Jump to content

Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 82.7.125.142 (talk) at 23:14, 12 January 2006. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

 Policy Technical Proposals Idea lab WMF Miscellaneous 
The proposals section of the village pump is used to discuss new ideas and proposal that are not policy related (see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) for that).

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

Please sign and date your post (by typing "~~~~" or clicking the signature icon in the edit toolbar).

Please add new topics at the bottom of the page.

Before posting your proposal:

  • 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.

Proposals archive

Discussions older than 7 days (date of last made comment) are moved here. These discussions will be kept archived for 7 more days. During this period the discussion can be moved to a relevant talk page if appropriate. After 7 days the discussion will be permanently removed.

Editing feature

I just moved to a new computer and accidentally made a few changes without logging in. I propose that every attempt to edit by someone not logged in results in them being presented with the option to log in, create a new account or continue on anonymously. Hackwrench 23:19, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I've had a simmilar exeperience. This would not stop people from editing as an IP but still give new users the idea that they can become a member easily. Also it wouldn't be intrusive. Witty lama 09:49, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support. This has been something that has bothered me since I started using Wikipedia. The problem is significantly worse when you sign on a talk page with tildes and end up signing with a IP on accident. Noneloud 04:10, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's a good idea, but I imagine it would become very irritating for anonymous users to have to click a "continue anonymous editing" option every time they edited. — Knowledge Seeker দ 04:28, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support. To avoid that irritation, let the anonymous user check a box "continue anonymous editing" and store the results in the cookie. If the would be editor wants to edit anonymously, she only has to say so once. Hiyya54 20:51, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Creating syntax for date preference formatting that isn't linking

This has come up in repeated discussions and I think it's important enough that something needs to be done. Currently, the only way to get date preference formatting to work is to link the date. While this works, it has the unsightly side effect of cluttering up a page with unnecessary links. Wikipedia:Make only links relevant to the context is a good guide in this regard. Unfortunately, because of the desire to get date formatting preferences to work, you end up seeing lots of unnecessary links. Let's take the high profile Christmas article. It has over a dozen links to December 25 and all sorts of links to other dates as well. It's ugly and it clutters up the page. Links should only be used when the user would actually have some valid reason to click through and find out about a topic. But I can't think of any reason anyone would need to be able to click through to December 25 a dozen times from the Christmas article. The desire to get dates working with the date preferences formatting is causing our Wikipedia pages to unnecessarily be cluttered with useless links.

Also, keep in mind that the majority of the people browsing or viewing Wikipedia either do not have user accounts or are not logged in, so they are not receiving any kind of benefit from the date preferences formatting. They're only perceiving the negative aspect of it: articles that are way overlinked to irrelevant dates and years.

I am therefore proposing the creation of a new kind of syntax or function in Wiki source that identifies a phrase as a date so that it can be properly formatted without having to have a date be linked. I don't exactly have something in mind, so for now let's just call it <date> and </date>. I'm sure someone else around here can figure out the appropriate way to implement it. With this feature implemented our article could be a lot better. We could link the first occurrence of December 25 on the Christmas page as [[December 25]] because it is conceivable that someone may want to know what else happened on that date, but for subsequent uses of December 25 we would use <date>December 25</date>. This would help to drastically cut down on the number of unnecessary links.

I'd link to point out one more area in which my proposal would be useful: chronological lists. Many, many articles have them, and typically they consist of bulleted lists starting with the date and then a description of what happened on that day. And those dates are always linked for the sole reason of getting the date preferences formatting to work. Wikipedia:Make only links relevant to the context makes it very clear that something should only be linked when it's relevant to the context; a date link is pretty much never relevant to the context as who exactly is going to want to randomly click through and see what else happened on that day in any other number of thousands of years? So what if the first launch of the Ariane rocket occurred on the same day as the signing of the Treaty of Ghent. Who cares? It's not relevant to the context!

One more thing I'd like to add - it's not obvious to me why date preferences formatting was implemented in the fashion it is now. There are two separate issues: linking to other articles and automatically formatting dates. Why the two were conflated as in the current implementation is beyond me. From the current state of matters one thing appears to me: the situation must be fixed. That is all. --Cyde Weys votetalk 21:47, 25 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Addendum: Please see Talk:Christmas#Snipping extraneous links for relevant discussion. --Cyde Weys votetalk 21:49, 25 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

