which require up-to-date knowledge on policy. I think there would be significant controversy for any of these long-inactive crats if they suddenly participated in these roles. Perhaps it might be a better idea to start with auditing the activity of crats, before trying to look at the 1000+ admins? --Rschen7754 13:37, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
-admin is effectively only done on instruction from Arbcom or strictly in line with the agreed inactivity policy so it can be considered to be +admin has become rather rare and +- bot is pretty much done on request of BAG. Maybe we should just get rid of crats altogether and assign the rights to the current Arbcom...! QuiteUnusual (talk) 16:01, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
Arbcom has enough on their plate. I think the current crat system is fine, but I agree with Rschen that some auditing needs to be done. Perhaps the much smaller group of crats would be an ideal testing ground for any proposed de-adminship or inactivity proposals. KonveyorBelt 00:10, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
While I don't feel strongly about this, I think some might object over "separation of powers" concerns. --Rschen7754 04:04, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
Since obviously, with global renaming, bureaucrats aren't needed for much anymore, can't we replace them with stewards? Opposite from the current paucity of administrators, we actually have more bureaucrats than we need at this point. And since crat actions happen very infrequently, I think stewards can do many of the same crat functions. Epic Genius (talk) ± 15:09, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
Requires up-to-date knowledge on policy but is purely administrative (i.e., requires no discretion)? That sounds like a job bthat should be assigned to the Clerks. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:30, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
@Epicgenius: Being a former steward, I don't think that would be a good idea; while I won't go into all of the reasons why publicly, it would be best to handle matters like this on a local level (we don't really have full control / accountability over stewards locally). --Rschen7754 01:05, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

My understanding was that when this user group was created, it was deliberately givent he most boring name possible in order to indicate that it is actually not a very interesting job. And with SUL there is even less for crats to do. However, piling those few tasks onto arbcom would basically guarantee they would not get done in a timely matter. Look at unblocks: onwiki unblock requests take minutes to hours in most cases, a day or two is exceptionally long. WP:BASC on the other hand, takes 2-6 weeks to handle each request. I don't think stewards should take it on either as they are not supposed to really use their powers on their "home wiki" so we would have to rely on folks who are by definition not very familiar with out policies.

All that being said, we probably don't need the largely inactive ones who appear to just be gaming to keep their rights intact as there simply is no benefit to anyone in theor continuing to retain those tools and the current crop of active crats is able to handle their diminished workload just fine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beeblebrox (talk • contribs) 19:00, 30 May 2015‎ (UTC)

OK.… Rschen7754's and this unsigned user's above comments are both convincing in the case against using stewards to handle crat tasks on enwiki. But we really don't need all these crats anyway—maybe eight to ten would be fine. Epic Genius (talk) ± 22:40, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Maybe (and don't shoot me until you read this fully) give the current rights of bureaucrats to the functionaries? (as in Checkusers + Oversighters) I know it's not what they signed on for or what the community approved them for, but the workload is pretty low, the work technical and routine in nature, they already have to be familiar with policy, they're all trusted at at least the level of bureaucrats, and the room for abuse is already much smaller than the room for abuse of CU/OS? --L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 02:16, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
    • That would also mean giving them to ArbCom, correct? --Rschen7754 04:01, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
  • @Rschen7754: Yeah, it would. (Is there a reason to not give them to ArbCom? It's not like we can't trust them not to abuse it) Thanks, --L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 11:41, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
  • That would be giving the responsibilities to an appointed group (in terms of the functionaries) that are appointed for different reasons and motivations. I'm not sure why this thread has moved towards ideas on removing the bureaucrat role entirely; the current system is not broken and there are still important duties that lay with the bureaucrat team (especially tending to RfAs in progress and at conclusion).
    My comment above about the reduced responsibility was not to say the role is no longer necessary: simply that there is a reduced need for services and less "grunt" work (i.e. work requiring less discretion or need to keep up-to-date with community standards) that is available to a bureaucrat who is returning to the role from a long absence; such that the community may wish to revisit the 2009 discussion concerning bureaucrat activity levels if they are going to do the same with administrators. Ensuring the bureaucrat team as a whole is actively engaged and up-to-date would also make it easier for the community to grant additional roles to the team as desired. –xenotalk 14:19, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Bureaucrats are all wise enough after an absence to review policies and procedures, neither of which are all that complicated. Also, there is already a procedure to remove a bureaucrat for tool misuse. And all those misuses are easily reversible. Is there any evidence that unlimited terms for bureaucrats is a problem? Kingturtle = (talk) 14:20, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

  • A couple of years ago, stupidly thinking that the 'crats might be pleased to have a bit more to do, as part of the exercise I hurriedly put together a Bureacrat activity table. The 'crats were incensed, even resorting to uncharacteristic personal attacks ranging from I should be minding my own business, to if I want to be a 'crat I should run for election. I think they were just embarrased by the stats. No new 'crats have been elected for a year-and-a-half now, some prunung ought to be done while some new tasks in order to make 'cratship something worth running for might be worth looking at. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:37, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
    • "The 'crats were incensed"...I don't recall any of us being incensed. As far as I know only one Bureaucrat replied. Andrevan called attention to some incorrect data and suggested you had editcountitis. And that turned into a spirited dialog between the two of you. Andrevan and WJBscribe both helped you edit the table. Back to the main topic, that no new 'crats have been elected for a year-and-a-half now has no bearing on the term limits question. It isn't as if we can only have 20 bureaucrats. If we need more, then let's nominate more. In the end, the term limits question boils down to one basic question, which I asked above: Is there any evidence that unlimited terms for bureaucrats is a problem? Kingturtle = (talk) 20:07, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Is there a broader issue here?

With all due respect to Sam, and while I think that there definitely may be a problem with inactive or inept admins who were named years ago, I think that there is a broader issue that needs to be addressed: a lack of routine, non-drama oversight for admins.

AntonioMartin had serious WP:CIR issues. Yet even so, it was plain that until he clumsily sockpuppeted, nothing was going to be done. There is no mechanism for dealing with administrators who should not be admins. Perhaps, as in this case, they are clearly incompetent, without a clue as to content or deletion policies, and creating articles that they themselves admit do not have adequate sourcing. Yet nothing can be done, as he was not abusing his tools or committing gross misconduct (until the absurdly obvious sockpuppeting was uncovered by checkuser and behavioral evidence).

There are other admins with clear temperament issues. WP:NPA is only loosely enforced, but admins are supposed to set an example. "Abusive administrators" is one of the common themes at a certain off-wiki website. While I'm not a big fan of that website, it does provide an escape valve for complaints re administrators that might not be heard here. There is no method that ordinary editors can turn to, re an abusive admin, with any hope that it will be dealt with fairly and without undue drama.

Then there's the issue of retaliation. If you bring a case against an admin at ANI or arbcom, your own behavior will be scrutinized. I'm not against "boomerang" - it's essential in most cases. But the problem is that it can translate into what is known in the real world as "retaliation against the whistleblower." In the ANI on AntonioMartin, there was talk that if anything was done, Damiens (the editor who blew the whistle) might be blocked as well. It took considerable guts, considering that he already had a block history, for him to take this case against Antonio.

Perhaps what is needed is a committee of arbcom that can look into complaints against admins with a minimum of drama, without the threat of "boomerang" retaliation, and at the same time swiftly throwing out meritless complaints. Desysoping would be just one of the things such a mechanism would do. It could order mentoring, or simply admonish admins. I think you need this so that the community feels that being an admin is not a lifelong entitlement, and maybe if that happens RfAs will be less of a trial by fire, as they should be until admins get their house in order and consent to this kind of mechanism. Coretheapple (talk) 13:59, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

We already have a committee of ArbCom that can look into complaints against admins and handle those complaints in an expedited manner—we call it the ArbCom. In recent years, it's actually been much more common for admins to be desysopped by ArbCom motion or to resign 'under a cloud' (when faced with an ArbCom filing) than for a full ArbCom case to be opened and completed. Indeed, AntonioMartin was swiftly desysopped by motion with a minimum of fuss.
Historically, mentoring has not been a terribly effective remedy; either mentor or mentee tends to lose interest in the process relatively quickly. Recruiting mentors (either at the time of the case, or to replace dropouts) has been difficult. In the past, 'mentoring' has largely amounted to a way to implement a more nuanced or filtered sort of page, topic, or tool ban. Compelled "mentoring" isn't likely to be worthwhile.
Admonishment is something that can be done just as readily through AN/I. If an admin (however recently-minted) ignores credible admonishments and continues with unconstructive behavior, they then end up before ArbCom.
"Retaliation", meanwhile, has always struck me as a red herring and has a whole bunch of bad-faith assumptions wrapped up in it that I'm not going to get into. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:37, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
And yet this finely oiled, superbly functioning, magnificent admin-supervision machinery, time-tested and universally loved and admired, was about to do absolutely not a thing about an admin who was grossly incompetent - until he socked. How about that! Coretheapple (talk) 12:21, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
A common misunderstanding regarding arbcom is that they are not an investigative body, they are a deliberative body. By definition they do not go out looking for things to fix, you have to bring issues to them, with clear supporting evidence. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:16, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
Yes of course. But what's needed is to get rid of bad admins, so that the community can feel confidence to allow more new admins, that it's not a lifetime appointment to a special caste of wiki-royalty. I think the focus of this conversation is wrong; the fact that AntonioMartin was from a different era is a bit of a red herring. The problem that emerged at ANI is that he needed to be gone, and that the current criteria didn't allow for his removal. Until he socked, and then we had a demonstration of why so many users are cynical about the admin caste - they get desysopped where ordinary users get blocked, and they don't get desysopped for simply being lousy. Coretheapple (talk) 00:00, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
  • If not enough badmins get desysoped it's not wholly the fault of Arbcom. The main fault is with the community itself.There is a group of regular whingers whom I loosly refer to as the anti-admin brigade and while they leave no stone unturned to jump to the defence of the most outrageous cases of PA and incivility and take a swipe at admins, they never, never take any intelligent initiatives to actually get things improved. In fact they so persitently disrupted one reform project that was ironically designed to get better admins on board, that the active participants in the project simply gave up. In genuine cases of regular bad adminship the community in its excitement generally looks only at the case in hand rather than long term patterns of abuse. That's why it took years to desysop two editors for whom I actually saw the writing on the wall a very long time before the community took note. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:12, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Identifying new admin candidates

As I said above, I think that adminship ought to be given out much more often than it presently is (and also be easier to remove). In my opinion there are probably many hundreds of active and experienced editors who would be helpful as admins if A) we could identify them, and B) we could promote them. Setting aside the mess that is RFA, I would like to solicit suggestions for ways to help identify users who would potentially be good as admins?

Personally, I tend to think the most important attributes are maturity, responsibility, and community trust, etc. Unfortunately, all of those are pretty hard to measure in any systematic, automated way. However, we can probably at least come up with a short list of possible candidates using automated tools that look at long-term active editors. For example, X total edits, averaging at least Y edits per month in the last six months, and has been active at least Z years. Do people have suggestions for what technical tests you'd prefer to help identify possible candidates? For example, edit thresholds, time commitments, patterns of editing by namespace, contributions in certain areas, etc. On the technical side, what characteristics does the current community think exemplify an ideal admin candidate? Obviously, not every good candidate would necessarily pass every possible technical test, but if we can make a short list of users who seems like good candidates then it might be easier to look at individual cases and encourage the best ones.

