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 listed at Wikipedia: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

Lexicon

I was surprised not to already find this somewhere on the Wik, especially in perennial proposals or in the Project of Fun or similar locations. The proposal is this: set aside some corner of WP, either all the subpages of the format Wikipedia:Lexicon/whatever or some other subdivision (if it got hugely popular, perhaps its own namespace) and play Lexicon on it. I'm aware that isn't really what Wikipedia is designed for, games do not belong here, we are trying to be serious and spread information, take your games elsewhere, etc. But clearly, pretty much by definition, Wikipedia has the largest editing community of any wiki around, and a Lexicon hosted by WP or at least by Wikimedia would be sure to never die through inactivity--there would always be new people to step in for dropouts--and the lexicons would, I believe, be of superior quality to games cobbled together out of whoever you can find online. Thoughts?--Mobius Soul 19:48, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

From the Lexicon article: Players assume the role of scholars that write the history and background of a particular time, era or world (completely fictitious in nature). So precisely what would be the value to Wikipedia - as an encyclopedia - to have superior lexicons of this nature? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:24, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

That they would be fun. Enjoyable, in a creative, literary, smart way--presumably exactly the way Wikipedia editors like to have fun. I don't claim they would be useful for any practical purpose. But a lexicon written by smart people who love words and stories is immensely fun to play, or read.--Mobius Soul 01:55, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I would say be bold and make it. But one of the 1300 administrators would probably delete the page. A.Z. 03:50, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Sounds amusing enough. It might become a problem though, I think the best idea would be to host it off site or perhaps just direct users to http://www.uncyclopedia.org. -Icewedge 06:27, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

The thing is, Lexicons are immensely hard to keep alive. I've started or helped start three, only one of which was played to completion, and that's the only completed one I've ever seen. It's hard to get people to come and play in the first place--a Lexicon only appeals to a certain kind of person--and they tend to get bored and stop writing after one or two rounds. It only worked on Urbandead because the game the wiki was attached too had a big community, many of whom were on the wiki and could see the announcements calling for players. Trying to start one on an independent website would result in its withering on the vine very quickly. But hosting one on Wikipedia would result in a functionally infinite pool of just the right type of person being in a position to see the announcements. Nowhere else would work--Uncyclopedia wasn't interested. It's too intellectual for them and frankly, I think it's too intellectual for the average prolific Uncyclopedia editor to be very interested in it or good at it. Anyplace with a smaller editing community than Uncyclopedia wouldn't be enough to support the Lexicon. Can anyone tell me how exactly it "might become a problem?"--Mobius Soul 14:03, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a place to play lexicon. Your playing it would not help improve the encyclopedia. Atropos 19:42, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. I think it'd be a grand addition, like a more interesting sandbox. DEVS EX MACINA _pray 04:25, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

You might try userspace, but it is possible that it would be MfD'd. ~user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 03:07, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

• I feel that this could actually hurt the project more than anything, Sure playing Word Association is all fine and dandy, but what your doing here, if I understand it correctly. is writing falsified information, and I think that's a road we don't want to go down. Deathawk 01:55, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

• Concur on that -- but maybe the board and Jimbo would want a new sister project --and could sell ad space to fund projects like this one. Non-profit is not the same as no revenue streams coming in. // FrankB 17:11, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Watchlists and control of article quality

I've felt that we need a more organized system of managing articles for some time, but I'm getting tired of seeing an important article get trashed by a vandal, have the vandalism go by improperly fixed by a novice, and the article as a result deteriorate over time, with nobody being aware that anything has happened. We need a more organized system of article watching and regular review, though we just don't have the manpower to do it. Beginning with watchlists would be a start though. We need to be able to look at an article and know if it is being watched. If one watches an article for a while or spends some time going through the history section, one can probably figure out who seems to keep an eye on it. But this isn't good enough - an experienced editor should be able to obtain this information immediately and with certainty. If I find an article is being messed around with and nobody is repairing the damage, I want to know if there is somebody watching it or not. If not, somebody needs to; an appropriate Wikiproject could be contacted for example. If there is, they need to get their act together and do a better job of keeping it in good condition. If they can't do it alone, more watchers need to be recruited. We have the 'maintained' tag, but that has always tended to suggest the 'maintainer' is a scholar in that field. Ideally, we would have an expert on each subject watching that article, but anybody would be better than nothing.

Let me give an example from my experiences today. I visit the article animal, one of the most important in biology. I see it is somehow smaller than before. Something has happened. I go to the page history, replete with thousands of edits, and try to find what happened. Eventually I reach something almost two weeks ago that seems to be the problem: a vandal deleted sections, and a relatively new editor tried to fix it but missed some of the deletions [1]. If somebody was watching this article they would never not notice something that major. Yet it still happened, and nobody seems to be any wiser. The reality is that someone probably is watching this article and has let it slip by. But I have no way to be sure someone is watching it. And if there is, I can't exactly complain to them can I?

We need to put in place a system where people can see who is watching an article. If people don't wish others to know that information, perhaps they could opt out via preferences (though it is no more of a privacy issue than being able to look through their contributions really). Alternatively, people could add their name to the talk page or somewhere else as a 'watcher', or via some indirect means, e.g. adding a template that links to articles they watch on their user page and being able to find these (e.g. via 'what links here') from the page itself. Another option is letting people select articles from their watchlist that they publicly proclaim to be watching and thereby take responsibility for their maintenance and care. They could appear in bold on the list, for example.

One problem is that vandals can find unwatched articles, but most vandals are unlikely to even know about the watchlist system, let alone how to access that information, and I believe the benefits would outweigh the costs anyway. If it was a concern, don't let anons or even newly registered users see the information. Another is that users may no longer be active but still have things on their watchlist, or they may not go through their watchlist carefully. A way of excluding those who are currently inactive would help with the first issue. On the other hand, if they had to explicitly opt in as a watcher, there would be few people doing so at first, and they may feel reluctant to take on that responsibility. There will also be those that whine about 'ownership', even if the job of the so called 'owner' is nothing more than cleaning up graffiti. But we need to be more responsible for our encyclopedia. Someone coming here should have someone they can complain to if an article is not being looked after. There should be someone there who will get the vandalism that slips through recent changes. It's a very big task to embark on but we need to start working towards it. We need to work out how to put this in place and then get people involved. Hopefully in future we will be able to say that every article on Wikipedia has someone out there looking after it, and those that receive a lot of traffic will have a dozen such people - perhaps even someone watching 24/7, or near to it. We could even start a WikiProject - perhaps "Wikipedia:WikiProject Quality control", to implement and coordinate such an effort. Is anybody with me on this, or do we just want to hope that a disorganized system will catch all the problems by itself? Richard001 02:33, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

IMO, the above is a mixed bag of proposals. Wikipedia:WikiProject Quality control is not a bad idea (too bad the shortcut WP:QC is already taken); it would overlap to some extent with Wikipedia:RC patrol, Wikipedia:New pages patrol, Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit, and such. A "these users watch this article for vandalism" template like {{maintained}} might not hurt, although it could as easily be a part of the banner for the above mentioned WikiProject as a generic banner. I think public watchlists are not such a good idea, although if anyone really wants one they can always just create Special:Mypage/Watchlist and use Special:Recentchangeslinked to watch the pages on it. I think the chances of vandals looking for unwatched articles is greatly underestimated. Anomie 03:15, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah that's why the unwatched articles special page is restricted to admins. Not a good idea. The template thing maybe.

Equazcion • argue/improves • 03:25, 09/23/2007

You are already aware of the problems with keeping a list or count of the users watching each article. A substantial proportion of the really active users are admins and have access to the list of unwatched articles, but that list only includes the first 1000 such articles and currently doesn't get as far as articles beginning with the letter 'a'. Providing a complete list of unwatched articles, or a mechanism which allows an admin to see a count of watchers for any page, would be more helpful, but I think this latter cannot be done efficiently with the current database structure.

I think a public watchlist is a better idea. I maintain one for vandalism-prone New Zealand-related articles. If Wikipedia:WikiProject Biology doesn't do so, perhaps you could start one.-gadfium 04:07, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Placing a template "This uses watches this page for vandalism" would be too trivial a thing for most purposes to place on a talk page, and it would require a lot of work for a person to manage them. If unwatched pages were a problem for vandals, we could solve the problem easily by only letting trusted users see the information, however we have no way of knowing telling apart trustworthy users from those who are not in an automated fashion. Even so, blocking users who have not been around X days and/or made X edits would almost certainly filter out any mischief. The administrators tool sounds useless, though it points out there are far too many articles not being watched, based on your description. People shouldn't have to become admins just to see such information though.

Having a public watchlist that is systematically gone through by people may be a functionally similar alternative or compliment. I'll think more on that possibility. Richard001 05:58, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't want the world to easily know what articles I am watching. I know it is paranoid, but as someone who is a citizen of the United States, I feel over-surveilled already. I don't actually do anything wrong, mind you, but in my country it no longer matters if you do something wrong or not. Interest in a subject is enough to get you on certain watchlists. I don't mind if the information is all encrypted and just shows numbers/statistics, but I don't want it to be like when the government records who you travel with, what books you check out of the library, who you call on the phone. Globally, there are also academics being arrested now in Germany because they were "intelligent enough" to have written certain things. I just have my reservations about "lists". Thanks, Saudade7 18:25, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, it isn't really an issue, Saudade. People can opt out, or, probably better still, opt in. My point was it's not all that different from look at your contribs. People seldom watch articles they've never edited. I can browse every edit you've ever made here quite easily, seeing both what you've edited and what you've written with ease using popups. I could stalk you if I wanted to, and you wouldn't even know I was doing it. It wouldn't be that big a difference. But the problem is, at the moment, I have no reasonable way of finding out if anybody is bothering to watch an article. With animal, I ended up posting a message on the talk page asking if anybody watches it. I got no reply, though someone else volunteered to start watching it. I'm still no wiser as to whether anyone was watching it in the first place; all I know is that if there were any they don't want to reply. I don't see any way in which we can hope to have decent quality here if there is no system in place to see that articles have at least one person keeping an eye on them. A public watchlist would only work if it included all articles in a given category or categories, and if it was systematically checked by everyone. I think this option is a much better idea, but nobody seems to be interested in it. Richard001 03:31, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