simple suggestion; ISO format dates (2005-12-25) could just be auto detected. Surpression with some simple sequence (2005-12‐25) in the very rare case it's needed. These have the advantage that they are reasonably country neutral and understandable for all when seen in edit mode. Mozzerati 21:56, 25 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • So your suggestion is to not have any special formatting but just recognize ISO 8601 dates via some sort of regex, i.e. /\d\d\d\d-\d\d-\d\d/ (yyyy-mm-dd in common English). I'm not sure if this will work. Anonymous users, which describes the majority of the people who use Wikipedia, are always going to be seeing ISO 8601, which isn't necessarily as clear as spelling out the month. It might be possible to detect which country the IP address belongs to and format the dating appropriately, i.e. "December 25, 2005" for Americans and "25 December 2005" for Europeans. But I still think the best solution would be some kind of added syntax. It doesn't seem right that it should be done automatically (and only for ISO dates). Wikipedia as it is is very explicit: words are only linked when you specifically say they should be linked, etc. A lot of this could be done automatically but there is going to be some error rate. A workaround like 2005-12‐25 in the situation where you wouldn't want auto-formatting seems very clumsy. I think the easiest way to resolve this issue is to just create the <date> and </date> tags (or whatever they end up being called). That way as you're editing articles that have too many repetitive linkings you simply convert [[ and ]] to <date> and </date>. You wouldn't have to go around changing all of the dates to match ISO format. --Cyde Weys votetalk 22:10, 25 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

(after edit conflict) I strongly support the addition of such a feature. The "simple" suggestion above is a start, but the vast majority of dates are NOT in ISO format, and that format is not the most helpful one for people without any prefernces (which is the majority of users) so i think it is unlikely to become the dominant format any time in the near future. The mechanics of the synmtax don't matter to me -- it could be pesudo-HTML as shown above or soem more wiki-like markup such as <<5 March 2003>>. Ideally, whatever methos is used, it would involve a single markup for each complete date. DES (talk) 22:13, 25 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Please see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) and Wikipedia Talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) for more related discussions. DES (talk) 00:12, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Someone tell me why we should add new syntax to the parser to replace something that is intuitive and works already, just because it's "ugly". rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 04:56, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It's intuitive to you because you've 'grown up' learning how to do it that way. If you had learned to enclose dates in #12/25/2005#, do you really think it would be all that much harder to figure out? Some of us have a problem with overdetermining the bracket syntax. -- nae'blis (talk) 09:35, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • There's absolutely nothing intuitive about it. Most new users to Wikipedia get very confused by this. Why should you have to turn a date into a link to get it to format properly? That's actually very counter-intuitive. And guess what, something being ugly is a very good reason to change it, especially because Wikipedia is a resource used by millions of people. --Cyde Weys votetalk 15:58, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Strong support; I've been meaning to propose this myself. I also strongly support auto-parsing yyyy-mm-dd syntax. The default date format can be something other than yyyy-mm-dd. Other possibilities like {{yyyy-mm-dd}} or {yyyy-mm-dd}.

Related date gripes/suggestions:

  • Signature timestamps should obey date locales.
  • This is probably assumed by the <date></date> proposal: [[December 25, 2005]] should work like [[December 25]], [[2005]].
  • Group linked yyyy-mm-dd dates by yyyy-mm in addition to mm-dd
  • Format any date such as year-month or just year in addition to year-month-date
    • e.g. <date>December 2005</date> should show up as 2005-12 in ISO8601 locales.
    • e.g. <date>567 AD</date> should show up as "0567" in ISO8601 locales.
  • Dates in various article names/categories would be better as yyyy-mm-dd or yyyy-mm instead of spelled-out or American "middle-endian" style (e.g. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2005-12-26, Category:Cleanup from 2005-12)

--Quarl 10:18, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This edit gives clear evidence why something really needs to be done on this issue. Look at how ridiculous it is to create literally dozens of unnecessary links on a page just to get date preferences formatting working. Some sort of syntax like <date> and </date>, discussed above, is absolutely essential. --Cyde Weys votetalk 20:23, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Looking into this one now. :) Rob Church Talk 20:23, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just wondering how this is going. Hope it's going well. --Cyde Weys votetalk 01:06, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Someone said this same kind of proposal is somewhere on the Wikipedia Bugzilla but I have been unable to find it with relevant search terms. Can anyone confirm? Thanks. --Cyde Weys votetalk 19:30, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Now enter3ed as bugzilla bug #4582. DES (talk) 21:21, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have an other idea that is more generic that just for dates. The idea is to implement that only the first occurance of a unique link on a page is rendered as a link. Example if you have the code 

[[Article]] bla bla bla [[Article]]

It will render as Article bla bla bla Article →AzaToth 19:59, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki:Anontalkpagetext

I propose changing the mediawiki boiler text for anon talk pages, along with a suggestion to add lookup information. Please see The talk page for details, including suggested markup and a sample link. xaosflux Talk/CVU 18:18, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Bump, This has generated a little talk, but not enough to form a concensus. Please take a minute to comment if you feel one way or another. xaosflux Talk/CVU 20:19, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This change has been enacted, if you have any comment's please post on it's Talk Page. xaosflux Talk/CVU 06:20, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Simpsons episode transcripts

I think somebody should post transcripts of every Simpsons episode on Wikipedia.

FLaRN2005 17:50, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That would be flagrant violation of Fox Entertainment copyright. Bwithh 19:09, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

WP Census

Could we have a Wikipedia Wide Census to get an idea of who we all are? The site has come a long way in a short time and I think it is high time to gather some information about the community.

