Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

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The proposals section of the village pump is used to discuss new ideas and proposals that are not policy related (see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) for that).

Recurring policy proposals are discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals). If you have a proposal for something that sounds overwhelmingly obvious and are amazed that Wikipedia doesn't have it, please check there first before posting it, as someone else might have found it obvious, too.

Before posting your proposal:

• Read this FAQ page for a list of frequent proposals and the responses to them.
• If the proposal is a change to the software, file a bug at Bugzilla instead. Your proposal is unlikely to be noticed by a developer unless it is placed there.
• If the proposal is a change in policy, be sure to also post the proposal to, say, Wikipedia:Manual of style, and ask people to discuss it there.
• If the proposal is for a new wiki-style project outside of Wikipedia, please go to m:Proposals for new projects and follow the guidelines there. Please do not post it here. These are different from WikiProjects.

« Archives, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215

Proposal to block the indexing of anything which is not an article

I would like to propose that Wikipedia block all search engines from indexing anything that which is not an article. This includes User pages, User Talk pages, category talk pages etc. for the following reasons.

1. Many times people post information on their own user page or talk pages which they later do not want displayed, since it is being used to harass them. The blocking of the indexing of these pages will prevent them from being found in search engines. Removing the content is not always an option, due to scrapers that will still have the old information. Although not all scrapers follow robots.txt, this will help for the majority that do. This would also stop Google and others that cache the page from returning a result with information that is not wanted, as google and others update their cache only once every while.
2. Doing so will help prevent harassment from those posting false information about people on random talk pages, which are not monitored as often and carefully as regular article pages.
3. This will speed up wikipedia tremendously because wikipedia will not have the extra load that the search engines place while indexing the talk pages and user pages.
4. Wikipedia is meant to serve as an encyclopedia, while the user pages and talk pages are helpful for those writing it, they are not helpful for those looking for information. Clicking on a search engine result and ending up on a user page or talk page, is very confusing for the visitor.
5. This will cause more pages from wikipedia to be properly indexed, as wikipedia will have more bandwith and server load that could be used for regular pages.

--PinchasC | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 22:56, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

You more than once made a false assumption. Google, Yahoo, and other major search engines don't impose any signficant load on Wikipedia as we have arrangements in place to provide them with independent dedicated feeds. In exchange for which they have provided material support in the form of servers and space in their data centers. As to the more general point, as an editor I find it useful to be able to use third party search engines to find content from those other namespaces, and in my opinion the rest of your argument don't provide a very compelling reason to stop that. Dragons flight 23:16, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I'd note that Google would still search the mirror sites - I'm unsure whether this is relevant to the indexing or not (I believe it is relevant to your first point, regardless) ... but a quick Google search for my User page brought up three mirrors - one of which has already caught an edit I made just a few hours ago. [1][2][3] --Tim4christ17 ^talk 00:41, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I often use Google to find templates, I don't think this is a good idea. Tim Vickers 01:23, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I support this proposal but I thinks it's clear there's no consensus on this. How we approach Google indexing should be about readers not editors. Notwithstanding this I do think redirect pages should be excluded from indexing. Indexing them serves no purpose other than search engine spamming! In the meantime anyone with some time on their hands could have a go at creating a customised google search (See [4] for more info). This could be used to exclude non-articles and mirror sites from google. (I'd use it.) Alternatively it could just search wiki articles and could be used as a more useful alternative to wikipedia's internal search. Caveat lector 15:06, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

• It appears the proposal is moot, and cannot be successfully implemented with the result the proposer intends, as mirror sites will be indexed, and the mirrors are under no obligation to keep such blocking templates or commands on pages they obtain. There are a lot more search engines than the big three or four. Further, the user pages are freely available for download because of the license they are created under: basically anyone may obtain all of the data under GFDL. If the pages are not indexed here, you can count on them being indexed in multiple places elsewhere, or to be done so privately. Preventing local indexing will provide editor/users with false sense of privacy and security which cannot be obtained. -- Yellowdesk 13:39, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

For User namespaces only?

I think it would be reasonable to remove the User namespaces from search engines. It aids in the privacy of our editors and discourages user space vanity articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:20, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

But that's how we find them, too. And spammy userpages. MER-C 03:21, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. We can start talking about this when our internal search engine gets better. Right now, Google is too useful for maintenance work to disable it. Kusma (talk) 09:21, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not liking this idea at all. If it weren't for google, tons of stuff (including discussions, userpage stuff, etc) would easily get lost and not be accessible when it needs to be. It's already a pain in the ass to find stuff, lets not make it any harder. If you do not want the internet to know something, then here's a good idea, stop talking about it in a highly public and visible place like Wikipedia. If anyone is worried about privacy then they shouldn't be putting sensitive information on any page of Wikipedia. -- Ned Scott 03:38, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

We also need to search Image space, not only article space. (SEWilco 04:11, 18 July 2007 (UTC))

What we really need is a bot that could find spammy or otherwise "bad" userpages, to reduce our dependance on Google. Nathanww 14:44, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I personally search wikipedia using a google directed only at the site in my toolbar, and often search for non-articles, including users. This would seriously inconvenience me for the sake of provided privacy.. to people who have published the information on the internet. Everyone with a userpage knows that they have no expectation of privacy.

I also doubt that people searching for a topic in the encyclopedia would be very likely to get a userpage very high in their google results. Atropos 00:20, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

The idea is great in theory, but when you look at it in practice I don't think this is useful. Google searching of all the namespaces is very helpful considering the MediaWiki search engine has a few caveats. If people are using information from Userspace as a source of information it shows that they haven't researched the quality of their source. For example, if I am going to use some information in an article, I make sure that where I am getting it from fits all the appropriate criteria. If I was using Wikipedia articles as sources for something else, I would put a little research into Wikipedia first and realise that Userspace isn't a reliable source of information. Nicko (Talk•Contribs)Review my progress! 03:23, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Agree with the 1st two sentences: MediaWiki's internal search system is horrible! Frequently it just doesn work and instead... points you to Google and/or Yahoo. If that's still going to happen, we need to make sure what people are being directed to will not be artificially crippled v. the internal system. 68.39.174.238 16:24, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

It is very useful to be able to search all namespaces. What we could have as a compromise is a template to slap on pages which prevents them from being indexed... that way my templates under my userpage would be indexed while my userpage proper would not (for example). BigNate37_(T) 19:56, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