In the past there have been some other attempts to identify potential admin candidates on the basis of technical evidence, does anyone remember where those lists ended up and what criteria were used? Dragons flight (talk) 04:30, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

There was a discussion about this in the last six months – I remember reading it. Unfortunately, I can't remember where I read it – it might have been at one of the Village Pump forums (but when I searched for it recently there, I couldn't find it); it may also have been at WT:RfA (I didn't really search there...). I hope someone can remember what the discussion I'm referring to, because there was a discussion about using a Bot to do what you're describing, but I think it only came to "talk" and no one went further with it (as fat as I know)... Beyond that, the only thing I am aware of is Snottywong's (now broken?) Admin score tool. --IJBall (talk) 05:58, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
@Dragons flight: There was Snottywong's tool that IJBall is referencing; general thought at WT:RFA was that such a tool would make editcountitis worse for the purposes of that forum--I'm not personally of this opinion--but that it also could be useful for identification of candidates (and not necessarily the more full review necessary for nominating/!voting on a candidate).
@IJBall: this search for "Snottywong" prefix:Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive will probably help you "bump into" the conversation in question, since I recall the same conversation and I'm fairly certain it was close in time to a reference made to the same tool. --Izno (talk) 14:26, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
Thanks @Izno:, but I still can't seem to find it! (I found something at WP:RfA was close to the discussion I was thinking of, but it didn't seem to include the part about the "bot" to look for Admin candidates... ). On a side issue, re: this discussion about Snottywong's Admin score tool – is there any desire or ability to fix the dang thing?! Or is it not possible now, post-migration?... (Pinging: @JackPotte:) --IJBall (talk) 17:18, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
I went to use the tool and did not have a problem (I happened to score a 230). You happen to score a 218.
Anyway, I think what you are looking for is Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 233#Bot to find candidates. --Izno (talk) 17:51, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
Re: this discussion only 4 of the original 11 inputs in to that tool currently work. You can see this if you compare current scores obtained from the tool vs. the 2013 list of scores – e.g. Carrite: 298 now vs. 945 in 2013 (there's no way his score could have dropped that much!!). (You can also see it doesn't work on mine either, as it's giving a "+0" score for "reviewer" status and I'm doubting it's supposed to...) P.S. thanks for the link to that thread!! --IJBall (talk) 18:28, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
Ah, yes, I thought that was odd. --Izno (talk) 18:31, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
Yes I was forced to inhibit some criteria because of the database replica performances. I tried these optimizations before asking for a merging into Xtools, which already uses some asynchronous functions. JackPotte (talk) 19:26, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
Is there somewhere that states the current scoring criteria and/or the criteria used in the past? Dragons flight (talk) 19:46, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
@JackPotte: (mostly) non-techie here – so is it hopeless to fix Scottywong's tool post-migration? Or are there potential workarounds to obtain the criteria that the tool currently can't access? --IJBall (talk) 20:07, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
@IJBall: I thought about rewriting these scripts in AJAX, or with an XML dump, but now I won't have the time before several months. Apart from that, cyberpower678 had a look to it. JackPotte (talk) 20:43, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
If I could get my hands on the original script, I can attempt to port it over to xTools. As for the old script that's residing on xTools, I recall not adding it because it was using outdated functions no longer used on the current xTools.—cyberpowerChat:Offline 05:49, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
 Done @Cyberpower678: Please find everything here. Thank you for your help. JackPotte (talk) 10:26, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
Well done, gentlemen! It would be nice if this tool, at least, can be put back into proper service. I look forward to whatever progress you make here. --IJBall (talk) 16:21, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
@Izno and JackPotte: This is just to say that I cloned the admin score tool myself a few months back; I think that tool covers most of the important metrics that Scottywong's version had. APerson (talk!) 04:36, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
@APerson: If you have the code to do it or can do it trivially, I would suggest knocking down the number of points associated with page creation where the page in question is created as a redirect. I score in the 600s because of this and I'm not sure I should. --Izno (talk) 15:28, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
PS. In case it is unclear, I'm volunteering to make a list, though how quickly probably depends on how complicated a set of criteria are involved. Dragons flight (talk) 19:46, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
Specific technical criteria suggested in the previous discussion (in no particular order):
  1. >10000 edits, no blocks for at least 6 months, >50 AFD comments
  2. 1 year, >5000 edits, no blocks
  3. 6000 edits, 1 year tenure, no significant blocks, as well 50 AfDs or 100 AIV reports or 1 FA
There were also a number of non-specific suggestions in the prior thread. Dragons flight (talk) 19:46, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
I'm not sure about the AfD or AIV parts. I see AfD brought up a lot in these discussions, but as one of those editors that rarely participates in AfD (I have nothing against it... I just don't find AfD particularly interesting, and personally find RM discussions more interesting than AfD ones), the hidden assumption in using AfD as a "primary" criteria is that Admins are always going to do a lot of article deletions, and while some do, others don't. Similarly, with AIV, I think that would "bias" towards editors that use Twinkle, Huggle and STiki. So I'm not sure you can set arbitrary levels for AfD, RM, AIV, RFPP, and ANI, etc. – looks at those things may have to come in the "second cut", after Admins parse through the "first cut" list of editors that the bot (or whatever) generates for you. --IJBall (talk) 20:02, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
I think the idea is that these criteria should find promising on-paper admin candidates, and AfD/AIV are typical of good admin candidates, even if there are others who would be good but don't have AfD/AIV experience. Equally any of the other criteria aren't necessary for a good admin but should flag some promising candidates. Sam Walton (talk) 20:06, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
The reason that AfD gets so much attention is that deletion is one of the two major admin tools that people are the most concerned about being misused. (Blocking being the other) At AfD, you can evaluate the contributor's knowledge of a number of notability guidelines, reliable source policy, other guidelines and policies, and their general propensity towards deletion. Its also a relatively accessible place for non-admins to be involved in policy work. The other would be AN and AN/I, but everyone hates their necessary evil, so general candidates aren't pressed to show positive involvement there. Monty845 22:53, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Some unofficial recommendations of admin candidates: Ahunt (strong), Armbrust, Amortias (the pings are intended). Ahunt has been here for 10 years, with 100,000+ edits and 1500+ articles created. 103.6.156.167 (talk) 14:27, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
The main thing thats put me off running for adminship appears to be a big want on article creation and work along those lines. Im fine with a bit of copyediting and tidying up but I have not a single ounce of creative anything anywhere (apart from the ability to come up with typical british humor responses to vandals and sockpuppets on my pages). Its why I tend to stick to rolling back vandalism, making requests for page protection and filing reports at the drama boards (as well as closing the ones that can be closed). I wouldnt say no to being nominated though as this would let me know theres a few people out there who trust me enough without a string of articles. I know a few other users who seem to have the same line of work on here who might be useful but if theres still a want on articles being created then I have a feeling some suitable candidates might be put off. Amortias (T)(C) 19:54, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
While I wouldn't suggest that you, specifically, be the one to "bite the bullet" if you don't want to, I'm thinking someone like you needs to run under the current RfA zeitgeist as a kind of "test case" to see if RfA's have matured to the point to where it will accept a candidate with your kind of background. While some voters, I suspect, will still cling to the "you need 'X' Good Articles, and 'Y' Featured Articles to get a "support" vote", I think most will recognize that not every Admin candidate needs to have that kind of background to be a good potential Admin. --IJBall (talk) 20:27, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
@Amortias: The emphasis on article/content creation at RFA seems to have faded substantially in the last year or two. That said, even back when the opposes for lack of content creation were common it was possible to pass RFA even for us gnomish editors with some work. When I passed my RFA back in 2012, the furor wasn't at its peak, but was still a major factor at RFA, and I passed without really having any major article creations to my credit. Not to say I had never done content work, people who looked could fine places were I referenced articles, I had done a handful of GA reviews, had done some AFC work. But I had created basically no articles from scratch, had no GA/FA/Main page credits etc... What is really important is that you have demonstrated enough content work that it is clear you understand the right way to do it. It also doesn't hurt to emphasize your respect for the content work done by those who are focused on content.
If you are interested in running some day, my advice on how to prepare yourself for RFA would be to take the next 5-6 months (Your 13 month account age would be pushing the inside limit on account age at RFA, at 18 months old this would be a much smaller issue) and try to find some collaborative content work to add to your wiki-resume. (Just as a side project alongside your regular editing) Since you appear to be interested in copy editing, some GA reviews might be a good start, as it requires you have the understanding of content work, while being different enough that it may be enjoyable even if regular content work isn't your thing. Maybe helping improve some drafts at AfC at least far enough to qualify for article space, even if not to full B/GA/FA status. Based on my quick glance of your history, I'd probably support you at RFA even today given the strength of your gnomish work, but then my personal criteria to support at RFA aren't as strict as some people. I don't know if you would pass today but I think with a bit of work and you would be very like to pass in another few months. Monty845 20:46, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
Though we have had occasional opposes for lack of an FA, the de facto standard for content contributions has long been that anyone wanting to be an admin needs to show that they know how to cite content to reliable sources. Usually that means listing some examples where they've done that, either on their userpage, in the nomination or their answer to Question 2. GAs and FAs are great to have, and I doubt if you can get 100% support without them, but the pass mark is in the 70/75% range. ϢereSpielChequers 07:14, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
I had zero GA/FA and I was very explicit that I am not going to have GA/FA, and I still got 99% support, so that they are certainly not necessary.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:44, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Sorry but I'm really underwhelmed by utilizing quantitative measures to identify admin candidates. I have observed some absolute idiots building up their edit counts in an apparent quest for adminship. Anyway I don't believe admin ranks should be expanded until the procedures for removing bad admins has been improved. Frankly I favor a moratorium on new admins until that has taken place. Certainly the community will continue to put new admins through a ring of fire as long as it a permanent elevation to Brahmin status. Coretheapple (talk) 14:55, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
    • Arbcom continues to desysop admins, if you have suggestions as to types of admin behaviour that the they should desyop for then why not make them there or in the Arbcom elections? In the meantime we need sufficient admins to keep the vandals and spammers at bay, and if you worry as to who we recruit as admins then may I suggest the worst scenario for you is that we reach the point where we have insufficient active admins to keep on top of AIV or G10 deletions and appoint a large batch of poorly scrutinised ones (I've tried several times to fix RFA and am increasingly resigned to this scenario - my bet is that as with the admins of the 2003/2006 era most will turn out just fine). ϢereSpielChequers 07:32, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
      • This discussion is becoming somewhat circular, as we're back to where we started, which was an admin (AntonioMartin) who came to ANI/I on WP:COMPETENCE issues and didn't have a hope of being desysopped on that basis. He was then desysopped, but not on the original grounds but for clumsily socking at ANI, when the usual penalty for that is a block. So we're back where we're started from I guess. The bottom line is that the process is broken and it's not going to be fixed. Coretheapple (talk) 15:46, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
        • Looking at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive886#Admin_User:AntonioMartin_repeatedly_adding_unsourced_information_on_a_BLP there was an active discussion as to whether to take the chap to Arbcom when it emerged that he was socking. Since the socking emerged when it did we don't know whether Arbcom would remove the bit from an admin for that alleged level of misuse of Rollback, BLP sourcing problems or editwarring. I suspect they would, but until someone takes such a case to Arbcom we don't know; Though it might make for an interesting question at the next Arbcom elections. In the meantime it has restarted the debate about our problems at RFA, and I doubt I'm the only editor for whom the problems at RFA seem a far greater issue than the theoretical possibility that Arbcom might decline to desysop a bad admin if a sufficient case was made. ϢereSpielChequers 16:36, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
          • No, it's not theoretical because the consensus at ANI, before the socking, was that bringing AntonioMartin to Arbcom would be a waste of time. And indeed, no one did, as it was obviously not going to be worthwhile. Coretheapple (talk) 13:30, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
            • The thread closed with "AntonioMartin has been desysopped by Arbcom--" not "no consensus to take this to Arbcom" let alone "ARBCOm has declined the case" so until we can peer into alternate universes we will never know whether ARBCOM would have desysopped without the socking. But as I said earlier if you doubt that this ARBCOM would have desysoped you are free to post a question in the next ARB elections. If the community then elects an ARBCOM majority that would not desysop in those circumstances then you could conclude that taking similar admins to ARBCOM would be a waste of time. But conversely if as I would expect the community elects a group of candidates who mostly would desysop in similar circumstances then you could have some confidence that they would have desysoped. ϢereSpielChequers 22:35, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Article tags

Tags at the top of article-space are intended to encourage editors to correct an article's problems, but more often than not, they are just an eye-sore and a waste of time when petty edit-wars emerge over tags, where that energy could have been better-focused on actual article-content. It struck me that this could be done in a better way that's more focused on the tags' objective - encouraging editors to improve the article.