I propose to have a page where information would be collected and then analysed to give trend, demographic, geographic, linguistic and area of interest information. The fields would have to be "check box" rather than "fill in" with words so as to make data analysis easier. The kinds of questions I think would be useful include:

  • Age
  • Country and City
  • Highest level of education attained
  • Languages spoken (and to what level)
  • Gender
  • Ethnicity (This one might not be P.C....)
  • How many edits
  • How long has the person been a member
  • Admin/etc
  • Computer literacy level
  • Most frequent activity on WP (check-box list including: RC patrol, research, minor edits, welcoming committee...)
  • How did person initially find WP(again, list includng: friend, google hit, other search engine hit...)
  • Area of interest/expertise (List taken mainly from the main page categories)
  • What does the person actually use the encyclopedia (as opposed to the community) for (e.g. personal interest, scholarly research, boredom alleviation, technical support, product reviews...)

The census could be based on the en.wikipedia community or across all WP or even across the entire collection of sister sites through MetaWiki. The link, I imagine, would look much like the current fundraiser link at the top of the main page. I would also assume that there should be a request to fill out the census put through foundation-i and maybe even on user pages. The census of course would not be obligatory but reccomended (as with donations).

The uses that this information could be put to are numerous. Some of these include:

  • Firstly it's fun. People like to know about themselves and their community. It might make Esperanza's job easier in that sense. Also, it would make wikipedians more comprehensive on breadth and depth.
  • It would help us Counter systemic bias by knowing where we are strong and where we need work (in terms of areas of expertise, geographic spread, and demographics).
  • We could see where there is a large community that might want to get together to form a chapter or a meetup.
  • It might help with discovering Milestones and in logging stats.
  • It would give the public perception of WP a boost when we can show them that we are not just a bunch of kids mucking about. To that end it would be a good story for the media - especially those that feature us every now and then as seen in "In the news" of the Signpost.

What do you think?? Witty lama 22:45, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's a reasonable idea as long as microdata is not available at all, that the only available data would be anonymized aggregate data. Further, there might be some difficulty in combining census data for account-holding editors with IP/anonymous editors, so an automated data addition of edit count and some aggregate, time resolved editing metric should be included for quality control and validation purposes. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 23:23, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just ask Daniel Brandt. I'm sure he already has all of this information on all of us. User:Zoe|(talk) 16:58, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, me thinks it's a great idea. The only problem is actually doing it. algumacoisaqq 18:39, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, on that, what are the techinical requirements of putting such a proposal in place? Is it feasable? I'm not entirely sure what Ceyockey was saying but I agree about the privacy concerns - the results should not be able to be tracked back to individual users. More in general, where does a proposal go from here if it reaches a general consensus?? Witty lama 06:25, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fine idea, but who would write the "questionaire"? Also, isn't this a proposal better suited to meta? 202.7.166.171 04:19, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

More helpful preferences, etc

As a recent admin, I now have the ability to edit the MediaWiki namespace. Nonetheless, I assumed procedure was to bring such changes up here first.

I feel that the preferences include an extraordinary lack of detail as to what the options do. Help can sort of be found elsewhere, but there is no link from the prefs screens.

Proposal A: I propose the addition of (?) links next to each applicable preference, linking to either pages on Wikipedia or Meta that describe that feature.

In particular, many users are switching on minor edits by default without understanding minor edits properly. IMO, I think this option should be removed, but I don't know its original intent.

Proposal B: But this isn't sufficient for the minor edits problem, and we also need a link on the edit page: "This is a minor edit" should be "This is a minor edit".

Any comments?

jnothman talk 10:43, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re Proposal A: I'd prefer if a key term associated with each option were linked to the appropriate help. I'm not aware of anything else in the UI that uses linked question marks to get to help. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:47, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There used to be a link to m:Help:Preferences. I wonder which MediaWiki page to edit to put it back.--Patrick 16:47, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A general link would be useful, yes, but option by option links are more likely to attract users to seek the help. Rick, I'm not sure about your suggestion: What would I hyperlink in "Mark all edits minor by default"? Would it be Mark all edits or minor or by default? Really it's the entire statement we want help on. In terms of new users looking at their prefs who might not be familiar with Wikipedia's style of linking keywords, I think that a (?) will be more user-friendly and familiar. And if not that then (help) is doable as well; while not as neat, it is more user-friendly and also closer to wikipedia's norms elsewhere (things like (talk) and (contribs) get used enough). jnothman talk 23:44, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In this specific case, I'd prefer "Mark all edits minor by default?" -- Rick Block (talk) 03:53, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Like Rick I prefer ordinary links like in articles. To start with, I edited MediaWiki:Tog-showtoolbar and MediaWiki:Tog-editsection.--Patrick 01:20, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Note that here HTML is needed, wikisyntax does not work. Note also that it seems to take some time to become effective, I suppose due to caches.--Patrick 01:23, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Of the two links I made, sometimes one is there, sometimes the other. I have not seen them together yet. Perhaps this is still some caching issue, or a bug.--Patrick 09:32, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I get the impression that this is the caching and updating of different Wikipedia servers; I think MediaWiki namespace is cached differently in general, and so can take longer to catch on. jnothman talk 10:24, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I see. Thanks.--Patrick 22:18, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Terminology (Passing away vs. Dying)

File:Death Personification.jpg
Grim reaper: The portender of death or of passing away?

