Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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The miscellaneous section of the village pump is used to post messages that do not fit into any other category. Please post on the policy, technical, or proposals pages, or - for assistance - at the help desk, rather than here, if at all appropriate. For general knowledge questions, please use the reference desk.

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Problem on Era conversion

This topic has been removed to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)

Wikipedia in parliament?

I've seen lots of mentions of wikipedia and potential COI editing in the news, TV et al, but this is the first time I've seen it mentioned in parliament [1]. Has anyone heard of anything similar before? Nil Einne (talk) 00:14, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes :-). See points 1, 2, 4 and the last one at Wikipedia:Wikipedia_as_a_source#2005.--Commander Keane (talk) 06:14, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually having a closer look at your example, the references I gave a merely mentions of Wikipedia, not Conflict of Interest points.--Commander Keane (talk) 08:44, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

South Park Featured topic drive

WikiProject South Park participants have started a page at WP:SOUTHPARK/TOPIC to organize featured topic drive collaborations. The primary goal is to improve the quality of articles about South Park episodes, with the ultimate end goal of getting sets of episodes by season to Good Topic or even Featured Topic status. We are starting off by focusing on Season 1, to get it to Good Topic status, see Wikipedia:WikiProject South Park/Featured topic Drive/season 1. Any help is appreciated, and feel free to comment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject South Park/Featured topic Drive. Cirt (talk) 22:56, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Article's watchers

Is there any way to find a list of people who are watching a particular article? This will help me find out if an important article is not watched adequately.. --Anshuk (talk) 23:25, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Maybe it would be good if there was an indication of how many watchlists contain a given article. That would give an indication of how vulnerable an article was to vandalism. A number at the top of each article could perhaps indicate the number of watchlists that article is found on. Bus stop (talk) 01:34, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

This has been proposed before (frequently). See Wikipedia:PEREN#Create_a_counter_of_people_watching_a_page. Cool3 (talk) 01:57, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

In response to the above link: I don't think it should be a button. It should be prominently displayed; it should probably not be removable. It should be a basic feature of how Wikipedia works. It is part and parcel of user responsibility to watch for incorrect changes made to the articles they are concerned with, which often corresponds to their interests, or to the articles they've worked on. Bus stop (talk) 02:08, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

I believe the theory is that less watched (and especially zero-watched) pages would make vandel targets. As for 'responsibility', well we're all volunteers here, so noone is technically (or should be) responsible for anything outside of what they actually do, or at least promise to do. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 02:13, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that less watched and zero watched articles are more likely to be targeted. and I also agree that no one has to do anything. I'm sorry if I sounded like I was telling everybody what to do. It was just a way of talking. but my theory is that if a responsible editor notices that an article that they have even only mild interest in is not being watched, that is, is not on many watchlists, and especially if there is some degree of vandalism to that article in evidence, that that would serve as motivation to get them to add that article to their watchlist. That is the way I would think, and I suspect that is the way many Wikipedians would think. But you're right -- my way of wording my above comment certainly could have been better. Bus stop (talk) 02:20, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

See also: Wikipedia talk:Special:UnwatchedPages.   Will Beback  talk  02:39, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Project to obtain legal photos of people?

Is there an organized effort to contact people listed in Wikipedia to ask them to contribute a photograph? It seems to me that people who depend on publicity (e.g. actors, authors, etc) would want to have a good photo representing them on Wikipedia, rather than a picture taken from a distance at a convention or lecture. Of course, the photo would have to be licensed appropriately, which may cause difficulties (e.g. perhaps it couldn't be a studio photo, but a picture they've had taken themselves). I'm sure other people have done this already: is the response typically positive or negative? (My apologies if I've missed something obvious.) --ScottAlanHill (talk) 03:13, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

See WikiProject Free images and Example requests for permission.-gadfium 07:23, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

• For the people who respond, I've generally found them to respond favorably. Unfortunately, there's plenty of people who don't respond at all. - Mgm|^(talk) 08:13, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Display of date on Merger and Split tags

This is a call for community input about a little corner of template talk page:

Display of date in Merge and Split tags: a discussion about enabling the display of the "date" parameter in all the merge/split templates, such as "Proposed since April 2009". Three propositions:

1. To maintain the current status of not displaying tagging data on the ground that it would make the tag's sentence too long,
2. To enable display of tagging date on the ground that it is standard and prevents tags lingering for months without actual discussion,
3. To have a bot automatically remove merge/split tags after N months.