It would take more than a simple template to achieve that - the mediawiki software would need to be changed, or a table of pages that should not be indexed would need to be created. Would that have consensus? — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:43, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I'll support this; although I don't know exactly how it would be implemented. And I also feel that the built-in Wiki search isn't very good.--HereToHelp 01:32, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

• It appears the proposal is moot, and cannot be successfully implemented in the way the editor proposes, for the reasons stated further above. -- Yellowdesk 13:39, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposal: opt-in noindexing for user pages

I propose that a table be created that simply lists pages (in user space). Pages in the table would be served with headers to prevent indexing. Users who wish to do so could request to have their pages added to the list. This would require implementation in the mediawiki code. The point is to allow for greater privacy for users who don't want their WP page to appear in Google. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:43, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I would agree with that, as long as it was limited to user and user talk pages. Think outside the box 12:47, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

• Well yes, of course it would require a change to the software. However, I don't see why the software change couldn't implement a magic word that could be worked into a template. Speaking as someone in the field, there is no reason to expect the devs to be unable to do what we want. If there's a problem with having it exactly how we want it, they will let us know what the next-best option is, and until then it is unwise to preemptively bastardize the proposed feature. This seems to be the rationale behind a table instead of a tag; in my eyes, a template or magic word like {{DONTCRAWL}} or {{DISALLOWROBOTS}} would be best. BigNate37_(T) 16:36, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

• Side note: This was made possible through the page protection form in r23166, but this was removed by Brion due to future compatabilty concerns in r23226. Prodego ^talk 16:46, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

If this can be done with relative ease, I would support it and make use of it. Adrian M. H. 16:51, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

• It appears the proposal is moot, and cannot be successfully implemented in the way the editor proposes, for the reasons stated further above. -- Yellowdesk 13:39, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I think opt-in no-indexing is the worst of all worlds except for the few things we already noindex though manual server config (AFD). External search on the policy and talk namespaces are just too useful.. and with a few exceptions they don't cause much harm. I have noticed, however, that some WP:FOO style redirects coming up in google as elevated hits. :(

I think, in particular, user NS is a special case. See below for thoughts on why user NS shouldn't be indexed. --Gmaxwell 17:50, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposal: Mandatory noindex/nofollow for User: ns

This was moved from Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#User_pages_in_search_engines.3F

Is there any reason why user pages need to be indexed by the likes of Google? I think we should modify Wikipedia's robots.txt to exclude pages in the User namespace (noindex, nofollow). That way people can feel more comfortable about listing personal information on their user pages. Besides, is there any advantage to searching the User namespace? Andre (talk) 23:00, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Right now there is a fair number of cases where folks have abused our hesitance to delete things from the User space of others, and have stuffed vanispamvertisments and POV article forks into userpages. Random people on the internet find these pages and can't tell them from a normal article page. Of course, we should delete the crud as we find it... but denying the gain is also productive. I'd also like to see "this is a userpage" notice displayed automatically on every userpage... but I'm guessing that it wouldn't be widely liked. ;) so at least we could take Andre's suggestion. --Gmaxwell 23:04, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any major reason why not to do this and I think that the advantages are, as you said Gmaxwell, stopping random people viewing all the rubbish people can put on the page because it's sort of "theirs". I think that removing it from indexing could also discourage users from making it a bit of a personal website, and maybe focus it more on Wikipedia. The "This is a Userpage" I can't see working for most people, as if the argument is people don't notice the "User:xxxxxx" title then they won't notice a small banner. And a big banner would annoy everyone. So overall I am in support of Andre's proposal. AndrewJDTALK -- 23:46, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

User space has long been nofollow territory on enwiki, precisely because of concerns about spam. I'd rather not see noindex in user space (or anywhere else on Wikipedia) because our internal search just isn't very good. Whether collaborating on an article or putting together an Arbitration case, there are a lot of good and useful reasons to be able to search the User: and User talk: namespaces through an external engine (okay, Google).

On Gmaxwell's and AndrewJD's comments above, who are these 'random people', and how are they coming across user pages in their Google searches? Because our articles are so heavily linked from the rest of the web, they tend to come up awfully early (if not absolutely first) in searches. I would have thought that someone would need to be using rather specific, targeted keywords in their search queries in order to come across a user page before an article...? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:00, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm well aware no follow for external links outside of the main ns, since I was the one to push that proposal for en in the first place. Spammers have now discovered that they can spam an unwatched article in main ns and link to it all over wikipedia, so I think we should also nofollow all links in userspace if we allow indexing to happen there at all.

In some cases we have no article, because it was deleted as spam. I've seen some stock pump-and-dump spamvertisements use Wikipedia user pages in this way. For vanity myspace pages in userspace there obviously won't be an article.

For POV article forks you'll see the user page as the third or fourth hit on google after the primary article but still in a top position.

If someone can demonstrate a need for search on User: namespace, I'll change my position, but as it stands I don't see why we shouldn't no-index. --Gmaxwell 18:19, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Can we at least somehow enable noindex on an optional basis for user pages? I would set many of mine to that. Andre (talk) 21:35, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Random Article Feature

First and Foremost I just want to thank all of you for producing such an incredible tool.

Quickly I wanted to mention an idea I had for the website:

I use the random article feature all the time. If I am sitting around at night watching a baseball game i will click on random article to learn different things about different items. What I would like to see is the option to some how filter what goes through random article. (i.e. history, sports, US, entertainment, ancient history, etc.) This is just an idea that I thought might be useful to some of the users.

I want to thank all of you again for all that you do.

You can browse through the Wikipedia:Categorical index page, (or this one [5]), and choose random articles from a particular cateogry. That's close to what you're looking for, I think. Recurring dreams 12:00, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm definitely sure it is possible to create a random featured article tool – look at this used on Portal:Middle-earth. –sebi 11:02, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Dealing with entirely in-universe articles

I've been suffering through two Afd discussions related to Harry Potter battles. A lot of the people arguing to keep are using the What about X? argument, often citing Star Wars and LotR battles. I'm wondering why exactly we have stuff like Category:Star Wars battles and Category:Middle-earth battles- the articles contained within them are entirely in-universe with no real-world significance, cruft, composed entirely from primary sources, and basically extended plot summaries.-Wafulz 22:09, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

See the last two examples at Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)#Examples --Tim4christ17 ^talk 22:22, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

• Basically because they're easy to keep neutral and verified, and because a lot of people care about them and are interested in them. >Radiant< 12:12, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Special:Newpages