Something like this:

Then you click on it and it shows something like this:

Details aside, it seems like something roughly along these lines would be much more effective at fulfilling the tags' intended objective of encouraging editors to improve the article and even providing actionable next steps on how readers can get involved. Beckoning readers to become editors.CorporateM (Talk) 06:05, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Would the change essentially be to reword the first line of Template:Multiple issues and make it default hide? Sam Walton (talk) 10:18, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
That would be a good first step and an incremental improvement over the current situation. CorporateM (Talk) 10:23, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
But another important function of tags is to warn readers that (1) there may be content in the article that's more problematic than usual or (2) in some significant way the article isn't up to the usual standards of a Wikipedia article (whatever those may be), in either case meaning readers may need to exercise extra caution in their use of the article. In those cases, it isn't desirable to reduce the tag's visibility.--Arxiloxos (talk) 23:18, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
Maybe that is a side function of the tags, but I don't think that is the actual reason the tags were created (prove me wrong if you must, though). Dustin (talk) 23:28, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
It's a fair concern, but I think the number of cases where that application is most relevant is small. When the problems are within normal range, tags only act as a "warning: Wikipedia isn't that great" and it's not sensible to place them on most articles. When the problems are significant enough to the point that the information is misleading to readers or not useful to an encyclopedia, this is a consistently successful argument at AFD, which is the right place to send articles we feel are so bad we would feel the need for a special warning for readers not to trust them. The range of articles that are bad enough such that the problems are not routine, but are not so bad to be deletable, but still bad enough to justify cautioning readers, is a very narrow set of articles. In comparison, finding a more compelling way to turn readers into editors and actually fix the problems of the article I feel are a much more compelling priority. CorporateM (Talk) 06:16, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
My experience with tags is the majority of them are useless complaints by drive-by editors. If these were constructive complaints, they would leave comments about what to fix, or better yet, since most of these complaints come from experienced editors, they would instead use their knowledge to fix the problems. But that would take time. Instead they simply vandalize the article, spray painting their Kilroy and moving on. I've looked at the histories of some of these abusers including the most prolific editor on wikipedia. They leave these tags, several times a minute, meaning they could not even taken the time to read, much less fix, the article in question. None of this is productive, but it increases their edit count. The majority of the tags are written to be broad and therefore easy to apply to multiple circumstances. The result is there is very little guidance given. Many are too jargonistic or oblique so inexperienced editors and the general public have no idea what they are talking about. All it really announces is something is wrong. It hurts the credibility of wikipedia and certainly the credibility of the articles it is seen on. A favorite is lede too short. That's just a word count and like many, a stylistic comment. Its like an art critic saying there is too little red in the picture. There is no wikipedia requirement, certainly not to the extent that the overall integrity of the article need be impugned. And perhaps the worst part, these tags are on the top of the article. They are the first thing a reader sees. Big and bold, they dominate the look of the article. One person's opinion, emblazoned across the top, vs the efforts of all the previous editors and other readers who would have the opportunity to edit and fix a problem if there really were something wrong. There should be a minimum requirement to leave a comment on the talk page. There should be a quota on usage, a minimum amount of time spent on a page (compared to the word count of the article). Abusers should be sanctioned. Trackinfo (talk) 07:23, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
@Trackinfo: There is some guidance at WP:TAGGING that "When it comes to confusing or ambiguous tags, such as npov or dead end, you should explain yourself on the talk page and/or in an edit summary." It also says "Anyone who sees a tag, but does not see the purported problem with the article and does not see any detailed complaint on the talk page, may remove the tag." Granted that is just an essay, and not a firm rule, it seems like there is technically already support for the idea that you should not apply ambiguous tags without explanation. So my instinct is that this is less of a policy problem and more of a - well, somebody has to confront the editors spamming thousands of tags, if that is the case. I know in my own experiences I went to cleanup articles that were tagged as adverts and most of them had been cleaned up ages ago without the tag being removed. CorporateM (Talk) 20:33, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
@CorporateM: What I am reporting is the almost constant abuse of Tags, including by the most powerful editors on wikipedia.Their actions are a real detriment to wikipedia. The existing rules serve no purpose to their abuse. Virtually none of the tags are positive or productive. I think the first thing we could do with tags, if we need to retain them al all which I am not convinced of, is to move them to the talk page and away from public view. That would eliminate the defacement, what I term vandalism, of the public view of an article. Trackinfo (talk) 08:44, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
I'd say that we need to consider visibility and audience. The goal being to attract attention of editors with interest and ability to contribute toward reviewing and revising. The second major concern here would be to keep such alerts, legitimate or otherwise, in places where they throw the widest possible net, so to say. We don't want merely a cabbalistic circle of conceited collaborators who all watch a worklist — not that i've seen any suggestions in that exact regard, but thought i'd mention it.
Anyway, from all the viewers of these tags, how many are
  • knowledgeable of the subject
  • considerate of the Wikipedia policies, especially the Socratic precautions
  • interested or capable of contribution (available time, resources)
as compared to those who visit an article seeking knowledge? Equally important: how many such editors might never view those tags because it never occurred to them that their contribution would be valued and appreciated?
Merely some thoughts. — JamesEG (talk) 05:58, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
With all due respect, this sounds elitist to me. If an article is already problematic enough to warrant tagging, any editor should be able to make improvements, even if they have no experience on Wikipedia or knowledge of the subject. If the tag provides a link to an essay that provides advice on how to correct the issue, this should make it even easier. We should welcome new editors, not discourage them from contributing because they are not experienced enough or knowledgeable about the subject. CorporateM (Talk) 19:58, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
And there is nothing wrong with elitism, in its place. There are things just about any editor can do. There are things that only some editors can do. And anyway, tags do many things (I have listed some of them in User:Martynas Patasius/Tags are useful). The one you mentioned - "encouraging editors to improve the article" - is by no means the only one. --Martynas Patasius (talk) 21:47, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
I was actually trying to sound un-elitist: the tags need to be somewhere that anybody can see, especially people who would be able to make a difference. I was also saying, as Martynas may agree, that just because someone reads a page doesn't always mean that they are the only ones who would be able to contribute to it — or even at all, but you can't make that determination out-of-hand et c. It occurs to me that some experts may never take interest in viewing articles in their field of expertise, to which is what I was alluding. — JamesEG (talk) 12:51, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
This sounds like what the Mobile Web site already does with those tags. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:41, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
  • It used to be argued that tags would encourage readers to fix articles and give direction to newbies as to how to improve articles they've just started. Nowadays we just have the argument that they warn readers of substandard articles, and enable editors to find articles with specific issues such as orphans and no categories. The price is that they drive away new editors directly by marking their work as substandard and indirectly by giving them edit conflicts. They also divert volunteers from improving the pedia to tagging it for hypothetical others to improve. Perhaps some tags could be converted into hidden categories, but deleting the lot would put the focus back onto actually improving articles. ϢereSpielChequers 07:06, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Proposals regarding the 'Preview' button

The 'preview' and 'show changes' buttons are redundant functions that could be merged. The new button would be called Preview Changes, and would highlight the changes inline. At the top middle of the screen there would be a Show difference button, which would expand into a comparison of the changed portions side-by-side with the previous version. (like in the Show Changes window)

• The new button could be on the left of 'Save page'.
• Also, pressing Enter in the Edit Summary box could do Preview instead of Save
• and both of these settings could be reversed by registered users, so edits could be saved quickly
85.211.105.223 (talk) 10:14, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
Oppose merging the buttons - each one will result in a certain amount of extra data to download; no need to force an editor to do both in order to get either one. And external tools (such as AWB) may use the preview feature but handle the changes internally. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 20:32, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
@Od Mishehu: Please don't "Oppose" - per the box at the top, this page is not for consensus polling. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:03, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
@Od Mishehu: 'Show changes' uses a much smaller amount of data, compared to Previewing (=parsing) a page section (or the entire page!). And technical ability to perform 'Preview' can still be available to bots etc. - it's just the visible button that will perform a new combo function. 2 vs 3 buttons can also be set in Preferences for registered users; meanwhile, two buttons instead of three is friendlier to new users. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.211.105.223 (talk) 01:31, 5 June 2015
Where this would create an issue is during full page edits of a lengthy article, particularly one with many images. In that case I just want to see the deltas, rather than reloading a long page. Possibly you could add a 'show preview' checkbox instead? But that may be confusing. Praemonitus (talk) 16:44, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
@Praemonitus: On Show changes, one'd see changes in source code, but not what it does in action; (so you'd Preview anyway to see if the code works or not). Do many people use 'Show changes'? (Can we get stats?) Maybe people do it because the (wall of) text inside the edit box is hard to make head or tail of. 85.211.105.223 (talk) 13:09, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
I often use "Show changes", usually last thing before "Save page", just in case somebody else is editing the page. You're not always warned of an edit conflict, and I don't want to overwrite somebody else's post by accident. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:38, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
@Redrose64: wow I didn't know the edits manager system bugged out like that! I saw a weird 'edit conflict' note before someone's post on Village Pump... it must have been this. But then if the system knew of the edit clash, why didn't it just tell the poster instead?.. Wonder if this bug has been reported. 85.211.105.223 (talk) 09:13, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
It periodically gets mentioned at WP:VPT. But generally speaking, the system will warn of an edit conflict, but it's not 100% guaranteed to do so. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:03, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

I'd love to have a "Preview changes" button. Now, the merged button should be opt-in, as every major website redesign. --21:31, 8 June 2015 (UTC)~

Opt-in for registered, optout for unregistered, I think. (it's not redesigning the whole site and anyway, it's not as if the layout new users see is immutable)
Although it'd be a lot better if the edit clash bug were worked out first. 85.211.110.34 (talk) 20:52, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Preview is best for things like adding pictures, show changes is often better when changing text. I don't see any benefit to merging them, and it would take away resource that could be used for things like resolving more edit conflicts without losing edits. ϢereSpielChequers 06:50, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Edit filter policy

The AbuseFilter is an extension that checks edits against a specified set of criteria with a primary aim of tagging edits and stopping abusive edits. Recent actions related to one user's use of the edit filter has called into question whether we should have some policies related to the use of this rather powerful tool, so I'd like to start a discussion with the view of then properly proposing specific policies that should hopefully reflect the community's feelings.

On the English Wikipedia the extension was added in 2009 and shortly thereafter renamed to the Edit Filter as, though it was originally designed to counter abusive edits, the more recent usage has broadened from that. In order to create a filter an editor must have the 'edit filter manager' user right, which has in all but a few rare cases only been available to administrators, who are currently free to assign it to themselves as required (new admins do not have the right by default). There are currently around 170 users with the user right, and I would estimate that around 10 actively contribute to filters.

Filters take a number of conditions in order to track edits that fit those rules in the log for that filter. As an example, Special:AbuseFilter/3 tracks new users (who are not confirmed), taking an article of over 300 characters and reducing it to less than 50, in the article namespace (with a few extras to avoid false positives). The output is stored in the abuse log for that filter, and the filter is currently set to warn the user with a message before tagging the edit ('blanking') if they choose to continue. New filters are usually left in 'log only' mode for at least a week before switching on any warning or tagging in order to check for false positives.

I'd like to start a few sections with areas that I think would be worth discussing, feel free to add more if there's something in particular you feel is important. Of course, if you feel that the current standing works fine, do say so. Sam Walton (talk) 00:41, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Useful links:

Assigning the user right

As mentioned above, the user right is currently primarily used by admins who assign themselves the right if they're interested in contributing to filters. It has, rarely, been given out to competent non-admins in the past. Should there be a better process for assigning the user right? Should admins be able to give themselves the right with no oversight? Should non-admins be able to request the right with a realistic chance of obtaining it? Discuss. Sam Walton (talk) 00:41, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