I see that a lot of articles say "passed away" when they mean "died" (and similarly with other parts of the verb e.g. "passing away"). I can't think that it's good to use this expression in an encyclopedia. They should generally just say "died" as this is direct and simple (except of course in direct quotation and where directly relevant to what's being discussed, e.g. in articles such as euphemism or nirvana). "Passed away" could perhaps even be seen as POV.

I started to edit some pages manually, based on Google search results, but stopped when I saw the large number of hits. Is there a consensus agreeing with my point? If so, could I suggest:

  • running a semi-automated bot to assist changing this usage where it exists
  • an addition to the manual of style to discourage this kind of usage

Thanks,

TerraGreen 21:50, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, "died" is more direct and simple, hence better.--Patrick 23:32, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. "Died" is a fact (i.e. they're no longer living; although obviously that can be up to interpretation), whereas "passed away" has connotations of rememberance and memorials.--Sean|Black 01:29, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Note that in some cases where the article is based on a old, out-of-copyright article, the usage has just been preserved - Skysmith 12:05, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the support. So, any thoughts on getting bot-assisted replacement going? (Not that I'd know how to do it myself.) TerraGreen 13:35, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Try here. Wikipedia:Bot requests Garion1000 (talk) 16:05, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, but I think this is only a small problem - there are thousands of style issues, such as excessive use of Latin abbreviations, missing articles, misplaced commas, awkward structure, and so on. If you want to focus on eliminating one across Wikipedia, though, go for it - but expect to be doing it again later on. Deco 01:03, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Taking it outside

I've been seeing some very long drawn out exchanges, often between a small number of users, on discussion pages. I've been part of some myself. It can be very annoying to read through seemingly endless text while people work out the minutia of some issue, or else just have a pissing match. Often these conversations lead to some interesting results, but by the time I get there my eyes have glossed over and my brain has clicked off. I propose to solve this by suggesting that people "take it outside".

Taking it outside would mean moving the conversation off the page and finding a new home for it. I have tried this sort of arrangement at the Wikipedia:LGBT notice board. Conversations start on the main page, and when they do, I move the entire converstaion to the talk page, and create a link to it.

Here's how it works:

  • At any point in a converstion, someone suggests to "take it outside".
  • Someone; a participand in the exchange, or even the person making the suggestion; copies the conversation to an existing talk page, or creates a new sub-page of the current conversation.
  • Just enough of the beginning of the thread is kept on the original page to convey what the exchange is about. It gets linked to the new location of the discussion.
  • Anyone reading the original discussion can choose to follow the link and join in on the discussion.
  • The people involved continue to discuss whatever it is, as long as they want or until they reach a consensus.
  • A summary of their result can be added back to the original conversation.

I'm not sure we have to create any policy to do this, but I would like to hear what people think of this. , and if the response is positive, I'll create a Wikipedia page. WP:TIO? -- Samuel Wantman 04:47, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nice idea. TerraGreen 13:37, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It would help Village Pump I suppose... — Ambush Commander(Talk) 00:25, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent suggestion. I know of several such exchanges and I react the same way you do. - ddlamb 02:37, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
On a related note, some people like to summarize talk page discussions. Others like me think that deleting swaths of text from talk pages for any reason is rather alarming. The nice thing about this idea is that in addition to containing the discussion while it's in progress, other editors could also "take it outside" after the fact, copying the content to a subpage and summarizing it on the talk page. Hooray for refactoring. Deco 01:08, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've created a Wikipedia page. The short-cut is WP:TIO --Samuel Wantman 06:48, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki should have a message board-like page

For places like Help Desk, Reference Desk, Village Pump, AfD, RfA, etc. Long discussions are difficult with a single edit anywhere page. Old but ongoing discussions eventually get pushed to the top by new posts, so a format where each thread exists as an object, and another page could show a list of objects, ordered by last post. Similar to the way message boards like phpBB work. I don't know how technically feasible this is (seems like it would have a very different paradigm for handling data), but I still think it's a good idea. What you think? -lethe talk 07:19, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I had a similar proposal about 6 months ago and mocked it up. I still think it is a good idea. -- Samuel Wantman 07:55, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Discussion Pages - Bring Modern Interface. --cesarb 20:38, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is brought often enough to, in my opinion, merit its own page, discussing past discussions and current situation (there has been some discussion also in wikitech-l that is not easily accessible). Anyone for Wikipedia:Forum? — Ambush Commander(Talk) 00:24, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

WikiEffort

I hereby propose WikiEffort, the wiki counterpart of BOINC.