I was wondering if it would be possible to add a "hide bot edits" option to new pages, as per on the watchlist? There's currently a bot going on a species article creation spree and it just makes it harder to read.. I realise this spree will probably be over eventually but if this bot article creation is going to be a regular occurence, this might be a good idea if possible. Couldn't find a relevant MediaWiki file so I'm posting here, thoughts? - Zeibura ^(Talk) 00:34, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Haha Polbot. I've seen him too. Good idea. I think also hide registered edits would be good also. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 02:35, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

User:Lupin/Anti-vandal tool can display an updating list of IP edits. I make frequent use of this particular feature. Raven4x4x 10:44, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Good ol' Polbot. I think it's a great idea. But the hide registered edits one wouldn't really work for Special:Newpages since IPs can't make new articles (right?) — Bob • (talk) • 05:54, July 30, 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the proposal, and I did a search on bugzilla a while ago only to find that it's been suggested as a MediaWiki feature few times. Confusing Manifestation 01:22, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Welcomebot

Is there a bot that automatically leaves a welcome template on new user talk pages. If not, could one be created? just a thought - Pheonix15 17:14, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

This has been opposed in the past because of the concern that a user being welcomed by a bot is not as 'personal' as being welcomed by a human. Tra (Talk) 18:02, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

But some human welcomers welcome so many new users, it's like a bot is leaving the message. Why not just have newly registered account automatically be redirected to WP:WELCOME? Flyguy649 ^talk _contribs 18:05, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Because it would not be personal. A.Z. 01:05, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I know it wouldn't be personal, but even a welcome message left by a bot could be made to look like a human entry. Most new editors on Wikipedia really aren't going to be able to tell the difference, and it would save the time of many who could be doing better things, such as writing new content. As long as the bot's username doesn't contain the word "bot", we'll be set. Chrisch^Talk 14:21, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Also, a bot would be unlikely to reply if the new user had questions. — The Storm Surfer 14:36, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

While it would be impersonal, I think such a bot would be very useful... If you look at the standard welcome message, it achieves two goals... the first is to let the new user know that someone else has noticed that they have created an account and joined the project. To makes the new user feel good about joining the project and want to contribute. The second is to provide them with links to the core policies and guidelines, so that they can learn how Wikipidia works. It is the second part that I want to focus on... While our Welcoming Committee volunteers do a great (and often thankless) job, they don't (can't) get to every new user. Thus, we have new users that never get welcomed... which means they never are provided with the links to the core policies. A bot would take care of this. I don't think we should abandon the Welcoming Committy... we should have both a bot and human volunteers. Blueboar 15:20, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't really think that the links to core policies matter to newcomers. I think the welcome matters most, so I a message such as "Hey, I notice you! Welcome!" would be enough. A.Z. 19:49, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

As with most issues, I find that I see both sides of the issue, and while I do agree that having a bot may be helpful in some cases, here are the reasons I would probably vote to keep the Welcoming Committee:

I personally don't just drop welcomes on any new user. First, I go through and check their contributions, and talk page. If they've received many warnings, or a bunch of notes regarding CSD or Image deletions, I tend to not drop my personalized welcome, because it shows they've previously ignored attempts to have them review the help info.

I have noticed while doing this, that many of these new accounts are created exclusively with the purpose of defaming/vandalizing pages (see information posted today on Morton's Page .) In that specific case, an article was published online, specifically directing people to create accounts with the express intention of targeting this member and vandalizing his pages. Now, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to welcome people who come here with the solitary intent on doing damage. ;)

I will also drop a welcome on a new user's page if I notice while on RC/VP that they've never had any activity on their talk page. Especially when they are contributing constructively, and especially if they seem to need a little help with formatting (like not 'indenting' paragraphs lol).

Probably the most important reason, if those folks the bot welcomes have questions, they have nobody to ask. Yes, there are the many help pages, but I can tell you from personal experience that that is a whole lot of information to wade through to find the one answer you need sometimes.

I've responded swiftly to new user's questions after I've welcomed them, and I take great pride in that. If a bot was going around welcoming every individual, it would take a lot from the community. Those in the Welcoming Committee seem to be more than happy to do it, and I'd hope between everyone, they get a good majority of the contributing new members. For me personally, I live a pretty solitary life, and I feel at least vicariously, that welcoming new users is spreading a smile that I'm not able to do in real life. And there's nothing I enjoy more than getting that orange box telling me I have a new message! ^Ariel♥Gold 15:34, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Another shortcoming of this proposal is that the default template is, frankly, inadequate. It provides far too few useful links and is not sufficiently visually interesting for new users (although some customised templates go too far in the other direction). I use my own template, because none of the published custom design quite fit the bill for me, but if you wanted a better template for a bot to use, I can envisage arguments about whose template should be chosen. Yet another shortcoming – mentioned by ArielGold – is that a bot cannot estimate the nature of a new editor by viewing their initial edits; a human can, and I prefer not to welcome anyone who has made nothing but obviously unconstructive edits because giving them more information may actually be counter-productive. People who sign up solely for the purposes of spamming, vandalism, or other bad behaviour tend to become obvious to a human eye quite quickly. Adrian M. H. 21:33, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't oppose the idea because it would be impersonal (most users welcome people using a template, so it makes no real difference). With help, a link to a help page is enough. But I agree with the above point that vandals should not be warned. Hence I would oppose a bot for now. Recurring dreams 11:56, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

While it is somewhat distasteful, it might be worthwhile if each bot post returned a helpful user (i.e. randomly from a list to which welcomers might add themselves) who might help a new user if they need guidance, rather than signing as "WelcomeBot". The welcome itself is somewhat dry - In my opinion, I don't think many newbies actually read it all. Nihiltres^(t.l) 14:05, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Good idea, Nihiltres, if the welcome bot's message included links to a live user (picked from a list of volunteers) to refer them to for questions, that would make a big difference. However, I personally still like the Welcoming Committee, and I'd be sad if that was done away with by bot welcomes. ^Ariel♥Gold 14:23, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

• Remember that most new users in fact aren't, so the bot would be pretty pointless for those. >Radiant< 12:11, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Centralized Wikipedia geographic database?

Based on the recent visibility of Wikipedia geographic coordinates on Google Earth, I have collected a set of 600+ significantly incorrect geographic references. For example, 300+ of them are communes in the Calvados department of France which were placed east of the Prime Meridian, instead of west.

I have been told on the general help desk that there is no central database for such information. That would imply that the Google Earth presentation could be wrong in other languages, even if I manually fixed the English pages.

Surely, there must be a way to introduce a centralized geographic database which could be automatically referenced by templates for each language translation, and for any other georeferences.