  • I do not believe admins in general are capable of assessing someone's technical knowledge to the point of being able to determine if assigning the edit filter right is appropriate. I also believe that an editor should be able to attain that right without being an admin (though as an individual who has had such a right, I may be biased). Historically this discussion has been done at WT:EF and the people that frequent that area would be able to make a reasonable assessment of an individual's technical ability to determine if assignment of the edit filter tools are safe. I do not believe that changing this process would yield any benefit, and any attempt to make the policy anything more than that would result in an RFA-style assessment which would leave us to "why not just do an RFA?" --Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 01:19, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
  • There's two primary sides to this: For one, you are absolutely correct in saying that many of the admins that added the abusefilter right are not really fit to be creating, adjusting, or otherwise presenting themselves as someone capable of understanding complex regex and the theory behind edit filters. On the other hand, they're all admins. We've entrusted them with the most powerful of tools. They can edit the MediaWiki namespace, which is visible to all users and arguably could cause just as much damage as a filter blocking nearly all edits that come through. But my last point is there's no reason for admins to assign themselves the abusefilter user group, they can already see private filters and the only reason they'd need the user group is if they wish to edit them. So I guess it boils down to whether there's been actual disruption caused by newbie admins trying to do something they're not truly fit to be doing. I cannot off the top of my head present any evidence of this (other than a single recent incident), so perhaps for now it may not be worth adding another layer of bureaucracy with a request for abusefilter user group granted only by 'crats or stewards. — MusikAnimal talk 02:22, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Given the insane WP:BEANS possibilities that the edit filter represents, we should really only grant the right to non-admins who we would basically trust to be admins. And if the larger community understood the potential for the edit filer, requests would receive far more scrutiny than they have in the past. Now its fair that some editors who would be trusted at RFA may prefer not to run, and want EFM, but we should still be as cautious as if it were an RFA. As an anecdote, the last person I opposed for EFM passed an RFA a number of months later and rightfully has EFM now, which is of course, fine having been subject to, and passed the heavy scrutiny of RFA. By default, I think we should suggest going through RFA for EFM, and really only consider granting the right separately if the editor has rejected the notion of becoming an admin. Monty845 14:12, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Yes, there should be a better process. For example, notice that Rich Farmbrough still has this bit even though other permissions were stripped from him after objections to his history of controversial actions using automated tools. I don't know what, if anything, he has done using this but it seems anomalous that this should have been retained when his use of automated tools was heavily restricted in other ways. Andrew D. (talk) 12:33, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
    • You can see what I have done on public filters. The private filters I cannot discuss much. There was a discussion at AN/I about the Edit Filter bit, and I ended up keeping it. The only bit I ended up loosing was the Admin bit. I have since been given the Template Editor bit too. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:56, 3 July 2015 (UTC).
  • Several administrators (myself included, as not just an admin but an oversighter and checkuser) have filter editor permission so that we can see the non-public information gathered by certain filters. Without the filter editor permission, we can't see that data, nor can we take action in relation to it. While I agree that there is potential for inappropriate use of this specific permission, there is also potential for misuse or incorrect use of just about every other tool in the admin toolkit (e.g., ability to edit the MediaWiki interface); inappropriate use should be dealt with accordingly, ranging from revert and advise to request for desysop, depending on the severity and frequency of the problem. Risker (talk) 14:41, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
    • What do you think about splitting the user right to viewing and modifying? Another user suggested this, with the viewing right possibly being given to rollbackers. I'm not sure what I think of the idea, just trying to generate discussion. Sam Walton (talk) 14:44, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
      • I suspect it's an okay idea for someone who just needs to look, but not okay for non-admins. Given that it is possible to block attempts at editing with filters, the logs are the equivalent of "deleted content"; in fact, there isn't really a proper "revision deletion" for these logs (in part because as hidden logs they're supposedly only available to admins, like any other deleted content). It's been a while, but the last time I was suppressing in the edit filter logs, it was a real PITA because it works differently and is more complex than "ordinary" suppression. I'm not 100% sure, but I think the edit filter manager right is required in order to do the suppressions, as well. Risker (talk) 15:00, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
      • There isn't much point splitting the rights further. (Some of) the private filters need to remain private, if you trust someone to see how they work, you trust them to not edit them if they don't know what they are doing. I can see some people might want to be protected from accidentally editing an edit filter, but it really isn't something you can easily do by mistake, and it is easily revertible. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:01, 3 July 2015 (UTC).
  • I tend to think that perhaps this is something 'crats can do (we all know they need the work), making them give it to admins and normal editors, with the idea that it's not a given for admins to get it either. Kharkiv07 (T) 01:05, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Hiding filters

In some cases it may be sensible to hide a filter from public view. This is useful for long term vandals who may otherwise work out how to avoid the filter, but is generally not used unless deemed necessary. Should there be a policy regarding when a filter should be hidden from public view? If so, what should be the condition for hiding a filter, and how would that be enforced? Sam Walton (talk) 00:41, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

  • I can't imagine a scenario where you would want the filter and logs hidden completely from view unless it's for long-term abuse. We can't really say for sure, but I'm willing to bet some of these people are both fully aware when they are triggering the edit filter (e.g. not disallowed or warned) and know how to respond to it. For this reason alone I'd say the ability to hide the logs from public view could be a good thing, but beyond that I've also seen how non-admin/non-editfilterer patrollers see the filter log and may get confused by the ambiguity and intentionally vague names of the private filters. As for policy, I'd say so long as it's helpful to patrollers to see the logs it shouldn't be hidden – and this is almost always the case, I think. One could argue that a deceitful edit filter admin could deliberately create a fully hidden filter for abusive purposes, but we've entrusted them with the right to begin with so we should not worry. — MusikAnimal talk 02:35, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
  • I've always had an issue with that, there have been many times when, while patrolling something or another I've come across a need to view the hits for a private filter. In all honesty I can't think of a specific example off the top of my head, but I've picked a few just scrolling that I don't understand why they're private:
I can come up with a ton more, I just pulled a handful. Kharkiv07 (T) 03:37, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Filter 34 - often relates to a user with a new username or trying to "vanish" and blanking the userpage of an account involving their RL name. There is frequently an element of off-wiki harassment involved.
  • Filter 364 - frequently involves significant BLP violations that may well get revision-deleted or even suppressed; a public log would also need to be revdeleted/suppressed as applicable.
  • Filter 483, 517, 575 - I have no idea.
  • Filter 559 - not sure why it needs to be non-public, but this information has been used to identify sockpuppetry. Remember that archive.is is on the blacklist, so it won't actually cause an edit, only an attempted edit.
Hope this clarifies a bit. Risker (talk) 14:50, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
Filters that are private and disabled generally concern abuse that has gone away. It is important that we don't leave inappropriate filters running for ever. If you look at the filter home page, you can select "ignore disabled". Notice also that a filter can be used to log the behaviour of many editors, to narrow down the search for abuse, it does not follow that a filter is expected to log even mostly abusive edits. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:13, 3 July 2015 (UTC).
  • I can fully understand hiding a filter so that a vandal can't find a way around it. But I think we need to make edit summaries available to all, the case in point being an edit filter I requested in January. Edit filter 656 - Driver 3 vandal was requested and created at the end of January (I'll give a fuller explanation about the vandal and their edits in the General section below) but the key point for this section is that the vandalism was stopped by the edit filter. The vandalism re-started this week, so I went to the edit filer to see if it's status had changed, it had, the problem is that there was no indication of why it was disabled. I can't even be sure who disabled it, only the last person to edit it is shown. Now, was the last editor the person who disabled the filter? or were they merely tidying up after the person who did disable it? What was the reason for disabling it? I've requested that it be re-enabled, and I'm waiting for a reply. But at the moment I'm effectively in the dark. - X201 (talk) 09:08, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
  • First, I think we are a bit too quick to hide edit filters. We should really only hide them when we are dealing with long term abuse from an editor that has shown themselves to be technically sophisticated, and thus likely to both realize the way edit filters work, and figure out a way around them. For the rest, they should be public, even if that slightly raises the risk of evasion. Given the number of people who report their own clear attempts at disruption to the false positives page (probably not realizing we will see exactly what they tried to do) I don't think the average vandal will figure out how to view and then avoid a filter. Second, we should either reduce the number hidden, or give rollback the view right, as many of the hidden filters are at a level where rollback would be more than sufficient trust to let people see the inner workings, and the more scrutiny the better. Monty845 14:25, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
  • That makes sense, there's no reason why we shouldn't trust people with rollback to view filters—if we don't we have bigger problems. Kharkiv07 (T) 00:28, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
  • We do this with "idiot" vandals -"Your Mom" is a public filter as is "You/He/She/It sucks", "School libel and vandalism", "Poop vandalism". Of the 120 enabled filters 69 are public and 51 private. We could certainly review their status, but so far what I have seen has been at least arguably correct. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:21, 3 July 2015 (UTC).

Filter checks

When a user creates a new edit filter, should there be checks from other editors at any stage of the process? For example, should a new filter be checked over before it goes into log only mode, or perhaps only before it's switched to disallow edits? Or do we trust that edit filter managers know what they're doing and shouldn't require checks? Sam Walton (talk) 00:41, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

  • EVERY filter should be checked in log only mode. There is no excuse for this. I've made emergency filters (as in, when the Wikipedia is under active attack by a large botnet) and even then I would check it in log only mode. Doing anything else is equivalent to checking in software changes and deploying them to a live server before you even bother to test it. Any sane software developer will tell you this is ridiculous. And it doesn't matter whether or not we trust edit filter managers (I would hope we do) - everyone makes mistakes. Everyone. (Preferably there would be a review process, too, but sometimes this is simply not possible due to the urgency of some filters and the proportional lack of filter managers, but at a minimum you should be testing your own software.) --Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 01:23, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
  • I think a review process may be too much, and also build up a difficult to tackle backlog. If we trust the user to edit filters in the first place we should trust that they'll test them before enabling any action. It's the honour system, if you will. — MusikAnimal talk 02:39, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

General discussion

Bad cases make for bad law. Other than Kww's bad filter (as determined by consensus yesterday), how many other cases of problematic hidden filters have their been? I don't mean botched filters, we've had a few of those, but hidden ones that went for days/weeks/months that did something bad or simply skirted policy? Before we "fix" this problem, is it really a problem, and how big is it really? I hate adding bureaucracy if it is a problem that happens less than once a year, for instance. Could we just sweep the hidden filters once a month instead of preapproving them? Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:48, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
This doesn't have to be a case of only adding policies designed to keep bad stuff from happening, in fact one of the side effects that I would be interested in is that tightening up the way in which the user right is assigned might allow more non-admins to help. Presently it seems as though there's the assumption of admins being competent at this and non-admins having to be outstanding in order to have the possibility of contributing. Maybe that's the way it should be, I can think of some arguments for it, but equally I can think of some arguments against, and I'm all for more editors being involved with edit filters. Sam Walton (talk) 00:54, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
As I wrote on ANI, this is a systemic problem. A huge proportion of recent filter changes have been by some definition "bad", but nobody seems to care (I have brought this up several times in the past few years). We have moved from tagging highly suspect edits to tagging unusual things, even when only 1% of those tags are actually problematic edits. That is the equivalent of assuming bad faith at the automated level. --Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 01:12, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
The filters are now "Edit filters" not "Abuse filters". Tagging should not be seen as a badge of shame. Note also that only about 48 or 120 filters tag, and some of them are very rarely hit. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:31, 3 July 2015 (UTC).
I would frame the issue differently. Right now, we have essentially no written guidelines about how filters should used, what they should be used for, what standards of accuracy should be expected, when to use the private setting / warnings / disallow / tags / etc. As a result, each edit filter manager essentially decides for themselves what they think is appropriate, and only in rare cases do conflicting interpretations actually get discussed. Equally bad, with no written guidelines, it makes it harder for other people to get involved in editing filters because they have no easy way to learn what is expected. For example, my personal opinion is that it is a waste of resources to have filters that target single articles, or that trip less often than a few times per week. I also think if a filter is going to issue a warning it needs to be pretty accurate (e.g. no more than 1 false warning per 20 real ones), and if it is going to disallow the edit it should be even more accurate (e.g. no more than 1 false disallow per 100 actually bad edits). Similarly, filters that target clear vandalism probably need to react differently than ones that aim to catch inadvertent bad edits (e.g. newbie errors). Right now most filters get little discussion at all, and those few that do get discussed need a new consensus for everything because we have no institutional memory to speak of. It would be good to frame a set of guidelines about how filters should be used so that we are all working from the same basic set of understandings. Dragons flight (talk) 01:38, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
I 100% agree with constructing some sort of guideline. There's simple base cases, such as vandalism trends (certain phrases, etc) that need no discussion, just a good edit filter manager to make sure it's working properly. Beyond that for SPIs and other complex scenarios perhaps there should be some guideline – even if not enforced. I still believe in the "honour system" as the power to edit filters is given only with utmost trust, inline with adminship. So we should assume good faith that the filters are well tested and intentioned, bound by a general guideline. Things like "good-faith filters should never disallow" and "no more than 1 false positive per 20 hits" is fairly straightforward and should expected from a regular edit filter manager, but it would be good to have it in writing, if not just for reference, and less so for enforcement. — MusikAnimal talk 02:51, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
As far as institutional memory goes, a significant problem is that much of it is on the filters' notes fields, because of privacy issues. I would think it is fairly easy to create some documentation pages but we don't want discussions of particular regexes that then need to be redacted. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:31, 3 July 2015 (UTC).
Dennis Brown@ I believe both I and User:Dragons Flight have been through most if not all of the enabled edit filters over the last few months. There was one edit filter that I considered abusive, interestingly this raised the question with whom could I raise the issue,since even the existence of the filter was secret? However I had reasons of my own to believe that no harm was coming of this filter, so I decided to stay quiet. Clearly a more vigilant approach is not a bad thing, but it would be useful to think about the general issues of whistle-blowing vs. confidentiality. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:46, 3 July 2015 (UTC).

I see filters as the surgical arm of Page Protection, so perhaps that may be a process to look at, as an example take edit filter 656. The Driver 3 article has suffered from repetitive vandalism by a single editor, the vandalism started in October 2014. The user would add links and text referring to a specific Disney franchise (Liv and Maddie), there is no link whatsoever between Driver 3 and Liv and Maddie, this is just pure repetitive vandalism. I requested an edit filter in January 2015 and it duly stopped the vandalism (The preceding 3 months had seen 88% of the article edits being vandalism by this one editor).