But there is a difference. I don't watch anything I edit and vice versa. I use my watchlist only to bookmark articles I've stumbled across but think I might not remember later. There are at least 100 articles that I am "watching". That said, I am a private person. I think of my edits as my publications but my watchlist as a personal journal. I know full well that people can see what I edit and thus I do so with that knowledge in mind. I spent some time before putting things on my watchlist trying to see what was on other people's watchlists, when I found that I couldn't I started adding stuff to my own. It isn't really that I have things that are perverse or dangerous that I am hiding. And as a cultural historian I am able to look at all the perverse and dangerous stuff I want without consequence. (I'm not some closeted politician from Idaho, e.g.) I just don't think people need to know everything I am slightly curious about or interested in. I don't like the way the world is turning into a system where people, with more power and access to information than I, can find out every single thing about me and yet I am kept in the dark about what corporations and my government etc. actually know about me, and especially what *they* are up to otherwise. I know it sounds paranoid, but I prefer to err on the side of caution. This world, especially the U.S. is going to hell and I just want to keep some things to myself. Saudade7 13:16, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Here's another case [2]: A driveby anon fiddling with a low profile chemistry article that I just happened to be watching. With an organized system of watching we could cover all the low profile pages systematically, avoiding this sort of crap. Richard001 00:41, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

E-mail this article (to a friend)

Sorry if this has been brought up before, but I didn't notice it in the list of perennial proposals. What do people think of adding this simple functionality to Wikipedia? Yes, it's very easy to copy the URL of an article from the address bar, but it would seem to be a rather convenient way to let others know about certain articles, and even to flag certain articles for one's own later reading. --Lukobe 21:58, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Good idea Lukobe. Zantaggerung 01:52, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

That's been rejected before, on the basis that a user might vandalise a page and then immediately email the result to someone, making it look like Wikipedia endorsed the vandalised version. --ais523 09:17, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Zantaggerung and ais523. I can understand the concern, but surely a note could be included at the top of the mail indicating that this was not the case? At any rate, my proposal would basically be to e-mail the first couple lines plus the URL, not the entire article. (If the entire article were to be e-mailed, perhaps it could be set that not the most recent revision would go out, but rather one from the previous day.) --Lukobe 17:47, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I haven't used Firefox for a while, but IE has this capability built in. I'm using IE 7 right now, so I'll just give that as an example. At the top of the page, there is a "Page" combo box next to an icon of a piece of paper and a pencil. If you click on the down arrow next to that icon, you get several options, including "Send page by E-mail" and "Send link by E-mail". Corvus cornix 21:46, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it's on FF (I'm using it, after all), but someone could possibly write an extension that does this. (I haven't checked.) ~user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 03:09, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

For more details, see bugzilla:227. --ais523 13:56, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

As I recall from a while back, part of the problem is that Wikipedia doesn't want it's servers put on spam blacklists. Andrewjuren(talk) 22:42, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

New Disambiguation system

I'd like to make a suggestion not a minor one: redoing Wikipedia's article storage/retrieval method/system, or at least creating an add-on retrieval method to deal with one of Wikipedia's most problematic aspects: disambiguation - I'll outline only the latter suggestion here.

Today, typing "Cork" in the search field and and hitting "go" will take you to a contributor-created disambiguation page - yet once there the list contains far from all articles containing that term. Typing "Cork football" will send you to a "search results" page (as the article does not exist). My question is: would it be possible to automatically create disambiguation pages that resemble the second circumstance - a search results page? This should of course be applied to searches containing only single terms contained in many article titles, or multiple terms contained in many article titles.

The only problem posed by this method would be the organisation of the results returned - what order would results for a search for "Cork" be returned in? My only suggestion for now would be to sort them (upon retrieval) by their category, the latter transformed into a sub-heading under which would appear all articles in that category.

I also think it would be useful Wikipedia (and the above method) to assign (visibly or invisibly) Wikipedia articles to three 'base' categories: "people", "places" or "things". In my experience, search patterns seem to revolve around these, and presenting a contributor with this choice would cut search time drastically (if they choose to use it).

Wikipedia is trying hard to define itself as an encyclopaedia, but I find it has yet to adopt a method best for both the web media (technology) and the habits of web-users. I hope you don't mind my two cents - cheers. THEPROMENADER 06:46, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

If you want to search for articles which mention "Cork" rather than going directly to the disambiguation page, press the "Search" button rather than the "Go" button. Go invokes search only if there is no article directly matching your query. See Wikipedia:Searching and Help:Go button for a more detailed explanation of how these two buttons work.-gadfium 09:07, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I think you misunderstood: entering "cork" and hitting "go" turns up a manually-created disambiguation page; I propose to make an automatically-generated one. BTW, I'm not a newbie. THEPROMENADER 18:19, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I still don't understand. To get an automatically-generated page, enter "cork" and hit "search". Most of the time, the dab page is more useful.-gadfium 21:26, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

It's the "most of the time" in the present method I don't like - as I mentioned above, a dab page requires contributor creation and (I'm sure often neglected) maintenance, and, as per the examples above, often do not list many of Wikipedia's articles containing the search term. An automated system would assure an up-to-date resumé of all Wikipedia articles whose titles (stress on "titles") contain the search term, should "search term" article not exist, and this without any need to update a dab page every time a new article is created. THEPROMENADER 06:22, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Just to add that I usually just use Google for this. In another tab I just type a string of keywords that narrow my search eg. Cork Jesuit sock puppet *and* Wikipedia. Usually the particular cork article I am looking for is the first one that comes up. It's a workaround that works because Google is a search engine and the Wiki is an encyclopedia. I like to use things to their strengths rather than trying to make something that does one thing super well into something that has to do everything kinda well. But I can understand why you feel the way you do and in a perfect world with unlimited funding I would agree. Saudade7 16:59, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Good suggestion, but don't sell yourself short. In a perfect world, "funding" would be irrelevant and we would not need computers to simulate access to the storehouse of unlimited understanding. Nevertheless, nice workaround. dr.ef.tymac 13:51, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh, good point dr.ef.tymac! Reminds me of an article (I think by Martha Rosler?) about the WPA photographers taking pictures to use as appeals for charity, but how charity itself is a concession which always leave the ontological/economic structures that make charity itself necessary intact. That was shocking the first time I thought about it as an undergrad. Don't we want something more? Ciao! Saudade7 14:29, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Verging almost totally off topic, is it not possible that charity itself is a public good - that the giver gets more than he gives and the receiver gets more than he receives, when the transaction is motivated out of charity and is not a coerced obligation? Perhaps there are social structures which create a need for charity without themselves being unjust, and that the charity they motivate is an additional just benefit. Of course, this requires rethinking quite a few assumptions commonly made about certain sorts of social programs... User:Bckirkup 03 October 2007 —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 18:54, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Wiki has all the technology it needs to install a "google-like" search engine (and I already find it hard to imagine that, because of its media and structure, it doesn't have one already) or an automated disambiguation system, but perhaps the manpower (programming) is what needs to be "funded"; but really, these are not questions for we contributors. If an idea is good and good for Wiki, I'm sure that Wikipedia would be willing to invest if it is for its own better function/use. Cheers. THEPROMENADER 15:15, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

As a relative newcomer contributer but a longtime reader and 13 yrs of Yahoo and little less of googling, I must say the go and search buttons are about the most frustrating entities on the entire web (after porn and spam of course ) I've read many times that that Google searches are the way to go, well if that's the case and the underlying causes of this are finances, then let's just be done with go and search thereby reducing the workload for Wikipedia and just use a specific Google search tool on site... just as many other sites do--Tallard 08:20, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Those sites pay for the priviledge of doing so. Many take on Google ads to help pay for it, which is something Wikimedia Foundation won't do. So, until donations become enough to pay for it, we won't get such a search system. -- Kesh 01:41, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Not Exactly Censorship, But an Idea

I know that wikipedia is not censored, but I also know that some images out there may be disturbing to some viewers; I have previously had trouble with this myself. I can instruct my broswer to disable images, but not everyone can do that. I have worked out a compromise: perhaps we should institute a system in which potentially disturbing images (most likley human anatomy, usually injuries etc) should be hidden and replaced with a link saying "this image may be disturbing to some viewers" or something similar, with the option to display the image placed underneath this warning. I think this would be very useful for more squeamish viewers; admittedly it probably be annoying to put this in for all existing distrubing images, but I think worth considering.211.30.132.2 11:01, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Isn't this one a perennial proposal? If someone's looking at an article about a disease or injury, it shouldn't be surprising to see a relevant image. SamBC(talk) 11:16, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

The other problem is how we would flag an image as being disturbing. Disturbing does not mean the same thing for all people (Think of pictures portraying Muhammad for some Muslims, or a spoiler). -- lucasbfr ^talk (using User:Lucasbfr2) 13:36, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

That would require we totally abandon no disclaimers in articles as it would be considered a disclaimer, which are generally not allowed in articles. And SamBC has a good point, if you go to the article penis or gangrene, why should you expect the pictures to be totally non-objectionable? Mr.Z-man 23:50, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't really think that would qualify as a disclaimer if it were implemented the right way. It would be a feature meant to help people, not a legal disqualifier to protect Wikipedia. It could also be an opt-in feature, via an option in Preferences. There is still the problem of the subjectivity of objectionable material though.