Equally, I would expect that the multilingual links on the left-hand side of each page should be derived from a links database fopr each page, so that if a new language translation were to be created for a page, all of the pages for the existing various translations would get the new link, and the links would always be in the same pseudo-alphabetic order. Fairfax Geographer 05:37, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

mw:Wikidata and m:Wikimaps might hold the answers. (I think the projects are more active than those doc pages would suggest. Dig around a little. Tell us what you find :) --Quiddity 17:30, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointers. They point to areas of considerable complexity and uncertain or unlikely action. We're all volunteers in these efforts, which means that newcomers with specific queries, ideas, or concerns must spend days or weeks working through Wiki terminology, multitudinous forums, etc. I had posted this question in several places before being directed here. I don't have the personal time for continuing research to become a Wiki guru, and I can't afford a trip to the August Taiwan convention to talk to other experts. So, I will get some volunteer efforts going for the 600+ manual edits (and growing daily) in English for the time being, and leave the other languages to a future day. Fairfax Geographer 09:20, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

User:The Anome is running a bot that adds coordinates to articles automatically. He uses the coordinates in other wikipedias for this (among other sources). You may want to contact him; he can probably make a list with problematic coordinates very quickly. Have you already found Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates? If you want volunteers to correct the coordinates, that is one place that you can find them. Eugène van der Pijll 12:43, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Template Sandbox ({{X1}}, {{X2}}, etc.) headers

The template sandbox ({{X1}}, {{X2}}, etc.) headers are not inside a <noinclude> block (hence they are transcluded) on pages where the template is used. This inhibits usage for testing templates. (assuming that the user follows the instructions and only touches the lines below the comment or the page is quickly reverted because the instructions weren't followed)
I propose wrapping all boilerplate headers (possibly excluding the comment) in a <noinclude> block.
BTW, I'm not sure if there's a better place to ask this. I would normally ask on the talk page but that's a sandbox as well. (My guess is this is a change that doesn't require formal approval but might need bots to modified to properly reset the pages) --Jeremyb 06:46, 31 July 2007 (UTC) Note: I transplanted this from WP:VPM --Jeremyb 07:15, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Biography Info Box Nonsense

Well, perhaps nonsense is a bit strong, but can someone please tell me why biographies include the age of the person along with their birth date? Not only do I feel that since the age will change, subsequently needing updating each year, I also feel it is indirectly insulting to any reader. Are we assuming that the reader can't subtract the current year from the birth year?

In any event, crack open an encyclopedia. You will find birth dates (and dates of death if applicable), but to include the age as of the writing of the entry would be silly. The only time I can think an age may be noted is for death.

I guess I'd just like to know the reasoning for including the current age of the person in the biography of a living person.

DeeKenn 15:59, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

There is a template in the infobox which automatically calulates the age so it doesn't need annual updating. I find it sto be a courtesy. Yes, it is very simple for anyone to do the simple math, but it saves you a couple seconds not having to think about it. I really don't see the point of complaining about it. Reywas92^Talk 16:13, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I find your last statement both rude and baiting. I posted a concern. If a concern is "complaining" to you, then why bother here?

Moving on, I find it unnecessary and un-encyclopedic. Regardless of Wikipedia's "dynamic" format, I find the information redundant. DeeKenn 16:23, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

The main reason print encyclopedias don't do this is because the information would become outdated. Wikipedia isn't paper. I have not confirmed myself that the age is generated automatically, but were it the case instead that the age was entered manually I agree it would be beyond futile. At any rate, I don't even see an age listed on the example at Template:Infobox Biography. Is this the template you were referring to? BigNate37_(T) 16:17, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

That template is a fine example of what it should look like, IMO. However, if you look at some of the actual biographies, there is a mark-up being used to automatically calculate the age. I did not know that, and to me that makes even less sense. DeeKenn 16:25, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't mind the age that much. What bothers me more is those damn flags. Can't people just read the word USA instead of also seeing the flag. :) Garion96 (talk) 16:31, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

So that everyone knows, DeeKenn is referring to the use of {{birth date and age|1931|03|22}} in the infobox field for date of birth, which gives a result of: (1931-03-22) March 22, 1931.

Add me to the list of people who think this is, at worst, harmless, and at best, useful. It makes the computer do the math, so the user doesn't have to. I don't understand the problem. --barneca (talk) 16:36, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Harmless? Perhaps. Useful? Not in my opinion. In fact, as I mentioned above, I find indirectly insulting. Furthermore, it is redundant. DeeKenn 16:59, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I find it very useful. I am good at math. Atropos 19:35, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Quaint, but far from useful DeeKenn 20:20, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Ah, so it's Template:birth date and age. There's a problem with this—it is not consistent across different pages. Any functionality like this should be either not used at all or incorporated into the infobox. Since the infobox's page itself describes how to use it and makes no mention of adding the age to the birth date field, I would suggest that the use of the age-generating template in infoboxes is improper. Therefore, if we truly want this age generating behaviour, it should be built into the infobox templates, otherwise it shouldn't be happening at all. BigNate37_(T) 16:45, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree. At the very least, it should be applied uniformly. DeeKenn 16:59, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

There is quite a bit of redundancy and non-uniformity in Wikipedia, and this is one example. Redundancy is often a good thing. Most of the information in the infobox is also located in the article; it is redundant. It is still convenient to have the information in the infobox. As for non-uniformity, for example, there is a similar Template:Infobox Person, which does explicitly suggest {{birth date and age}} as an option for the birth date field. There is a discussion (apparently, if I am a judge of consensus, successful) at Template talk:Infobox Person#Merge to combine them all. I am puzzled by your taking offense at being insulted by this, DeeKeen; no one is saying users cannot subtract. This little box simply makes it so they don't have to. I'm all for keeping it, under the heading Benefit:small / Cost:zero. --barneca (talk) 17:22, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with you that redundancy is a good thing. "Good things, when short, are twice as good." - Gracián. Many Wikipedia articles are over-bloated with such redundancies. DeeKenn 17:37, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Everyone else, just end this. The simple convenience of telling us how old a person is even though the year is right there is perfectly fine, useful to some, and staying, even though it may be redundant and theoretically insulting. By reading User:DeeKenn's userpage, he must have a lot of concerns and we shouldn't take his comments too seriously. There, I said it. Reywas92^Talk 18:13, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

This should not be dragged down to a personal level, and may I note that this is your second disrespectful post towards me.