I saw the edit filter as the only sensible and fair way around the problem. An IP block wasn't an option as the vandal changed IP addresses. range block wasn't an option as thousands of innocent users could have been hit. Semi-Protection would have blocked genuine IP editors. Full protection would have been overkill, and probably not granted. But a single, specific filter that blocked this one repetitive vandal has resulted in no vandalism and the article being available for everyone else to edit.

The problem now, as detailed in the "Hiding" section above, is that someone has disabled the filter and the vandalism has re-started. I don't know who or why the filter was disabled, but I have a pending request for it to be re-enabled. At least with Page protection we're able to see the reasoning for protection removal and can be sure which admin was responsible for it, at the moment we're not able to see that with edit filters. - X201 (talk) 09:10, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

I've updated the Wikipedia:Edit filter to hopefully better reflect community consensus on these issues. If anything there doesn't seem right to you or could be explained more clearly, please do post on the talk page or change it yourself. Sam Walton (talk) 19:46, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kww and The Rambling Man/Workshop#Comments about timelines may be of interest. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:17, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia GUI overhaul

Introduction

Hello! My name is Coderenius[1], and here is my proposal.

Problem

In my opinion, the current Wikipedia skin is becoming increasingly outdated, and I believe humble efforts should be taken to create a more modern looking default skin. The current vector skin is fine, but I would prefer a skin that agrees graphically with some of the beta gadgets we have right now, such as VisualEditor[2] and Hovercards. Tools like Wikiwand do a good job at this, but it's missing a lot of functionality and didn't seem to be able to co-exist with the current Wikipedia workflow that I've grown accustomed to. If anyone is proficient with CSS coding and web design, perhaps a new skin could be designed with these beta features in mind.

Proposal

As most major websites are moving to more streamlined interfaces, we here at Wikipedia have been using the same since around early 2010, if I'm not mistaken. And yet, currently, we are the 7th largest website in the world![3] We are above Yandex, Blogspot, and even Twitter. I am not a hipster or trying to get on a bandwagon, if you were beginning to feel that way about my statements, I assure you. I have not been a registered user for a very long time here. Actually, I am an extremely new user. However, I have been loyal to Wikipedia as a reliable source of information since I was a child (I am not too old right now, if you ask how), and have been reading articles and gaining a sublime knowledge of culture and knowledge for many, many years. And now, as I present my idea here amongst my fellow contributors, I am quite pleased at where I have come now. That's enough about me, now.

Concept

Even though the current Vector skin is certainly not intrinsically flawed, I would prefer an interface that is minimalistic, smooth, and yet still retains all the functionality of our current Wikipedia, with anti-aliased, bigger, and slightly lighter text with perhaps some different fonts. The borders around articles should be removed, and the gradients the tabs in the top nav have should be redesigned as well, as some of these features are distracting. Overall, I really liked the way the Hovercards and VisualEditor were designed, but I would prefer an original motif, preferably without frameworks such as Bootstrap. If any one is up for the challenge, or knows someone such as an admin who you think is up for the challenge, please let them know as well.

Conclusions

Overall, I know this is not a high priority issue, but if you agree that this is something that should be implemented, or if you believe this idea should be brought up on the proposals page, please reply and let me know. I would love to hear from the community, as of right now I have heard very little from any other user, and my experience has been quite isolated. Thank you for your time, and by all means, suggest more ideas and critique my own.

Notes and references

  1. ^ If you can, please visit my user page to find out more about me, and then leave a message on my talk page if you have any ideas or thoughts on the subject, or if you just want to collaborate with me.
  2. ^ I also believe that in the top nav, instead of having VisualEditor labelled as edit, it should be labeled as something else, like VisualEditor or EditBETA to distinguish it from the normal source edit, which should remain as simply Edit.
  3. ^ "Alexa Top 500 Global Sites". Alexa.

Gallery

Notifications as one inspiration
Hovercards as another inspiration

Discussion

What problems with editing or reading the encylopedia do you see this update solving? Sam Walton (talk) 19:25, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

That's a great question, Sam. I did state in my concept that there is nothing intrinsically flawed with the current skin (not flawed by nature), but this is merely a suggestion, an idea; I don't want it to be a concrete proposal yet at this point. I merely thought it would help and be more welcomed by regular readers. If I go over to the Chrome Web Store, I can see that 129,024 users are all using Wikiwand, and 1,541 users are using Readable Wikipedia, so obviously these people find something wrong with the readability of the current interface, or don't like it. And these 130,565 users account for just these 2 extensions in just Chrome! So I hope this helps strengthen my case, and if you still don't find this to be any problem (or have grown accustomed to the same Wikipedia for many, many years anyway), that's perfectly fine! P.S: Also, thanks for stopping by, I've never met an admin before. It would mean the world to me if you could stop by my user page and leave a message on my talk page, I have a few contributions in mind that might need an admin's help :) Coderenius (talk) 22:53, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
Do you know about winter? --Sitic (talk) 19:47, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
I did not, actually, thank you. I do like Winter now that I've taken it for a spin, but as of right now it is a prototype, and it hasn't been updated since roughly last year. Perhaps I should ask someone working on it about its status? :) Coderenius (talk) 22:53, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
Or about the design work in general? --Izno (talk) 20:01, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
Yes, thanks for bringing that up, I have taken a look at that and I do like the Agora/Mediawiki.ui styles mentioned, but I noticed that there haven't been any status updates since January 2014, and no drastic changes to design have been made still. If you know anything more on the matter, by all means, please let me know. Thank you! Coderenius (talk) 22:53, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
The focus of the WMF's design work has seemed to have shifted over to mobile: both the mobile website and mobile apps. This is because when they touch anything on desktop, Wikipedians howl like banshees about it, but on mobile, the pesky Wikipedians aren't there to get into a strop. The difference is like night and day: on mobile, there is well-set typography, modern layouts, responsive design—and on desktop, even on Vector, the look is pretty stale and old fashioned.
I'll note that the Wikipedians screaming like banshees aren't unjustified in doing so: the desktop version has a bunch of things that editors need and breaking those things makes it a lot harder for us to contribute to or administer the site. Being the fifth most popular site on the planet means a certain level of conservatism about changing things. And irritating a bunch of people who pour hundreds of hours into running that site is a wise plan. (A fair amount of it is old fashioned grumpiness though.) —Tom Morris (talk) 01:35, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
Yeah, the mobile site looks nice and slick. If you want to use it, rather than just look at it, it's an embarrassing piece of crap. My favorite 'did anybody actually think about this?' misfeature is the fact that the boxed "m" for a minor edit takes up its own extra line. So edits marked minor get more screen real estate and are more visually prominent. Meanwhile it's impossible to find links to an article's history or a user's contributions list. "Gather" is easy to find though! This is all especially galling because you can't throw a rock in San Francisco without hitting a competent mobile developer. Opabinia regalis (talk) 04:26, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Is anyone in for taking a poll of any kind? Just a suggestion, I want to see what everyone thinks on the matter. Coderenius (talk) 22:53, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

  • Part of the justification for switching the default from Monobook to Vector was that Vector was a cleaner design, optimised for readers rather than editors; At the time that sort of made sense, our aim is to make information available to all, the size of our editing community wasn't then a concern and active editors could always upgrade to Monobook. The situation now is more complex, raw edit count and raw page views are both on the decline, though in both cases there is uncertainty as to what you'd need to adjust for to get a true comparison. Some people have become active editors despite being Vector users, but we have been far less successful at converting casual editors into active ones during the Vector era, and there are very few admins who started editing after Vector became the default for new users in 2010. If we must come up with an even cleaner more reader friendly skin then I would suggest using it for IPs and defaulting all logged in editors onto a skin designed for editors. ϢereSpielChequers 05:53, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
  • The switch from Monobook to Vector seems an improbable cause for the decline in administrators. There are plenty of administrators who haven't "upgraded" to Monobook, myself included. The idea that Vector usage is the cause of the decline in edit count, new editors and adminiship promotions seems pretty unlikely compared to (pick as per preference) an often unwelcoming or abrasive community, incivility, high-speed CSD tagging, the reticence of experienced users to subject themselves to an RfA, or the general feeling that Wikipedia has gone from growth mode to long-term tidying up and maintenance mode etc. —Tom Morris (talk) 01:35, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
  • I left during the monobook era and returned in the vector era. In retrospect, monobook is hideous. It's all what you're used to, I suppose, but I don't see how that much visual clutter can be "better for editors". Opabinia regalis (talk) 04:26, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
  • There clearly are exceptions who like Vector, and I would agree that there are several other contributory factors to our problems at RFA. But the link between a less cluttered more reader friendly skin and fewer people using the hidden features is not just theoretical. We have very few admins who started editing in the vector era, some from the monobook era may well be vector users, but if we just look at the default the figures are stark, and while RFA can be tough on former admins, we'll qualified candidates from 2010-2013 can still sail through, we just don't get many such people. ϢereSpielChequers 15:26, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
I would buy this with some data along the lines of "editors who registered post-vector and changed to monobook are more likely to have had a successful RfA than editors from the same time period who changed other user preferences but kept the vector skin". Otherwise... I think it's more likely that even vector looks increasingly clunky and dated, and the more out of sync Wikipedia gets with common UI behaviors on the rest of the web, the less likely new editors are to adapt effectively to the local interface. The entire rest of the internet has figured out how threaded comments work and we're still on "type this many colons and that many tildes and if you get an edit conflict just copy and paste what you wrote into a different window that gives no indication of where you left off". We insist that every damn sentence end in a footnote but to cite your sources just use this handy unparseable 500-character glob of wikisnot. Changing the skin doesn't fix that and it's obvious that if Flow and VE ever become the standard editing workflow there will be screaming like it's the End of Days. Opabinia regalis (talk) 01:42, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Tagging talk-page researcher resources

I’m writing a book on vintage port. That brings me across references to people and places that might not otherwise be known, which are nonetheless unworthy of comment in the articles. See, as examples as good as any other, H. H. Asquith, Stephen Gaselee, John Vaughan, and Cyfarthfa Castle. It seems to me that these talk comments should be tagged with something identifying their nature (not about article, about subject of article, of interest to those trying to enlarge current state of knowledge, not to be archived). What should I do? What should I have done? JDAWiseman (talk) 23:17, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

‘Allow discussion about the topic of the article’ is, apparently, a perennial proposal. But this semi-proposal isn’t quite that, even if it seems to come close. I’m providing a pointer to a source that might of interest to a deep researcher, and a source that is otherwise very unlikely to be found. A future biographer of H. H. Asquith might welcome the link to a wine merchant’s order book: he was buying Champagne to assist in wooing. Those purchases would just not be found by a biographer, without infeasible luck or a way for me to cross-link. However, I’m not ‘discussing’ the merits or demerits of H. H. Asquith as man or wooer or drinker. Just providing a pointer that might be of use, and is unlikely to be found otherwise. JDAWiseman (talk) 21:52, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
  • User:JDAWiseman I think your posts on the talk page are appropriate and in the right place. Would this possibly be appropriate to add to Wikisource? Also, some of these might be more article-worth than you think. Have another look at the Vaughn talk page, where another editor thinks it is worth mention. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 05:33, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
User:Oiyarbepsy: thank you. I’d like to tag them so that they aren’t archived — is there (or should there be) a robust means of doing that?
Re the John Vaughan page: you (and the other editor) might well be correct. But as I know nothing of John Vaughan other than the existence of the wine auction, I’m uncomfortable doing that myself.
And I will investigate Wikisource. JDAWiseman (talk) 11:20, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
  • I wouldn't worry about archiving - it doesn't look like any of these article talk pages are all that busy. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 17:13, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
Indeed, many relate to minor players—making the extra reference all that more useful. But some relate to players of more significance (e.g., H. H. Asquith and Earl Haig). And the system should cope properly with a minimum of maintenance. Hence the question about tags. JDAWiseman (talk) 17:28, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Watchlist: Quick toggle option to expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent

Would it be possible to have a link to toggle the watchlist between showing only the most recent changes (current default) vs. showing all changes (can be done, but buried in the preferences)? I'm thinking it could be a link on the watchlist itself, alongside "Hide minor edits | Hide bots | Hide unregistered users..." etc.