The change was briefly enabled on 10 templates then reverted and a discussion started: interested partie can continue at Template talk:Merge in sections "Date field broken" (talk side for #1–3) and "Please enable date display" (technical side for #2). — The Little Blue Frog (ribbit) 20:45, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

links to outside pages, but do not want to leave full hyperlink

How do i leave a link to an external website without leaving the entire hyperlink?

julcal— Preceding unsigned comment added by julcal (talk • contribs)

Like this: [http://google.com Google] which renders as Google. – ukexpat (talk) 00:09, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

vandalism on Leeds Bradford Airport Article

Massive vandalism to the Leeds Bradford Airport article. cannot find history tab, no idea how to fix it. Thanks. (does this belong here, if not where?) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.6.145.28 (talk • contribs) 17:56, April 6, 2009 (UTC)

It looks Ok now. This revision current when the above message was posted looks Ok, but the symptom sounds like the template vandalism. I just noticed what I thought was template vandalism at 2009 L'Aquila earthquake which overlayed the window with an obscenity when the edit button was pressed but I could not track down which template was the cause before it was fixed. However, after looking at Template:current disaster and other included templates I cannot see any obvious cause. Maybe it was deeper or a short-lived CSS-hack? 84user (talk) 22:32, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Looking at these recent Template changes related to Leeds Bradford Airport it appears there was a series of template vandalisms which was finally fixed at 22:13 today.

Also I see the template vandalism of 2009 L'Aquila earthquake that I mentioned above was also fixed here. Hopefully there won't be much more of this. 84user (talk) 22:44, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Source code written by editors

I've noticed that many computing related articles seem to contain source code that is completely unreferenced and obviously written by Wikipedia editors. I feel that including code written by editors is completely against all Wikipedia guidelines, such as WP:NOR. One might argue, that source code is an illustration of the article subject, much like self-taken photographs or self-made SVGs that are widely used in WP. But I think that still does not excuse us from ignoring very basic Wikipedia guidelines.

For examples of what I mean, take a look at [2]. Most of the articles do not mention where the source code is from. A specific example: Bellman-Ford algorithm. Please also note, that copying source code from a non-free source, such as a textbook, is a clear copyright violation. This is why I'd like to propose not including any source code in Wikipedia articles at all, unless it can be directly copied from a free reliable source. Offliner (talk) 22:55, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

(replies moved to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Computer_science#Source_code_written_by_editors, please reply there)

I see no problems with short snippets of computer code or, preferable, pseudocode. It is trivial to compare it with the referenced algorithm. Complicated (and simply long) pieces of code are probably should not be on Wiki. They are difficult to validate (they even can have malicious insertions) and GFDL license is not designed for practical code Alex Bakharev (talk) 00:08, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki interface to get a facelift- any updates?

In the beginning of January there was a Signpost article on the Stanton project to create a simplified UI for beginning editors [3].

The Stanton Faq page is very unhelpfully on a Wikimedia wiki, so it's not possible to post additional questions on the discussion page. I have seen no further info since the signpost article, and would like to hear an update on what the current thinking is. This information is pertinent to development of templates on wikipedia.

1. Will this be a complexity hiding UI, such as is speculated on this blog page?
2. Assuming the UI example of #1, if the user clicked on the blue text hiding the syntax, would something like a form be presented where the user could type in the link address (in the case of the link example), or the parameters of the template (in the case of a {{citation}})?

In what time frame will #1 come out? #2? -J JMesserly (talk) 23:22, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

AFAIK, the project is still in the research phase. Mr.Z-man 23:47, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't know, but you can find out more about the Stanton usability project here: http://usability.wikimedia.org/ -- phoebe / (talk to me) 04:48, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Back end contributions?

I have an idea to help cut down on vandalism. Basically I'd like to design an algorithm that detects likely vandalism, and requires a trusted user (say, an admin) to approve the changes.

For example, if a proposed edit contains no recognizable dictionary words and wordcount is reduced more than 50%, kick it to an admin. Things along those lines. Basically, it'd entail reading a lot of vandal edits, identifying common elements, and implementing code to detect them.

There are three questions I have about this endeavor.

1.) Would such a filter be well received by the community? I'd be erring on the side of letting malicious edits through rather than restricting legitimate speech. 2.) Is there a central location vandalized pages are listed? Or would I need to download the wikidump and crawl it myself? 3.) Is wikipedia open to such contributions, or do they prefer we only improve articles?