Sawyer, just because I am not thrilled with Wikipedia overall does not mean that I can not offer any valid suggestions/contributions. If you do not allow dissent, how can you expect progress? DeeKenn 18:28, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I see your point, though the first I was only disagreeing. Some just find it quite helpful to simply read a person's age, especially when just scanning, rather than doing the math. It definitely was never meant to insult anyone's intelligence. Reywas92^Talk 18:47, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how displaying a person's age, particularly if the birth date is common knowledge, could be a problem. It could also, somehow, be useful to some. I could see a problem if the counter kept going after the subject, well, died, but I don't know what happens in those cases, or whether the "counter" is removed after people die. John Carter 18:57, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Wait, so you're saying Beethoven isn't 237 years old?

According to the documentation for Template:Infobox Person, I believe the theory is that you switch to {{birth date}} after they die. Now, all we need is someone to create {{birth and death date and age too}}, so that a dead person's age at death is automatically displayed... --barneca (talk) 19:07, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

If the behaviour was built into the infobox instead of being manually added in lieu of a birth date, then the infobox could simply inhibit display of the age when the death date is provided (or even display age at death). Aside from consistency and simplicity, the age-generation behaviour could be more powerful if integrated with the infobox rather than implemented in a separate template, because of access to all the infobox's parameters. BigNate37_(T) 19:21, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I also find the age calculation useful. Doing the arithmetic (including month and day comparison!) when we have a computer in front of us is like keeping a dog and barking. It would be nicer, of course, if it were used consistently in all articles on living people. To help this, when the date of death is not specified the infobox parameters should (correctly) indcate the reason for this (not known whether dead or alive, date of death unknown or merely not known to the author). The infobox parameters could then be used to correctly generate the relevant categories. To accommodate those cases where an infobox is not wanted, perhaps the template could have a parameter to hide the infobox and merely generate categories and formatted data.--Boson 19:42, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Watchlisting sections

As the name implies, I propose that watchlisting individual sections be enabled, where, next to the little '[edit]' on a section, there be a '[watch]'. This is useful in places where there are often much discussion under certain sections, but the page as a whole is very busy. WP:ANI would be an example of this. Thoughts? -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 16:59, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

It's been proposed before, and it is a very good idea, but technical limitations disallow it, I believe. Reywas92^Talk 17:00, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't even be responding to this proposal if I could have just watchlisted one section of this page. But I did watch the entire page, and here I am helping discuss others' proposals. A watch section feature would eliminate this incidental involvement on a number of pages, and in my opinion that is a bad thing. BigNate37_(T) 17:19, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, really, its a relatively small loss to quite a good gain when you consider it. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 17:21, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Are you saying you're unable to follow discussions on pages with more than one active discussion? What is the good gain you are referring to, other than convenience—is it actually going to avoid the loss of discussion participants? BigNate37_(T) 17:47, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Possibly. It will allow tracking of more specific pieces of text easier, and would, as you say, be convenient (not that I can see anything wrong with that), with the downside of, in my opinion, minimal loss. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 17:54, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

BigNate37, I understand your point about participation. However, I can see this being extremely useful on high-traffic pages. For one, it would make it easier to focus on a specific issue. Secondly, from a technical perspective, some of us have a lot of watchlisted pages - but the watchlist only displays a maximum of 1000 changes. If one is monitoring a high-traffic page that has hundreds of edits daily, that can drastically impact the "reach" of the watchlist. --Ckatz^chat_spy 00:29, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Once again, this is a problem that would be fixed by a proper forum system. User:Dcoetzee/Why wikithreads are bad. Dcoetzee 19:03, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

As written this feature request is not going to work, because it's too easy to renumber sections (if I add or remove a section above, the number changes). >Radiant< 12:10, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I think that's the least of its problems, really. Not that I'm not in favor of it!

And yes, this has been discussed before: last change before automated deletion (which would have been much easier to find if you could watchlist sections, by the way) — The Storm Surfer 13:43, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Articles entirely written by a single editor

An article entirely written by a single editor have a high probability to :

• be POV,
• not be peer-reviewed,
• need wikification and spell check.

I have written a script which lists all such articles.
Browse the list, check the articles, edit the ones you want to improve, and come back to tell me how to improve this tool :-)

If it proves useful, this tool could be added to the "Fix-up projects" section of Wikipedia:Community_Portal. But first I need your feed-back, and feel free to ask anything about the script or project. Contributors are welcome too :-)

Nicolas1981 11:13, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Articles written entirely (or almost entirely) by a single editor also have a much greater chance of becoming featured articles. -- Qarnos 11:36, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, some of these articles are really good. But I doubt any featured article have been entirely written by a single editor (I haven't checked, though). I think that nobody can be totally unbiased. Nicolas1981 13:51, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Looking at the list, it might be wise to drop (for now) the articles beginning with a numeral. Many appear to be articles following a templated or placeholder format, with information about a specific date or an event that took place in a specific year: 104 AH, 1622 in art, 1856 English cricket season, 1770s in archaeology, etc. Because of their automated or template-driven creation, these pages tend to be formatted properly and well wikilinked; I suspect that many are the products of various wikiprojects. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 12:06, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Even among the articles beginning with a letter, a large proportion of the articles have been automatically created, their content is so small, and their topic so specific, that it's hard to improve them. But anyway, I think it's a good idea to check automatically-created articles, even though most of the time they are more boring than human-created articles. Nicolas1981 16:03, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

"Super" watchlist

Could another field be added to the watchlist that would be for users to tag high priority articles and pages that they want to be able to look at quickly - a sort of super watchlist? This would be helpful for people who have edited many pages and have very large watchlists, but only want to look at the full list sometimes. Tvoz |talk 16:23, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Use alternative watchlists via m:Watchlist#Related changes feature ∴ Alex Smotrov 16:42, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Project-specific clutter on article pages

Just curious other opinions about the practice of placing huge honking project-specific tags onto articles, as for example here. IMO, it's bad enough that the top of many talk pages are occupied by multiple project banners -- but now expanding the clutter into the article space seems a bit too much. I mean, in this case, it is not like the article is horrendously bad in a general sense -- it seems that it just isn't up to snuff by some standards of a wikiproject. I thought that sort of tagging is one of the things that the project banners on the talk pages were for. older ≠ wiser 02:15, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree - a simple cleanup tag would do here. And then only if it violates actual wikipedia guidlines, etc. If there's a project about the standard "format" of a page, it should be brought up on the talk page, not the article itself. --Tim4christ17 ^talk 12:18, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Roadcruft has about gone far enough in considering itself some type of separate entity as it is. I get more and more tempted to write an MfD every time I see something like this. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 12:29, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I find it interesting and very frustrating that tags that could go onto the article page - visited by those that are into improving / looking abit further - are put onto the talk page e.g. (see 1911 (encyclopedia Britannia)). Such like should go onto the article page so that the 'casual researcher' has the easily accessible information about the subject... But no instead it is put on the talk page - somewhere they may not even know exist, let alone visit. Wikipedia is an platform for knowledge - we should not clutter the article page with development demands at the same time hide under discussion buttons the sources of such knowledge. --Edmund Patrick 14:41, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Are you talking about Template:1911? As it states there, it should be placed on article pages, and at the same time Template:1911 talk should be placed on the associated talkpage (in order to categorize it). (For future reference: When describing a problem, linking to an example article will always make things clearer ;) --Quiddity 17:21, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