Currently it is possible to "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" but only in a buried preference. By default it is off, but I much prefer it on; nevertheless, sometimes the occasional edit spree means that my watchlist gets very long because of one or two articles, and turning it off briefly could help highlight edits I'm most interested in. At that time, it would be useful to quickly toggle to only the most recent edits.

In my dream world, the default for this setting would be "on", since I have seen several occasions where new, well-meaning folks revert only the most recent edit in a string of vandalism, since it is very easy to miss the effects of a series of edits with only the most recent showing. Having a quick toggle (with persistent default view via preferences) could make it easy to manage the impacts that "show all edits" would have for folks who have huge watchlists, or watch ever-changing articles.

At the very least this would be much more useful for some (IMO) than the option to show/hide wikidata. Any thoughts? Antepenultimate (talk) 03:02, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

I am a “new, well-meaning” editor, who, on reading this, wonders whether my rare reverts of vandalism were sufficient. Not many, and I hope sufficient. So it seems sensible for this to be on by default But don’t hide minor edits, as that would encourage vandals to describe edits as minor. JDAWiseman (talk) 15:15, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Do we still need administrator ?

Dear wikipedian,

I'm tossing with the idea of not having any administrator anymore.

I'm on wikipedia since 2004 and I've witnessed a lot of change in Wikipedias (and MediaWiki the fabulous software behind it).

One important change since that, is that Administrator (formerly know as sysop for system operator), had very difficult and important task to make at that time that requires special skills.

In the meantime, MediaWiki impoved so much that a lot of the task can basically be made by any regular contributor to Wikipedia.

Furthermore, MediaWiki is now bulletproof in the sens that almost all the operations can be reverted without too much harm and hence allow more flexibility to do those operations.

So here is my proposal, isn't it the time for Wikipedia to allow all the regular contributors to do those operations. Xmlizer (talk) 14:24, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Please note this account (who used to be sysop on WP:fr 10 years ago) has been blocked (3 days then 1 week) for POINT. He was just unsatisfied of the deletion of this article and tried any manner to criticize the decision. — S t a r u s – ¡Dímelo! – 14:39, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks to show up here Starus, perhaps you should explain that I've been blocked, because I started a debate on this question ? Xmlizer (talk) 14:42, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
cf. A proposal to reform the power structure of Wikipedia, which didn't go anywhere. --Unready (talk) 19:15, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the pointer ! Very good start, so it could be improved !Xmlizer (talk) 22:19, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
cf. Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Adminship. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 19:30, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. Looks like it's the air Xmlizer (talk)
As long as vandals need to be blocked, attack pages need to be deleted and consensus needs to be determined we will need people to do that. You could run a wiki without some of those elements, but I'm not convinced that you could create an encyclopaedia. ϢereSpielChequers 05:34, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
OK for vandals. But the very definition of vandals is changing! Now some people that could contribute are banned, does it make sense ? Attack pages are already monitored by the community and can be put to speed deletion. And the more difficult looks like the consensus, so let's try to solve that one Xmlizer (talk) 11:30, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
Speedy deletion like all deletion processes relies on admins to actually delete pages. As for the definition of vandals, I'm not aware that has changed. Yes we have some people who have been banned from the project, but again that isn't new, nor is it new that some banned people eventually get unbanned. ϢereSpielChequers 11:35, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
The ability to view revdel'd edits is also something WMF legal doesn't want everyone to have. --Unready (talk) 22:47, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

How do I recruit Hmong Dawb (White Hmong) speakers for the Hmong Dawb Wikipedia and for doing Hmong Dawb translations?

I'm looking for Hmong Dawb speakers to do editing on the Hmong Dawb Wikipedia (still in the incubator) and also for doing some translations on the Commons. I would like for the Hmong Dawb Wikipedia to go in the mainspace and there needs to be an editing community for that to happen.

I'm asking here because the potential users are likely editing the English Wikipedia: Many Hmong Dawb speakers originated from Laos but now live in the United States. Large numbers reside in the California Central Valley region (Fresno, Merced, Sacramento, etc.), the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area, and parts of Wisconsin, with smaller numbers in the Detroit area and in North Carolina. I hope that the speakers may start articles in Hmong related to those parts of the U.S., so more Hmong speakers may read the articles and join the Hmong Wikipedia.

I have previously e-mailed Hmong student' associations and Hmong mutual aid associations in the US under my Wikipedia name (I did not use my real name in corresponding with them), but I hadn't made much headway. Does anybody have any suggestions on what I could do? WhisperToMe (talk) 13:02, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

User:WhisperToMe, try posting at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Laos Oiyarbepsy (talk) 03:51, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for the suggestion! I'll make a post there! WhisperToMe (talk) 04:16, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

CSD A7 as written is widely misapplied: Why this is and ideas to fix it

I have observed that the CSD A7 criterion is frequently (even usually) applied in a way that is inconsistent with the CSD A7 policy page and supplementary essay WP:Credible claim of significance as they are currently written. In particular, articles that I do not find to be covered under A7 are routinely tagged and speedied as A7. To prevent the confusion and unintentional biting that may arise from this situation, I suggest that the statement and application of A7 be brought into accordance. This can happen either by changing the statement of A7 to match its application or by changing the application of A7 to match its statement, or a bit of both. Below I explain how the present application of A7 is inconsistent with the policy as it is currently written and propose solutions to this problem.

The disconnect between the statement and application of A7 derives from differing interpretations of the phrase "credible claim of significance". A7 revolves around this phrase because anything that does not make such a claim can be speedied under A7. I will argue that "credible claim of significance" can be read either as "verifiable claim of notability" or "plausible claim to belong to a category of which the members are often notable", and that while articles are very frequently deleted under the former interpretation, WP:A7 and WP:Credible claim of significance actually indicate the latter interpretation.

The differences between the two interpretations hinge on two central points:

  • Meaning of credible: My dictionary tells me that credible means able to be believed. For something to be able to be believed by a rational person, it needs to be plausible and supported be evidence. My reading of the current statement of A7, however, indicates that supporting evidence (i.e. WP:SOURCES) does not factor into A7's "credible claim of significance". In particular, WP:A7 notes that A7 is "distinct from verifiability and reliability of sources" and does not apply "even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source". WP:Credible claim of significance is even more explicit, stating: "A claim of significance need not be supported by any cited sources, much less by inline citations to reliable sources."
    Since the two components of credibility are plausibility and supporting evidence, and A7 clearly rejects the need for evidence, it seems that the word credible in A7 is used esoterically as a synonym for plausible.
  • Meaning of significance: Confusingly, the terms significance, importance, and in one instance notability appear to be used interchangeably throughout WP:A7. I will discuss the term significance, since the terms appear to be interchangeable and significance is discussed at length in WP:Credible claim of significance. Unlike credible, there is no common meaning of significant-- the word's meaning is entirely determined by context. On Wikipedia, a certain kind of significance, WP:Notability, is rigorously (if arcanely) defined by WP:GNG and the subject notability guidelines. However, WP:A7 explicitly states that its significance is different from WP:Notability: "It is irrelevant whether the claim of notability [read: significance!] within the article is not sufficient for the notability guidelines." WP:Credible claim of significance discusses significance in depth through six bullet points. Points 1 and 4 deal with verifiability, already discussed above. Points 2 and 3 reflect A7 in asserting that significance is not the same as WP:Notability. Points 5 and 6 say, in effect, that if a claim constitutes a claim to notability (excepting sourcing requirements), then it also constitutes a claim to significance. None of this is very helpful for defining what significance actually is. WP:A7 states very vaguely that significance is "a lower standard than notability", but the relationship between the two is otherwise undefined.
    The only clue about the precise relationship of significance to notability I could find is in WP:Credible claim of significance, when an example claim to significance is dismissed because "that kind of thing is not likely to lead to notability". By inverting this, we can define significance relative to notability as "the kind of thing likely to lead to notability", or more precisely, "belonging to a category of which the members are often notable".

To sum up, my reading of current policy "credible claim of significance" gives the interpretation "plausible claim to belong to a category of which the members are often notable". However, I have observed that A7 is often applied according to a different interpretation (which would be equally valid if there were no additional material explaining what the phrase means): "verifiable claim of notability". For example, I have recently seen articles for film directors and television broadcasters deleted. I have doubts about whether those articles would have survived an AfD, but the claims to significance (i.e. being a film director or television broadcaster) were certainly plausible and, in my opinion, film directors and television broadcasters are often notable.

There are two possible solutions to this problem:

  1. Amend the language of WP:A7 and WP:Credible claim of significance to read "verifiable claim of notability" and adjust the explanation accordingly, reflecting what appears to be current CSD practice, or
  2. Amend the language of WP:A7 and WP:Credible claim of significance to read "plausible claim of significance", leave the explanations as they are, add to WP:A7 the clarification that a "claim to significance" is a "claim to belong to a category of which members are often notable", and enforce this interpretation of "credible claim of significance" on the CSD process.

In addition to these solutions, we can also mix-and-match on the two central points, changing practice for one and not the other.

Many thanks for reading all this! I would certainly appreciate any and all opinions and feedback. A2soup (talk) 15:05, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