Equazcion • argue/improves • 23:55, 09/26/2007

This is a proposal that only ends as a true slippery slope. In the United States there are people who are offended by almost anything except Hummels and the music of The Carpenters. I think that the above responses are correct, if you don't want to see an image of eyeball surgery, don't click on that link. Visual information *is* information and sometimes it is not pretty. But it is more important to have information available than to censor it because some people have lived sheltored lives, (if a person grew up in a bloody war zone I doubt a picture of breast enhancement surgery would be shocking or offensive to them) or because they believe in some kind of god that says they shouldn't look at certain things. And I guess I am a person who is, frankly, tired of having to always click here and there to get access to certain material just because the default settings on everything cater to the most squeamish and easily offended sectors of society. I'm not even talking about pornography, but just basic art historical images and such. And as far as kids go, they are the parent's responsibility in this matter, not mine. If people actually had intelligent engaging discussions with their children about why people do and say and believe the things they do, the children could handle seeing, hearing and knowing pretty much anything. "Childhood" in the West was only *invented* in the early 19th century. There are children fighting guerilla wars right now as I type this. It isn't right, but neither is the world, and I am sick of having my access to things curtailed or restricted or even just slowed down because someone, somewhere might be offended by seeing a picture or hearing a noise (word). Sorry if that was a rant. I'm a historian of visual culture and I actually do consider this kind of thing a form of censorship in the guise of etiquette and politesse. Take care, Saudade7 12:32, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I expect you can find people offended by Hummels and the Carpenters too, if you look hard enough. *Dan T.* 12:41, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

True, but I bet they aren't censoring types. Saudade7 13:01, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

If my only choices are Hummels and the Carpenters, I too would break out the blue pen! Some things just aren't meant to be... Donal Fellows 22:44, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

(off-topic) I never really had that sort of *talk* with my parents; I just read everything I could find and then reasoned it myself. ~user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 03:15, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Definitely not by default. Perhaps we could allow users to set this under preferences, but I do agree with the points made earlier, that people can be offended by just about anything, and that looking up a term is agreeing to exposure to these images. And having to click a link to view an image is annoying, often I just glance at the image to get a general idea. As for children, that is pretty obvious. Either you trust your kid to not look up such images. Or you don't. Well then, supervise his or her computer activity. If you can't do that, don't get the kid Internet access. Oh, and by the way, seeing a picture, won't immediately transform a kid into a violent perverse monster. Cheers!--Puchiko 00:24, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

This is not quite on the subject of the talk, BUT important. I sometimes work from a very slow connection and the loading of immages gums it up compleatly. I would like a possibility to set a flag "no unrequested images.Seniorsag 15:08, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

You might be interested in the Opera web browser, then. If you put it in "show downloaded images only" mode, then by default it won't download images, but instead show placeholders. You can right-click on any image you want to see, and select "reload image" to show it. --Carnildo 02:41, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I believe there is also a Firefox add-on to get the same behavior. Anomie 03:00, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Link to search results on disambig pages

When a disambiguation page exists, it may prevent some users (novice ones especially) from finding other relevant pages that show up in the search results for that term. For example, the disambig page Beds lists two items and a link to Bed (disambiguation). If you search for Beds, however, you get 23,000 results, at least some of which are probably of interest to someone who types Beds into the search box and hits Enter or clicks Go.

The current {{Disambig}} template is worded like this:

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Between those two sentences, I propose that we add:

You may also search for Beds in the full text of all articles.

I'm not sure on the most succinct way to word this. Any other thoughts? — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 18:17, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

My only suggestion would be to make it

You may also search for Beds in the full text of all articles.

So as to look better. Other than that, I agree.-Ljlego 19:04, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

That makes perfect sense to me too. --OES23 19:26, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Any opposition to this change? If there is none within a week, could an admin please make the change? — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 19:47, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Very sensible! Approve--Tallard 08:25, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I support changing the template. It's been more than a week, so please make the change. -kslays 18:25, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

No, no... First of all the problem to solve (in my understanding) is that user enters Beds into search box and intuitively clicks Go expecting a Good Thing to happen. Ups, it is not happening! The root cause is not the broken disambiguation pages, but the Go button acting not so intuitively.

Your solution will only help a little, because reader remembers he/she have already searched for Beds, why to search again then? I think this hint should be displayed, but not hidden somewhere inside the {{disambig}}. It should be displayed as a separate line on any page, but only as a result of Go-search user action. --Kubanczyk 08:54, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

A mega project proposal

I know it's not very realistic, but Google for example will take this challenge on at some point, and you're supposed to be their match. So, what I am suggesting is taking the translator ten steps ahead - making it able to translate any sentence from any language to any language. It'll take AI experts and linguists, and a few trillion contributions from surfers who know 2 languages well(it would be trillions of trillions if not for deduction and induction software created by the AI and lingu experts), but what you'll get will be an almost perfect translator, allowing for example the immediate translation of any wiki article to all existing languages. --199.203.54.236 15:48, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

That would be excellent, yes. However, since it is currently impossible to perfectly translate texts (including all idioms, synonyms, etc) with an automated program, this solution is indeed not very realistic and couldn't be implemented in the near future. Melsaran (talk) 15:54, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

The current translators do a pretty bad job and they just have two languages to worry about. I think your suggestion is jumping the gun. The technology needs to evolve some more first.

Equazcion • argue/improves • 15:57, 10/1/2007

It sounds like an interesting project and one that might work well with a wiki and some advanced extension software, but how does this relate to Wikipedia? (Not to mention, of course, that we match Google only by sheer force of number of contributors - financially, we are the molehill to their mountain, and that isn't about to change since we run on donations and will not accept advertisements.) Nihiltres^(t.l) 21:14, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Where has it ever been decreed that Wikipedia is a match for Google, or intends to be one? This is an encyclopedia, not a search engine, with a few volunteer developers, not a large paid staff. Corvus cornix 16:05, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

It would be darn near impossible, the software would have to detect not only the word, but also how the word is used. No individual word could be translated out of context for it to be perfect. In a document of 25000 words, the first sentence would have to be analyzed with respect to every other sentence, every other word, every other group of sentences, every other phrase, etc. to make sure that the original intent of the words comes across perfectly clear. Then every sentence, word, etc. would need the same done to it. Then you run into the problems: words/phrases that have no direct translation, words that even given the context can have multiple translations, things that given the context don't make any sense, how to make software that can determine context with near perfect accuracy, spelling and grammar errors in the original document, etc. Then you have to put it all together. After it is translated, it has to be logical, grammatically correct, in correct writing style, and completely coherent as if it was written by a native or extremely proficient speaker. You'd not only have to teach a computer every language: grammar rules, style, every possible word, etc. (If Microsoft Word's spelling/grammar checker is any indication, we're far from that.) But you would also have to teach it to compare the languages which is where most translation software fails miserably. You'd need immense amounts of processing power and data storage, which would cost a lot of money, the Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization; how much are you willing to donate? Mr.Z-man 03:37, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Mmm... Maybe you can collaborate with the government or the UN for funding. Otherwise, watch while google have their way with it. By the way, I heard about a wikia search engine in planning, but maybe it's all just talking, and they're really not up to it. --199.203.54.236 16:55, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Quieter cleanup style templates.

Recently I began noticing various boxes and icons appearing on the "this needs attention" templates. But the icons and boxes stand out even more than the text. Before, you could skip them easily. Now they demand attention. It makes the whole encyclopedia look like a draft version with scribbles all over it, whereas to all but the pedantic wikipedian, it is a complete product, if still evolving. They get in the way of reading the text. The "this needs attention" box should be almost unnoticable. They are essentially footnotes. Categories and other systems make sure that they won't get completely missed. It's a rare page which hasn't been vandalised by one or more of these bossy templates. Where was the decision for big glossy templates with icons made and how can I precipitate its reversal? Quirkie 20:40, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

The changes to the templates were the result of a standardization movement. I can't point you to the pages involved, but the current design came about as the result of a great deal of discussion. Corvus cornix 21:52, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Post your complaint at Wikipedia talk:Article message boxes. I agree with you, by the way, and there are many others who do too. People tend to forget that this encyclopedia doesn't just exist as an excersize in editing.

Equazcion • argue/improves • 22:57, 10/1/2007

AFAIK, most of the templates already had the icons (unless people have been going to the "next step" and making icons, I stopped visiting WT:AMB a while ago). The nice thing about the new design is that you can easily hide the icons if you don't like them. Anomie 02:34, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

That is nice but it's not something the casual reader will know about or care enough to go looking for. If it were a prominently-displayed feature then maybe I'd see it as a solution, but this is monobook.css customization. No one but steady, technically-inclined editors are gonna do that. Also the poster wasn't only complaining about icons but the general prominence of the boxes.

Equazcion • argue/improves • 02:55, 10/2/2007

I really like the new template formats. They are much more dignified and professional looking than the old ones. The first one you see may be a little more eye-catching than before, but once you get used to them, their standardization and regularity makes them a lot less conspicuous than the older versions. If we wanted to downgrade them we could play around with the size and placement - thaqt would be a proposal for somewhere. Wikidemo 23:20, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Not to mention the fact that if an article has serious problems, we don't want that to blend into the background. Mr.Z-man 03:39, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

One of the benefits of the various maintenance templates, is that they encourage readers to become editors. Hence it could/can/has been argued that higher-visibility for these templates is a good thing. --Quiddity 03:47, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Is that a fact, or just a supposition? It could probably be measured - check correlation between articles with boxes and number of edits. I suspect tho, that making the encyclopedia more readable is more likely to encourage the reader to participate than emphasizing that a very large number of articles could benefit from editing. Quirkie 18:37, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

• I have to agree with Corvis Corvix on this, the problem is especially problematic when multiple clean up tags flood the articlce. worst yet is a lot of these notices are never followed up on (I'd guess eight out of ten clean up templates don't have thier rationale listed on the talk page) I think a soloution could be easily solved by placing a clean up warning on a template similar to those used for templates for deletion saying the page has issue and to see the talk page for more details then listing the obtrusive clean up tags on the talk page. Obviously certain templates should remain in the article space. (Copyright problems, and AFD notices should stay the way they are) So yeah that's my soloution. Deathawk 07:18, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Category tree display

This is a pretty minor suggestion in the grand scheme of things, but I was wondering: On category pages, there are plus signs (+) next to each category so you can expand the tree to see a category's sub-categories. Those plus signs also appear next to categories that don't have any sub-categories, and if you click that plus sign, you just get a message that says "no subcategories". This is kind of annoying to me. Could we possibly eliminate the plus sign next to categories that don't have any sub-categories, so that we can see at glance which categories are expandable and which aren't, without having to click on each one?

Equazcion • argue/improves • 17:29, 10/2/2007

As far as I can see, this would be a major technical change and would not be feasible. Either the category page would have to check every single sub-category when the page loads (right now, it only gets this data from the server when the button is clicked), or there would need to be a change in the database schema. --- RockMFR 03:16, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeah I can see the problem. It might be possible to keep an index or an extra field in the database table that says whether or not a category has any sub-categories... but like you said that's probably a major change. It was just a thought.