  • Thousands of visitors like the idea of contributing to Wikipedia, but lack the expertise to write encyclopedic articles.
  • Some Wikipedians have tasks in mind that allow Wikipedia to take a giant leap forward. But with only themselves or some insighters aware of it, the task is unsurmountable and might take a life-time to complete.
WikiEffort brings the two together in a massive collaborative effort. One day later, the unsurmountable task is completed.
The process in short:
  1. attract lingering users, possibly via the main page.
  2. propose to them a wikitask (the task of the day), providing both quick and long information.
  3. link them to one unique workunit.

Comments welcome--Joris Gillis 09:36, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's an interesting idea. Maybe even suggest two different tasks. You're more likely to get something that interests the user, and you have the "Which colour would you like it in?" type of hard-sell. Maybe you could have a box which says: 

Would you rather:
*Write a short article on the topic "Sabine-Southwestern War"
*Improve an article on the topic "Meditation" or 
*Proofread the article on the topic Albert_Wesker?

selecting one requested article, one article that needs to be taken to featured status, and one article in need of copy-editing. --Slashme 11:55, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thanks for the response. But I was actually thinking of tasks that do not require insight or major cognitive efforts. Creating or 'improving' articles would not be candidate tasks, I fear (lack of expertise). The task should be able to be carried out by a majority of ordinary users with a minimum of instructions. Proofreading OCR-scanned pages will do perfectly well as a wikitask: one only needs to be able to read and type characters.--Joris Gillis 12:21, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • WikiEffort would allow the nasty jobs to be carried out quickly. The term nasty refers here to the size of the job, not the nature of it.--Joris Gillis 12:24, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, right. That seems sensible too ;-] --Slashme 12:33, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not quite the same, but this sounds similar to User:Humanbot. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:37, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the link. I notice the similarity indeed. The Not writing section of the fixup projects resembles quite good what I had in mind for WikiEffort. The only real differences seem to be the scale (I thought of attracting thousands of users during a single day) and the missing a-useful-contribution-is-only-one-click-away-factor: the need for a firefox extension might hold some users back.--Joris Gillis 17:59, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Moderating edits to protected pages

I see that Template:Editprotected has been added to try to deal with the issue of non-admins wanting to edit protected pages.

However, there is a more fundamental problem, that having to post requests for changes is a slow and unreliable process, and discourages people from making what could be constructive edits.

By "slow and unreliable", what I mean is that:

  • a change may sometimes take rather longer to describe than to make oneself
  • a requested change may be missed because there is no systematic way for suggestions to be incorporated

Certainly, speaking as a non-admin myself, I just don't bother with trying to get changes into protected pages because it's too much hassle.

I would like to propose instead that a "protected" page should instead become a "moderated" page, in order to streamline the process. A non-admin wishing to edit the page would get "edit (moderated)" rather than "view source". Any changes would then go into a queue of pages for an admin to moderate. The moderation process would consist of clicking "accept" or "reject". In the event of reject, there could be a field to specify the rejection reason. The process could include a couple of check-boxes to allow the admin to automatically add notes to the editor's user-talk page and/or the article talk page giving the outcome of the moderation decision.

Admittedly, there is an issue with what happens if a subsequent request to edit the page comes in while there is still an outstanding moderation decision on the page to be edited. An expedient solution would simply be to revert to the "view source" behaviour in that situation, with a note apologising and saying "please try again later". Even if this is done, I believe that with administrators actively monitoring the queue of pages to be moderated, the vast majority of the time there would not be outstanding requests on a given page (provided at least that policy dictated that submitting vandalism for moderation was viewed with the same severity as vandalising an unmoderated page, so that people maliciously flooding the system could be blocked). A more sophisticated solution to the problem of multiple edits might involve the use of Patch style application of differences, so that edits can be independently moderated if they are orthogonal.

Obviously moderation policy would need to be worked out. It might perhaps have a number of cases, with the acceptance criteria depending for example on whether a page is locked because of simple vandalism or because of POV warring. I believe that moderation should not be a means for admins to exert editorial control against consensus, and that the best way to achieve this would be to rule that the actions of an admin rejecting an edit and of an editor repeatedly submitting an already-rejected edit both count as reversions for purposes of 3RR (with the exclusions still applying, so that for example an admin can reject simple vandalism without limit). To this end, rejected edits should be visible in the page history (whether by default or not).

Whatever the detailed policy, it would make it quicker and easier for non-admins to make useful input to protected pages, and would give less sense of exclusion to the many users who are unlikely ever to become admins, not because they are untrustworthy but because they do not have time to make the large number of edits which seems to be pretty much a precondition for adminship.

TerraGreen 13:26, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This would require a technical implementation, and regular page locking should be kept (for pages like Wikipedia:General disclaimer. You can still request changes via the talk page of the article... I don't think such streamlining is necessary. If the topic is that controversial, it's better not to get the sysops involved with issues of moderation (that's for consensus). — Ambush Commander(Talk) 00:22, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New template, {{SplitCategory}}

Just made the above template because i noticed that a lot of articles were just lists, and would be much better off just splitting the links down and then adding category tags in there, the pages really should be category listed anyway. For an example, please check Illnesses related to poor nutrition. 