It seems really clear to me that the template example you present should have been placed on the talk page. — The Storm Surfer 17:24, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Edmund the Martyr is a perfect case. a casual researcher arrives reads and leaves, why would they go to tabs - discussion - history - watch etc. And where did some of this information come from but Encyclopedia Britannia, as it says on the discussion page. And actually there is a bot that moves such Template:1911 from the article page to the talk page. (It once was there). Sources of the knowledge should be easily accessible to the casual research so that they can verify elsewhere if they so wish. --Edmund Patrick 07:06, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

sorry people I knew I could find it somewhere; please see Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2007_July_18 for an earlier discussion --Edmund Patrick 07:23, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I"m confused -- A reference to the 1911 encyclopedia has been present in some from or another for the entire existence of the article. And as near as I can tell, {{1911 talk}} was added to the talk page by PbBot (talk · contribs) on 09:21, June 7, 2007 (UNC). older ≠ wiser 11:32, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I suppose I could say case proven- as I had missed the statement at the bottom of the article page - but not the large tag at the top of the talk page. It maybe just me, or possibly others also miss that statement. Thanks for the pointer. --Edmund Patrick 12:04, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I've sorted the sections at Edmund the Martyr, per WP:LAYOUT - it should be a bit clearer now :) --Quiddity 16:34, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

An "essential" Wikipedia?

Is there any sort of database, or filter, or overlay, in existence right now for an "essential" Wikipedia?

As an example, if I was running a school in rural Congo with no internet access, it would be nice to have one CDR (or whatever size medium is required) that has just the essential educational articles, with all the trivia and pop culture stripped out.

I was thinking that would be an interesting idea - a way to be able to read, or download, only the essential articles.

I assume identifying the articles would just take the addition of a tag. As for a script to assemble the updated essential articles for download, though, that is beyond me. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad 19:51, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

You might be thinking along the lines of the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team's release versions. I don't think that their releases, which are more "general interest" than subject-specific, are exactly what you're looking for, but it's the closest approximation I can think of. John Carter 19:54, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

The Wikipedia CD Selection in co-operation with SOS Children looks like the sort of thing you are thinking of. It looks as if the 2007 selection is available. There is also information on the 2006 Wikipedia CD Selection on Wikipedia main space.--Boson 17:17, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to add RSS feed for the Featured Content section

I love the featured content...um, feature. I was wondering if there has been thought given to generating RSS feeds for the featured content. This would allow people to see at least a clip of the featured article in their blog-roll / reader software they use. If a small intro blurb to the article was provided via an RSS feed I would think some people would end up more inclined to click through.

It would allow users to see the content easily without having to remember to visit the site daily. Just my two cents, and I apologize if this has already been suggested and rejected, I didn't notice it anywhere on this page.

Template:wrongtitle

I am primarily an Uncyclopedia user, but I came here because I'm good at looking at recent changes and doing stuff pertaining to that. I've noticed that certain articles have titles that are impossible to render in MediaWiki. We, over at Uncyclopedia, have a fix for this. I didn't write it, nor do I have any stake in it besides my own personal use of it on an article of mine (click to see what it does). Perhaps you could use this to solve your woes (note: I would ask at the forum there before I sporked it, just because they tend to be testy.) Cheers.-Ljlego 01:26, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, but I actually think our problems have been solved with {{DISPLAYTITLE:}}. —METS501 (talk) 01:34, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

English Wikipedia has similar template {{wrongtitle}} and similar code in Mediawiki:Common.js although it's much more conservative: it doesn't change the title if it wouldn't link to the same page. (Actually, now we can probably get rid of it and just use DISPLAYTITLE). The way it works at Uncyclopedia — change to arbitrary title and don't even warn the user — would be unnacceptable here.

By the way, if DISPLAYTITLE works at Uncyclopedia, I suggest using it when possible instead of {{title}} ∴ Alex Smotrov 02:25, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

User pages in search engines?

Moved to Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Proposal:_Mandatory_noindex.2Fnofollow_for_User:_ns

Vandalism Parole

Please see here for a proposal about unblocking users and giving them parole. Feel free to comment/add. --(Review Me) R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 03:06, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Quotations

I have restored the {{proposed}} banner for Wikipedia:Quotations (WP:QUOTE) because it seems to have been replaced with {{historical}} a while back without discussion. If anyone can point to some discussion that formally rejected this proposal or otherwise discussed its removal from consideration, please note that on its talk page.

After a little time to get some notice for the old proposal, I would like us to review and edit it to reflect current practices and/or establish new ones. I am especially concerned about a growing problem with editors doing mass transfers of quotations from Wikipedia articles to Wikiquote with no regard for the edit history or other crediting required by GFDL. (See q:WQ:VP#Probable GFDL problems with improper transwikis for only the latest of heated discussions about this problem.) We at Wikiquote are beginning to simply delete these contributions because fixing the vast problem is far more work than we can reasonably do. (After all, there are at least 150 active Wikipedians to every active Wikiquotian.) Since simple deletion hardly serves Wikimedia's interests, we need to establish a formal, practical policy for where, when, and how to do this, and this proposal page seems to be the logical home for it.

I would appreciate assistance in (re-)developing this potential guideline. I will also be requesting help from Wikiquotians, many of whom are Wikipedians, too. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 22:18, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Uh, on second thought, I think we can skip the question of the historical tagging. I've been led to understand that this can be a sensitive subject, and I don't believe we need to go into it here. Regardless of the history, we now have a compelling reason to have some guidelines on Wikipedia about quotations, even if they only address when to incorporate them in articles and when to move them to Wikiquote. (I'm sure there will be much more than that, but this issue alone is urgent justification for a page.) So let's just look forward on this. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:58, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

• Yeah, thanks for the attack. "Historical" means inactive, therefore if there is no discussion on something, it is by definition historical. What did you think this was, a bureaucratic procedure? >Radiant< 10:50, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Radiant, I'm sorry that you felt I was attacking you. My concern was that I am not familiar with the formal processes of Wikipedia policy/guideline proposal approval and rejection. I spent a few minutes reviewing Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines, Category:Wikipedia proposals, Category:Wikipedia rejected proposals, this page, and Wikipedia talk:Quotations, and found nothing that suggested there was a dicussion to close this proposal, merely a determination by a single editor that the proposal had lost steam. But my quick review could easily have missed something not obvious to a first-time policy proposer (as is true for so many processes within Wikipedia, which can indeed be quite bureaucratic and has many times the formality of most other Wikimedia projects), so I wanted to be sure I was not missing something.