Equazcion • argue/improves • 04:54, 10/3/2007

Also, there is no category tree. It's not that organized. Many categories have several parents. (SEWilco 17:12, 6 October 2007 (UTC))

Transform Wikipedia:POV check into a noticeboard

I just stumbled upon Wikipedia:POV check. Seems like a semi-forgotten essay, but it has some templates and other pages (ex. Wikipedia:NPOV dispute) associated with it. How about we transform it into a noticeboard, where cases could be discussed on a one-by-one basis, as Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard, Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard and other noticeboards work so well?-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  23:54, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

That seems like a good idea, but we should probably follow convention and create a Noticeboard sub-page of WP:NPOV. Adrian M. H. 16:40, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I think we have enough noticeboards already. NPOV disputes can be addressed by our dispute resolution process. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 18:30, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Lists of MMOGs

Shouldn't the lists of MMOGs ("List of MMOGs" and "List of free MMOGs") have another section on the page for each game? "contact info required?" This would tell whether or not you must give out contact information (phone number and/or email, and/or mailing address) in order to create/run a file/account on these games. Zantaggerung 01:45, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Sounds fine, feel free to be bold and do it yourself, if you want help implementing this plan i would suggest going to the articles talk page because the village pump is more for stuff with wikipedia wide effects. -Icewedge 01:26, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

User account renaming proposal

In reference to a thread at ANI, [3], where a vandal recreated an old account that had been renamed. Don't want to create too much, well, bureaucracy for the bureaucrats, still want to leave the option open for new users to take the username. So how about when accounts are renamed, the old account name is automatically recreated by the bureaucrat potentially with some sort of template notice saying that to acquire the account name requires usurpation or something? Is it possible to balance this out with the standard redirects to the new userpages? Basically, let's add an extra step to obtain a username that has been in use. ~Eliz81^(C) 17:07, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Some users theoretically might not want or care about recreating their old name, so adding a "Would you like a bureaucrat to recreate your old name?" question to the WP:CHU process might be good. The biggest problem I'm seeing with bureaucrats recreating the old username is figuring out what the password of the account would be and who would have control of the account - the bureaucrat or the user. Also, while unnecessary, it might be nice for Extension:Renameuser to have an option to automatically recreate the old username when renaming. --- RockMFR 21:17, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Technical Directory

Right now, there seems to be no place to find summaries of all the Wikipedia namespace pages, policies, and processes. What do you think about a Technical Directory, summarizing all things back-end? Here is a sample entry for quickpoll:

Quickpoll: Quickpolls were a process used in early 2004. They were designed as a way to quickly make desicions related to user conduct, but were seen as unsuitable to the project, and were eventually displaced by RfCs and arbitration. A proposal in 2005 to bring them back was quickly rejected.

I know this isn't perfect, but the TD will be editable like everything else. It would be a great source to learn about things like BJAODN. So, once again, what do you think? ¿SFGiДnts! ^{¿Complain! ¿Analyze! ¿Review!} 03:28, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

My initial reaction is that you have just had a very good idea indeed. The closest approximation that I know of is John Broughton's directory, but that is a general A-Z of almost everything. Adrian M. H. 22:35, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Some of the entries in the index I've been working on do have a bit of explanation, but they are simply links. Perhaps someone would like to fork the index (fine by me) and start expanding the entries? Maybe pick a letter of the alphabet and do all the entries in that section, as a demo? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 12:17, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I propose a fixed left hand panel or toolbar

Might it be possible to have a fixed left hand panel so that features such as "community portal" and, especially the search box are available at all times.

In editing I want to focus on a particular section in "Show Preview" mode and at the same time access the search box to help me research for further editing. (It's not a problem in "edit this page" mode as the edit screen scrolls and the search box is static at the left of the screen.) If I were to “compare selected versions” on the “history” page I reach a “difference between revisions” page and have the same problem. I lose the section of interest if I just use "home" on my keyboard to access the search box.

At the moment I set up a separate tab for Wikipedia home so that I have access to the search box, and a separate tab for Wiktionary. A fixed search box or a toolbar for search and Wiktionary (is that possible? costly?) would be very user friendly. --User:Brenont 03:52, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

With browser frames? You're likely to give many people another vertical scrollbar, which is wide and often confusing; especially those with older and less-capable equipment. Although, I'm very sympathetic; I often want to search without losing my place in scrolling. Maybe there is a nicer-looking way to do it than frames. 1of3 03:56, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I hate frames: to me, they're visually unappealing, never let me see the address of the page I'm on, annoy me when I am scrolling and my mouse leaves the frame, and just generally stink. ¿SFGiДnts! ^{¿Complain! ¿Analyze! ¿Review!} 04:19, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

The three inches at the left of every Wikipedia page is devoted to a Wikipedia panel and it has scrolled off the screen much of the time. I don't understand the frame problem but I'm not that technical. A docked or floating toolbar could achieve my aim, couldn't it? --User:Brenont —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 04:45, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

The problem with a floating DOM element window is that it would have to be made compatible with non-javascript and non-css browsers. 1of3 14:08, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Easy fix: Take the bottom three lines from my CSS file and copy them into yours. Adjust the margin values according to your browser, default text size, and the number of links that you have in each portlet. If you have not customised the portlet links, you may need more space. And you will need to hide the language section as well (fourth line down in my CSS). Hope that works for you as well as it does for me. Some trial and error will be needed with the margins. You can use the same technique to modify the navigation portlet as well if you want to. Adrian M. H. 16:30, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

That would be perfect were it not for the long list of interwikis on, e.g., the Main Page. Almost exactly perfect, though. 1of3 16:49, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

That's why I wrote that you need to hide the language section. Adrian M. H. 16:51, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I have been using this a few days and I think it is very close to being ready for prime time. There need to be conditionals based on screen height (javascript) and the number of interwikis, but this is a tremendous improvement. In order for this to get implemented though, this discussion has to move over to WP:VPT. If nobody objects in a day or so, I will be moving the thread. 1of3 15:30, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I tried something similar in CSS a while ago (I'm not sure whether I used the same code or not), and it had problems with position:absolute and position:relative CSS elements. Could you test the code on some of those first, to make sure it works? (By the way, I put a scrollbar on the interwikis if there were too many of them, to solve the interwiki problem, but that isn't enough on smaller screns.) --ais523 15:35, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

It is really not something that everyone (or even a majority) would want. I tried it as by way of an example for this thread, but I have not kept it. I'm in the habit of hovering the pointer over the left pane when I when I want to scroll the whole screen while editing, and a fixed object gets in the way of that. Best left for individuals to adopt if they want it, I think. Any positional inheritance issues would be easy to fix, though. Adrian M. H. 15:42, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Is this what you're looking for? meta:Help:User_style/floating_quickbar — Omegatron 02:55, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Signature suggestions

I propose an easy checkbox to turn off signature bots, and a template that makes it easier to sign for someone who forgot to sign.--Filll 22:25, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

So, um, you want it to be easier to be lazy then. Sorry, but I find myself using {{Unsigned2}} far too often, and it gets a bit annoying. If you want to opt out of Sinebot, you can, but that is really for making edits that do not require signatures. Adrian M. H. 22:33, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

RfA change

There's an important discussion going on at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia:Requests for adminship. a.z. 01:05, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Desysopping proposal

After some of the discussion on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia:Requests for adminship, I've decided to try my hand at creating another desysopping proposal. Please read it over (a read of the RFC might help too) and discuss it on the talk page. Mr.Z-man 01:14, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Graphviz extension

There is a Graphviz extension to MediaWiki. Why don't you use it on Wikipedia? http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GraphViz It would be awesome, and very useful for quickly making and collaborating on diagrams and graphs for articles. -- Frap 02:12, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Spell check

I hope I'm putting this proposal in the right place, but I would like to propose that wikimeta's search results have a spell check thing on it. Similar to Google's "Did you mean _?" It would greatly help in looking for articles without having to look up the name in a dictionary. And please don't yell at me if I am putting this proposal in the wrong spot. Thanks-- Penubag  04:16, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

This is in the right place, except that new sections go at the bottom of pages. However, this is an idea which has been suggested often before. We could do it, but it would require much more server resources, and as a donation-funded project, we just don't have the cash. See also WP:PEREN#Search_should_detect_spelling_errors.-gadfium 06:03, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh, Ok, I understand. Thanks-- Penubag  15:44, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

CC template standardization

The Creative Commons copyright tags are a bit varied in their layout, and I think they should be standardized. Here are the differences I see:

• They all start out with different words, either "this image," "this work," or "this file."
  • "This image": {{cc-by}} {{cc-by-sa}} {{cc-by-sa-2.0}}
  • "This work": {{cc-by-2.0}} {{cc-by-sa-2.5}} {{cc-by-sa-3.0}}
  • "This file": {{cc-by-2.5}} {{cc-by-3.0}}
• Most of them simply give the license version followed by the raw URL of the license (and among these, some say "version X" while others say "v. X"), but {{cc-by-2.5}} and {{cc-by-3.0}} render the URL with the name of the license as the link text.
• {{cc-by-sa-2.0}} is noticeably different from all the rest, with a different frame and width, and smaller, left-aligned text.
• In {{cc-by}}, {{cc-by-2.5}}, and {{cc-by-sa-2.5}}, the "CC", "by", and "sa" are icons combined as one image, which renders the "by" and "sa" icons larger than they are in the other templates.
• {{cc-by-2.5}} and {{cc-by-3.0}} are missing the word "the" before the license name.
• {{cc-by-sa}} renders the words "this image" as a link to the image's URL, which none of the others do.
• Most of them render "Creative Commons" as a normal wikilink, while {{cc-by-2.5}} and {{cc-by-3.0}} have it as an interwiki link.

To me, {{cc-by-3.0}} looks the best stylistically, so my proposal would be to use it as the standard for all of them, with the following changes:

• Add the missing "the" before this license name
• Change "this file" to "this image"--unless the tags are used for things other than images, in which case "file" or "work" might be better.
• Change "Creative Commons" to a normal wikilink. Having it as an interwiki link is unnecessary, and without the different shades of blue the two links look like one.

I don't think that the direct link to the image in {{cc-by-sa}} is necessary, but I think it's used on all the CC tags on Commons, so perhaps it should be included for the sake of uniformity.

What do you think? --CrazyLegsKC 09:36, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I would prefer "work" to "image," since IIRC the templates are used on audio files. Work might also be better because I think some editors use their userpage to license their own work under multiple licenses. --Ybbor^Talk 13:21, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

The tags are also used to licence sounds and videos, as well as their more common use on images. --ais523 16:58, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree they should be standardized, but while you're at it, standardize the userpage licenses listed here: Wikipedia:Userboxes/Large/Licencing and decribed here: Wikipedia:Multi-licensing and User_talk:Ram-Man/MLFAQ. -kslays 18:31, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Biographies of science writers = scientist?