WP:TROUTs for the admins deleting per the "former interpretation" as in your first paragraph. --Izno (talk) 15:57, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Thanks for raising this. To me the actual instructions for A7 are already sufficiently clear, especially the words "and is a lower standard than notability", yet there are many articles tagged for deletion because in the view of the tagger they would probably be deleted at AFD. I wouldn't however be as hardline as to say that all film directors and television broadcasters should be immune from A7. Phrases such as "and is working on his first film" do bring some such people into A7 territory. Where I disagree is about the solution, amending the language of the policy doesn't solve the problem of people tagging articles for speedy deletion who obviously haven't read the policy. My suggestion instead is that we could always do with more eyes at CAT:SPEEDY, the sooner taggers get their tag removed and an explanation as to why you thought their tag wrong the quicker we can correct their tagging. ϢereSpielChequers 16:34, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
  • I think the sematics are adquate as they stand. Admins already understand what our CSD criteria mean although some of our NPPers don't, but that's an intellectial issue and not one of the wording of our guidelines. We need to be looking at ways to educate our patrolers, insisting that they read WP:NPP and WP:DELETION or preventing them from patrolling until they have more experience. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:33, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
  • If (picking the strongest claims to significance in two of the articles you list here) you really think being a fifteen-year-old soccer player or earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts is enough to disqualify an article from A7 speedy deletion, I don't know what else to say. If you expect administrators to take each substub with claims this flimsy and research and rewrite them, we'd need at least on the order of ten times the size of our current active administrator corps, and that seems unlikely. There wasn't any reason to think such searches for these subjects would be fruitful, and I wouldn't have hesitated in deleting them if I saw them. There's nothing stopping you from making new articles that make actual claims of significance. —Cryptic 20:40, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
With respect, this sort of attitude is exactly why I made this proposal. It is completely possible to broaden the applicability of A7 (see proposal 1 above), but it's not okay to leave it as-is while blatantly disregarding it. I can see from Google caches that all of the articles I listed at the talk page you linked made clear claims of significance based on the way WP:A7 is currently written, as I discussed at length above. If, for you, an "actual claim of significance" is a "verifiable claim of notability", and it seems to me that it is, then there is no reason to not simply update the policy to reflect that. If the current policy is incompatible with the size of the administrator corps, we can update the policy as described in proposal 1 above to deal with that situation. But operating outside the policy, which is what you advocate, is operating outside consensus, and in an area of Wikipedia where strict adherence to consensus is very important. A2soup (talk) 21:14, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
"{{speedy deletion-significance}} [Name omitted] (born [date omitted], 1990) is an American soccer player with Guamanian heritage." Which combination of being 15, American, a soccer player, and of Guamanian heritage is "a category of which the members are often notable"? Or is the Google cache saying something that Special:Undelete does not? —Cryptic 21:42, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
I'm with Cryptic for this particular example, but I'm also with A2soup regarding the criterion being misinterpreted, perhaps not by admins but certainly by NPPers. A claim of significance is a claim that a subject is somehow noteworthy (not necessarily "notable" by our definition) or unique in some way that makes the subject worthy of being the topic of an encyclopedic article. As Cryptic correctly observes, that particular section did not make such a claim, only that the subject is a young soccer player, with no attempt to explain why that is significant. Importance is a good synonym for this: why is it important that this person is recorded in an encyclopedia? I suppose that comes down to the credibility argument as well: is it credible (plausible, believable) that we would write an article about such a person? It's not. More below in a moment. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 21:59, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
I concede that the footballer, out of the five deleted articles, was likely an appropriate speedy, but the other four certainly were not. In fact, I think they all have a fighting chance at AfD. A2soup (talk) 05:12, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
  • As for interpretation of the criterion generally, I agree that many things get tagged for A7 which pass that low bar, because some NPPers have misinterpreted "credible claim of significance" as meaning a subject which passes WP:N and WP:V, and that is incorrect. It's not meant to be that strict a rule, that's what we have WP:AFD for, and many subjects which make a credible claim with no references are quite often found to be verifiable. If strengthening the language of the criterion makes for less new articles incorrectly tagged, then we should do it. I'm not sure that's the right approach though, as we would be making just minor tweaks to wording which would no doubt still be misinterpreted by some. A better approach, if admins or even other NPPers are willing, may be when untagging articles that pass the test, to let the editor who placed the tag know why it was removed, and explain what part of the article was a credible claim of significance and why a reference is not required for "credibility" in this context. Or, that the proper response if a claim is unverified is either to tag with {{cn}} or else look for a reference yourself. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 22:06, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Looking at the deleted items I would only say that the broadcaster looked as if there was any suggestion of significance. The G1 listed there also should not have been speedy deleted, but it required so much work, that it was likely better to start from scratch. But that is out of scope of this discussion. Also some A7 candidates are tagged too fast such as the Washington center for equitable growth, but deletion only followed an hour later. Perhaps there could be an automated mechanism to knock back too soon A7 nominations (ie done within 30 minutes of creation) ut I don't think we can automate checking for claims of significance. The NPP tools are so simple to use that users may not educate themselves on the criteria first. But we should expect that admins will check. One idea is an audit of deletions to see if there are systematic problems with admins. Another is to look at complaints, but people complain anyway. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:50, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
Disagree that only the broadcaster had a suggestion of significance, rather I think perhaps only the broadcaster had a claim of notability. Bands, artists, foundations, footballers are often notable, although perhaps the articles should have articulated what makes their particular subject potentially notable? A deeper issue is that I fail to see the actual distinction between a "claim of notability" and a "claim of potential notability (i.e. significance)". They sound different, but I cannot imagine an unambiguous claim of potential notability that is clearly not a claim of notability-- there appears to be no material difference between the two. But that's neither here nor there.
As for auditing deletions, I think it would be effective at curbing overreaching CSDs, but probably at the cost of driving off the admins that handle CSD-- not a price that I think fixing overzealous CSD is worth. I focused on the written policy because I want a clear guideline that page creators can follow to ensure their creations are not speedied and which can be quoted by the creator on the talk page to unambiguously stop overzealous deletion. Alternatively, I am serious about the idea that the policy can be made more permissive to allow the deletions that currently occur (proposal 1 above). For me, the important thing is for newbies to know why their pages were speeded and how to avoid that in the future. That is lacking in the currently confused situation. A2soup (talk) 05:03, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
The broadcaster does not have a credible assertion of significance, because the article is clearly a hoax. Hut 8.5 18:40, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
Actually, whether the claim is true or not (or a hoax) doesn't factor into A7's "credibility" as currently written (from WP:A7: "even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source"). That said, this does seem to be a legit G3. If it had been tagged that way, I wouldn't have had a problem with it, but seeing an article get A7 speedied while containing the statement "he is notable for..." (or something like that; I can't see the article anymore) made an impression on me some days ago. I only looked for sources on him after the page was gone, at which point I found the Californian broadcaster and didn't realize that he was not the one originally described on the page. The summary in the deletion log was A7 standard and mentioned nothing about factual issues. I maintain that A7 was very misapplied in this case, and I think your defense of it speaks to the need to clarify its language (e.g. credible --> plausible). A2soup (talk) 18:57, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
It could have been deleted under G3, yes, but A7 works as well. It's correct to say that an untrue claim can still be credible, but a claim that is clearly untrue is not credible. I don't see any particular difference between "credible" and "plausible" in this context (Wiktionary even defines "credible" as "believable, plausible" and the definition of "plausible" uses "credible".) That an article says "he is notable for..." doesn't necessarily mean it gets past A7, it depends on what is being claimed. Admittedly here we're talking about appearances on national TV but it could be something insignificant. Hut 8.5 21:57, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
Can you temporarily undelete the page or email me the text of the revision at the time of deletion so I can judge how clearly untrue it is? A2soup (talk) 22:50, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
Another admin emailed me the page, which is currently in my sandbox, and there is nothing obviously fabricated about it. In fact, it is so detailed and self-consistent that I have a hard time believing someone would invent it (although Google shows this to apparently be the case). As I stated above and in my original proposal idea, I think that the word credible is causing confusion here because it suggests that evidence for the truth of the claim is relevant, when it is not. I think this confusion stemming from credible may also explain many of the A7 tags I see on articles making clear but unsourced claims of significance. I do feel that, Wiktionary definition notwithstanding, plausible better conveys the point that evidence is irrelevant. A2soup (talk) 01:42, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
It would be more obvious if you could see the edit history. The article started as a copy/paste of the article on Nick Grimshaw, and was tagged for speedy deletion as a duplicate of that article. Afterwards the creator replaced the name of Nick Grimshaw with that of Paul Johnson. Sourcing really has nothing to do with this. Hut 8.5 06:50, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
Ah, thanks, I see now. I was thinking that the whole thing was far too elaborate to be invented from scratch. A2soup (talk) 06:56, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
  • A2soup, your formulation "plausible claim to belong to a category of which the members are often notable" is wrong, and is confusing you. Bands, footballers, artists, politicians are often notable, but very much more often they are not. So "X is an artist" or "Y is a footballer" are not, in my view, credible claims of significance, and I would delete them under A7 unless there was something more to indicate "importance or significance". In all those categories a lot of wannabes think that Wikipedia is the route to fame, and we can really do without requiring an AfD to decide that a 15-year-old schoolboy footballer, or a new unsigned band "working on their first album", do not need an article. JohnCD (talk) 08:41, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Some teenage sports stars are notable, or at least pass the test for plausibly claiming importance or significance. This is the first version of the Theo Walcott article. Today the equivalent would get a BLPprod, but hopefully not an A7 tag. There are some roles which are themselves an assertion of importance sufficient to avoid A7, being a footballer, politician, priest or academic isn't an assertion of importance, but playing for a top flight club, being elected at national level, being an archbishop or professor are. I played sport at school, and was once offered the chance to play against another school, I was also for an hour or so at the tail end of a student party a member of a band (mercifully we never got around to having a rehearsal let alone a gig, but the equivalent today would briefly have a Wikipedia page). We do have problems at speedy deletion, and I would recommend A2Soup getting involved in the WP:Article Rescue Squadron and rescuing articles which do merit inclusion in Wikipedia. ϢereSpielChequers 09:57, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
I think one of the problems at NPP/CSD is that people prefer to stick tags on things rather than fix them themselves. In the Theo Walcott case, you're right that someone probably would stick a BLPPROD tag on that, when in fact the notability claims in that version (youngest ever player to play for Southampton first team) would be easy and quick enough to source (or not, as the case may be.) The old version, Special:NewPages at least lists a few things to bear in mind (no quick A1/A3 tagging etc), whereas Special:NewPagesFeed simply advises: "Please review new pages below and help improve Wikipedia." A bit vague and unhelpful, even if there are links beside it. I'd like to see more of the advice from the old version included at the NewPagesFeed and maybe an invitation to do WP:BEFORE, which would stop some of the issues. Valenciano (talk) 19:04, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Sometimes there can be a mis-click - I changed a tag the other day from db-band to db-bio as the subject was a boxer with no mention of any musical ability (or otherwise), and not much to show as a boxer IMO. I put some blame on the Page Curation db-significance tag for A7 being misapplied to items of software, monuments and other things not included in the criterion. However, there is quite some lack of 'reading the manual' amongst patrollers. When I was patrolling Edits by Recent Accounts (I was never with NPP...), I had a window open with WP:CSD on it. Is that a hard thing to do? No. It can even be done in a tab if you like tabs. A7 does not specifically require evidence, just a claim. However, good evidence in refs turns credible into proven. Context has to be applied - a 15 year old archbishop now is not credible in any Church that is notable, but in mediaeval times was not unknown. A 15 year old footballer is unlikely to be significant (without good evidence), but a 15 year old gymnast or swimmer may very well be as they peak far earlier and are quite likely to be in a national team where a footballer wouldn't be. I think there could be more education done by admins, whether the tagger is established or not. I try to explain why I've declined or retagged. If every admin working CSD did a bit more (and I include myself there), we could train the patrollers better. I would think that the number of articles that are lost to posterity that should be on Wikipedia is quite small. The majority of the stuff junked IS junk. If it looks unfinished but with a future, userfy it. A lot is spam. We're not losing future editors there, or anything of value most of the time. If something looks potentially notable but requires a total rewrite, I tell them so. Peridon (talk) 11:50, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Most of the analysis at the start of the thread is flawed. "Significance" is not equivalent to "belonging to a category of which members are often notable". Any plausible indication that the subject is notable should get an article past A7, and the current wording reflects that by making it clear that A7 is a lower bar than notability. Judging whether an article meets A7 doesn't otherwise involve notability, and for good reason - notability is meant to be evaluated through AfD and PROD, rather than speedy deletion. It is true that the reason we delete articles that don't indicate significance is to get rid of things that are unlikely to be notable, but the process of deciding whether an individual article meets A7 doesn't consist of deciding how likely it is to be notable.
    The proposed revision would substantially change the scope of A7, making it broader in some ways and narrower in others, and I don't think it would help. For instance I have declined to delete articles about athletes in the past in cases where I was pretty certain that the subject didn't meet WP:ATHLETE, because they had participated in some significant competition that wasn't enough to get over the bar of WP:ATHLETE. Under this wording I would not be allowed to do this because the article wouldn't indicate that the subject is likely to be notable. To use another example there are plenty of notable film directors, but asserting that someone is a film director is not an assertion of significance. It could just mean that they directed some film on YouTube. Directing some film which actually got some kind of wide reception or appraisal is an assertion of significance, and I would decline an A7 on someone who has directed notable films, but this proposal might well mean we couldn't delete articles on self-proclaimed film directors under A7. So this proposal would allow speedy deletion of athletes who fall just short of WP:ATHLETE but forbid the speedy deletion of YouTube film directors. I don't think that's an improvement. Hut 8.5 18:40, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
  • NPP is not the ARS. Contrary to what Valenciano suggests, NPPers and deleting admins are not expected to stop and do research to improve the articles they patrol or delete; if they were to do that we would be back to a 30,000 backlog in no time. The onus is on the creators to ensure their articles meet Wikipedia inclusion criteria. The Page Curation system is designed specifically to help them do that, it has a message box, and any patroller seeing potential in an article that would otherwise be a A7 can always move it to draft and tell the creator to improve it. If not, the stale draft will be procedurally deleted sooner or later. As I mentioned above, we need to either better educate the patrollers or install a system that ensures that patrolling is only done by experienced editors. We also need to remind some admins that with a lot of the work at NPP being sub-standard, they should treat every CSD with skepsis and check again before pressing the delete button. In a one-hour patrolling session I always revert several CSDs, move some articles to Draft, leave messages for the creators, and remonstrate with the patrollers. I shouldn't have to be doing this. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:14, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
Yes, it isn't the ARS, but it takes less than 30 seconds for someone to do a quick google and establish that, hey wait a minute, there are sources for this, so I don't need to be slapping a CSD or bitey tag on the article. Yet I frequently come across cases where that has happened. I'm also unclear in many cases how people are supposed to "see potential in articles that would otherwise be A7" unless they actually spend that half minute? In the Theo Walcott case, a quick google turns up this which certainly suggests that the subject deserves more time than Prod/A7. Finding that and adding the ref takes exactly the same amount of time as options such as adding a BLP prod or moving the article to draft space & sternly admonishing people does. In the first case the creator is more likely to stick around and we're less likely to lose useful content, which is the whole point of us being here, not slapping people's wrists for making the type of newbie mistakes that we all made at one time or another. Valenciano (talk) 01:00, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Having now done a more thorough research into the reasons behind the rationale for this proposal, I find it is possibet that the proposer may still be not fully familiar with our systems. For one, there is a possible misunderstanding in the use of a long since deprecated 'Hang-on' tag. Perhaps WP:NPP, WP:CURATION, and WP:DELETION, and an attempt a few thousand patrols might help clarify matters.
For clear guidance that page creators can follow to ensure their creations are not speedied, the recommendation is to create a Draft and submit it through AfC rather than creating articles of dubious notability directly in artice space. While the AfC process itself still leave a lot to be desired, it would avoid immediate deletion. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:43, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

I think that now it seems fairly clear that all of the deletions are going to be endorsed (or at least, not restored), it's time to acknowledge that while this particular suggestion looks like a nonstarter, CSD A7 is still widely misapplied. See for instance Paul Johnson (Broadcaster), which is a valid G3, but if it wasn't G3 wouldn't by any stretch of the imagination be valid as A7. Is there anything that can be done to better educate patrollers and admins active in this space on when and where A7 actually applies? Lankiveil (speak to me) 02:42, 19 July 2015 (UTC).