As I try to be thorough, I stated my findings to date and asked for any information I'd missed. Within minutes of my announcement, I was warned that some might take exception to my implied criticism; thus my subsequent caveat above. Criticism was not my intent. My primary goal here is to ensure that Wikipedia and Wikiquote have a place to establish how they interact, because we at Wikiquote are getting tired of fixing or deleting massive GFDL violations by those of us at Wikipedia who have the good intention of transferring quotes from WP but seem unaware of the requirements for crediting contributions.

I have no quarrel with your historical tagging. I believe I understand the rationale, and clearly no one disagreed with it back then. But we surely need something now. I hope that you will accept my apology for this inadvertent offense, and that we can move on to the effort of resurrecting and updating this proposal. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:42, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedian of the Month

I think it would be a great idea to start a wikipedian of the month. We'll have candidates state their case for one month while editors vote for who they feel should be wikipedian of the month. At the end of the month the votes will be counted and whoever has the most will be wikipedian of the month.--Southern Texas 18:00, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

And where would the "Wikipedian of the month" be featured? On the community portal? Melsaran (formerly Salaskаn) 19:13, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh no, more backslapping? This kind of thing does nothing positive. At best, it massages a few egos and at worst, you'll see clique voting. Adrian M. H. 20:54, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

See previous suggestion at Wikipedia talk:Featured content/Archive 1#Featured project. To summarize: No. "Featured" status is for highlighting encyclopedic content, not for users, templates, categories, or anything else.

Things like this quickly devolve into the inanity that is currently at Wikipedia:Best User Page Contest. (Which someone really ought to MfD..) --Quiddity 21:08, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I think it would make editors more constructive because they would want to be wikipedian of the month and would work extra hard. It would be a plus for the expansion of the encyclopedia.--Southern Texas 21:31, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

It's nice in theory, but in practice all this serves is to hurt feelings and exclude people. If you don't enjoy editing Wikipedia for the sake of editing, you probably shouldn't hang around --L-- 21:33, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with L. ElinorD (talk) 21:36, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

People should not need affirmation to know whether they are doing good work. Adrian M. H. 21:38, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

If somebody doesn't get it, it would be an incentive for them to work harder and would be a plus for the encyclopedia. There would be no votes against anybody, just for somebody and that can't hurt anybody's feelings because there won't be any insulting comments against people. If you don't vote for somebody you won't leave a comment and whatever votes they get will make them feel good. If they don't get any votes they will work harder.--Southern Texas 21:40, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

No. If they don't get any votes, they will likely get very disheartened. Adrian M. H. 21:42, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

The fact is that some people do need affirmation that what they are doing is good. I personally don't but I don't think people like this should be excluded. This will increase interest in productivitiy just like in a business with the use of the employee of the month. The competitive nature increases productivity. I think that admins should be excluded and there should be an edit limit. This will make more productive users and make articles better. Editors shouldn't be able to nominate themselves so they will at least get one vote.--Southern Texas 21:47, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Why wouldn't seeing that the editor got a barnstar or some other form of recognition be enough? John Carter 22:11, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Because that is rare for an editor with under 500 or even 1000 edits.--Southern Texas 22:21, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

So presumably you would consider that even editors with so few edits could be nominated. Presumably by themselves, as few others would have noted the name in that time. On that basis, I would assume that what you're talking about might be something more like "Newcomer of the Month", for people with only one or two months experience. I would think such a process might be even more likely to make people leave, as these comparatively new people might be even more likely to react negatively if their new contributions wouldn't be enough to win. John Carter 22:25, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

S.Tex, why do you think this will increase productivity? It will cause a LOT of time wasting, polling, popularity contesting, social networking, effort, and drama that could all go into making Wikipedia a better place instead. And think about how many millions of editors we have- do you really think that selecting twelve Wikipedians a year will do anything but discourage others who know they will never, ever be popular or well known enough to make it? Also, what you say concerns me--- Why do you think Wikipedia should have editors competing with each other? We're all about collaboration, if we isolate ourselves we're doing nothing but harming the project. We already have rewards for making GA, FA, DYK articles, we already have barnstars, but do you REALLY think that people are going to put more EFFORT into the ENCYCLOPEDIA from this or just TIME into the popularity contest? --L-- 22:26, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

It was just an idea to increase productivity and add more productive users. I'm sorry I wasted everybody's time--Southern Texas 22:41, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Please don't be put off by one idea that was not well received. Adrian M. H. 23:18, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. The idea is not a bad one; unfortunately, there's a good deal of history already to indicate that the execution often leaves a lot to be desired, which is a separate matter. And it isn't a waste of anybody's time to propose an idea that you think might work. Personally, I wouldn't mind it myself, but the history seems to indicate that it is likely to get unforseen and unwanted consequences. Unfortunately. John Carter 23:30, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

How about this, a new editor who does the most constructive edits in a given month can be called the wikipedian of the month.--Southern Texas 00:59, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Use a barnstar. Ask at Wikipedia:WikiProject Awards about creating something like a "newcomer barnstar". Instead of inventing a new process, always try to use the ones already in place - that way you avoid extra pages of instructions to read, and in this case can give barnstars to many editors per month, etc. --Quiddity 04:15, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Move-protection

It may be something to consider to move-protect established articles that shouldn't need to be moved. For example, there is no reason at all that the article George W. Bush Rat or Jerry Falwell should ever have to be moved, so the only "benefit" of not move-protecting those articles is opening the possibility of page-move vandalism. Melsaran (formerly Salaskаn) 19:13, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Your first example is move-protected. The second is not. What specifically is your proposal? Who exactly should decide when an article's name is "right", and therefore should be move-protected? Should they do this for less important articles too? If not, who decides what is "less important" and what is "more important"? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:18, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Have a look through the archives if you can, because this proposal was raised a couple of months ago. I think the response was a bit mixed. Adrian M. H. 20:57, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

List it at WP:PEREN :) Melsaran (formerly Salaskаn) 21:12, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Bad example then. Still, this applies to many articles for which the name is stable and doesn't ever need to be changed. Melsaran (formerly Salaskаn) 21:12, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I don't think it's a bad idea, per se. But as John pointed out, there are some decision-based difficulties in its implementation. Adrian M. H. 21:25, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

As noted by others this creates issues of ownership. I can think of articles where you'd think the name should be permanent but to some extent is open to question, for example Lewis Carroll, which is the prominent penname of the real-life Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (redirect), which it might conceivably make sense to move. Dcoetzee 22:20, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Currency

I suspect that something like this may have been considered before, but if so then I don't know the outcome.