I've noticed that the biographies of science writers (e.g. Dava Sobel) are put into the category of scientist (or in the scientist stub category). I find this odd, since many of the best science writers, while scientifically educated, are not scientists. Should there not be a category for science writers instead? I don't know the reasoning for this, hence my question. --Michael Daly 16:25, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

So fix it. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:34, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

If it was one or two pages, I'd assume an error and correct it. However, it appears to be an across-the-board "standard", hence my question. I don't know if a community decision was made on this or it just happened. Michael Daly 13:56, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Personalized random article function

The Special:Random feature is an good one, but with 2+ million articles on Wikipedia, it becomes "too random". I would like a "take me to a random article" feature, that is narrower. So that I can find a random article in a topic of interest for me. So, that for example, I can easily find a random article on computers and science, and someone else can find a random article on animals, plants and nature, and someone else can find random articles on body, biology, medicine, etc. -- Frap 17:33, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

This has been suggested before, and it is a good idea, but I do not know whether it would be practicable. It might be possible to add an option to filter by category, and add the ability to filter out certain types of page (such as disambiguation). I would like to see that happen, but that is a question for someone with more knowledge of the software. Adrian M. H. 18:10, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Also it would nice to be able to limit the results to non-stub articles. Kaldari 23:59, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

New look for vandal warnings

I was thinking we could convert the vandal warnings to the ambox style. I think it might make the warnings easy to see and know the level of the warning. Thanks! jonathan (talk — contribs) 21:21, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

You should probably contact the User Warnings WikiProject about this. However, as a (somewhat inactive) member, I am wary about this idea. The appearance of ambox is meant to make it stand out from the article. However, user warnings are part of talk pages, not just a header to them. Some time ago, there was concern that mere paragraphs (see Template:Test now) were insufficient for distinguishing warnings. So, icons were introduced (this was somewhat controversial back then). In my opinion, we don't need to take ambox to user talk pages, since the icons are sufficient. Gracenotes^T § 23:00, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

James Polk entry

I accessed this entry on 8 October 2007 at 0026 ET (US). According to the quick information under his picture, it says he was a US President from 1945 until 2002. Just letting you know that the dates do not coincide with those stated in the article itself. Thank you for your time and sorry for the inconvenience.

Jamie Indiana —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.51.104.178 (talk) 04:27, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism from a university IP address; fixed by Golbez approximately 2 minutes after the posting here.

NOTICE: this is wrong place to post vandalism reports. If you don't want to fix vandalism yourself, please post at the help desk. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 11:56, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

A collapsable template for references and footnotes

Following my previous suggestion here, I really think that a collapsable template for references and footnotes would be a good idea. Skimming over the article for Golden plates, and we can see that more than half of the article is references and footnotes. It makes the article look longer than it really is, and can be a pain in the butt when it comes to scrolling. Maybe we could device a way to put the refs and notes into a template and make use of the "hide/show" function. Or like I previously suggested, putting refs and notes in a separate page, and that page will be accessable alongside the top between "article" and "discussion". Oidia (talk) 12:43, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

The footnote system is bad enough (it takes two clicks just to check who is being cited). If the footnotes were hidden or on a different page, they would be even less useful than currently. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:55, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Looking at Golden plates, it's actually slightly less than half. I don't see any problems with the article that would be fixed by this proposal and that outweigh the problems that would be introduced by the proposal. Anomie 22:14, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Aggree on collapsable {{reflist}} template (as opposed to a separate page), on the condition it would be automatically fully shown if a reader clicks a reference ^[1] link. Is it technically possible? --Kubanczyk 08:33, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Users protecting their own user pages

Would it be possible for users to protect their own userpages from editing by other users except admins?--Avant Guard 16:47, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Anything is possible, software wise. It's rather unlikely that you're going to get software developers interested in this, if you post a bug/feature request, unless community consensus is shown. And I doubt that will happen - users have been known to abuse user pages, and it's helpful that regular editors can (initially, at least) deal with the problem.

Also, if a particular user page has been the subject of repeated vandalism, it's likely that an admin would give it semi-protection, or (I suppose) permanent protection if the user never wanted to modify it again (seems unlikely).

In short, to the extent there is a problem now, it's far, far easier to handle it on a case-by-case basis than to tork the software so radically. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 11:50, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Article space templates

I've been wondering, why are all the "page might not be neutral", "page needs cleanup", "page might be compromised by weasel words", "page lacks sufficient cowbell" templates in article space? They're horribly obtrusive, in many cases convey the opinion of the editor who has deigned to "drive-by tag" the article more than any measure to which they reflect consensus and are next to useless for the reader. That information on Wikipedia ought to be cross-referenced and taken with a grain of salt (much like any other source) is a fact unknown to virtually no regular browser of the site, and at any rate is a notion that would be much better conveyed with a small universal disclaimer rather than with humongous, descending, colorful, graphic-laden monstrosities of a template, equivalent in all respects to the much-deprecated "Under contruction!!" notice notoriously plaguing novice websites.

In what is in no way an invocation of Argumentum ad Jimbonem, I must note that the assertion "[Wikipedia is] like a sausage: you might like the taste of it, but you don't necessarily want to see how it's made" applies to exactly this sort of case. I suggest that Templates like these should be relocated to their respective discussion pages, and anticipating that this might very probably have already been suggested and rejected, would at least like a link to the obligatory behemoth discussion that took place so I can understand the rationale behind things being the way they are now. --AceMyth 17:07, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if this has been discussed, but I know that I am against such a measure. There are two reasons why these templates should remain in article space: first, we like to encourage new editors, so it serves us well to give new editors a place to start, and second, it is important that a reader knows that what they are reading is not the best of Wikipedia. Someone might be very turned off from Wikipedia if the first article they read is full of grammatical mistakes and POV and they don't know that we realize that fact and want to fix it. —METS501 (talk) 17:12, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I use wikipedia far more than I make changes. I'd like to see a compromise between the above two viewpoints where the "cleanup" templates are made quieter: smaller, no box, no color, no icon. With only a little exposure I can know that wikipedia is a work in progress and that some pages are better than others, and that I can edit nearly every page. The only time I care about the box is if I happen to be editing the page anyway and it suggests something I can actually do. Quirkie 18:46, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I concur with this and add that a clear separator plus a healthy amount of space between the templates and the article would also be a good idea, both aesthetically and functionally. i.e. something like this, which still has a box etc. but I think would be a step in the right direction (cf. this quasi-current version of the same article, which begins with the equivalent of putting the reader through a powerpoint presentation). --AceMyth 00:23, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Whether as user or editor, I find the whole lot of "IN YOUR FACE" templates to be obnoxious and in poor taste—and worse, unprofessional. To me, they are self-inflicted wounds that could be replaced by a modest 2 line tall notice. I don't buy the idea that such tags encourage someone to become an editor. An "editor mentality" will spot and error and fix the typo or grammar without a tag. There are a lot of reasons to quiet them down and make an understated message, not least that they half blast me off the chair when viewing said page. {{underconstruction}} is probably the worst of the lot, and the least needful to be a big box. A simple statement that the page is a work in progress is sufficient. // FrankB 17:47, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Quran

The sentence in the text about Prophet Muhammad, the sentence which regards to Quran says that there is no big difference between the Quran early in the history and the one publishing nowadays. It's wrong. It must be "there isn't any difference". Because Muslims believe Quran is the word of God, the word which can not be changed. If it can be changed then there would be no difference between Torah, Bible and Quran. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.114.107.227 (talk) 21:26, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Please read WP:SOFIXIT. --Kubanczyk 08:07, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Page histories - marking edits as vandalism?

A lot of the page histories of articles I watch are nothing more than a school boy's play pen of vandalism and reversion. Is there some way we can mark vandalism in the page history? Of course, it's a subjective matter, but for cases that are just plainly vandalism, and edits that are just straight forward reversion, it would make the history section a lot easier to navigate, especially when finding a useful edit is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Richard001 22:29, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree that would be a useful feature.-gadfium 04:16, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Too easy to open to abuse. Editors in an edit-war often label their opponents work as Vandalism, even when it is clearly not. If they had the means to make their opponents work disappear at the click of a mouse, is that something we want? --Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:32, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

It's just the same as marking edits with rvv, which can and is also abused, and would contain no more authority than doing so. Other editors could unmark edits as vandalism or reverting if required, and explain and if need be warn other users. Ideally it would be limited to established users, i.e. semi-protection criteria apply. It would require work on the software, so the main question is whether the use of it is worth while or just feature creep. The other issue is which edits should be marked - vandalism only? vandalism and reverting? What about reverts that also add some information? What about incomplete manual removal of vandalism? Good faith edits that clearly don't improve the article? Also, there would probably have to be some sort of 'edit history' for the marking of changes, which themselves would then be candidates for marking as vandalism and reverting. The idea is to make navigation simpler, but if it would make things more difficult overall it wouldn't be worth it, so I'd like to hear more input. Thinking about some of the difficulties it could bring up, I'm tending to think it might not be such a good idea. Richard001 22:44, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

But the deal with rvv is that it is transparent and in the edit history for all to see. If I understand this proposal, it is to redact all vandalous edits so they no longer appear in the edit history. That sounds like a bad idea all around. With only a FEW exceptions (which is why the power is reserved for Beaurocrats), making a page in the edit history disappear hurts credibility. All edits, even vandalism, should be visible to all. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 00:15, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

This smacks of a desire to sweep things under the carpet and, apart from the obvious scenarios that are already dealt with, there is absolutely no need to do that. It is not desirable and the system would be abused habitually. Which would only make more work for others; more reversions and messier disputes. Adrian M. H. 00:56, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

One way this could work is for admin rollback to add a flag to the database hiding the revisions being rolled back, and for suitably trusted users (those with accounts more than four days old, or some new level of trust) a checkbox to set the flag would be available next to the "This is a minor edit" checkbox when using the "undo" feature or editing a previous revision. Viewing of history would omit such flagged versions by default, but a checkbox would enable anyone to see such flagged revisions (not dissimilar to the checkbox enabling or disabling viewing of minor edits in "Recent Changes").

I'm not at all sure whether the benefits of this would be worth the coding effort, the additional complexity to the interface, and the issues of dealing with those who might abuse the features, but it's certainly worth discussing.-gadfium 02:08, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I have to agree with Adrian, there is far too much potential for abuse of this with edit wars and sockpuppetry with such little benefit in convenience in searching the history. If an article gets so much vandalism that there is as much vandalism/reversion as good edits and it is frequent enough to have the effect of clogging the history, long-term semiprotection would be something to consider. Requiring edit summaries would be much more helpful in searching the history, but that will likely never be implemented either. Mr.Z-man 02:18, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Special page to list incoming links?