Spum 13:48, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not entirely sure I understand your point. But your example, Illnesses related to poor nutrition, would not be better made into a category. Categories cannot be grouped like that list is, nor can the entries be annotated, as those are. Categories and lists are complementary. -Will Beback 19:52, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I do, and Spum's idea makes sense. Although the two are complementary, sometimes the wrong one is used. A collection of items that's simply an alphabetical list is better as a category; a collection of items which need to be in some specific order or have extra information, or would have a lot of (to be filled) red links is better as a list. For that reason I'd also suggest a complementary template to go in categories that might be better as lists. BUT (and it's a biggie), this needs to be coordinated with AFD and CFD, rather than done off one person's bat, since categorising what was a list involves deleting the list (AFD), and listifying a category involves deletion of the category (CFD). Grutness...wha? 22:33, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Peace, Rows, and Userboxes

I'm not sure if this is the best spot on the village pump to put this but here goes.

We all know that there has been a big battle about userboxes in the last few days. Things are getting pretty heated, and even starting to get ugly in some places. I wanted to make a few suggestions for keeping the peace.

Can people PLEASE STOP speedy deleting userboxes before they finish TfD, as has happened a lot in the last few days. It's playing hob with my user page for a start, and there are people out there with even more userboxes than me.. At least could people put why on the relevent talk page, so that when I have to revise my collection of userboxes I know why.

I would like to suggest, since lots of people are getting worked up about this, that any userbox deletions should go through full TfD. Even if they might normally be speedy deletes. This is a controversial topic right now and I think it's time for a bit of diplomacy, so can people please TfD userboxes instead of speedying them. And please make sure it's clear on the talk pages what's going on.

Tom 22:28, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can I suggest that while this battle rages (it's spilling over into WP:RFA too, BTW), you consider subst'ing userboxes? I know it makes for a mess of code, but at least you're less likely to have to deal with deletions on your page. Grutness...wha? 22:36, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ultimately, that's not the problem at all. The problem is the lack of deliberation on the subject. Very few templates speedy-deleted actually fall under the speedy deletion criteria. It really isn't that hard to list a template, userbox or otherwise, on TfD, and, even if deletion is the decision, we won't see such major arguments as have recently occurred. - Cuivienen 00:13, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We could equally solve the problem if certain people desisted in insulting other editors, and personalising disputes, by creating 'attack' userboxes (calling people 'fascists' and comparing them to Stalin). There are a host of ways to express yourself and air your views or grievences (see WP:DR) - there is simply no call for such disruption. Personal attack pages are speedied - and their creators may well be blocked. If you don't like your page being messed up by deletions, then the solution is don't use such templates. And if there are no such creations, then there will be no such deletions. --Doc ask? 13:36, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
But perfectly innocuous templates are being deleted ({{User AI}} is one that was recently deleted then restored, for instance). And people who have never used or condoned attack templates are having perfectly reasonable templates removed from their user pages. To say that this is because of attack templates is equivalent to having encyclopedic articles deleted because some vandals have made attack pages. It just doesn't make sense (But then again, this isn't the place to discuss that). Grutness...wha? 23:53, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikinews Football Portal

Hey there everyone. I just started it up - it's just at the moment concentrating on Football news in the UK, but if people want to add to it, and expand it to other countries, and do La Liga, then that's good! Anyway, if anyone follows football, either for their team, or in general in the UK, and is reading this, then PLEASE CONTRIBUTE to the portal!Anyway, the link;

Mr Spum 14:19, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This seems to be more appropriate for the news section. Anyway, you can wikify the link like this: wikinews:Portal:Football. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 00:18, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bot generated AFD summaries - an alternative interface

I have been experimenting with using a script to generate an alternative interface to AFD. It is still in the experimental/development phase and is only currently updating when I am working on it, but the above link should give an idea of what is being created. I am hoping by posting here to solicit feedback on whether people view this as a good thing, what features might be useful, etc. Dragons flight 15:47, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Question: Is there a count before the afd is listed on Uncontested? All new noms on which the nominator adds a vote would be on Uncontested automatically if there is not. I would suggest adding a count prior to listing on this - and I would make it more than 5 (the "few votes" limit) preferably 10 or more (to keep items off the list prematurely.) I have found several instances of uncontested Afd's with 5 - 10 deletes, where the case was that no one had done any serious checking of what turned out to be a poorly written article. My concern is that once listed on Uncontested, an article might receive less attention, being percieved as "already decided" by some. KillerChihuahua?!? 15:54, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Not presently, but categories are allowed to overlap so that something with only a few votes could be listed in Uncontested, Few Votes, and other places as applicable. I actually think having an uncontested category may have the opposite effect to what you suggest though. In other words that people may visit it for the purposes of finding those AFDs that no one was really paying attention to, so that having such a list actually aids in their detection. Dragons flight 13:49, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Looks pretty cool to me! You may be interested for applying for a Toolserver account, which will give you access to the database and allow you to forgo manually scraping the pages with a bot. The current organization may have some inherent flaws, but it'll only really be an issue if the new interface becomes really popular (too much success). Don't forget to unit test, and analysis on length of responses would be nice too! :-) And remember: voting isn't everything. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 00:16, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Make ~~~~ signatures ISO 8601

I would like to see ~~~~ signatures, and most other auto-generated dates, adhere to ISO 8601. This is related to the above proposal for making more dates follow preference regioning, but this is much simpler, and doesn't require a major addition to the capabilities of Wikipedia.