Thanks for the information. I can be reached via my talk page, or at gregnorc@gmail.com

-GregNorc (talk) 13:08, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

That sounds very like the abuse filter. Algebraist 13:10, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikimania 2009: Scholarships

English: Wikimania 2009, this year's global event devoted to Wikimedia projects around the globe, is now accepting applications for scholarships to the conference. This year's conference will be handled from August 26-28 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The scholarship can be used to help offset the costs of travel and registration. For more information, check the official information page. Please remember that the Call for Participation is still open, please submit your papers! Without submissions, Wikimania would not be nearly as fun! --Az1568 (talk) 21:21, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

New proposal for site

Could I ask Wikipedia editors to have a look at this proposal & let me know what they think, would they support it, what would they want in it or would they be totally against the idea etc.? Please let me know on my talk page or on here. Thanks. dottydotdot (talk) 22:27, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

A proposal for a site that would allow people to submit articles they wished to be in Wikipedia but couldn't put in because they had a conflict of interest. Much of the time, these people want to put a neutral article about their notable company up, but can't. Wikipedia editors could then browse through these already made articles & add them to Wikipedia if they thought they were good. There would be no requirement to list the original author or site & editors could make as many or as few changes as they wished. It would be a paid for site, in that if you wanted to submit an article, it would cost you a small fee, less than £5. Editors who put an article on Wikipedia would also get paid for putting that article on.

"Advantages of a paid system"

Firstly, a percentage or revenue would be donated to a chosen charity, voted for by the readers & a percentage would also be donated to Wikimedia/Wikipedia. Having a paid system would stop spam & give people an incentive to write thorough, well researched articles rather than just putting rubbish up. It would also encourage editors to browse through & select articles.

There would be no problem with the payments, because it is not paying editors to submit specific articles. Any article that is submitted will be paid.

This would be a good way of increasing & improving Wikipedia's database, while negating a key criticism of Wikipedia.

dottydotdot (talk) 22:27, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

• There's no need for a separate site. Anything that has the potential to be included on Wikipedia can be submitted to WP:AFC - Mgm|^(talk) 12:41, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I agree that we don't need a separate site, nor do we want one, because we need to keep track of who contributed what wording (GFDL/CC licensing). But WP:AFC, where IP editors post draft articles, is not the ideal place; it would be much better to have COI editors do a draft in their user space, and then engage in some dialog about notability, neutrality, and other improvements. A COI editor is usually pretty motivated to improve a (draft) article, unlike an IP editor; done right, Wikipedia could get some pretty good (and, yes, neutral) articles from COI editors if they had some guidance, and if there were a formal process for a non-COI editor to move acceptable articles from user space to mainspace. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:52, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Discussion of File:Lolicon Sample.png

An editor has brought up a concern that this image is illegal and should be deleted. Please come participate in the discussion. Thank you. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 22:57, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation legal counsel has commented, in that discussion, that there is no problem with the image. Unless editors have some reason to believe that the Foundation's lawyer is wrong on this point, further discussion seems pointless. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:42, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Dr Sushil Kumar

Please see the history of the Dr Sushil Kumar article. Directorichr (talk · contribs) continues to edit the article to a non-standard formatting of references. I keep reverting it back to a formatted version, and try explaining to the editor what's wrong with their edits, but they never respond and just keep reverting back. What's my best action? Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 01:27, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

The article creator has not made edits except to this one article. I suggest it be nominated for WP:AFD. The user name, Directorichr, suggests he is identifying himself as Director of the ICHR. Notability is questionable given the current references. An arduous negotiation with someone who is unwilling to join discussions might thus be avoided. If relations had started out better, it is conceivable we could work with him to create a keepable article. Against tooth-and-nail opposition I don't think it is possible. EdJohnston (talk) 01:48, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Concur - Pointillist (talk) 12:10, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Internet users by language per article on Wikipedia

I've made a chart comparing the rough number of Internet users who speak a particular language as their primary language to the size of the Wikipedia in that language, see:

• User:Dcoetzee/Internet_users_by_language_per_article_on_Wikipedia

It's fairly incomplete, but still interesting. Dcoetzee 05:06, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Poll: autoformatting and date linking

This is to let people know that there is only a day or so left on a poll. The poll is an attempt to end years of argument about autoformatting which has also led to a dispute about date linking. Your votes are welcome at: Wikipedia:Date formatting and linking poll. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 09:05, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Admin coaching

Hallo, is the admin coaching project still active/in use? I was going to sign myself up for coaching, but then noticed that the unfulfilled requests were sitting around for many months without action. Thanks, tempodivalse [☎] 14:31, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I've wondered that for awhile myself. The talk page is so scarce there hasn't been a single thread from March '08 to March '09 and the same question was asked in 2007 with nary any improvement; it appears this was never the springboard that was hoped for. Requests for coaching just sit there and no one really rattles the cage about it. Maybe it needs a call to arms over on Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship where they are currently lamenting the lack of good admin candidates. (If someone really wants to save admin coaching, they should nominate it for deletion: a brilliant way to make a point and everyone will say it is a massive abuse of the system — yet it works every time!) --64.85.214.183 (talk) 18:27, 11 April 2009 (UTC)