Is there any consensus for a page — say, Special:Recentlinks — to be created to list all additions of external links in a similiar style to Special:Recentchanges? — Thomas H. Larsen 06:22, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

So on this page you would list all external links which had recently been added to articles? — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 14:28, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Not at all. I am referring to a page which could list the diffs to all external link additions, primarily for the purpose of fighting (link)spam. Cheers. — Thomas H. Larsen 05:00, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Download version history as RCS file

This is a request for a new feature in the MediaWiki software. On the article history page like http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Pedophilia&action=history I have to click a thousand times if I want to download all versions so I can grep them. Of course, I could write a shell script to do the job but that would burden the server and only help those who have the script. I think it would be better, if the version history page contained a prominent link to download the entire version history as Pedophilia,v in RCS format as created by multiple

ci -d$DATE -w$USER -l $ARTICLE

commands. Any volunteer implementors reading here? Roman Czyborra 11:34, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Can't you just use Special:Export? It allows downloading about 100 revisions each time, and there is an offset parameter so (I believe) you can work your way through a thousand history pages if you want to.

You also don't mention why you want to do this. If you're searching for specific text, for example, then Wikiblame or User:AmiDaniel/WhodunitQuery may be better options. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 11:43, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Link to featured article revisions

I asked once before if Wikipedia could provide links to the revisions of articles that passed the nom to become featured, and the response I got was that Wikipedia provides links to the revisions of the articles the day that they are featured on the main page. But all this provides a link to the initial paragraph [4]. I think that it's very important that Wikipedia provide links to the entire featured revisions of articles, not just the first paragraphs, because the quality of an article can deteriorate over time and articles can eventually lose their featured status. If this link is provided, a person will always have access to featured quality material, and being able to compare the current revision of the article to the earlier featured revision can aid in maintaining the article's quality and seeing if it still deserves it's featured status.--Avant Guard 16:03, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I concur with you. This system exists on the French Wikipédia. I always believed it was on the English one. I think this is good proposition you just did. Martial BACQUET 16:35, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

If you to the article's talk page, you should see an "article milestones" box with a link to the featured version. If I recall correctly, a bot handles this. east.718 at 21:43, 10/9/2007

Let's get rid of the user conduct RfCs because they're inefficient stupid wastes of time

With the growth of Wikipedia has come the inevitable growth of a de facto court of litigation that has a structure that many describe as unnecessarily convoluted. In particular, Wikipedia:Dispute resolution lists the steps roughly as

1. talk it out
2. get a third opinion
3. file a Request for comment (RfC)
4. Request mediation
5. Go to arbitration

However, in parallel to this are issues involving problematic editors with user conduct issues. Though not outlined as clearly, the court of appeals process unofficially looks something like this:

1. talk it out
2. file a complaint at AN/I or CSN
3. file a user conduct RfC
4. Go to arbitration

My beef is with step number 3. Does anybody ever really take user conduct RfCs seriously? No. They are simply a way of gathering a bunch of people together to argue over which person/persons is/are "good" or "bad". Invariably the User conduct RfC ends up looking something like this:

• User:ABC writes in the lead: User:XYZ is bad, bad, awful, and no good. Look at this list of 100 links that proves it.

• Corroborating ABC people 1 through 10 sign in agreement.

• User:XYZ writes in rebuttal: User:ABC is bad, bad, awful and is hounding me, hurting my feelings, and I'm just trying to make Wikipedia better. All those links prove nothing and here are 100 links proving it and how bad Corroborating ABC people 1 through 10 are.

• Sympathetic XYZ people 1 through 5 sign in agreement.

• Uninvolved neutral paragon of neutrality User:000 writes: Aw shucks, both groups sound like they are being naughty. Everybody needs a slap on the wrist and should go back to writing an encyclopedia. Yes, some people have done some bad things, but haven't we all? WP:AGF, WP:CIV, WP:NPA, WP:CON, WP:NPOV, etc., etc. Love, peace, and cherry blossoms.

• Other candidates for adminship 1 through 5 sign in agreement.

• Sundry of other responses by various people in one of these three camps write pretty much the same thing with the usual suspects endorsing.

What's the point? I mean really. We all knew that this was what the User:RfC was going to look like anyway and when the inevitable arbitration does happen, the arbitrators don't have the time to sift through all the B.S. to cull out the few decent pieces of evidence contained in that tripe.

So I say, why do we have these things? They are a ridiculous procedure and a waste of time.

GRRRR!

ScienceApologist 18:16, 9 October 2007 (UTC) Ali'i expanded some acronyms for clarity 19:28, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

• Signing in agreement. No, wait! :-) More seriously - so, what do you suggest? See, RfC has one good thing about it: it gives a sense of proportion. It lets XYZ know that there are actually 10 people who feel that way about him. XYZ probably knew there were 3, but probably didn't know there were 10. It lets ABC know that there are 5 people supporting XYZ. ABC may not have known that. XYZ may have thought there were more. Either or both may have thought that, given 15 people, a clear majority would agree they were right. It's a specific forum for a large number of people to air their gripes or suggestions, without messing up an article talk page for issues that are really about editors. It doesn't often work completely, but sometimes it does help a bit. What's your better suggestion? And don't forget the love, peace and cherry blossoms. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 18:49, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

  Let them air their gripes and frustrations at one of the other three venues I listed. AN/I, CSN seem like good options. The problem is that too often a user-rfc is listed as a bloody requirement for getting action taken to deal with a problematic user. After you waste weeks or months with the thing and nothing has happened except more grief, only then is it okay for escalation of the matter to occur. That's wasting a lot of people's patience and goodwill and generally driving good editors away. My suggestion is simply trash the entire thing as my point is that it doesn't work at all. It never resolves anything. Show me a place where XYZ has ever said, "OMIGOD! 10 people are upset with me! I better change!" due to a user conduct RfC. Show me enough examples and maybe I'll change my mind. But I've been through lots of these things and to the best of my knowledge this NEVER has happened. Sometimes it actually makes things worse. ScienceApologist 18:56, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Epbr123 seems to have worked. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 19:12, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Where's your evidence that it worked? In particular, this comment seems to indicate otherwise. ScienceApologist 19:44, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

It worked in the sense that it hasn't needed to be taken farther since, which is really all we can ask for. I hope you weren't looking for someone to throw themselves on their knees, rend their garments and pour ashes on their heads. User_talk:AnonEMouse#RFC is a nicer comment. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 19:56, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm dubious. When someone declares that the user-conduct RfC about them has "no consensus", what is to say that they won't keep behaving badly? I don't believe that there is anything wrong in principle with having a neutral place to air ones grievances without resolution, but to REQUIRE it of all disputes is a bit outrageous, don't you think? ScienceApologist 21:16, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

• Put it this way. User conduct requests can work, but only if there's actually some desire by the person being "commented on" to find out about their behavior. Hostile RFCs, filed by users hostile to a given user, are rarely useful unless the other user is willing to say "I will take this into account". Otherwise, they break down pretty much along ScienceApologist's lines. I don't even bother commenting on most of them, since they're so uniformly pointless. However, occasionally you can see a legitimate desire for some kind of resolution. --Haemo 19:25, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

  Keeping a version of User RfCs of that sort would be a fair compromise (though there is Wikipedia:Editor review which basically does exactly what you say). User RfCs are almost always on the whole hostile. ScienceApologist 19:44, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

• User conduct RfCs don't really have much value in terms of actually correcting user behaviour, but they DO serve a useful purpose in terms of putting issues in perspective and gathering consensus. Often User A will file an RfC against user B, expecting to drown B in a sea of shame and scorn, only to be told en masse that either B was right after all or that B was wrong but the issue is trivial. An RfC isn't going to turn a mustache-twirling wiki-villain into a sudden good guy, but it does sometimes help us sort out the mountains from the molehills. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 21:47, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

  I guess what you're saying is then that the benefit of user-rfcs is to keep the overly WikiLitigious from bogging down the community. I guess I just always find myself in the goddamn mountains. Still, I think we should be able to find a better way than having what amounts to essentially a process which is meaningful only when it fails! ScienceApologist 22:30, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

  It only "fails" if you see its goal as being resolution of the dispute. Despite what the page says, I think at this point the goal is more to get community input than really solve anything. -Amarkov moo! 22:46, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

  Then it should not be considered part of dispute resolution, should it? I guess then I can tell all those people complaining that I haven't done a User-RfC to shove it! ScienceApologist 23:16, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

• But politely so we don't have to file an RfC. Cheers! --Kevin Murray 23:30, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

• The only real problem that I have with RfC is that it tends to bog down in 2 ways. First of all, by requiring that truly problematic and disruptive editors go through the process, it keeps them around, being disruptive longer. Secondly, the preponderance of petty problems means that the real troublesome problems get trivialized or get missed. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 00:11, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

• Goodness me I actually did laugh out loud at this, well done SA. I fully agree user conduct RfC is a complete waste of time, and only serves to keep disruptive editors around longer. The best that can usually be expected from really malevolent editors subjected to RfC, is that they lie low for a while, or find more subtle ways of making everyone else's lives just a little more miserable. The main argument in favour of keeping it here seems to be community input, but let's face it, there are plenty of other existing venues for that, like AN/I, CSN, or mediation. Let's ditch ( or at least deprecate ) this silly waste of effort, and skip straight to the keel-haul... er... I mean... "community sanctions"... ahem...  – ornis⚙ 08:35, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
• Agreed, the RfC process almost never generates any meaningful result. It's little more than a hoop that must be jumped through in order to proceed with other steps in the dispute resolution process. If the subject of the RfC is reasonable, discussion on their talk page or other venue suffices; if the subject is unreasonable, RfC accomplishes nothing (except to bring out other unreasonable people who support their co-conspirator). Raymond Arritt 17:59, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
• I seem to vaguely recall a discussion along these lines after User:Kelly Martin went through like 3 in a row. (I'm not singling the user out, it's just the last time I recall this even semi-seriously being discussed.) - Personally, The RfC process only barely works for article concerns. (I honestly think straw polls work much better as a way to start discussion in those cases.) RfC seems to me to work best for policy/guideline/convention discussions (though if there is interest, they can get to be loooong : ) - So yes, I agree with the intial thought, RfC for user review should go the way of the dodo. - jc37 19:30, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Restore this version - request for additional reverting functionality

Just as we let users 'undo' a certain edit, I think the 'restore this version' feature should also be available. Often undo doesn't work or doesn't cover a series of vandal edits, and even with Twinkle I can't always use it on computers with IE7 as the only browser. Richard001 22:50, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

It takes 3 clicks to do what you are saying. Not really that big of a deal. 1) Open the old version, 2) click "edit this page", 3) enter an edit summary and click save. What more can one want? --Jayron32|talk|contribs 00:13, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Normal revert? Anything more would essentially be an Administrator power. x42bn6 Talk Mess 09:35, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

It might be useful to have a link to open up the edit view for an old version, accessible from the history, simply to make things easier for new users and anons who might otherwise not know how to do a non-undo revert. It saves only one click-step from the current method, and still requires a summary, so it's not as if it's giving anons rollback. --ais523 11:37, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

If you set your preferences to Edit on Double-click, you can save a step. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 19:48, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Checksums in history?