Right now, it's non-trival to use ISO 8601 in your signature. I had to modify USER/monobook.js to hack the signature button to print this, because subst:Twodigit can't appear in a raw signature (but these non-subst templates can!):

—[[User:Daelin|Daelin]] @ {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}–{{subst:CURRENTMONTH}}–{{subst:Twodigit {{subst:CURRENTDAY}}}} {{subst:CURRENTTIME}}Z

And it was hard just trying to discover that part. I got lucky and found several other people who had done the monobook.js hack, every last one added ISO dates (in addition to other things), and I was able to copy their code.

The benefits of ISO 8601 are numerous. The mere fact that it scans left-to-right is a huge plus IMO. We're already almost using ISO 8601 for times. It's easier to compare ISO dates and times by direct comparison, as your brain can compare them just like any two decimal numbers. They seem to be more acclimatable to US users than the British form currently used. After over two years, I still have to pause to shuffle the signature date around and mentally widen the gap between the time and the day, while I have no such trouble with ISO. —Daelin @ 2006–01–08 23:09Z

I'm sure that this reqest has been made before, but I agree wholeheartedly. Unfortunantely, I don't feel strongly enough to do my signatures the way you do... — Ambush Commander(Talk) 00:10, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Would that mean I will always see the date like in your signature? Since I am European my brain really likes it that I see the date as 9 januari 2006. Instead of 2006-01-08. Garion1000 (talk) 17:35, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Garion. I'd hate to have to mentally parse that date format every time. User:Zoe|(talk) 19:23, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Poll

Forgive me if this has been suggested but why not have moderator aproved polls being created? Like a user can create a poll and a moderator has to approve to make it functional. This is probably needed so constant repeats or bad in general polls arent all over the place. But this would give us the ability to see what the community thinks about a specific question and its something to add to the main page...'poll of the day'. Love to hear the communities ideas. Thut 23:42, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

meta:Polls are evil. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 00:09, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We don't have moderators. -Splashtalk 00:17, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Moderators = administrators. Dur. ⇒ JarlaxleArtemis 04:31, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Administrators on Wikipedia don't "approve" anything. User:Zoe|(talk) 19:24, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Suggesting a replacement for the NPOV notice

Hello alls, I would like to replace this.

with this

This is just in: There is no NPOV issue at all! Not within 200 miles of this article!
 

Thank you for your time, Dabljuh 20:59, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

*laughs* BJAODNed. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 00:05, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Eh? That kind of humor really isn't funny :-P Mr Spum 15:30, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Where disambiguation is needed for TV programmes, can we standardise to (TV) after the title?

Hi there,

I've been looking at a number of pages in this and similar categories and I can't see any consistency in the labelling of programmes where there is a possible ambiguity. For example, we have Bottom (television), Porridge (TV), Coupling (TV series) and other synonyms such as "show" or "programme". There are also some labelled as "sitcom".

It would look neater and be simpler if there was a common format to follow:

I'd personally opt for (TV) after the name - this seems succinct and we don't really need to know if it's a series or programme etc.. I'd also opt for replacing any that say "sitcom" with "TV" as well. Obviously, with some titles such as The Vicar of Dibley where there are no ambiguities then just leave them as they are - I'm not trying to make this more confusing, I'm trying to simplify it.

This has also been posted here before I read and discovered that I should post it here, apologies. Naturally it also applies to other categories of television programmes, not just British or sitcoms, of which there are many.

Iancaddy 23:06, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Quite sensible. I agree. Witty lama 00:10, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The only problem I can see is where there is more than one show by the same name, say Battlestar Galactica (disambiguation). I suppose in that case there could be a hierarchy of pages in which a new Battlestar Galactica (TV) was a sort of TV disambig.--Samuel J. Howard 16:05, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like something that would go in the Manual of Style. I like the idea, a lot. -- nae'blis (talk) 17:59, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Forced to be on at least one watchlist

To comabt vandalism, the following rules could be put into place (coded, set up, however)

  • Only logged in users can create articles. ...done
  • Newly-created articles are automatically added to the creator's watchlist.
  • If you are the last person watching an article, you receive a warning and confirmation if you try to un-watch it
  • Special:Unwatchedpages made available to all registered users. Currently admin-only. - probably not going to happen.

Obviously, this isn't perfect, (eg. rogue users), but it could help a lot, since many people forget to watch pages, and many pages are unwatched.