I still think that changing credible to plausible would be a positive change. I have been watching A7, and I see deletions that I think are made because there are no reliable sources. I would expect this to happen because, as argued above, I think that credible implies evidence. Plausible, which does not imply evidence (to me, at least), seems to be a less confusing synonym in this case.
I see clearly now that my suggestions about significance are misguided. Although I still think that NPPers and even admins misunderstand the meaning of this word (admins, look at the recently A7'd pages Shailendra Pandey, Trey pollard, and Dharma - Kannada Actor, deleted by three different admins), I see that rewriting policy is not the way to fix this misunderstanding. Valenciano noted that Special:NewPagesFeed has no policy guidance links. I think we would benefit from putting a few statements at the top of that feed with bold and links to policy emphasizing the strictness of A7, the exclusive promotion needed for G11, etc. Thoughts? A2soup (talk) 03:40, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Unintended effect of username policy

I've been looking at the way that our username policy and our conflict of interest policy interact, and I'm concerned that there's an unintended and perverse effect of the way the two work together. Consider a typical scenario. A company creates a Wikipedia account named something obvious related to their company, and they start editing their company's article. We tell them "no, no, no," we can't let you have an account that looks like it's shared, and then we tell them to make a new account. Haven't we just given them license to create a non-obvious promotional/shared account? Now, instead of it being clear that there's a conflict, the company editor has an account that just makes them look like a normal editor.

I've noticed now a few occasions where we block a company user, and then another brand new innocuous-sounding user shows up and begins editing only the blocked company's article. We don't want to be accusing such editors of having a conflict, because really, we have no idea. They're not socks because we told them to make a new account. But they're still violating the TOS by not disclosing their paid editing (which we would have known about if we hadn't blocked them the first time around). I understand the good policy sense in requiring everyone to have an individual account, but I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas about how to avoid this perverse effect. Agtx (talk) 13:01, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

There is no problem because usernames are not the only way(or even a correct way) to disclose a COI. We also don't allow company names because they are spammy. Chillum 13:21, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
I don't see much promotional value in a corporation taking on a username, so I think we should follow the dewiki method and allow such account names if they are verified through OTRS. I also worry that these people who happen to start editing because of their job are getting a brusque welcome to the project. Accordingly, they're much less likely to be 'taken in' by the ideals and goals of the project and edit other topics outside of conflicts of interest in their off hours. From an editor retention perspective, I'd prefer if we very rarely blocked people outright just because of a username. –xenotalk 13:43, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
The problem with accounts that are simply company names is that the company assumes they 'own' them, and if the employee who was using the account leaves, the company would want us to make the account available to the next person. We don't do that, and I don't think we want to start doing that. Some people have been encouraged to create accounts with usernames like JonSmith_BigBoxMart which seems like a reasonable alternative. --Versageek 16:26, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
I think Xeno's proposal is not a bad one, but I'm afraid it could cause a nightmare in the implementation. Who at a company is allowed to create the Wikipedia name? How do we figure out who's authorized and who's not (which gets into Versageek's concerns). The problem with the alternative Versageek suggests is that when we indef block people for having a bad company username, we don't prevent new account creation. And when they come back and create a new account, it's often not of the "Joe from Company X" variety. Instead, they come back and create one that's totally unrelated and gives no hint of an affiliation (such that we might know to tell them to disclose their COI the right way). Perhaps one solution could be to block users with company names and prevent account creation until the company user changes their username to something acceptable. Then the block would be lifted. That would get rid of the temptation to create a new user name that gives us no way to know that COI edits are occurring. The way I see it, the biggest problem here is that we've set up a system where our actions incentivize people to hide their conflicts instead of disclosing them prominently. agtx 16:40, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
The quick blocking of obviously promotional usernames has obvious downsides: it encourages the person to create a less-obvious account; and it shows the spammer how easy it is to make multiple accounts. Far better would be to do a quick account rename, and to retain the notion of one person - one account, retaining a single easy to track edit history. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:03, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
I agree with SmokeyJoe above. Softlavender (talk) 01:24, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

I think SmokeyJoe has it about right. I've put together a draft proposal based on the feedback above. I'd appreciate any comments you have. agtx 02:59, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

  • Your proposal seems to miss SmokeyJoe's central point of a quick username rename. I would suggest that bureaucrats immediately rename the account (from CompanyX to User 1 from CompanyX) and the post a message on the talk page stating "we renamed our account since it didn't meet our username policy. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 03:59, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
    • One issue there is: what do we name them? Something super-generic like "User 1" doesn't really fix the shared account problem. It's so impersonal that it's effectively identical to a shared account, especially because we didn't ensure that the user understood the policy by making them change it on their own. The other problem is a more practical one. The user might not be able to log back in if they don't know their user name. agtx 04:11, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
  • I agree that a forced name-change without any input from the user would leave them with no idea what their new name is, probably leading them to believe that the ID had been deleted. They'd probably just try to re-create it. They should be given the ability to choose a new ID by requesting a specific change. The procedure outlined by the proposal addresses that. My concern reading the preceding discussion is that there should still be some declaration of COI. The proposal addresses that as well, although it may be worth strengthening. In most cases users do not need to declare their employers. In fact, such a requirement would be considered a form of WP:OUTING. COI cases are the exception, however. So I have a few points.
    1. When users are informed how to change their IDs and how to declare COIs, it think it would be worth emphasizing that IDs are not to be shared by illustrating the example of what happens if they should depart their company. In particular, that their IDs are their IDs no matter their employer or employment status.
    2. If they already have a previous, individual Wikipedia ID, they should use that, since having more than one account is considered socking. The "company" ID will be blocked indefinitely.
    3. Some companies may try to tell their employees that the company "owns" the "company" Wikipedia ID. Emphasize that this is not the case, independent of whatever the company policies and practices are. Any "company" IDs can be blocked. If the company is unable to agree to Wikipedia TOS, "company" IDs (and possibly company IP ranges, if they have a fixed range) most assuredly will be blocked.
      --Unready (talk) 16:39, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
    • I think that (1) and (3) above are absolutely right, and I'll adjust the proposal to incorporate the feedback. I think (2) misses the mark a little bit though. As long as it's clearly disclosed and isn't being used abusively, having an additional account for work isn't necessarily a problem. For example. User:Tokyogirl79 edits under User:Tokyogirl79LVA when she's working for the Library of Virginia. agtx 18:24, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
      • In the proposed block template, suggest striking text as follows to make it stronger. ... account creators are allowed to keep their accounts .... --Unready (talk) 19:11, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
        • Good call. agtx 19:23, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
      • #2 is entirely wrong: WP:ISU and WP:VALIDALT (under "Designated roles") specifically allow "Name at Organization"-style names even when the editor also has a personal account. Anomie⚔ 14:29, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Weighing in a bit - I can say that keeping a separate account makes it way, way easier for me to keep the edits separate when it comes to anything COI related. This way it makes it easier for people to follow after my edits and check for any issues. I also find that it's good to have since sometimes I edit on things that are really, really non-related to the LVA, things that while not bad per se, aren't things that my employer (well, I'm volunteer but still - same thing when it comes to Wikipedia COI for the most part) want in my edit history since I'm sort of representing the LVA when I make edits. This also benefits me since I'm trying to set up a Wikipedia program here and I have the feeling that they'll be looking through the other account's edits to see if it's worthwhile - some of the drama I've had to wade through as an admin might deter them. For others, having an edit history with non-work related matters might prove problematic if they're editing in areas that their workplace might not approve of. For example, if someone is editing a lot of slasher horror topics and they work in a lawyer's office, this could open them up to scrutiny. Or if the person is editing LGBT topics and their boss is conservative, they may not want their boss to be able to see this. (The boss could still presumably read the other account's edits since it'd be linked on the page, but it could decrease the likelihood.) Having two clearly labeled accounts (like mine are) could also be beneficial since it'd possibly encourage them to edit about non-COI matters. However, if they've stated that they have no interest in editing on non-COI matters, there's really no reason for them to have two accounts. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 12:41, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

If we could just get a notice added at Special:UserLogin/signup which said something like: "Please note that your username cannot represent a company, organisation or group" (instead of the silly "Help me choose" → link to massive policy page which no new user is ever going to wade through) then this problem would be much less of a problem. </grumble> Yunshui 雲水 13:04, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

You're totally right and I didn't even think of that. As part of the proposal, I'll add a simplified username guideline. Something like WP:42 for usernames. agtx 17:23, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
What we really need here is a software change, we need a form of block that is really "force a username change" administered much like the current softback, but when the user next logs in they get a message saying that they need to change their username and explaining why. No need to use a word like block, just have the software require them to change their username before they can edit, explain why we don't allow either role or company name accounts and then redirect their user/talkpages accordingly. ϢereSpielChequers 15:12, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
Not necessarily a bad idea, although I have the feeling that this would be considered a low-priority enhancement. agtx 19:26, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
I have met several peoplein the foundation who seem up for developments that would make the pedia a tad less bitey. But they have a huge development backlog,and a track record of preferring grandiose projects that confront the community rather than suggestions from the community. If I have an over optimistic mood next week I might write it up inphabricator. ϢereSpielChequers 01:26, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

I think I'm getting about ready to bring the draft proposal over to the proposals section in the next few days. Any thoughts on the way the proposal is set up (too detailed? too pushy?) are certainly appreciated. agtx 19:48, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Non-white background colour when not logged in

On multiple occasions I have made an edit to a talk page, signed with the tildes, and saved. Only then to realise that I wasn’t logged in. Sigh: log in; edit the signature to say me. My fault. There’s a simple UI solution. If I’m editing without being logged in, please could the background colour of the whole page, including the typing box, be non-white (perhaps pale red or pale blue)? That visual clue, delivered before I start typing, would prevent the error. JDAWiseman (talk) 23:41, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

It won't help the general case, but you can fix this for yourself by putting something similar to #wpTextbox1 { background-color: #ddeeff; } in User:JDAWiseman/common.css. That'll change the color when you are logged in, not when you aren't; but it accomplishes the same purpose. —Cryptic 00:02, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
Or you could add this to your CSS:
#wpSave {background-color: green;}
It makes a green background on Save page when you are logged in, indicating it is safe to press the button. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:26, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
Thank you. That helps me. But it would still be a sensible default behaviour.
And I prefer your direction. Not being logged in is bland nothingness — white. Being logged is being logged in with a specific name, so let’s have a specific colour. JDAWiseman (talk) 09:23, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
#wpSave {background-color: green; color: white;} makes the button easier to read. Eman235/talk 19:06, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Inappropriate templates based on context

Certain warning templates appear inappropriate for articles flagged with a stub tag, namely {{Empty section}}, {{Expand section}}, {{Inadequate lead}}, {{Incomplete}}, {{Lead missing}}, and {{Lead too short}}, among others. If an article is already flagged as a stub (and has no more than ten sentences of prose), then that should be sufficient notice to the reader that it needs more content. I think a bot should remove those templates from all stub articles as all they do is disrupt reading and make it look untidy.

What do you think? Praemonitus (talk) 17:08, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree. The stub tag already implies all of those others. Too many tags can be intimidating to some potential editors who might otherwise improve the page. ... I don't know much about bots, but is such a maneuver possible?    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 16:23, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
I agree. Redundant tags are not helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:59, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
Have you considered the possibility that sometimes it is the stub tag that should be removed? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 20:36, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
Yes, but that is not the usual case (about 95% really are stubs in my experience). It's also easy to do a basic check for plausibility; AWB already has a simple standard, and smarter tools like http://pythonhosted.org/wikiclass/ could also be used to exclude those cases. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be pretty good. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:39, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
I generally agree with the idea, and technically it is easy to find all the articles which are marked more than once using quarry: (based on templatelinks table). However, it is possible that {{Incomplete}} (for example) in some cases can give the reader different information than stub - for example if article isn't only short, but missing important ideas (which may lead in serious cases to {{POV}}). Eran (talk) 03:33, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
If the problem is POV, then it ought to be tagged as such, and not merely as being incomplete. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:40, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
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