Adding a checksum feature would make it easier to see which revisions are the same version (to identify reverts, etc) —Random832 16:56, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of which, why isn't there a user preference to hide reverted edits on the history page? — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 19:49, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Small references

Make all headlines titled "References" have small text, so you don't have to manually add <div class="references-small"> to all articles all the time. -- Frap 23:07, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

You could just use {{reflist}}. Lara❤Love 23:40, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

And we generally should not be doing that unless there is a lot of refs compared to the amount of text. Mr.Z-man 23:58, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

How do submit something or someone you feel should be in Wikipedia?

How do submit something or someone you feel should be in Wikipedia?

I am interested in submitting a person I know for a fact is searched for a lot on video sites and search engines. How can we see his name on Wikipedia? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.111.145.38 (talk) 01:00, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

You can request articles at Wikipedia:Requested articles. If you are feeling bold, you can create the article yourself, as long as you understand how wikipedia works (WP:BIO and Wikipedia:Your first article are good reads). -Andrew c ^[talk] 01:30, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

automatic text promt

As it is often the case that you go to the main page of wikipedia to search, it would be useful if the text cursor automatically was in the search box, without you having to click in it (like on google)130.88.168.247 18:38, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

But then you couldn't scroll the Main Page using the arrow keys on your keyboard. --ais523 18:40, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

S: Pseudo-namespace for shortcuts to Special:

I'd like to suggest the creation of the pseudo-namespace S: or WS: to hold shortcuts that redirect to pages in the Special: namespace, such as S:WATCH redirecting to Special:Watchlist. I'd actually be a little surprised if this hadn't been suggested before, so if there's a project in the works on this topic already or a technical reason why this can't be done, please let me know. Also, if there's a better place to move forward with this concept, I'd be happy to take this topic somewhere a little more permanent than the Pump. --Dachannien^Talk_Contrib 21:42, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Laat time I checked, redirects to Special: didn't work, because it's not a true namespace, and the pages in it don't really exist. --Carnildo 01:49, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Just tested: they still don't work (see User:Carnildo/sandbox2, which isn't a redirect to Special:Random). Further, the "S" prefix is used for interwiki links to Wikisource. --Carnildo 01:59, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunate. Ah, well, thanks much for the response! --Dachannien^Talk_Contrib 02:44, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

The software has the ability for redirects to Special: to work, but it's broken and so turned off on Wikimedia. (It just does a HTTP redirect, which means that redirects to special pages can be used for hard-to-revert-if-you-don't-know-what-you're-doing vandalism (the 'redirected from' message that's normally there is removed), and there are weird cases such as redirecting your userpage to Special:Mypage that cause HTTP redirect loops.) --ais523 17:20, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

New FL on the Main Page proposal

We now have over 400 featured lists and seem to be promoting in excess of 30 per month of late (41 in August and 42 in September). When Today's featured article (TFA) started (2004-02-22), they only had about 200 featured articles and were barely promoting 20 new ones per month. I think the quality of featured lists is at least as good as the quality of featured articles was when they started appearing on the main page. Thus, I am ready to open debate on a proposal to institute a List of the Day on the main page with nominations starting November 1 2007, voting starting December 1 2007 and main page appearances starting January 1 2008. For brevity, the proposal page does not discuss the details of eventual main page content, but since the work has already been done, you should consider this proposal assuming the eventual content will resemble the current content at the featured content page. Such output would probably start at the bottom of the main page. The proposal page does not debate whether starting with weekly list main page entries would be better than daily entries. However, I suspect persons in favor of weekly lists are really voicing opinions against lists on the main page since neither TFA nor Picture of the day started as weekly endeavors, to the best of my knowledge. See the List of the Day proposal and comment at WP:LOTDP and its talk page.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 14:23, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:What The Fuck? Oh My God! Too Many Damn Three Letter Acronyms. ARRRGGGHHH!!!!~!@!~1`2 --Ali'i 15:24, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry. Revised.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 16:32, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Citations -- Help page proposal

Wikipedia:Citation templates has two big failings when one is fumbling to figure out how to cite a kind of reference new to one's experience— 1) so much is crammed into it's columns, its hard to read any of it and 2) it doesn't define any of the fields (template parameters). In it's defense, it does provide a link to the full doc page with full detail, but I just noticed that about an hour back. (Perhaps WP:CITET can be given one of those ugly IN YOUR FACE notice boxes highlighting that in the head section.)
Unexpected use of template {{2}} - see Template:2 for details.In general Category:Citation templates has been too cluttered to be of much use, too cryptic as well, and sort of playing a safe form of russian roulette when guessing whether that one would be better or suitable at all.
Unexpected use of template {{2}} - see Template:2 for details.Burned by struggling for a media cite last week, I suggested a help page (goto) here on Wikipedia_talk:Citation_templates. Well actually above 'here', but the current discussion will reveal a method was explored and that the feasibility of the page is established. (No reason to recap all that here--that's what I want consensus and comment on!)
Unexpected use of template {{2}} - see Template:2 for details.The question is now whether to procede with a Wikipedia page creation, whether to cross-link it with the existing Wikipedia:Citation templates page, and how (Whether we section that, or have no back links from the new page to the alternative form [both would list the same templates, but display different information about same]).
Unexpected use of template {{2}} - see Template:2 for details.Bottom line, I think the idea worthy, especially as once things are set up both the new variation on Wikipedia:Citation templates, and the new page ([[Wikipedia:Citation templates II?) can be written so changes on the source pages (template space /doc pages per this method) automatically update the two complimentary compendiums. That should be obvious given the discussion. Cheers! // FrankB 21:10, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Citation can be easily done using the small program User:Dmoss/Wikicite JoJan 15:38, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure the following qualifies as "easily"; The program does not need to be installed and makes no registry entries. To run it, simply copy the executable to a convenient place on any computer capable of running .NET programs. Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 can run .NET programs.

I think Reference generator is a much easier way to generate citations; all it takes is a bookmark. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:38, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Anal-oral contact

I think the illustration for this article is unnecessary and probably break some law of United States. What does mean the community? This can be located in a encyclopaedia like ours? ServusDei 21:11, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Its probably about as tasteful an illustration of the concept as you can get and I see no reason to remove it. The image isn't crude, provides a valid and exact illustration of the article's topic, and Wikipedia isn't censored Collectonian 21:16, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

And the description in article isn't enough for understanding, what is a anal-oral contact? this image isn't crude?? What is crude then? ServusDei 06:28, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Crude is what your emotions founded in prejudices react to strongly enough to have as a opinion. Setting aside our natal and religious prejudices is part of our job here. So, our task is to make dispassionate evaluations of whether an illustration depicts the topic, or not. This one comes "close"—the tounge is not in contact though, so some could argue not close enough. Disengage the emotion, and go with the flow. Making judgments such as "crude", "obscene", is not part of the job. // FrankB 17:06, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Job is making of money. Wikipedia isn't job, it's a hobby, not more. OK, if the people here want to change wikipedia into a porno-site, I have nothing against, It's your choice. And I will stay with my "religious prejudices" ServusDei 19:37, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, judging "obscene" is part of the job. Any image used on Wikipedia needs to be non-obscene according to the Miller test. As a rule of thumb, any image used in an encyclopedic context is not obscene. --Carnildo 19:46, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I've removed the image. It's almost certainly illegal per 18USC2257. Quite apart from any issues of censorship, I don't think the Wikimedia foundation wants us to be committing felonies here. If there's an admin around, that image should be deleted and we should probably contact Paul Godwin to get a reading on how to deal with sexually explicit imagery around here. Wikidemo 20:47, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Since wikipedia is non-commercial it doesn't fall under 2257. Downstream users might have a problem. Besides, you can't see a face on the image so I don't think there is a reason to delete it or remove it from the article. Garion96 (talk) 21:36, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Contacting Paul Godwin might prove difficult btw. :) Garion96 (talk) 21:37, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

2257 has no exception for non-commercial, encyclopedic, or educational use. Nor is there an exception for cases where you cannot see the face of the "performer." If you see anything to the contrary here or in the new proposed regulations please share. Wikidemo 23:49, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Note, I've proposed a ban on sexually explicit imagery here because of this issue. Wikidemo 00:00, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

See [5]. I couldn't quickly find the text of the actual law. The link you added linked to civil penalties for controlled substances. Garion96 (talk) 00:33, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

It does not seem to apply for non-commercial and educational. See [6]. To quote "(d) Sell, distribute, redistribute, and re-release refer to commercial distribution of a book, magazine, periodical, film, videotape, digitally- or computer-manipulated image, digital image, picture, or other matter that contains a visual depiction of an actual human being engaged in actual sexually explicit conduct, but does not refer to noncommercial or educational distribution of such matter, including transfers conducted by bona fide lending libraries, museums, schools, or educational organizations." Garion96 (talk) 00:54, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

The law is poorly worded. The non-commercial / educational exception you quote is to "sell, distribute, re-distribute, and re-release." The law does not provide that exception for what Wikipedia does, "inserts on a computer site or service a digital image of, or otherwise manages the sexually explicit content of a computer site or service." That's why we need to look at the regulations. The regulations I linked to (which are from the Wikipedia article) got deleted, presumably in favor of the newly proposed regulations. That's why the reader is automatically defaulting up to the next regulation in the list. I'll see if I can find the regs.