Infinity0 talk 00:24, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would agree with this if you change the third part to "You receive a warning and confirmation prompt if you remove an item from your watchlist and you are the last person watching it." We should certainly not be compelled to watch pages we aren't interested in just because the creator decided to take it off their watchlist while we were watching it. It also probably wouldn't be as effective as we'd like considering how many pages are created by users who later become inactive. Deco 00:58, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
OK, suggestion noted. Also added the unwatched pages special. Infinity0 talk 18:35, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I saw someone claim the other day that 70% of articles are unwatched. It's a wonder we stop as much vandalism as we do, at that rate... -- nae'blis (talk) 17:53, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I like the idea of a (nice) warning that one is the last watcher of an article. It could enable a useful amount of voluntary adoption. Inactive users... is it possible to use the regular re-login to identify these and trigger the Last Watcher notice? JackyR 18:01, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Now that idea has some merit. I fixed your special link too, Infinity0. -- nae'blis (talk) 18:43, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, I believe Special:Unwatchedpages is unavailable to non-admins. Why? Concern that vandals would deliberately target unwatched pages. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 19:04, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why not make it available to only logged in users? The vast majority of vandals are not registered; and most wouldn't even know about that page. Infinity0 talk 19:40, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The real nutty/persistent vandals, however, are registered. Semi-read-protection, anyone? — Ambush Commander(Talk) 00:02, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. Vandals often don't create accounts simply because they don't have to and it makes it harder to ban them. If there were a compelling reason to create an account, they would. Deco 00:06, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Plus, they could create one account (and age it four days, if we're talking about semi-read-protection), read Special:Unwatchedpages with that account but vandalize as an anon or under different new accounts. The logic behind keeping Special:Unwatchedpages locked up tight is pretty compelling, I'm afraid :-( —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 05:19, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Bah. I suppose one vandal could watch a page, and then that page would be removed from the unwatchedpages list, and then they would be able to write whatever crap on it they want to. Infinity0 talk 17:01, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't it possible to enforce some criteria for looking at Special:Unwatchedpages? Like the criteria for the arbcom election. Garion1000 (talk) 19:07, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Internet Meme Guidelines

I would like to see us have some sort of guideline in place regarding internet memes, similar to WP:CORP or WP:MUSIC. After seeing many, many notable internet memes end up on AfD (Brian Peppers about a zillion times, Raptor Jesus, Hatten ar Din_, it's apparent that a) people are creating articles out of internet memes, and b) people wrongly consider some memes to only be notable if they get publicity offline, like All Your Base. Obviously, some guideline needs to be set to separate the Magical Trevors from the one-off Something Awful "Flash Tub" characters, but it would be very, very helpful to set some sort of standards.

With that said, I don't know what we need to do to get there, but I do have a couple ideas:

  • Some sort of basement Google guideline, perhaps. The problem with this is threefold - Google is biased toward newer memes, allowing older yet notable memes (like, say, Prime Number Shitting Bear to fall by the wayside, and Google doesn't always catch what some users might incorrectly call "forumcruft" like Rapter Jesus, and Google is english-biased.
  • Perhaps a basement guideline of publication on notable websites and/or blogs? If a site like Something Awful links to it, when we know they have hundreds of thousands of readers, it can be safely said that it's reached a sizeable audience.
  • Offline popular culture references would be a clear sign, such as All Your Base in Foxtrot.

Any other thoughts? I'd really like to see this occur. --badlydrawnjeff 14:14, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Jeff that a discussion at WP:MEME might be a good idea. User:Zoe|(talk) 19:26, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sockpuppets

Is there a way to detect sockpuppets? An easy way would be to include a user's IP address AS WELL as their user ID in edit histories. This wouldn't involve any more breach of privacy than anon editors already accept. A situation recently arose where sockpuppetry appeared to be occurring, but there was no straightforward way to prove or disprove it, which would have helped to resolve an ongoing edit conflict. While I'm fairly sure sockpuppetry isn't all that widespread, when it does occur a quick way of stamping it out would be very helpful. Thoughts? Graham 15:48, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I dont think many people would be happy about revealing their IP, there is Wikipedia:Requests for CheckUser though. Martin 16:22, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nationality in Bio Articles

Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (biographies)#proposal A proposal to clarify the meaning of "Nationality" in the Manual of Style for Biographies -- should the "nationality" in the lead section normally men the person's citizenship, or the person's possibly complex ethhnic heritage. DES (talk) 19:11, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Review the anonymous article creation policy

I would like to cite the points brought up in this dicussion of the new policy as evidence that a review of this policy is necessary. If I'm honest, the whole idea seemed rather backward from the moment it was introduced. You're actually forcing people to have MORE anonymity before they can create articles, which gives serious vandals an advantage, as vandalism is harder to trace. 71.141.251.153's post sums up my thoughts quite well.

Please consider this, as the policy as it is now has done nothing in terms of preventing vandalism so far. --82.7.125.142

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)&oldid=34948594"