I think it would be useful to have a unified way that currency amounts can be quoted with templates, that result in useful links for the reader.

What I envisage (setting aside for the moment the fact that {{currency}} already exists as a redirect with a number of links to it) is a setup where you can enter something like:

{{currency|GBP|20}}

or

{{currency|CHF|30}}

and then this gets rendered in the article as something like "£20" or "30 Fr." (i.e. taking into account the symbol and ordering), but as a link which takes you to a page where there is a link to the relevant article (e.g. Pound sterling or Swiss franc) and also links to third-party websites showing the currently equivalent value of that sum in other currencies (something vaguely analogous to what is done with book sources).

This does somewhat depend on third-party sites supporting some URL format that embeds the query information appropriately, but if not then probably the prospect of traffic generated from Wikipedia would be enough to persuade those site maintainers to implement it.

No doubt there could be other template options like overriding the display symbol or possibly specifying a date for historical conversion, but this is the gist of it.

Does this sound desirable? Feasible?

I must admit that I probably don't have the time or knowledge to actually help with this, so it would depend on whether anyone else has the inclination.

Many thanks. — Alan^✉ 11:42, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Interactive Multimedia Content: Scratch at Wikipedia?

Interactiv Media Content is missing at Wikipedia. There are many things that could be explained and learned more easy, if there was a method including it. Some other encyclopaedias include Interactiv Media Content as one of their bigest advantage against Wikipedia (e.g. Encarta). But where the datatype of other Wikipedia media seems to be obvious, interactive media has a problem.

• It should be strong "sandboxed" (to cause no harm to the user of Wikipedia)
• It should present itself in a alternatively printable way and a clear frame (like a picture)
• It should be based on openSource and common technology
• It should be easy created eaven by non-programmers
• It should have an educational background

Please feel free to enlarge that list. Most known ways to create interactive data like e.g. Java, Flash will not fulfill these demands.

I think that the new visual programming language Scratch could fulfill it.

Scratch is made by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab for educational purpose and has a strong growing community of teachers and students. It's sandboxed, framed, openSource, very easy to learn and has an educational background (originaly it's invented for school kids). Eaven if the Scratch Player is based on Java, it is the only Java program needed(Scratch code is interpreted by this player and so much stronger sandboxed).

Here are some Scratch Project that could ilustrate that, even if they are not created to do so and some are made by children:

• Do You Know Europe?
• Heart simulation
• Vacuum
• Simple Electrical Circuit
• Photosynthesis
• Composer
• Lego Model Creator
• Architectural Stamps

At a Scratch-Forum we had a discussion about connecting Wikipedia and Scratch and I was encouraged to suggest it here. When having a look at The home of Scratch don't laugh about the sometimes childish projects: Children are our future and the potential of a technology they love is big.

Thank you for your feedback in advance. Mtwoll 19:08, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

One way of doing this would be to enable uploading of scratch files and then allow the java scratch player to be used to display them, perhaps either on the image description pages or inline on other pages. This would require an extension to be written to enable this. Tra (Talk) 21:51, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I am leading the development of the Scratch on-line community. I would be happy to help in making it easy to push projects hosted in the Scratch website into Wikipedia if this is needed. I have seen pictures from Flicker in Wikipedia. Is this done manually or is there some automated system? In any case, let us know if there is anything the Scratch team could do to let non-professional programmers contribute programmable media to Wikipedia. andresmh

In the past, Wikipedia has avoided hotlinking media from other websites (apart from Wikimedia Commons and some Toolserver scripts, which are sister projects). This is mainly because if the media is on another website, it's not possible to connect it with a Wikipedia username and see the full revision history and there's a risk that third party servers may fail, or the media may be deleted or modified in a way that is unsuitable for its use in Wikipedia. There is also the problem that it is very easy for someone to just link to anything that may violate someone's copyright.

This is just in a general sense. Depending on how the Scratch site is designed, some or most of these problems might not apply but it's still best to be on the safe side and not hotlink media on third party sites. As for the Flickr pictures, those were downloaded from Flickr then uploaded separately to Wikimedia Commons.

Even without hotlinking, having Scratch projects embedded in Wikipedia pages would still require developer involvement, since an extension would need to be coded for the MediaWiki software to make it possible to type in a reference to the Scratch file in wiki-code and generate a link to the applet. Enabling Scratch uploads also requires developer involvement, although it is much simpler by comparison since it just requires adding a file extension to the whitelist.

As for what you can do at the moment, the only currently possible way of including Scratch files in Wikipedia is to link to the page on the Scratch website with a basic hyperlink. Tra (Talk) 03:24, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Resources

Hey all, I would like to know if there is a group of wikipedians dedicated solely to helping others find sources for articles? I have access to quite a few databases and would like to help out as many people as possible, so a central location for such requests would be helpful. --Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 06:08, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to block BIGCANDICEFAN

Now, I'm not just picking on BIGCANDICEFAN, but this user has some very obvious alternate accounts, some of which have also posted on Talk:Candice_Michelle. As was stated on Deep Shadow's talk page, this user lurks about, edits pages about wrestlers, starts big flame wars, then just leaves, then comes back under a new account and repeats the cycle. Alot of his alternate accounts have something to do with Candice Michelle. So I'm proposing we block him, do a Checkuser, block any alternates and maybe block his IP for a bit. He's lashed out at me and several other users. Please forgive me if he's already been blocked, I haven't thoroughly checked the Block Logs and I'm relatively new to editing Wikipedia, although I am a regular Wikia user Template:Signatures/Падший ангел

EDIT: I also apologize if this is the wrong place for this, and if it is, I'd like to know where to properly post this, because I would like to hear the community's opinions on this user and whether we should block him or not' Template:Signatures/Падший ангел

WP:ANI. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 06:33, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you :) Template:Signatures/Падший ангел