Okay, found the regulations, here. The commercial requirement applies to brick and mortar distribution; all websites are covered, whether commercial or not. Wikidemo 01:57, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

In that case, you need to contact the Wikimedia Foundation's lawyer. Nobody here is qualified to deal with it. --Carnildo 02:04, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. I just said the same thing in the other thread. -Chunky Rice 02:07, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) What article exactly? I don't see it. See also [7] for more info. Besides, we shouldn't do anything anyway until the foundation legal counsel confirms that explicit images should go. I still don't see a legal reason to do so. Garion96 (talk) 02:06, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

§ 75.1(c)(2): a "secondary producer" is anyone..."who inserts on a computer site or service a digital image of, or otherwise manages the sexually explicit content of a computer site or service that contains a visual depiction of an actual human being engaged in actual sexually explicit conduct." § 75.2(a) says any producer "shall, for each performer portrayed in such visual depiction, create and maintain records containing the following:" [draconian record-keeping and record availability requirements we cannot follow]. I'm not about to launch a deletion campaign on Wikipedia without a green light from the Foundation; however, on a case-by-case basis, it's fair to say that when you think it's a felony to have the image it's best to delete the image and wait for further instructions, not leave it up until you confirm it's a felony. It's the same as if you found an actual instance of child porn on the site. But I will ask. Does anyone have Godwin's email to ask him? I must have it around here somewhere. Wikidemo 02:15, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. You shouldn't be doing anything that's based on your determination of illegality. Even if you are an attorney, that determination should not be made by you. Otherwise, what's to stop anyone from removing random content, saying that they think it's illegal? -Chunky Rice 02:25, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Also still disagree, I don't work with American law but this does not seem clear enough. Let Mike Godwin handle this. Garion96 (talk) 02:36, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

There's nothing to stop anyone from doing anything on Wikipedia, that's how this thing works. But people do remove things unilaterally for all kinds of images. But I agree, we need to figure out a policy on this and be consistent. I will be asking MG. Let's see what he says. Just don't be surprised whichever way his answer comes back. Wikidemo 18:36, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

That because Wikidemo decided it was illegal and arbitrarily deleted it despite the ongoing discussion about it. You can see the image under discussion in the last revision Collectonian 02:12, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh, absolutely I should be avoiding illegality on the site, and there's nothing arbitrary about that. Copyvio gets deleted on sight and this is a much more serious issue than copyvio. If I thought there were any real risk I would revert again (see below), but I don't think the FBI will be breaking down the Foundation's doors on this image anytime soon, so I'm fine with waiting for Mike to take a look. For a little more reasoning on this feel free to take a look at the very polite discussion between me and User:Chairboy on my talk page. Wikidemo 03:01, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

• Note: I've reverted Wikidemo's change for now, the legal situation remains to be defined and redacting it from the encyclopedia for legal reasons is premature. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 02:33, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a ridiculous discussion. The intercourse article doesn't have a close-up photo of penetration, or any photo of humans having sex, for that matter; and it never would. Even if you want to make the argument that the photo doesn't depict actual contact between the partners, the intercourse article doesn't even contain a close-up photo of a penis approaching a vagina, and similarly, never would, because such a thing is pornographic and totally inappropriate for an encyclopedia. The same goes for fellatio, cunnilingus, oral sex, and countless other articles describing sex acts. They all contain drawings and textual descriptions of the act, which are enough. A close-up explicit photographic depiction is completely unnecessary and adds nothing to one's understanding of the subject. I challenge anyone to find an encyclopedia that does contain such material.

Equazcion • argue/improves • 03:03, 10/13/2007

I challenge you to find an encyclopedia that contains an article on Jigglypuff. No? Well, that argument didn't go very far, did it? I'll agree that a line drawing would be preferable to the photo, and if you have one, feel free to swap it in. -Chunky Rice 03:10, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

We have articles about topics that other encyclopedias don't, but content itself still needs to be encyclopedic. Just because other encyclopedias don't contain articles on the more trivial subjects doesn't say anything about the way we limit content. We have rules about notability that tell us which topics we can have articles about, which allow for many topics other encyclopedias wouldn't include; but we have separate rules governing content, which state that such content must be encyclopedic, that unless I've misunderstood something means content that would normally appear in an encyclopedia. This image would never be in an encyclopedia article, no matter what the topic.

Equazcion • argue/improves • 03:17, 10/13/2007

There's nothing unecyclopedic about a visual illustration of any article that we have here. (Un)encyclopedic is such a useless vague term, anyway. -Chunky Rice 03:27, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

This is an encyclopedia first and foremost, so it's not a useless term; nor a vague one, as the only thing required to distinguish non-encyclopedic from encyclopedic content is to ask whether or not the content would ever appear in an encyclopedia. There answer here is no. Similar to the way a close-up photo of a penis approaching a vagina would be deemed unnecessary (and even unacceptable) for the intercourse article, the same should apply here, and if you think that's an undue comparison then I'd like to hear why.

Equazcion • argue/improves • 03:37, 10/13/2007

Please cite specific Wikipedia policy or guideline instead of the extremely vague "non-encyclopedic." -Chunky Rice 03:39, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Please answer my question first, as even without the word "encyclopedic", my larger point still stands.

Equazcion • argue/improves • 03:43, 10/13/2007

Your point, as far as I can tell, is that this content would not appear in a standard encyclopedia. Which is completely irrelevant, since Wikipedia is not other encyclopedias. It is its own encyclopedia, with its own policies and guidelines, which we follow. So if you aren't going to cite any, then you really have no leg to stand on. -Chunky Rice 03:47, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Forget about encyclopedic vs. unencyclopedic. "Similar to the way a close-up photo of a penis approaching a vagina would be deemed unnecessary (and even unacceptable) for the intercourse article, the same should apply here, and if you think that's an undue comparison then I'd like to hear why."

Equazcion • argue/improves • 03:48, 10/13/2007

You're right about that, since the appropriate image for sexual intercourse would be actual intercourse, not the moment immediately prior. A line drawing is preferable (I see we have one), but if one was unavailable, a photo would be appropriate. -Chunky Rice 03:54, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

←Why would a drawing be preferable?

Equazcion • argue/improves • 03:57, 10/13/2007

It's less titillating and more illustrative. -Chunky Rice 03:59, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Why should we be concerned over titillating?

Equazcion • argue/improves • 04:04, 10/13/2007

Because our primary purpose is to inform. If you have a point, make it. Or if you have policy to discuss, cite it. Otherwise, I'm done with these rhetorical games. -Chunky Rice 04:07, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

(ec)We aren't censored for you or for anyone else. There are subjects on here that you may find distastefu;l, but as long as ythey are presented in a neutrally worded and factually accurate manner then they should remain. The same goes for an image that illustrates a concept, we do not remove images because they offend your sensibilities - you don't like them, stay away from sexually orientated pages. Viridae^Talk 04:11, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't personally have any problem with the photo, and if I did want to stay away from such photos, I could go look at any other article on sexual acts, because they don't have them.

Equazcion • argue/improves • 04:19, 10/13/2007

So anyone has actually sent Mike Godwin an email yet? Could be there a chance that our former attorney, Brad Patrick, dealt with this issue before? User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 04:10, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I was under the impression that Mike had been emailed. I would do it myself if I knew his email address.

Equazcion • argue/improves • 04:19, 10/13/2007

I think Wikidemo contacted him. His contact information is at User:Mikegodwin if you need it. -Chunky Rice 04:22, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Probably. Check this google result: pornography 2257 site:en.wikipedia.org. Anchoress 04:23, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

(←) Well, considering the topic, another related issue has been brought up at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Requiring reliable sources in media. It's regarding the video of an ejaculating penis in the Ejaculation article. Lara❤Love 04:59, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

And the same response was given; talk to Mike (Gowdin). User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 05:06, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

As an outsider, the following comment. Some people argued that the image was "unencyclopedic" and "you would never see this image in an encyclopedia". That is simply not true (at least not outside the US). If a publisher was to release an "encyclopedia on sexacts" then there might be a reasonable chance that such an image would be included. Hell, there are countless Kama Sutra publications that contain photo's of all the sexual positions. To say that the photo is unencylopedic in the context of the article is simply rubbish. At most we are violating a US law. No more, no less. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:03, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

As a man, wich tongue presents on this foto, I want to explain something.
We just wanted to illustrate article, nothing more. We don't have a plan to change Wikipedia to a pornographic resource. The low of the USA and Florida is unknown for us, so in many cases we guided by rules of Wikipedia and our intuition. On Commons we founded some fotos, that can be classified as pornographic in Russia. So, we decided, that foto of anilingus has no differences from (for example) this or this, and maded foto for article. If our foto break some law of United States, it must be deleted from Wikipedia. But can somebody to make me know, there we can find text of the low, which prohibits foto of the anilingus in Wikipedia and allow foto of masturbation (or video of ejaculation)? (sorry for my English)--FearChild 17:10, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the background and for the contributions to Wikipedia. If the US law applies to this image it requires that you keep your own ID (that could be a Russian passport, but I doubt anyone from the US is going to go to Russia to check). The problem is that the law would also require the Wikimedia Foundation in Florida to keep a copy of your ID, which obviously is not going to happen. The law specifically mentions both oral-anal sex (real and simulated), and masturbation (real and simulated), so definitely those two images. The ejaculation video isn't as clear to me - it depends on whether a court would decide it falls under the category of "lascivious display of the genitals."

My personal opinion is that the image is encyclopedic and belongs in Wikipedia, except that the US law might prevent it. We don't censor and we don't require reliable sources to prove that an image shows what it says it shows - we just look at the image and decide. At some time in the future we might want to flag explicit images as "not safe for work" so that people can filter them out and Wikipedia doesn't get put on companies' block list. The law has some problems, but if it forbids these images without ID we'll just have to remove them. It creates a chilling effect on adult imagery and nudity, but nobody ever said the US law always makes sense. Wikidemo 18:36, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

This is more of an aside, and I could be wrong about this, but to address the over-18 issue: the anal-oral contact photo, and especially the photo of the "woman" masturbating (this) look to me as though the subjects might not be over 18.

Equazcion • argue/improves • 18:30, 10/13/2007

En dashes in article titles

Currently the Manual of Style says to put en dashes in physical titles, as long as there is a redirect from the hyphenated version, for articles like Eye-hand span and Bose-Einstein condensate.

This is ok and all, but hard to type, so freehand links (like the above) generally become redirects, and URLs of the actual articles are a little complex ("Eye%E2%80%93hand_span"). I want to propose using the DISPLAYTITLE parameter instead, like we do for titles that start with a lowercase letter.

Thoughts? — Omegatron 02:46, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Many Wikipedia article have such cumbersome URLs, but I am not sure this is an issue, really. Who types in such URLs by hand, or trys to find a Wikipedia article in that way? If the redirects exist, the articles should be easy to find. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:14, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

MoS also states (regarding article titles): Special characters such as the slash (/), plus sign (+), curly brackets ({ }) and square brackets ([ ]) are avoided. Personally, I think that should apply to all special characters, including n-dash and things like '…' (ellipsis). They simply do not show corrctly in URLs (they are encoded like "%E2%80%93") and there is no easy way to enter those in an URL or search box. Redirects are fine, but why use these special characters in the first place? — Edokter • Talk • 13:34, 13 October 2007 (UTC)